Is This For Real? Obama Administration Accused of Faking 2012 Unemployment Numbers

On top of everything else, the New York Post is running a story about a census worker - or workers, it's not clear - who were faking unemployment data in the summer ahead of the 2012 election. Can that be true?

In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington. 

The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.
And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it. 

Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy. 

And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today.
“He’s not the only one,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous for now but is willing to talk with the Labor Department and Congress if asked. 

The Census employee caught faking the results is Julius Buckmon, according to confidential Census documents obtained by The Post. Buckmon told me in an interview this past weekend that he was told to make up information by higher-ups at Census.

Amazing if true, plus we already know that - if it is true - you are never going to find the West Wing memo directing this sort of thing. That's because progressives in and out of government don't need to have things spelled out for them like you do with the more earnest elements of the Stupid Party. They have known since 2004, if not earlier, that Barack Obama was a once-in-a-generation leftist organizer who could bring the progressive "project" along faster than any of them would have dared to dream. Name the institution and its resident liberals have done their part to alternatively aggrandize and protect The One. Faking unemployment numbers would seem an obvious step.

Obamacare: Bitter Recriminations Edition

Like President Obama, I am getting mighty tired of reading articles like this: Trust Frayed Between Obama Dems

President Barack Obama’s credibility may have taken a big hit with voters, but he’s also in serious danger of permanently losing the trust of Democrats in Congress. The Obamacare debacle has been bad enough that it’s tough for Democrats to take on faith that the president can fix the problems. His one-time allies are no longer sure that it’s wise to follow him into battle, leaving Obama and his law not only vulnerable to existing critics, but open to new attacks from his own party. 

“I don’t know how he f—-ed this up so badly,” said one House Democrat who has been very supportive of Obama in the past.

Oh, come off it. the Obama Administration might have screwed up the website, but every other baleful effect of the full implementation of Obamacare is due entirely to what we lawyers like to refer to as the "operation of law." Health plans being canceled? Patients losing doctors? Premiums skyrocketing? Healthy middle class people subsidizing the health care of drug addicts? People being shunted into Medi-caid hell? That's not because of a freakin' website! It's by "operation of law!" (isn't it majestic?) Obamacare is working precisely as it was meant to work. No more, no less. 

Obamacare is a disaster because the law is disastrous. Obama might have sold the law and signed the law, but a Democrat Congress drafted it and passed it, no doubt with the eager vote of "one (of many!) House Democrat who has been very supportive of Obama in the past." This might be one of those rare times when the ship is sinking too fast for the rats to get off in time.

Bill DeBlasio, The New New Left & A New New York City

I have manfully refrained from commenting on the NYC mayor's race; but, now that the Huma/Weiner circus has left town, I really need to ring the alarm bell on how Gotham's citizens are on the verge electing a real socialist as mayor; that socialist being Bill DeBlasio, the Democrat in the race.

Think I'm joking? No less than the New York Times has written about DeBlasio's frankly hard left background which includes extensive work with the Nicaraguan Sandanistas and even a honeymoon celebration (!) in Cuba. The New York Post has reported on his extensive ties with ACORN, including a sound bite from the notoriously avowed red Bertha Lewis. DeBlasio himself allows that he was - and remains - a "progressive" and a "social democrat," and is up front about his Reagan-era work with the Internationale. New left worthies like (yes) Tom Haydn are already looking at DeBlasio's 30% lead and licking their lips at the thought of all that sweet, sweet redistribution. The man is not just a leftist. He is a pinko at the very least,  and not even shy about saying it.

Now, one thing that is important to keep in mind: the fact that DeBlasio was flying down to Nicaragua to "help" the Sandanistas is not just a signifier of his extreme leftism. It's also a sign that he is an idiot, both literally and in the "useful idiot" formulation. I traveled in some real left-wing circles back in those days, and I am here to tell you that even most liberals and lefty types thought that Sandalistas like DeBlasio were fools who were helping prop up a dictatorship. Maybe things have changed, but back then there was no honor in announcing that you had just arrived from a spring break trip to Managua. DeBlasio and the rest of the Sandalistas really put the "simp" (as in "simpleton") in Com-simp.

So are New Yorkers really going elect a guy like this? All those bad ass Gothamites with their attitudes, street smarts, and "yo, yo, yo" are going to pull the lever for a guy who thinks Daniel Ortega and Bertha Lewis are worthy of his attention?

Well, they have to vote for someone, and right now the Republican in the race, Joe Lhota, does not seem like the sort of "someone" who can overcome the lazy inertia of Democrat registration. Successful NYC Republican politicians have been larger-than-life figures who could deliver their bold promises to clean up the city's mean streets. Lhota appears to come from the Todd Akin wing of the party. He once called Port Authority officers "mall cops" (37 of them died on 9/11) and is best known for leading the charge against a dung-covered painting of the Virgin Mary.

Also, Lhota says that - Yes! Absolutely! - he is going to make an issue of DeBlasio's communist past and socialist present, but - no - he is not going to call his worthy Democratic opponent a socialist. I look forward to his concession speech, as Lhota clearly doesn't have the stones to face down the left.

Look, Joe, maybe you think it's de classe' to call your opponent by his real ideological leanings, but you can still call him out without having to label Bill DeBlasio a socialist. Notice anything in paragraph 2 above? The man went to Cuba for his honeymoon! In 1994!! He broke a boycott put in place by JFK!!! He violated federal law!!!! His honeymoon dollars went straight into the pockets of a regime that maintains gulags and throws people in prison for simply speaking out against the government!!!!! What kind of person thinks of Cuba as a romantic spot to celebrate his marriage ???!!!

Listen up, Joe! I'm using all these explanation points because I don't think you understand how easy you could make this into a campaign issue without your having to stoop to (shudder) McCarthyism (i.e. telling the blunt truth)!

The success of Republican and pseudo-Republican governance in NYC has been one of the under-appreciated stories of the last 25 years. Rudy Giuliani came into an urban liberal hellhole and turned it around in short order following policies that any conservative would support. Michael Bloomberg re-registered as a Republican (!) to run as Rudy's successor. This at the same time that it's been conventional wisdom that Republicans can't win in big cities and can't fight liberal machine politics! They can with the right candidates and the right message! Too bad for Chicago and Detroit that they never had their own Rudy/Bloomberg moments. And yet, we are poised to hand the mayor's office off to a "progressive" who has specifically promised to return to the law enforcement and budgeting policies that sent NYC into the toilet. Excuse me, I am running out of foreheads to slap.

The NYC mayor's office has been one of the GOP's real plums for the past 20 years, and yet we're not showing any sign that we intend to fight to hold on to it.

Money For Nothing: Corey Booker's "Start-Up"

I think this Times puff piece about Corey Booker was supposed to cause Jerseyites to admire his visionary tech-saavyiety (new word alert. Call the OED), but instead it reveals to how a handful of billionaires have used an internet start-up as a front to funnel money into Booker's bank account. 

Mr. Booker personally has obtained money for the start-up, called Waywire, from influential investors, including Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman. A year after its debut, Waywire has already endured a round of layoffs and had just 2,207 visitors in June, according to Compete, a Web-tracking service. The company says it is still under development. 

Yet in a financial disclosure filed last month, Mr. Booker, 44, revealed that his stake in the company was worth $1 million to $5 million. Taken together, his other assets were worth no more than $730,000. 

That revelation, with just a week left in Mr. Booker’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate, shows how a few tech moguls and entrepreneurs, many of them also campaign donors, not only made a financial bet on the mayor’s political future but also provided the brainpower and financing to help create a company that could make him very rich. 

Waywire has also provided jobs for associates of Mr. Booker: the son of a top campaign supporter and his social media consultant, who is now on his Senate campaign staff.

Waywire is a pathetic nonentity in the world of the internet. It's a video sharing platform. Wow! a video sharing platform? On the internet?! Althouse, who flagged some of the purple prose from the Times, brings us a dramatic report from the Waywire site:

Here's Waywire, by the way(wire), so check for yourself if it's haywire. You can't tell from one look how long these items have been at the top, but the timelessness of the subject matter makes me think: a long time. I mean: "7 Great Beatles Performances," "Top 15 Most Patriotic Songs," "30 Best Summer Songs"...? These seem to pre-date the Internet! But let's be fair and watch "Top News, August 8," which appears in the upper left-hand corner of the grid. It starts off (for me, now, anyway) with a grainy 38 seconds of a guy in a suit drawing all the pingpong balls for a set of Powerball numbers. (That fits with "betting on Booker.") It then proceeds to another video, a minute of Obama on Leno, then another (showing "Suffering in Syria"), then something about Egypt, something about Dustin Hoffman, something else about Egypt, and ending the run through the top news that you need to know today, August 8th, with "Toddler Beaten to Death by Foster Mother." We see her sad face in a thumbnail. 

Just to add to the appearance of impropriety, one of the board members is Andrew Zucker, a 15 year-old boy. Or, was. He has since resigned, no doubt because someone realized having Jeff Zucker's son on the board of Booker's nest egg would probably give rise to questions about the nexus between the MSM and the Democrat Party. 

Well.

As with John Edwards, who actively worked to separate the nonagenarian Bunnie Mellon from hundreds of thousands of dollars, all in the name of funding his political career, one has to ask how any of this is legal. Conservatives like Sarah Palin have to keep every receipt from Target, lest they be hounded for accepting a $50 "gift," while Dems can earn hundreds of thousands of dollars through cattle futures, bogus start-ups or simple "gifts." I'm starting to feel like there's a double standard at work here. 

Booker has been a real up-and-comer; a golden boy who waded into the corrupt world of Newark politics and seemed to be cleaning it up. Then again, there's apparently a lot of hometown griping that he hasn't done all that much to turn Newark around, except remove some of the more egregiously corrupt civil servants. Crime, poverty, unemployment are still sky-high, and indeed are unchanged from the beginning of his administration. Booker's run for the NJ Senate seat has been treated as a for-ordained glide path into national politics, but clearly there is much that is lurking under the surface for a determined foe or journalist to dig into.  

P.S. As much as we can be discomfited by Booker's arrangement with his donors, the fact is that people like him need to sustain themselves and raise a family. Human nature being what it is, you can't expect civil servants to live penuriously. No one likes to hear this, but most elective offices are severely underpaid. Senators and congressmen should be earning in the low seven figures, not the relatively small salaries they are actually paid. If Corey Booker was actually earning a salary commensurate with his skills and his job duties, he wouldn't have to enter into bogus "investments" funded by billionaires living 3,000 miles away from the Garden State. 

Charlie Rangel H8's The Tea Party: Can't We All Just Get Along?

Charlie Rangel wants you to know what he really thinks of Republicans and, especially, the Tea Party:

There is little question that Rangel is nearing the end. First elected 43 years ago, after having defeated the man whose name adorns the building where the congressman keeps his office, he is musing aloud now about what he once forbade anyone to discuss with him: his own retirement. 

But even at 83, dressed in a blue bow tie and crisp gray suit, Rangel is relentless toward those who he feels are slowing the forces of progress. 

House Republicans? Have done more damage to American competitiveness than al Qaeda ever could. “What is happening is sabotage. Terrorists couldn’t do a better job than the Republicans are doing.” 

The Tea Party? Defeat them the same way segregation was beaten. “It is the same group we faced in the South with those white crackers and the dogs and the police.”

Uh, no they're not, jerk, and you know it. The Tea Party has nothing to do with segregationists, who were Democrats who voted for every New Deal and Fair Deal program under the sun, so long as the "Solid South" could remain a segregated backwater. The Tea Party is trying to reduce the size of the federal leviathan, starting with Obamacare, and moving on down the line. I know it's hard to understand, given how all us white people (aka "crackas") look alike, but that's life for you. 

The real problem with the Tea Party, if you are Charlie Rangel, is that it is dedicating to reducing the various hand-outs, transfer payments, subsidies and "free" stuff that he has spent a career acquiring for the "community." Rangel's power has come from ginning up outrage and then dispensing goodies to his constituents, many of whom think of Great Society programs as a sort of reparations for slavery. (something they never personally experienced, btw, but the "right" to reparations is something they inherited, I guess, like white people inherit stocks and bonds). Cut welfare? Why don't you just cut off Charlie Rangel's arms?! That would definitely be racist.

America has never had a shortage of roguish politicos, but Charlie Rangel really takes the cake. He's used the ideals of the civil rights movement and the righteous anger of African-Americans to build an empire of boodle where he stood at the head of the line dispensing Obama-phones and AFDC checks like a ward-heeler (hey, what's this "like" stuff?" That's what he is) passing out stringy turkeys at Thanksgiving. Along the way, he's amassed a fortune worth many times what he could have earned through his congressional salary, not that anyone's cared to inquire too closely about that. Even the IRS could be sent packing on Rangel's behalf. 

But, when the taxpayers who pay for Rangel's power revolt and demand some sign that the Rangels of the world at least to pretend to live within the limits of the Constitution, not to mention math, suddenly it's all firehoses and dogs and Bull Connor. It's absurd. If anything, Rangel is now part of the noxious power structure. If he needs to insult decent Americans to keep his place there, I guess that's what he's got to do. 

Clueless: Moderate Republicans And The IRS's Attacks on the Tea Party

We've spent so many decades hearing about how Richard Nixon (unsuccessfully) tried to sic the IRS on his political opponents, it was almost funny to learn that the "white hat" Obama lead an effort to systematically suppress conservative activists through abusive auditing. You would think anyone with an "R" after their name would know what to do with a scandal like this: righteous anger mixed with a resolve to fight these b**tards to the political death. But that's not what the GOP's moderate elements are doing. Instead, they are working hand-in-glove with the Obama administration to pass immigration reform while harrumphing about "special prosecutors" and generally allowing public anger to diffuse. 

As the perfect exemplar of this strain, Sheriff Michael Gerson rode into town on his high horse a couple weeks ago and declared the heated reaction by Tea Partiers to be, erm, unhelpful:

A number of libertarians and conservative populists have found data collection by the National Security Agency(NSA) to be the final confirmation of their worst fears about Barack Obama and modern government. It is an attempt, according to Ron Paul, to “deliberately destroy the Constitution.” To radio talk show host Mark Levin, it reveals “the elements of a police state.” To Rush Limbaugh, it is part of a “coup d’etat” by the Obama “regime.” 

Some on the right believe, as they say in the intel business, that they have connected the dots. All the scandals are really part of one big scandal. For Levin, it encompasses abuses by the Internal Revenue Service, the collection of DNA by policemen, Obamacare’s centralization of medical records and the use of domestic drones. “The Transportation Department, people forget, has proposed black boxes in all of our automobiles to track how they function,” Levin adds. 

Limbaugh presents a similar list, demonstrating what he calls “the totalitarian nature or the authoritarian nature of this administration,” and homes in on the NSA revelations: “The main question is, why is such a gigantic surveillance operation even necessary? What is really going on here? Who is the enemy? The tea party, we know, is an enemy of the administration. We know that conservative Republicans — and I could give you names — are enemies of this administration.” 

Let me stipulate that the IRS targeting of tea party groups is deeply disturbing andEric Holder’s Justice Department is politicized, swaggering and incompetent. Distrust of government is deep in the American DNA, and the Obama administration has often managed to justify it. 

But asserting that U.S. intelligence agencies are part of a conspiracy that somehow includes a national gun registry, drone surveillance and Lois Lerner crosses a line. 

I guess we shouldn't expect any real fight from the man who helped craft the Bush 43 administration's pathetic non-response to the scurrilous attacks the left subjected it to for years. But, come on! Doesn't any of this make Gerson angry? It should. Decent, hard-working Americans of the sort whom the GOP has historically relied on at the polls, were subject to attack and abuse by cold-hearted left-wing activists disguised as bureaucrats. The GOP base was literally being hounded and suppressed - while the left wailed about a bogus "war on women" and a mythical effort to suppress minority voters via voter ID laws! Mr. Gerson, your people were under attack and that doesn't seem to bother you, nor does it bother many of the DC-based GOP leadership. Frankly, that is almost as disturbing as the IRS asking conservative groups about the contents of their prayers. 

What's worse is that progressives have been using 501(c)(3)'s and (4)'s as political tools and income streams for years. The NAACP, NARAL, the teachers unions (and every other union), Greenpeace, PETA, and so on are all tax-emept organizations. They are also political through and through. How is that "legal" while some women organizing a Tea Party group around their kitchen tables is untoward? 

And, left-wing groups aren't just organizing tools. Rich progressives like the Kennedies use them as tax shelters and as income streams. The grant-writing liberal is not far removed from the conservative businessman going to the bank for a loan, only the liberal is looking to start an activist group and pay herself a salary. And, the non-profit sector is notorious for its prodigious fund-raising and pathetic disbursement rates. Rush Limbaugh has been saying for years that the modern left is funded by tax-payers. He's not far off the mark. Again, Mr. Gerson, doesn't it make you angry that leftists are excluded from the sort of rigorous enforcement to which conservative groups were subject?

That's not to let Tea Partiers totally off the hook. As earnestly as they wanted to comply with IRS rules, it should have been clear to anyone receiving those crazy document demands that quick approvals would not be forthcoming from Cincinnati or Ogden or wherever. As Prof. Reynolds suggests, they should have self-exempted at that point. And, while it's admirable that conservatives wanted to make sure they were crossing all of their T's and dotting their I's re: accepting donations, I have to ask whether, say, the Black Panthers or Mario Savio or the Chicago Seven or other leftist rebels ever went through the bother of complying with IRS rules. Maybe they did and there was a Black Panther 501(c)(3), but I have no idea and anyway I doubt it. They just went out and started taking care of business, committing real crimes along the way. The left's funding has always been murky with an unknown but significant portion coming from Moscow and Beijing back in the good ol' days. Somehow the Tea Party hasn't managed to figure out that successful political activism is probably inversely proportional to compliance with the rules created by the political class. 

And, finally, while the right has a compelling case that its vote was suppressed in 2012, it was hardly a case of involuntary suppression. People just stayed home and didn't vote. Excuse me? That's pathetic! You don't like Romney, or are being inundated with insane IRS correspondence, or are getting Obama robo-calls, and your response is to stay home? Voting in America is still one of the easiest public duties a citizen has available to him. Obama richly deserved to lose, whether that loss came at the hands of Mitt Romney or Rick Perry or John Huntsman should have been beside the point. 

I had no illusions about Mitt Romney, no one should have. The man was a technocrat, not an activist. All those promises about repealing Obamacare, etc. would have wilted at the first sign of leftist counter-attack. But, that would still be better than what we've got now. 

To bring it all back to Michael Gerson's plaintive whining about unhelpful right-wing rhetoric, there's a reason why the Bush/Romney/Dole/McCain/Ford/Dewey branch of the party has so much trouble winning elections. They have no fight in them, and worse, don't realize they are in a fight at all. And, if they manage to win an election, they don't fight back. They don't protect themselves, and they don't protect their voters and most active supporters. Pathetic. 

Lone Nut Theory: Robert Kennedy Jr.'s Politics and Advocacy

If there's a living embodiment that Life Is Not Fair, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has to be Exhibit A. Born into an illustrious political family, he blew up any chance at elected office through criminality and drug addiction that persisted well into adulthood. Now an environmentalist and progressive activist, Kennedy seems perpetually in the public eye, at least that part of the eye trained on the innumerable cable news shows on which he appears. But, watching him is a painful experience. His "impassioned" advocacy quickly veers into hair-flipping rants, especially when challenged from his political right. Most people in his position are either in an early grave, in prision, or living in tiny hovels filled with yellowing "Nader For President" flyers. We all know what has saved RFKJ from such a fate: his name and his $$, but in America that's more than enough. He is the ultimate "Fortunate Son."

(not only that, he - like many progressives - is adept at using the tax code and trust law to set up non-profit foundations to hide his assets and pay himself and his family comfortable salaries. Not that the IRS has ever shown any interest in that).

Folks on the right have had his number since he first dropped out of Harvard, but for Democrats and progressives, RFKJ is still an admired figure. But, his anti-vaccination crusading has apparently freaked out the good libs at Slate:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. likes to talk. When he calls you to discuss vaccines, he talks a lot, uninterruptably. He called Keith Kloor after Kloor wrote a story for Discover about RFK Jr.’skeynote address to a convention of people who think vaccines cause autism. You can read about their conversation at Kloor's blog. Phil Plait wrote a story about RFK Jr. forSlate last week, pointing out that the idea that vaccines cause autism is a crackpot theory that has been thoroughly debunked, that it is dangerous, and that RFK Jr. is one of its most effective proponents. 

RFK Jr. was displeased. His managing director emailed me (I’m the health and science editor) to say that the story was full of inaccuracies, and I offered to correct any errors right away. He said Kennedy wanted to speak to Plait or me; I requested comments or corrections in writing; we went back and forth. Eventually Kennedy got me on the phone and he talked and I listened. 

Slate doesn’t give equal time tocreationists, and given the overwhelming evidence, we would never publish a story claiming that vaccines cause autism. But it’s fascinating, in a horrified head-shaking sort of way, to hear how anti-vaxxers think. I requested a transcript or video of Kennedy’s speech to the 2013 AutismOne/Generation Rescue Conference, but neither the conference hosts nor Kennedy’s office provided them. I can tell you what he said to me instead. 

The short version of the vaccine conspiracy theory (if you are stuck on the phone with RFK Jr., you will be subjected to the long version) is that a vaccine preservative called thimerosal causes autism when injected into children. Government epidemiologists and other scientists, conspiring with the vaccine industry, have covered up data and lied about vaccine ingredients to hide this fact. Journalists are dupes of this powerful cabal that is intentionally poisoning children. 

For a guy whose family has such a distinguished record of public service, Kennedy says some pretty awful things about government employees: “The lies that you are hearing and printing from the CDC are things that should be investigated.” He spoke to one scientist (he named her but I won’t spread the defamation) who, he said, “was actually very honest. She said it’s not safe. She said we know it destroys their brains.” 

I asked the scientist about their conversation. She said there is in fact no evidence that thimerosal destroys children’s brains, and that she never said that it did.

And so on. It's probably too much to expect Slate's "Science and Health Editor" to wonder, hey, if the haphazardly educated RFKJ is wrong about vaccines, he might not be right about the other scientific matters on which he so passionately rants. 

Search Engine: The Obama Administration's Surveillance State

I'm not a criminal law attorney so I have no idea whether the NSA's seizing all of Verizon's customer records is unconstitutional (fwiw, the steadfast likes of John Yoo and Andy McCarthy see nothing wrong). And, maybe there's some logical rationale for the newly revealed (but years' long) effort to poke through the servers of some of the internet's biggest names, but I've got a more basic question: is any of this data mining accomplishing anything?

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post. 

The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. The NSA prides itself on stealing secrets and breaking codes, and it is accustomed to corporate partnerships that help it divert data traffic or sidestep barriers. But there has never been a Google or Facebook before, and it is unlikely that there are richer troves of valuable intelligence than the ones in Silicon Valley.

I ask whether any of this is accomplishing anything because you may have noticed that, despite all of this intensive trolling through phone records and internet searches, two kids from Chechnya - one of whom had even been in contact with the DHS and FBI - managed to set off bombs at the Boston Marathon without much trouble. The Tsaernovs seem to have spent a lot of time on the phone and on the 'net, but still managed to slip through.

I haven't normally gone along with the black helicopter/Parallax View approach to issues like this, but after the IRS scandal, I literally do not trust the gov't at all. Sure, everyone's talking about how there are all these protections, and the searches are focused on "patterns" and the like; but isn't that what the IRS was doing? Plugging search terms like "Patriot" and "9/12" into their computers to better target the people they wanted to target? Seems like whatever the NSA guys were doing could just as easily been turned towards that direction without much trouble.

(plus, we are still being treated to 2012 election post-mortems featuring Democrat operatives crowing about how their data-mining efforts helped them to better target voters. Data mining, you say? And how do we know you also weren't using data mining to target your political enemies?)

As usual, Obama defenders are falling back on their first refuge: this program started under Bush. But, my memory was that Dems were calling for impeachment and worse - remember all of those assassination fantasies? - when the original NSA program was revealed by the NY Times. Now, Obama has taken the Bush-era data mining efforts and exploded them.

Either this stuff is dangerous and unconstitutional or it's not, but it looks like to the left "unconstitutional" really means "didn't go far enough."

Spit Take: Local Pol Busted In Stamp Licking Scandal

Disgraced former Santa Clara County Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr., who has already resigned his seat and plead guilty to misappropriating campaign funds, has been arrested again for his role in sending out an "illegal" campaign mailer on behalf of his former chief of staff. The evidence? A match between genetic material found in the spittle on the mailings and a DNA swab taken during the Supe's arrest earlier this year: 

In an extraordinary DNA match, saliva left on the stamp of a scandalous and illegal San Jose political campaign mailer three years ago led to the arrest of a disgraced former Santa Clara County supervisor, prosecutors said. 

George Shirakawa Jr. was arrested Wednesday on charges of impersonating City Council candidate Magdalena Carrasco in May 2010 by sending mailers that linked her to the communist government in Vietnam, said Jeff Rosen, the Santa Clara County district attorney. 

"What is offensive about the flyer," Rosen said, "is that this is a photo of Magdalena Carrasco right across from the flag of North Vietnam." 

The hit piece - whose origin has long been a mystery - was sent to residents of a district with a large population of Vietnamese Americans, and it may have affected the outcome of a tight council race. 

Carrasco finished second in the June 2010 primary by 20 votes, then lost a November runoff election against a former Shirakawa aide, Xavier Campos, by just 400 votes.
Neither Carrasco nor Campos returned calls seeking comment. Prosecutors would not say if Campos was cooperating with investigators.

Now, there's a lot of material to unpack from such a frankly absurd story, it's hard to know where to start:

1. Shirakawa is, needless to say, a Democrat. Not only that, he's the scion of a Democrat family with a long-standing history in South Bay politics. 

2. While it's amusing to think of the grossly obese Shirakawa hunched over his kitchen table licking stamps and stuffing envelopes with a bizarre graphic tying a Hispanic woman to the Commie North Viet Namese, we are also getting a not-so-funny glimpse into the world of, if not voter fraud, certainly voter misdirection. If it's hard to find the sort of shadowy figures who practice this sort of stuff, it might be because the politicos themselves, and maybe their immediate families, are the ones doing it. 

3. If I were Xavier Campos, the "beneficiary" of this dodge, I wouldn't be feeling very appreciative right now. 

4. Note that all of this "DNA-swab-taken-at-his-arrest" stuff is coming just two days after the Supreme Court ruled that such swabs do not violate the Fourth Amendment. It's almost as if the DA was patiently waiting to spring this charge on Shirakawa. 

5. The timing of this has drawn the ire of Shirakawa's attorneys, and rightly so. They negotiated an elaborate "resignation/guilty plea" resolution to his other crimes, and the DA pops up with this the day before the ex-Supe was to be sentenced. Defense counsel is crying foul saying they had agreed to a global settlement of all of Shirakawa's crimes. The DA was clearly holding this back for later. 

6. The mailer has been called every word in the book: "libelous," "scandalous," "scurrilious," etc. But what made it "illegal?" Apparently because Shirakawa included Carrasco's campaign ID number on it, thus making it look like an official Carrasco campaign document. But, read the DA's comments in the story; he seems to think the flyer itself was illegal for combining Carrasco's face with the Viet Namese flag. That's illegal???? 

7. It's hard to believe anyone's vote could be swayed by Shirakawa's flyer - it's incredibly primitive, not to mention stupid - but Carrasco lost by a whisker-thin margin. I am unable to resist that "surrounded by idiots" feeling, even if we're talking about Democrats here. 

8. Note that the offending mailer was targeted at an immigrant community, and was calculated in its ham-fisted way, to offend its political sensitivities. And it worked! This doesn't speak well for the assimilation and sophistication of our treasured immigrant brethren. In fact, it raises the question once again whether there are people voting in American elections who are citizens and actually have the franchise.  

9. Shirakawa is obviously a classic example of the gutter level corruption you can find in any municipality. One imagines a lot of cash-in-envelopes have passed through his hands over the years.

10. But at least he never led a "war on women!"

Fire & Brimstone: Sheldon Whitehouse Talks About The Weather

This is a couple days old, and he's already semi-apologized, but this Sheldon Whitehouse rant in the Well of the Senate is one for the ages:



Here's a summary:

Whitehouse spent 15 minutes chastising GOP senators and justified his remarks by alluding to states that seek federal assistance in the wake of natural disasters. 

“So, you may have a question for me,” Whitehouse said. “Why do you care? Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings and disgrace ourselves? I’ll tell you why. We’re stuck in this together. We are stuck in this together. When cyclones tear up Oklahoma and hurricanes swamp Alabama and wildfires scorch Texas, you come to us, the rest of the country, for billions of dollars to recover. And the damage that your polluters and deniers are doing doesn’t just hit Oklahoma and Alabama and Texas. It hits Rhode Island with floods and storms. It hits Oregon with acidified seas, it hits Montana with dying forests. So, like it or not, we’re in this together.” 

Whitehouse went on to condemn the current Republican position on global warming, citing economic, environmental and diplomatic damages. 

“You drag America with you to your fate,” he continued. “So, I want this future: I want a Republican Party that has returned to its senses and is strong and a worthy adversary in a strong America that has done right by its people and the world. That’s what I want. I don’t want this future. I don’t want a Republican Party disgraced, that let its extremists run off the cliff, and an America suffering from grave economic and environmental and diplomatic damage because we failed, because we didn’t wake up and do our duty to our people, and because we didn’t lead the world. I do not want that future. But that’s where we’re headed. So I will keep reaching out and calling out, ever hopeful that you will wake up before it is too late.”

In other words, you darn Republicans are destroying the world with your capitalism and your Climate Change Denial, and now you are coming to ask for tornado disaster relief? Good day, sir! 

All of this on the day a tornado destroyed Moore, OK and at a time when the death toll was being reported as much higher than it turned out to be (including erroneous reports of dozens of children killed). One imagines Sen. Whitehouse's staff getting ready to contact "Moore parents" and offer to fly them to DC on Air Force One to lobby for a carbon tax. 

Now it's easy enough to say, Jesus, what a nut; but that the guy's a US Senator! Someone had to vote for him. Plus, he's got that dumb "Time To Wake Up!" poster next to him, so he must have thought he was reflecting his constituents' heartfelt beliefs. 

The boring truth, of course, is that "we" have been dealing with tornadoes since the first Conestoga wagons crossed the Great Plains. The Moore tornado, as bad as it was, was not nearly as deadly as the worst ever, which killed hundreds. And, tornadoes are certainly not caused by "global warming" or whatever else the poli-sci majors who are GW's greatest proponents might believe. 

Whitehouse clearly believes not only that GW is real and that it is killing us; but also thinks that Republicans should be punished in some way for "causing" GW. His idea, I guess, is to withhold disaster relief. (and big spending libs have pulled out the green eyeshades when disaster has struck Texas, Tennassee, and even Staten Island). Or maybe they could double the number of IRS agents in OK. Whatever it might be, it's clear that a lot of liberals would like to see conservatives suffer for their sins (that sin being conservatism).

Gun Fury: Newtown Parents In Washington

I wasn't going to do this, but the efforts of some (not all) of the Newtown parents to guilt-trip Americans into surrendering their Second Amendment rights have really crossed a line. Here is "Newtown mom" Francine Wheeler giving the president's weekly address:

Francine Wheeler blinked past her tears, looked straight into the camera and asked Americans to push for tougher gun laws, drawing on courage she said comes from the memory of her 6-year-old son, Ben, murdered in his first-grade classroom in Newtown, Connecticut. 

"His boundless energy kept him running across the soccer field long after the game was over," said Wheeler, describing her son during what is usually President Barack Obama's weekly Saturday address to the nation. 

"He couldn't wait to get to school every morning," she said, her voice breaking, her husband David beside her, sighing and swallowing hard. 

The address was the culmination of a week of emotional pleas in Washington from families of the 26 people killed by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14. 

"To us, it feels as if it happened just yesterday," Wheeler said, recounting the horror of waiting at the firehouse after the shooting "for the boy who would never come home." 

The massacre has spurred Obama to propose new restrictions on guns - politically difficult measures in a country where constitutional rights to own guns are defended by powerful lobby groups like the National Rifle Association. 

Obama brought the Newtown families to Washington on Monday aboard Air Force One after he gave a speech in Connecticut urging action on his plans.

I'm sorry, but does Wheeler, or anyone else, honestly think her pain over losing her son is not something that would be shared by any decent parent in her position, even the dread Wayne LaPierres or Ted Cruzes of the world? What happened to Ben Wheeler and his classmates was awful. Just awful. I couldn't stand to watch news coverage of the event. Don't even get me started on the political ghouls like Michael Bloomberg and Diane Feinstein who leaped for the cameras before lunchtime on that terrible Friday morning, seeing an opportunity to "win" a political argument they had lost years ago. But, Wheeler's pain is universal. It has nothing to say about gun control, background checks, or the other ephemera that the Senate is debating. 

We're not supposed to attack Wheeler and her cohort, but I have to ask what was the point of her presentation. She addresses nothing about the substance of the pending gun control bills, or how they might or might not be constitutional. I don't even know if the murder of her son has changed her views on gun control. She's an upper-income woman from suburban Connecticut. Odds are, she didn't like guns before 12/14/12, and would have supported the president's efforts at anytime, regardless of her circumstances. 

And, let's talk about the president and his "efforts" to address Newtown. What's he done? Made some speeches denouncing the opposition and acting like he - the president of the United States - is being thwarted by dark forces led by the NRA and/or Mitch McConnell. I can't do anything! he seems to moan. Bullsh*t. There's plenty he could do above and beyond his flurry of executive orders. (how's it going implementing those, btw? Did he ever follow through on his order to himself to nominate a new ATF chief?) The president is, after all, the president. He runs the executive branch! He could get out there and actually go after the bad guys he claims to want to put of business: the criminals committing gun crimes and the gun runners making illegal weapons sales. He could lead a national "conversation" about violent video games and movies. He could get behind an effort to resolve the vexing mental health questions that arise from these events. (and address the unspoken question of whether psychotropic drugs have played any role in the psychoses of mass killers). 

But all Obama's doing right now is making Republican Senators squirm on Meet The Press, and that might be all he accomplishes because - and this is the biggest joke - everyone knows that whatever legislation manages to pass out of Congress would not have stopped Adam Lanza or anyone else from committing mass murder. 

Is that what Ben Wheeler's blood is going to buy? The temporary discomfort of some RINO's who probably secretly agree with his grieving mother anyway? 

As an example of how a president who is serious about solving a seemingly intractable problem, look at how the Reagan Administration waged the War On Drugs. Sure, there was some legislating involved, especially with the notorious mandatory sentencing laws; but the president didn't sit around waiting for Congress to act. The Justice Department and other cabinet departments were mobilized to focus on drug interdiction and prosecution. On the PR side, there was Nancy Reagan's earnest and effective "Just Say No" campaign, along with a million PSA's culminating in the famous "This is your brain on drugs" commercial. We can sit around arguing how effective all of this was,  but there is no doubt that an executive branch committed to a particular policy can throw a lot of resources around in a hurry. 

So is Obama prosecuting gun crimes? No. In fact, such prosecutions have declined under his watch. How hard would it be to call Eric Holder and tell him to turn this around? About as hard as Ronaldus placing a telephone call to Ed Meese I would imagine.

Is the Obama administration going after gun runners or underground dealers? Are you kidding? They ran the biggest gun running operation in history! Plus, I just don't think there are any sort of large-scale underground gun dealers out there, anti-gun propaganda notwithstanding. Why would there be?

Is the Obama Administration producing PSA's about gun safety? (Moms & Dads, don't leave your freaking weapons lying around! Especially when you know your son is a nut!) Of course not, and they are demonizing the one organization out there that does, the NRA, which produces a wealth of gun safety information.  

When is the First Black President going to use his bully pulpit to address the perpetrators of the vast majority of gun crimes: young black men? 

It's not as if these would be controversial. Wayne LaPierre, at his much maligned post-Newtown press conference called on the president to do the above, and more. The NRA wants criminals rounded up and sent to prison whether they are Adam Lanza or anonymous South Side wanna-be's. They just don't want law abiding citizens to be hassled along the way. 

Most important, maybe, the president might want to take a look at his rhetoric, and that of his fellow progressives, over the last 4 years. A lot of it has focused its vitriol on the wealthy and well-to-do, always with the subtext that their wealth is somehow misappropriated. Who did Adam Lanza target, after all? The children of the 1% whom we are told are responsible for all that is wrong in American society. Children who were born into what many on the left consider the white power structure. 

Sure you can say Adam Lanza was crazy or evil, but why couldn't have this been a political act, no different than a Palestinian blowing himself up at a school bus stop? 

I know there's a show biz aspect to politics, but this "Mrs. Wheeler Goes To Washington" routine is so bogus you can practically see the wires and the blue-screen. No one doubts her pain and anguish. How could you? But, she is going as a human shield to shut down debate, a phenomenon first identified by Ann Coulter years ago. We're not supposed to criticize her, yet she is flying around in Air Force One and is being shuttled to meetings with numerous Senators by lobbyists and a former "strategist" for Bill Clinton. (among his noble bits of strategy was navigating Slick's bimbo eruptions. Why would you want to shake hands with this guy, let alone let him shepherd you around Capitol Hill?) Are Americans supposed to watch this soap opera and collapse on to their fainting couches en masse? Apparently. 

The GOP will always be the Stupid Party, but Democrats are crafting arguments designed to appeal to stupid people. I'll take honest stupidity any time. 

This Bugs Me: The Secret Mitch McConnell Tape

The supposedly explosive Mitch McConnell tape"scandal" has backfired on the Democrats and has become a question of whether left-wing operatives committed felonies by recording a conversation between the Senator and his campaign staff: 

A secret recording of a campaign strategy session between U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell and his advisors was taped by leaders of the Progress Kentucky super PAC, says a longtime local Democratic operative. 

Mother Jones Magazine released the tape this week. The meeting itself took place on Feb. 2. 

Jacob Conway, who is on the executive committee of the Jefferson County Democratic Party, says that day, Shawn Reilly and Curtis Morrison, who founded and volunteered for Progress Kentucky, respectively, bragged to him about how they recorded the meeting. 

On the tape, McConnell and his advisors are heard laughing and joking about opposition research they had on actress Ashley Judd, who had been considering running against McConnell next year. Many Democratic groups blasted McConnell for the remarks yesterday, disgusted by the fact McConnell would potentially use Judd's suicidal thoughts as a child against her. 

Reilly and Morrison have declined to comment for this story.

I heard Jacob Conway's interview on Fox. What a laughable clown. And what a typical modern-day Democrat. Not only was he disingenuous, claiming in this fake-exasperated tone that these darn operatives were not authorized by the Democrat Party at all; but his voice was - how can I put this - *mincing*. If you catch my drift. We are definitely a long way from the lunch pail wing of the Democrat Party. 

More seriously, though, McConnell should hereby be on notice that he is Going Down on the slightest possible pre-text. Now that the "war on women" angle - McConnell and his staff were discussing Judd's well-publicized mental problems - has failed to work out, leftist activists are making a stink over possible ethics violations arising from whether McConnell was on "campaign time" or "government time."  It's not going to matter so long as McConnell is injured. 

Don't think that this can't happen? Read Robert Novack's description of his "role" (such as it was) in the Wilson/Plame affair.  David Corn was present at the creation of that media-driven "scandal." Whatever you might say about Corn, he knows how to create the impression of law-breaking out of the carelessness of Republican officials. 

(btw, you know who definitely gets hurt by these "secret tape" scandals? The tapers. Democrat politicians and journalists are happy to publicize these things, but it's the tapers who pay the bill. That kid who turned Sarah Palin's emails over to Gawker went to jail. Those two liberals who tape-recorded Newt Gingrich in 1997 - they were just a couple grandparents who thought they were hearing a bit of history! - plead guilty to federal wiretapping charges*. David Corn is going to get his awards and his publicity out of this, but it's anonymous Kentucky Democrats who will likely go to jail.)

A lot of conservatives like to dump on Mitch McConnell, but you won't hear that around here. McConnell has demonstrated over and over again an ability to lead the opposition in the Senate. His grasp of the law and the Constitution is deep and impressive. He has fought for conservative principles, going as far as to take multiple cases to the Supreme Court, where he has prevailed. He is a much steadier hand than John Boehner. That's why some of the Left's big guns are hunting McConnell. 

McConnell has played this affair well so far. He instantly recognized that no one could have recorded without breaking the law. But, he's going to have to be careful out there. 

* actually John Boehner sued lefty jerk Jim McDermott and won a multi-million dollar judgment against his colleague, so occasionally the bad guys do get dinged. 

He Is Risen

According to Google's homepage, Sunday is noteworthy as...Cesar Chavez's 86th birthday. Happy Si Se Puede Day!

Trillion Dollar Bash: Paul Krugman & the Coin That Will Rule Us All

It's amazing to think that there are large numbers of Serious People on the sophisticated left (these are the ones who always chortle over the Republican "war on science") who see a way out of the debt ceiling via the minting a trillion-dollar coin that the gov't could deposit - TA DA! - with the Federal Reserve. Paul Krugman - who won a Nobel Prize and is widely viewed as the leading apostle of Keynsean economics ca. now - thinks this is just what the doctor ordered.

Enter the platinum coin. There’s a legal loophole allowing the Treasury to mint platinum coins in any denomination the secretary chooses. Yes, it was intended to allow commemorative collector’s items — but that’s not what the letter of the law says. And by minting a $1 trillion coin, then depositing it at the Fed, the Treasury could acquire enough cash to sidestep the debt ceiling — while doing no economic harm at all.

Krugman et al. have sort of thought this through except for one detail: it's completely crazy, not to mention a mockery of the law and the Constitution. I mean, you have to love the idea of a "loophole" that allows you to mint a trillion-dollar anything. After a deafening round of mockery from the right, Krugman doubles down with a rousing defense of the concept:

What the hysterics see is a terrible, outrageous attempt to pay the government’s bills out of thin air. This is utterly wrong, and in fact is wrong on two levels. 

The first level is that in practice minting the coin would be nothing but an accounting fiction, enabling the government to continue doing exactly what it would have done if the debt limit were raised. 

Remember that the coin is supposed to be deposited at the Fed, which is effectively just a semi-autonomous government agency. As the federal government proper drew on its new Fed account, the Fed would probably respond by selling off some of its $3 trillion balance sheet. In effect, the consolidated federal government, including the Fed, would be financing its operations by selling debt instruments, just as always. 

But what if the Fed decided not to shrink its outside balance sheet? Even so, under current conditions it would make no difference — because we’re in a liquidity trap, with market interest rates on short-term federal debt near zero. Under these conditions, issuing short-term debt and just “printing money” (actually, crediting banks with additional reserves that they can convert into paper cash if they choose) are completely equivalent in their effect, so even huge increases in the monetary base (reserves plus cash) aren’t inflationary at all.

Krugman has an out for any blame that may come the left's way should this inflationary coin come to light: the Republicans made me do it!

For those new to this, here’s the story. First of all, we have the weird and destructive institution of the debt ceiling; this lets Congress approve tax and spending bills that imply a large budget deficit — tax and spending bills the president is legally required to implement — and then lets Congress refuse to grant the president authority to borrow, preventing him from carrying out his legal duties and provoking a possibly catastrophic default. 

And Republicans are openly threatening to use that potential for catastrophe to blackmail the president into implementing policies they can’t pass through normal constitutional processes.

...
This still leaves the question of whose face goes on the coin — but that’s easy: John Boehner. Because without him and his colleagues, this wouldn’t be necessary.

John Boehner's mind control is so total he is planting ideas that are literally out of a Simpson's episode (one featuring Fidel Castro!) in the minds of the brilliant among us.

Just What The Hell Is Going On?

I have been going back and forth over how much or how little to write about the horrible events in Connecticut. My reaction has been similar to that during the days after 9/11, and I don't say that lightly. Just as on that day, I keep going back to the same thought, "how could anyone do that?" Maybe the event is too much for a blog post, but I do need to say something about the political reaction, such as it has been.

We are being ruled by fools on both sides of the aisle.

Within an hour of the true scale of that maniac's rampage becoming clear, you began to hear talk about how we would need to Do Something about guns. Those poor children, and the brave handful of women who sacrificed their lives to save so many others, were lying still where they died, and here came Michael Bloomburg, who should rightly be concerned about what's going on in the Five Boroughs, and no further, intoning that "we" must get guns off the street. The words of this former alleged Republican have been repeated ad nauseum, so much so that it is clear that liberal politicians and their media allies saw this awful tragedy - just imagine the last panicked seconds of those children's lives - as a once-in-a-decade chance to "win" a political argument they lost years ago.

Michael Bloomberg? Diane Feinstein? Michael Moore? Everyone on CNN & MSNBC? Go to Hell. Please.

And, they're the compassionate ones, don't you know.

Banning guns may have a certain visceral appeal, especially with its biblical incantations of beating swords into plowshares, but that's not going to solve anything. For one thing, gun bans are unconstitutional. For another, facts and experience tell us that gun bans ultimately result in more guns deaths, not fewer. And, finally, there is not a law you could draft respecting guns that would have stopped that monster from carrying out his evil deeds.

Of course, the fact that liberals can't ban guns doesn't mean they can't do the next best thing, which  it to wave the bloody shirt in the face of those conservative politicians reckless enough to go on cable TV to be hectored about the 2nd Amendment, as if the NRA relishes mass killings.

That doesn't mean the right hasn't had its own moments of jack-assery. You know what's just as pointless as calling for banning guns? How about calls to censor violent movies and video games? That's just as unconstitutional as banning guns, and about as effective. Same with calls to bring back school prayer.

You know what I haven't heard from any of our conservative "leaders?" An idea of how to deal with the actual problems that you readily identify as common to all of these mass shootings:

1. a troubled loner who was obviously a ticking time bomb, and whose dangerous proclivities were undoubtedly well known to those around him, but who could not get him off the streets.  

2. readily available guns that they practically picked up off of the floor  

3. a "soft target" filled with defenseless victims

We knew all of this before last Friday, but everyone's acting like the sun just rose in the East for the first time.

Now I know House Republicans have been very busy watching John Boehner tramp up to the White House to "negotiate," but, in the meantime, don't they have jobs? Aren't they, like, legislators? Hasn't Congress been known to produce legislation on occasion?

Say what you will about Dianne Feinstein, but 48 hours after the massacre began, she was in front of a microphone with draft legislation ready to go. Do you think she and her staff wrote this stuff in a fever pitch on Saturday? Of course not! They had it sitting in a drawer somewhere, ready to go for just this moment when the public could perhaps be railroaded into supporting gun restrictions it would otherwise oppose.

You get the feeling Republicans have draft legislation sitting in a drawer (or on a hard drive)? Me neither.

Where's the federal law making a parent criminally negligent when they leave a god-damned weapon lying around the house, and their kid uses it to kill someone?

Where's the federal concealed-carry legislation?

Where's federal equivalent of the Tarasoff rule?

And where's the federal law making it a lot easier to institutionalize people with dangerous, violent psychoses?

(that last one, btw, would pass with wide majorities while the ostensibly "common sense" guns bans will languish in committee. Let liberals explain why the likes of Seung Cho should be able to just wander the world until they decide it's time to go out in a blaze of infamy.)

Where is all this proposed legislation? You got me. All I see are Republican politicians like Louis Golmert auditioning for the James Watt Memorial Clueless Right-Wing Gaffe Award by, say, going on teevee and saying we should "arm the teachers." Maybe we should, but wouldn't it be better to try and actually pass laws that could address the very real gaps in our laws? And, Rep. Golmert, with all due respect, isn't that your job?

The Adam Lanzas of the world have civil rights that allow them the freedom to plot, and carry out, mass murder. I guarantee that somewhere in Connecticut there is a psychologist who knew exactly what was wrong with his patient and didn't or couldn't do anything about it. Lanza's civil rights trumped the right those children had to be able to go to school and then come home alive. Society has bent over backwards for Adam Lanza and his ilk, offering them freedom where, 50 years ago, they would have been institutionalized. In coddling Lanza, society utterly failed to do anything for those beautiful children, and the women who tried desperately to save them. Arm the teachers? Sure, but why not get the nation's Adam Lanzas - their neighbors and teachers know who they are, more or less - off the streets?

But no, the dread "right wing" would rather gas on about Call of Duty II or school prayer, in between stuttering defenses of the 2nd Amendment under the kleig lights of the cable shows that constitute our god-forsaken public forum.

We've had school shootings before, but this one is historically awful.

Liberals think we must surrender our constitutional rights, and leave ourselves defenseless.

Republicans are willing to defend the 2nd Amendment, but are otherwise cowering in the usual defensive crouch, offering platitudes.

No one wants to take the lead and say what the majority of Americans are thinking: we have been too lenient for too long with the disturbed young men who walk our streets.

As I said, we are being ruled by damn fools.

Confident Men: Bucking Up the Troops Before The Election

It's the weekend before the election, and the 'net is filled with aggressively optimistic pronouncements from lefty analysts:

Sam Stein says the Obama campaign has personally contacted 125M voters. And I'm sure all of those people politely nodded and said, yes, of course I will vote for the president.

Eleanor Clift says the Obama campaign is working hard to make sure young single mothers get to the polls. Funny how the spohisticates on the Left are so reliant on naive, poorly educated people who have made bad life choices...and who don't tend to vote in large numbers.

Charles Blow says Romney is "unraveling" and his time is running out. Blow is right. Romney's been wasting his time going to all these huge rallies in Democrat precincts.

Bob Shrum has a long list of mistakes that have doomed Romney. If there's a guy who understands mistakes made in presidential campaigns...

Greg Sargeant says Obama's in good shape with three days left. He even says the polls would have to be systematically and catastrophically wrong for Romney to win. Of course, if there's one thing we've had a lot of in the last 10 years it's the phenomenon of once-unimpeachable institutions being systematically and catastrophically wrong

Jesse Jackson says (in the UK Guardian) America and the world "need" Obama because that mess he inherited was so deep, a standard no Democrat ever afforded "mess" inheritors Reagan and Bush 43.

Sean Sullivan, quoting David Plouffe, says Mitt Romney's play for Pennsylvania is a desperate ploy. Look, I get it that PA is a stretch, but didn't conservative stalwart Pat Toomey just win a Senate seat two years ago? (and didn't Rick Santorum represent PA for two terms when the state was even more Blue?)

Roger Simon says the "swift boating" of Obama (via Beghazi-gate) has failed, which is why everyone in the Obama Administration is pointing the finger at everyone else.

And, of course, Paul Krugman says you would have to be stupid to think the election will be close. I agree that a lot of people will look stupid come Wednesday. Hopefully, we won't be among them.

Privileged: Pete Starks Kids Draw Social Security Benefits

I've really been neglecting to follow the faltering re-election campaign of 40-year Congressman, Pete Stark, who has been facing the first stiff opposition he has seen since the dawn of the Ford Administration. The latest trouble? A controversy over his minor children, whose dad is a multi-millionaire and Congressman, receiving Social Security benefits:

The campaign of Rep. Pete Stark, the East Bay Democrat in a contested re-election race against fellow Democrat Eric Swalwell of Dublin, confirmed to the Chronicle that Stark’s children do receive Social Security benefits as allowed under the law, and that he has stopped paying his dues to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. 

Stark campaign consultant Michael Terris wrote in an email that Stark “fought his entire career to protect Social Security from those who would dismantle it. Congressman Stark has been paying into the system for many years. And yes, like all Americans, he and his family intend to collect the benefits to which they are eligible. 

Stark, 80, earned his M.B.A. at UC Berkeley in 1960 and went on to make a fortune early in his career starting a successful bank in Walnut Creek. Stark’s net worth is estimated as high as $27 million and is ranked as the 74th wealthiest member of Congress.

I will stipulate right now that what Stark is doing is perfectly legal. His children are entitled to recieve these benefits and there's no reason why they should reject them, but still...

According to the Social Security Administration, “4.4 million children receive approximately $2.5 billion each month because one or both of their parents are disabled, retired or deceased. Those dollars help to provide the necessities of life for family members and help to make it possible for those children to complete high school. When a parent becomes disabled or dies, Social Security benefits help to stabilize the family’s financial future.” 

Under the rules, children can receive benefits if they are minors and are the biological or adopted children (or stepchildren) of the Social Security recipient, and the parent is retired.

What's funny is the media and Stark's political opponents could have brought this up anytime in the last 15 years, but haven't. It's no great mystery why everyone's piling on now. Stark is too old and addled to continue in his currect occupation. He was thought to be so far gone that he was passed over for the chairmanship of the House Ways And Means Committee, a post that should have gone to him under the House's normally iron-clad seniority rules. The local media, which was always happy to soft-peddle Stark's endlessly ugly personal attacks and dirty politicking, is now publishing every unflattering story it can find. There's no harm since, thanks to California's new "non-partisan" primaries, the Democrat Stark is facing...another Democrat in November. 

It's not often we see what the world would look like if a Democrat were held to the same reporting standards as a Republican. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Teacher's Pets: How Hard Is It To Change Work Rules For CA Teachers? Harder Than You Think

You'd think one of the easiest things to do in the world would be to pass legislation to streamline the process to fire public school teachers who molest their students; but, no it's not, at least not in California:

State Sen. Alex Padilla of Los Angeles had every reason to hope that the 11 members of the obscure but powerful state Assembly Education Committee in Sacramento would back his new legislation, Senate Bill 1530, designed to let public schools more easily fire teachers who commit sexual, physically abusive or drug-related acts with their students. 

The bill, written by the former L.A. city councilman from the San Fernando Valley, a graduate of MIT who is seen by many as a man with a political future, had sailed through the Senate Education Committee in the upper house on a bipartisan vote. In the state Capitol, news reports about disgusting teachers who weren't fired thanks to rigidly protective laws — teachers such as alleged sex pervert Mark Berndt — were fresh in legislators' minds. 

Egregious-behaving teachers have formidable powers. LAUSD secretly paid Berndt $40,000 to quit. That was far less money than LAUSD would have shelled out for attorneys and Berndt's ongoing salary — only to perhaps see him reinstated by California's unusually powerful, three-person Commission on Professional Competence, controlled by two teachers-union appointees who are increasingly criticized for not acting on behalf of children. 

... 

But in late June, Democratic legislators from six Southern and Northern California communities killed Padilla's bill. Two Democrats voted no on SB 1530 — Tom Ammiano of San Francisco and Joan Buchanan of Alamo. And four Democrats, including Betsy Butler of Los Angeles and Mike Eng of Monterey Park, refused to vote at all, knowing their abstentions would assure that SB 1530 failed by a single vote — and that their non-votes would go largely under the radar. (The other two abstaining Democrats were Wilmer Amina Carter of Rialto and Das Williams of Santa Barbara.)

The hang-up, believe it or not, is the timing of the termination notices. Reformers sensibly want the notices to go out right away, while the teachers' union says, hey, you can't send out notices during summer vacation! I wish I was making this up

Under current law, for instance, a school district cannot even begin the notification process — that it wants to dismiss a teacher for egregious behavior — if it's summertime. Why? Because some teachers might have to cut short vacations to set up legal teams or huddle with family; some may ignore their mail all summer. 

Padilla's bill lets the first notice go forth as soon as it's ready. 

CTA officials** urged educators to stop SB 1530, warning that it "would allow employers to send out a notice to dismiss during the summer when many certificated personnel are not in town."

Nice to know there are so many teachers out there who are the sort of creepy depressives who won't pick up their mail for months on end. 


A subtext of this story (and other teacher-parent flash-points) is almost always that these abusive teachers are in schools serving poor communities. It used to be that was no problem, I guess because the students were too poor for anyone to care about. But, things are different now because the poor kids are becoming increasingly brown, and Hispanic parents actually care about the welfare of their kids and are will to organize to vocally object to this sort of nonsense.* If you read the linked article, you'll see many of the law's proponents are Hispanic. You'll also see that the charge against the law was lead by San Francisco's Tom Ammiano, a very left-wing, very white-bread, and very gay former teacher. Yet, by some magical process, these parents are also supposed to see the Democrat Party as their "natural" home. Not if stuff like this keeps happening, it won't.


*one of the few useful California ed-reforms have been the law allowing a majority of parents at a school to essentially vote the current school staff out of their lives. Many of the schools that have gone through this are majority Hispanic).