TheMiddleofSomewhere A grab bag of interests

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Recently I received the following in an email. While it claims to have been written by Dr. Walter Williams, he has disclaimed it. I can only guess that it was written a.) by a Democrat who wanted to discourage Republicans or b.) by a Republican who wanted to spur other Republicans to greater efforts. I disagree with the conclusions drawn in the message and have inserted my rebuttals in bold print.

No Matter What

NOT By Dr. Walter Williams

Can President Obama be defeated in 2012? No. He can’t.. I am going on record as saying that President Barak (sic) Obama will win a second term.
The media won’t tell you this because a good election campaign means hundreds of millions (or in Obama’s case billions) of dollars to them in advertising.

But the truth is, there simply are no conditions under which Barak (sic) Obama can be defeated in 2012.
The quality of the Republican candidate doesn’t matter. Obama gets reelected. 
Nine percent unemployment? No problem. Obama will win. 
Gas prices moving toward five dollars a gallon? He still wins. 
The economy soars or goes into the gutter. Obama wins. 
War in the Middle East ? He wins a second term.

America’s role as the leading Superpower disappears? Hurrah for Barak (sic) Obama!
The U.S. government rushes toward bankruptcy, the dollar continues to sink on world markets and the price of daily goods and services soars due to inflation fueled by Obama’s extraordinary deficit spending? Obama wins handily.

You are crazy “Williams.” Don’t you understand how volatile politics can be when overall economic, government, and world conditions are declining? Sure I do.

And that’s why I know Obama will win. The American people are notoriously ignorant of economics. And economics is the key to why Obama should be defeated.

Even when Obama’s policies lead the nation to final ruin, the majority of the American people are going to believe the bait-and-switch tactics Obama and his supporters in the media will use to explain why it isn’t his fault. After all, things were much worse than understood when he took office.

Obama’s reelection is really a very, very simple math problem. Consider the following:

1) Blacks will vote for Obama blindly. Period. Doesn’t matter what he does. It’s a race thing. He’s one of us,

There are more black conservatives than ever before and many present themselves as role models: Condoleeza Rice, Herman Cain, Thomas Sowell, etc., etc. even the real Walter Williams!

2) College educated women will vote for Obama. Though they will be offended by this, they swoon at his oratory. It’s really not more complex than that,

They don’t like the idea that their kids are already more than $40,000 in debt, that Social Security and Medicare may not be there when their kids need them. Many see their grown kids unable to get jobs. Furthermore, Obama’s so-called “oratory” could falter big time when he is effectively challenged. Last time McCain was too willing to grant Obama the benefit of the doubt.

3) Liberals will vote for Obama. He is their great hope,

Many liberals are disappointed with Obama, feeling that he didn’t go far enough fast enough. Some will vote for third party leftists.

4) Democrats will vote for Obama. He is the leader of their party and his coat tails will carry them to victory nationwide,

See note re liberals above.

5) Hispanics will vote for Obama. He is the path to citizenship for those who are illegal and Hispanic leaders recognize the political clout they carry in the Democratic Party,

First, illegal immigrants shouldn’t be voting at all. Second, many GOP candidates offer some pragmatic way to deal with the immigration problem(s) we face. Hispanics are largely Roman Catholics who don’t care much for the secular progressive bent of Obama and his adherents, vis. Bill Maher. Cubans in Florida and elsewhere don’t like Obama’s dealings with Cuba and Venezuela. If Marco Rubio is on the ticket, all bets are off. 

6) Union members will vote overwhelmingly for Obama. He is their key to money and power in business, state and local politics,

Probably true, but union membership is down. The strong arm tactics advocated by Obama’s friends Andy Stern, Richard Trumka, and Jimmy Hoffa turn off even some of their own union members. 

7) Big Business will support Obama. They already have. He has almost $1 Billion dollars in his reelection purse gained largely from his connections with Big Business and is gaining more every day. Big Business loves Obama because he gives them access to taxpayer money so long as they support his social and political agenda,

Hard to argue with this one. As Lenin said, “The Capitalists will sell us [communists] the rope with which we will hang them.” Perhaps they’ll wake up in time.  

8) The media love him. They may attack the people who work for him, but they love him. After all, to not love him would be racist,

That “racist” spin has about run its course, and the so-called Main Stream Media is no longer the only game in town. If you’re reading this, you know it’s true.  

9) Most other minorities and special interest groups will vote for him. Oddly, the overwhelming majority of Jews and Muslims will support him because they won’t vote Republican. American Indians will support him. Obviously homosexuals tend to vote Democratic. And lastly,

“Overwhelming majority” is an opinion. Many Jews disapprove of Obama’s treatment of Israel. Otherwise, what we have here is a conglomeration of very small minorities.

10) Approximately half of independents will vote for Obama. And he doesn’t need anywhere near that number because he has all of the groups previously mentioned. The President will win an overwhelming victory in 2012.

“Approximately half” is only a speculation. For the reasons stated above he does not “have” all the groups previously mentioned. 

Someone other than– Dr. Walter Williams

Dwight Boud

Since pundits are wildly speculating about why Newt Gingrich is soaring in the Republican primary opinion polls, I’ll add my “two cents.” The disturbing question to many focuses on the fact that Newt has a history, both personal and political. Some Republican insiders who have dealt with Newt from the time when he was Speaker of the House just plain don’t like him. It’s a personality thing. Others are concerned that he “thinks out loud”, that many of his copious ideas would be better left unsaid. He was ousted from the House speakership because of an ethics charge. He was unfaithful to his wife. Why, with all this “baggage” dragging behind him, has Newt’s popularity as a potential candidate risen so far so quickly?

Mitt Romney by contrast has no such baggage as far as anyone knows. He’s articulate, clean, upright, intelligent, knowledgeable. He has administrative experience both in business and as Governor of Massachusetts. He saved the Olympics! Yet his poll numbers seem anchored in place.

In the General Election, as a Conservative Republican I’ll vote for or anyone but Obama. I even know of one Conservative who said he would “vote for Putin before he’d vote for Obama.” I wouldn’t go that far, but I get the point. I’m certainly not part of the “anyone but Romney” faction. That, however, is in the General Election. In the Primary, we still have to make a choice, and here’s Newt Gingrich (Liberals, insert here “of all people”) surging in the polls while long-time putative front runner Mitt Romney lags behind.

We know that this campaign is going to be rough and tumble beyond the usual. It’s going to be vile and dirty. Whoever is going to win over the likes of SEIU, and ACORN will have to be willing to “throw an elbow” or two. (Recall that former SEIU leader, Andy Stern, said that if they can’t win with the “power of persuasion” they’ll have to resort to the “persuasion of power”)

Romney’s problem is that he is a consummate gentleman. He seems to prefer giving others the benefit of the doubt. It’s uncharacteristic of him to raise his voice. He demonstrates that it’s possible to carry moderation to extremes.

Enter Newt. While Gingrich has steadfastly refused to attack his fellow primary candidates, he has no such reservations about liberals whom he has fought for years. To put it bluntly, Gingrich is pissed off with liberalism, in particular as practiced by the present administration. His anger shows in his facial expression. You can hear it in his voice. You can see it in his gestures. It’s in his gut and it’s real. He knows that team Obama is trying to fundamentally transform the country into a bureaucratic, centrally-planned welfare state, and he doesn’t like it. (I won’t use the word Socialist. I know the President is sensitive about that.)

Why, then, is Gingrich drawing ahead in the polls? Republicans are beginning to see that he gets it and that he has ideas to undo the harm that this administration has done in a mere three and a half years. He asks questions like, “Can you stand four more years of this?” The answer is “No”, and while other candidates like Bachmann and Santorum may be thinking this, Newt is increasingly viewed as the one who has taken off the gloves. It’s about time.

At least that’s how it looks from here.

Dwight Boud

Most humans cringe at the thought of Iran launching one or more nuclear weapons against Israel. That, however, is what seems to be the aim of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Considering the following quote from the Koran, perhaps he should reconsider:

“It is unlawful for a believer to kill another believer, accidents excepted. He that accidentally kills a believer must free one Muslim slave… He that kills a believer by design shall burn in Hell for ever. He shall incur the wrath of God, who will lay His curse on him and prepare for him a mighty scourge.”
Quran 4:92-93

Note: in this context a “believer” is a Muslim.

The only excuse for Ahmadinejad would be to claim that the detonations were accidents. “Oops, I just accidentally dropped a bomb on Israel that killed untold numbers of fellow Muslims. My bad.”

Some pundits have been suggesting that President Obama step aside from the 2012 Presidential Race and let Hillary Clinton run instead. If this idea appeals to you, think it over and remember Hillary’s health care reform proposal from earlier in her husband’s administration. Perhaps the following chart will remind you:

Much of this was used as a blueprint for “Obamacare.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The problem with the push toward “green energy” is that it’s based on a theory. It’s well established by the historic record that, over time, climates change. These changes have been happening for eons. Those who want to blame perceived climate change on human activity, however, have been caught manipulating data to make it appear that emission of CO2 into the air is causing unusual warming of the earth. Recently a Nobel Prize winning Physicist has resigned from the American Physical Society because he disagrees. He is not alone. Claims of scientific “consensus” not withstanding, it is not “settled science” that humans are causing global warming. 

Why, then, are our government and the EPA making sweeping policies and regulations ostensibly to prevent the climate from changing? Changing our light bulbs, pushing people to drive electric cars, covering the ground with solar panels, etc. based only on a theory is ludicrous.

This theory is being manipulated to scare the populace into compliance with an autocratic approach to governance. Supposedly, self-appointed visionaries like Al Gore will lead us all to safety. Even if we dutifully follow them, volcanic eruptions could undo all our efforts in a few days. What are we to do to prevent that? We would be far wiser to put our efforts toward studying ways to adapt to change, as generations of our forebears have done. 

Conserving energy and exploring additional sources of energy are worthy activities, but they will proceed without our tying ourselves in knots and submitting to a government that is bent on forcing us to live our lives as it dictates.       

Dwight Boud

During the last Presidential campaign, Barack Obama famously told “Joe the Plumber” that “when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everyone.” The problem with that statement is the use of the phrase, “the wealth.” There is no such thing as “the wealth.” “Wealth” does not just grow on trees; it is created by hard work, ingenuity, and, yes, risky investment. It belongs to its creator(s). Wealth is a relative word. We use it to distinguish between larger and smaller amounts of (usually) money. That’s why it’s so hard to determine how much money constitutes wealth. If I earn $20,000 a year and my neighbor earns $25,000, all other things being equal, he has more wealth than I do. I wouldn’t be justified, though, in claiming $2500 of his wealth just to make it “fair.”

President Obama more recently opined that at some point a person has “enough money.” While that makes sense to some, it is purely arbitrary to pick a number to identify where that point is. And, I submit, no one, not even a President, has the legal right to decide when a person has “enough money.”

Now, of course, those who argue in favor of the redistribution of wealth say they want to equalize the amount of wealth everyone has. It’s only “fair,” they say. But equal distribution of money would have to be imposed on people and would stagnate human progress and elevate a self-appointed elite to positions of power over the rest of us that would make Simon Legree look like a camp counselor. Nothing fair about that.

Elizabeth Warren, candidate for Senate in Massachusetts and favorite of Pres. Obama, suggests that a person who builds a successful factory is entitled to keep a chunk of the money earned, but most of it should go to the government, presumably for distribution to the people. After all, she says, the factory owner distributes his product on roads that the rest of us pay for. Therefore, “we” have a claim on his income. She does not say whether, if a group of marauders assaulted and destroyed his factory using roads that “we” have paid for, we share their guilt and should spend some portion of “their” time in jail.

Any scheme to spread “the wealth” counters basic human aspirations. Such schemes are hopelessly utopian. Even in the Soviet Union, people curried favor with the leadership to get even a slight edge on their neighbors. Some had dachas; most did not. Utopia is not a “place” we can reach after which everything will be “hunky-dory” and static. People would not sit back, take a deep breath, and say “at last, we are here.” Society would continue to change for no other reason than that people are curious, always wondering what if…

Dwight Boud

Having not yet selected from among the candidates for the Republican nomination, I still want to share an observation about Mitt Romney from the first candidates’ debate. The question, as I remember it, was “What’s the first thing you would do as President?”

A variety of answers ensued. Most of the candidates laudably focused upon repealing “Obama Care.” Most Republicans, Tea Partiers or not, share that goal. But repealing the entire complex law that is now unfortunately too far down the road toward implementation will take time. Mitt’s answer to the question was different from the others and revealed an important attribute that he brings to this campaign.

What he said he would do first as President was to instruct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to issue waivers from the law to every state in the nation. There it was — simple, direct, well within the powers of a President. Such a move would freeze the negative impact of the law in its tracks. The measures necessary to repeal the law completely could then proceed in an orderly fashion.

That approach was evidence of the executive experience Mitt Romney brings to this process. It stood out uniquely from the other candidates’ answers. Issue waivers. Such waivers have already been issued to pay off some of Obama’s supporters, so the precedent has been established. Romney’s seizing on that approach shows the kind of executive mindset that an effective President might need to get us out of our economic slough.

Note: The fact that Team Obama has seen fit to issue waivers to some of Obama’s political allies is, of course, further evidence of the law’s negative impact. Why, otherwise, would someone say “I’m going to give everyone low- cost health care except for some of my friends”?

A lot of people are wondering why, if President Obama has a plan to get people back to work, he’s waiting until September to lay it out before the public. Well, I suppose he has to wait for Congress to get back from their break. No sense letting people know what’s in the “plan” before people like Chuck Schumer, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, et al. are around to obfuscate the distasteful parts.

I doubt, though, that that’s the whole reason. I seem to recall that other schemes by team Obama were accompanied by crises. Now maybe 9.2% unemployment is a crisis, but not enough of one to scare people into welcoming another big centralized government plan. Not enough, for example, to want yet another federal department with a “Czar” to run it.

It takes time to create a useful crisis. Sometimes one has to settle for a fake crisis. For this, many in the main stream media can be of immense help. Get them talking about a “crisis,” and before you know it, the people think there is one. When Pelosi was pushing the Health Care Bill through the House of Representatives, The MSM was talking endlessly about “the health care crisis.” This created just the sense of urgency to convince much of the public that there really was a crisis and that Big Brother was moving heaven and earth to fix it. The facts that much of the bill had nothing to do with health care and that some of its key provisions were not scheduled to go into effect until years later, didn’t come out until the thing was passed.

Nothing succeeds like success, so I look for a similar tactic to be employed with the so called jobs plan. What kind of a “crisis” would work? My guess is that in September we will be hearing much more about “the growing inflation crisis” and how the only way we will be able to prevent drowning in inflation will be to rush through another big government “solution.” I guess, too, that not everything in the plan will have to do with jobs, unless it means everybody goes to work for the government. Just sayin’.

Another reason the Plan will have to pose as a response to an emergency is that Obama promised that he “will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.” Heaven forbid we should get to comment on the “emergency” bills before they’re signed.

Dwight Boud ©2011