RNC Observations

It was encouraging and uplifting to hear people like Mia Love, Ann Romney, Rick Santorum, Artur Davis, Condoleeza Rice, Chris Christie, Susana Martinez, and some others speak this week.  It was disappointing and discouraging to observe the media as they experienced a desperate meltdown and scrambled to demand that their viewers ignore all those lying people.

Paul Ryan is my superstar among the leading characters in the GOP.  The proof that his speech was pitch-perfect was found in the media attempts to attack him as a liar.  Only the Left-Wing media's manufactured "fact-checkers" turned out to be lying themselves about Ryan's reported whopper about the GM plan closing in Janesville.

MSNBC's "dog whistle" theme was proved to be merely a desperate ploy to paint the entire party as racist, based on ... nothing.  I spent a short time looking in on MSNBC after the speeches just out of curiosity to observe their "analysis".  Rather than analysis, I saw the Obama Campaign volunteer staff members who masquerade as journalists try to stop themselves from screaming in frustration and desperation, because they knew Obama's presidency was being systematically destroyed and they were powerless to stop it.

The MSNBC themes that accused republicans of racism and sexism were soundly refuted simply by the outstanding messages delivered by Love, Martinez, Rice, and Martinez, and Davis.  The party members proved the snarky commentators from Obama's House Network to be fools.  It was so silly and juvenile that the network chose not to televise any of the speeches given by those folks so they could pretend they didn't exist.  As if people wouldn't catch on.

Clint Eastwood's appearance as the convention's mystery guest was interesting.  He was funny and modestly entertaining, but I thought his presentation seemed off-the-cuff and unrehearsed.

Mitt Romney himself delivered an acceptance speech that wasn't terrible, but it certainly was a bit anticlimactic.  That's OK with me;  I'd rather have a solid but non-charismatic president who can get the job done than a soaring speaker who promises to cure disease and lower the sea levels then does nothing but funnel money and goodies to his cronies while our country circles the drain.

What if the Fact Checkers Lie?

For several weeks now, I've been hearing Democrats and their media sycophants incessant whines that the evil Romney campaign keeps lying about Obama's efforts to single-handedly invalidate the welfare reform law that is a source of pride for republicans from 1996.

It continued at the convention with Rick Santorum's speech.  After the evening's speeches ended with Ann Romney and Chris Christie's impressive performances, I stumbled across Andrea Mitchell getting a microphone into Santorum's face to accuse him of lying in his speech about the welfare work requirements being removed by Obama.  After the ambush of Santorum, she and anchor Rachel Maddow commisserated about the gall of right-wing extremists like Santorum and the rest of the republicans to continue pounding such an outright lie.  For them, "everybody knows" it's not true that Obama removed the work requirements from welfare.

The interesting thing that's happened in this campaign is that the Left has created their own "fact-checkers" who turn out to be partisan crusaders for Obama and publish Obama campaign talking points while calling them "facts", then get quoted as the authorities on who's telling the truth in the campaign.  Of course, somehow actual lies from the Obama campaign team are buried, ignored, or explained away, while mere disagreements with Romney campaign rhetoric are inflated into outrageous and dishonest lies.

Where to go to find the truth about the welfare issue?  I've knocked around the internet now and then in search of facts, but until this morning failed to find any honest account.  Surely, if Obama wants to claim it's a lie, there must be some underlying story that he could point to that explains the misunderstanding or distortion.  But no such defense of fact could be found.

Until today.  The first time I've seen anything that tells the underlying story comes from Ann Coulter.
Sure, Ann's a major partisan figure on the right, and is known for her satirical approach in trying to expose what she sees as Democrat foolishness.  If you follow the link to her article, she explains what happened and why the Left built a very thin cover story through faux fact-checkers in an attempt to mislead the public.

If somebody out there believes they have factual evidence to the contrary of Ann's piece that proves Obama and Sebelius are not destroying the 1996 welfare reform law, I'd love to see it.  Of course, don't bother if your approach is to try to invalidate her by trying to refute her satirical suggestions such as the one about exempting welfare recipients so they can spend their time "playing XBox and eating Doritos".  Nobody thinks that's an actual qualification for receiving a work exemption, so don't even try.

2016: Obama's America Reviewed

Last night I decided to go catch the timely bio-documentary on Obama called "2016: Obama's America".  Before settling into my seat in the theater, I resolved to view it with a critical eye, since I could be reasonably considered a member of the choir prepared to receive Dinesh D'Sousa's anti-Obama sermon.

Expecting a partisan hatchet job against the president, I was a bit surprised to find the film had nothing close to a partisan tone.  It treated the president respectfully and approached the narrative more as an attempt to understand who he is and where his policy priorities come from, rather than Michael Moore-style disdain a la Farenheit 911.

The film was compellingly shot and paced, and very well done.  It wasn't too long, and avoided preaching about why Obama's policies have been so destructive to our country.  D'Souza instead introduced the film by explaining that he found himself puzzled by Obama's policy priorities after he achieved office on such a positive platform of unity, "Hope and Change".

D'Souza travels to Hawaii, Kenya, and Indonesia in a quest to understand the roots of Obama's personal philosophy, following the president's own autobiography as a guidebook.  The host concludes through his studies of Obama's history and interviews with his family members that the president is driven by a desire to prove himself worthy of the father that abandoned him by achieving the United States presidency and rolling back the American legacy of colonial exploitation of the third world.

Angry critics from the Left have of course used vicious attacks on D'Souza's motives, some of which were excerpted near the end of the film.  I read an AP review that trashed the film today by picking apart minor theories from D'Souza that tied Obama's attitudes on some specific issues to his father's.  The AP reporter's approach was to try to invalidate the entire documentary by suggesting he made some of those up ("There is no evidence that Obama believes ....").  The story also tries to argue against some of the assertions among the litany of problems that have been created by Obama's administration, such as arguing that his suggestion that Obamacare will cost a trillion dollars over the next decade (a right-wing lie).  It fails to even address the basic message of the film, which is that Obama was raised in a radical family, attracted to radical leftists who became his mentors and supporters, and truly believes he can and must transform America into a less wealthy, unthreatening member of the family of nations.

Personally, I found the brief scene of D'Souza interviewing a psychologist about the effect of parental abandonment on the psyche of children pretty much useless and unnecessary.  Although some of his conclusions about Obama policies based on "Dreams from my Father" are not evident, I tend to believe they are consistent with what we've seen in his first term and the attitudes he has projected throughout the past 3 years.

Ultimately, I don't believe it's accurate to describe this film as "Anti-Obama".  D'Souza never engages in gratuitous partisanship and is never disrespectful to the president.  He actually shows what I took to be sincere empathy for Obama's life experience and understanding about how he reached his adult attitudes and political beliefs.  In the end, he simply suggests that he doesn't believe Obama's attitudes qualify him to serve as the President of the United States.

Of course, I agree.

Is it a Normal Part of Maturing?

I think about the old caricature of the crotchety old man shaking his cane at the world and declaring, "This country's going to hell in a handbasket!"  Am I becoming that old man because I increasingly hold that sentiment?

My grandparents were scandalized when the Beatles showed up on Ed Sullivan with their floppy hair and wild rock and roll music.  They were also aghast at the increasing depictions and frank discussions of extramarital sex on television during primetime, not to mention the constant pushing of the envelope in the amount of skin displayed.

I'm shocked to find out that the Democrat party considers my views on abortion "extreme".  That nobody under 40 seems to understand that a major factor in the social crisis our country is experiencing is the destruction of the family.  Now they tell me I'm a bigot if I don't celebrate the idea of the government forcing us all to recognize (and celebrate) gays "marrying" each other?

My generation dismissed our grandparents' alarm at loosening sexual mores, but now those of us who managed to grow up are suddenly beginning to understand why they were alarmed.

Truth doesn't change.  God doesn't change.  I suspect every generation experienced a certain level of hubris in believing theimselves to be more enlightened than all the generations of human beings that came before.  It's sort of like a disease that has become pandemic with this current generation.

Mitch Daniels was right in telling our generation at the 2009 Butler commencement that it's our fault.  Absolutely, the current generation is merely a product of ours.  We're the ones that taught them narcissism, the myth of self-image, and the attitude toward everything of "what's in it for me?".

We've doomed the greatest country in the world to a path that ends at anarchy and dictatorship.  We've doomed our grandchildren to lives of hopelessness and want.  Because in our selfishness we failed to honor our parents' values.

My generation created a mess, and somehow we should strive to make it right for our offspring before we die.

Missouri Abortion/Rape Flap

As one who would like to see the Senate flop to the GOP this year, I cringed when I heard the story about Todd Akin in Missouri suggesting that women who are raped are less likely to get pregnant.

Even if he can cite a peer-reviewed scientific study that backs up his suggestion, he was stupid to make such a statement.  He quickly tried to walk it back by claiming he "mis-spoke", but that doesn't really work.  I wonder if he really did hear that from a Doctor.  We'd all like to believe that's true, but even if there are great studies out there backing up the statment, it's probably not a great thing to say when running for a national office.

He was on a radio show and the interviewer was asking him about his views on abortion.  I was able to later hear what he said in context, and it was sort of an aside in a much longer explanation of his conviction about protecting life.  He would have done much better to simply leave out his thoughts about the ability of women to fend off pregnancy in the case of rape.  Obama himself expressed outrage in response to the statement.

His better response was that we should worry more about punishing the rapist than punishing the innocent baby that resulted from the crime.

Of course, in all discussions about abortion we hear the pro-choice folks talking about, "What will you do, outlaw abortions from rape or incest?  Huh?  Huh?"

Reasonable people can have their opinions on that question, but it's a distraction from the core issue, which is abortion as birth control.  I'm a self-control guy who actually holds old-fashioned notions of honor and responsibility.  Plus I'm a Christian who believes such things belong to God, not men.  I think abortion amounts to murder of a developing child, and it's silly to try to suggest a child is somehow less human if it happens to still be in the womb.

For now I have to deal with my disappointment that a single unfortunate sentence uttered by Mr. Akin will send Claire McCaskill back to the senate for 6 more years to continue inflicting terrible damage to the republic.

Fascinating Peek at Voter Demographics

USA Today had a fascinating lead article today by Susan Page.  It's easy to tell she's a Democrat, and it's also easy to tell she's worried about this upcoming election.

The article's fascinating because of the suggestions it makes about voter demographics and the overwhelming proportion of voters who know next to nothing about the candidates they're choosing.

It was striking to read that USA Today's numbers suggested that only 39 percent of voters are able to name the Vice President.  A woman featured in the article as an example of a disaffected voter unlikely to bother showing up at the polls was quoted as follows:

"I really don't know that much about him, but from what I hear, he's all about putting taxes on the middle class people, and I've heard that he's put his money in overseas accounts".

She's disappointed in Obama but has swallowed the false media-amplified narrative so aggressively hammered home about Mitt Romney by the Obama campaign over the summer.  She admits that she doesn't pay much attention to the campaign, or politics for that matter, which supports the idea that the coordinated messaging on behalf of the Democrat candidate is highly effective.

Polls consistently show that Americans are divided approximately in thirds: One third are committed Liberals, one third Comservatives, and the remaining third are in between.  But this article suggests that the true division is inside the approximately 40 percent of voters who are actually paying attention.  I suspect that among those 40 percent, about half are conservative and the other half big-L Liberal.  So the electoral fight is really to find that catchy jingle that will appeal the unwashed and ignorant masses from the other 60 percent.

If Romney wants to overcome the sycophantic media's Obama messaging echo chamber, he needs to find a way to connect to people at the grass roots level.  He needs a different narrative about himself that tells the disconnected and disaffected voters who he really is; rather than the elite rich guy who's going to stick it to the middle class so he can make his rich friends richer, he needs to promote an equally simple message that he stands for prosperity for everybody.  Alongside the message telling the same folks that Obama's objective is to make everybody poor except the government class, who live like kings while everyone else suffers.

Susan, the author, is clearly worried.  She found out that most of these disaffected voters who say they're unlikely to show up to vote this year voted for Obama in 2008.  She tries to make her liberal self feel better by offering the hopeful news that Romney's got only tepid support from the other side, but I think she's missing a very important distinction about that observation.

Although most conservatives, me included, are less than enamored with Mitt Romney, we are all planning to show up at our polling places with bells on to enthusiastically pull the lever for him.  Because we are unified behind the absolute certainty that Obama will destroy America if he's allowed to stay in office beyond January.

What's disappointing about the article is that it seems close to 2/3 of American adults are almost completely ignorant about candidates and their policies, not to mention any notion of how the Left's policies affect their lives.

What's encouraging is the knowledge that millions of people that were so enthusiastically turning out for Obama last time are disappointed and discouraged, and most likely won't bother this time.  I'm pretty sure that adds up to a Romney victory.  Although I also believe if more of those ignorant folks took some time to educate themselves, they would be more likely to be converted to the conservative philosophy.

Subtle and not-so-subtle referees

Factcheck.org was made famous in the previous presidential elections, cited often by both sides as some sort of independent arbiter of campaign claims and counter-claims.

I beg to differ.  Factcheck obviously bends over backwards in sometimes ridiculous attempts to show that both sides lie and distort the facts.  But there are big differences between the lies of the Obama campaign and the sometimes arguable rhetoric of Romney's.

Since they think they must show balance by documenting lies and distortions on both sides, the impression they're going for with their readers is that both sides are liars to some degree or another.  I think that's the strategy used by their fact-checkers who carefully construct their stories to ultimately benefit Obama.

Let's look at one example - Obamacare.

Factcheck says Obama fibbed when he promised Americans can keep their existing plans (ya think?)

But to achieve balance, they accuse Romney of misleading people by claiming that Obamacare will come between the patient and his/her doctor.  They spin like a top in trying to convince the reader that ObamaCare's "Advisory Board" isn't at all going to resemble Sarah Palin's "Death Panel".  Plus they're saying the only thing coming between us and our doctors is going to be the Insurance Company, as if that's going to be the only obstacle between us and the care we may actually need.

I think it's comical how Factcheck can't seem to make the linkage between the insurance companies and the advisory board and the obvious logical extension that the ultimate reason we might be denied the care we need is because our insurance company refuses to cover it because the advisory board told them not to cover it.

So where exactly is Romney's lie in saying, "And perhaps most troubling of all, Obamacare puts the federal government between you and your doctor".

Nearly every example on the website has a similar analysis that can be applied.  The reality is that most of the Obama lies and distortions are truly lies and distortions, while most of the Romney accused lies and distortions are easily argued as truth or at least much less egregious cases of campaign rhetoric or overstatement.

In politics, both sides are definitively not equal when it comes to lies.

Finally the Football Withdrawal Ends

Even though I had to settle for listening on the radio, it was nice to finally catch the NFL on a Sunday afternoon again.

The Colts destroyed St. Louis while I coincidentally was driving from Indianapolis to St. Louis.  It was certainly encouraging to listen while the Colts' rookie quarterback, Andrew Luck, matched Peyton Manning's debut by throwing a short pass to Donald Brown on his first play as an NFL QB that was turned into the first touchdown of the season.

The entire Colts team played well, racking up a 38-3 victory.  It's not enough to gloat or declare the Colts are back.  Because after all, it was the first preseason game and it was against the lowly Rams.

However, Luck seemed poised and effective.  The offensive line seemed solid.  The running backs corps seemed capable.  The defense managed to mostly dominate.

But were these promising signs really showing us that the Colts' new front office and new coaching staff were successful at going out and finding a a bunch of great young players and preparing them to play well at the NFL level?  Or did we just get a preview of how bad the Rams might be this year?

My hope is that the Colts have indeed found the right bunch of draft picks and free agents to give the fans an exciting and competitive season.  My prediction is that the Colts will go about 6-10 and miss the playoffs.  If they end 8-8 on the year, I think that would be an overachievement.

As long as they get better as the season goes along and give us hope for the future.  That might at least ease the pain a little bit in February when we're watching Peyton and the Broncos going against the Packers in the Super Bowl.

Then again, the AFC South doesn't look particularly strong going into the season.  The Texans are ahead of everyone else, while Jacksonville and Tennessee both look beatable.  Who knows, maybe the Colts can steal a playoff berth by sweeping the weaker teams and splitting with Houston?  It's not completely impossible, is it?

Whatever happens, it's all just fun.

Paul Ryan's a Star

Personally I think Romney made the perfect choice in tapping Paul Ryan as his running mate.  Ryan's young, charismatic, brilliant, energetic - he's a GOP superstar and the model of the ideal conservative candidate.  He's certain to rev up the conservative base, since he's got it all; unapologetic conservative ideology on both sides of the fiscal and social issues.

The old women in the GOP establishment are already wringing their hands and crying;

"The Obama campaign will demonize him for his budget cutting and entitlement reform bills", or
"He'll drive away the independents".

I find it refreshing and a bit of a contrast with the party's Presidential candidate to bring on a Veep candidate who's not afraid to talk out loud about the philosophies of our founders and other conservative icons like Ronald Reagan without apologizing or equivocating.

When the election returns are counted in November, regardless of the outcome, don't try to tell me Romney lost because he picked Ryan.  I must believe it more likely he will win at least partly because he picked Ryan. 

He won't win anything by trying to entice independent voters by pretending to be a more moderate version of Obama.  That strategy's already been tried and it failed.  Remember McCain?  I continue to believe McCain would have been beaten even more severely had he picked a running mate other than Sarah Palin.  He lost because he ran as Obama-lite and failed to fight back when the media set out to destroy Palin in the most misogynist campaign we never could have imagined when he chose her. 

Romney can't win by trying to moderate his message or try to fool moderate-to-liberal voters into thinking he's not as conservative as the Obama campaign would like them to believe.  Misleading voters is what Obama and the Democrats do; it must not be what Conservatives do. 

We must stand or fall fighting for what is best for the country.

Campaign Mythology

The stunning show of support for Chick-Fil-A this week was a very hopeful sign that we still have a chance to stop the Obama project of American Transformation into a Socialist State.

I remain convinced that most of those who steadfastly cling to their support for Obama and the Democrats do so out of willful ignorance driven by fear.  For example, I just read about mass mailings going to public employees in battleground states spreading the false message that a Romney presidency will lead to the destruction of all public employee pensions. 

While it is true that public employee defined benefit pension plans are at or near the top of the list of costs that are bankrupting states and municipalities across the country, it is an outright lie to suggest that a President Romney would or could have the power to simply dictate the cancellation of such plans.   Each state and municipality must make those decisions independently of the Federal government.

The Obama goal is to use Federal dollars (that don't exist) to prop up the budgets of States and Cities across the nation, so they won't have to make those tough decisions they're now facing on how to balance their shrinking budgets.  As far as I know, none have yet cancelled their public employee pension plans, although Wisconsin famously tried to recall their governor for having the gall to require a modest contribution to the pension fund by that state's public workers.  The dominoes now falling in California with cities declaring bankruptcy will force somebody to make very difficult decisions, but even in those cases I doubt pensions will be cancelled in their entirety.

Today's Obama supporters simply reject the facts about his misdeeds, from Solyndra and Green Energy corrupt boondoggles to illegally changing immigration laws to implement amnesty without a single vote by a citizen or citizen representative to using regulation to close down domestic coal and oil production to violating the First Amendment by forcing the Church to provide free abortifacients to their female employees.

They are unwittingly trading away their freedoms of religion and association.  They're giving up their ability to choose what to drive, where to live, what to eat, what to believe, and what to do with their own property.  In return, they hope to get free healthcare and a comfortable retirement from their government without having the freedoms they personally care about taken away.

Somehow all of us need to find a way to get the message to the citizens Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina that it's up to them to decide whether we have a chance to save our uniquely free way of life or give up to tyranny.

Confession Required

While attending a Catholic Mass out of town last weekend, I was disappointed to hear a political prayer mixed in with the Prayers of the Faithful.  It was not only political, but contrary to the true teachings of Jesus Christ.

Here's the prayer, paraphrased:
May our leaders take action to affect a more equal distribution of wealth among the people

The prayer may as well have been for all Catholics to cast their vote for Obama.

It's time someone took the time to refute this misguided attempt by liberal christians to mislead others about what charity really means.

The idea that Christians should support socialism is horribly wrong.  If Jesus believed that Caesar should confiscate money from his wealthy Roman citizens and give it to the poor throughout the empire, perhaps he would have preached that lesson.  Instead, he was very clear that it is each individual's responsibility to help the poor.  If we encounter someone in need, he challenges us to meet that need - not by demanding someone else take care of them, but by meeting the need personally and immediately.

The major flaws in the philosophy proposed by that prayer are numerous, and helping someone in need on a person-by-person basis is far superior:

Whenever a liberal expounds on the need for government driven social welfare, the source of the money to be redistributed is never them.  Proponents of government redistribution always intend for somebody else's wealth to be redistributed.  Because it makes them feel better to tell themselves that they care, because they helped take care of the poor by voting for candidates who promised to take money from those who deserve to have their money taken from them.  The liberal never considers himself someone who deserves to have his wealth redistributed.

Government socialism is inherently corrupting.  When you give a bureaucrat authority to redistribute other people's money, you are guaranteed that the bureaucrat will stuff as much of that money in his own pocket as he thinks he can get away with.  The less sophisticated bureaucrats just steal it, while the savvy bureaucrat makes sure to write volumes of rules and regulations that will allow him to steal it "legally".

Government socialism fails to recognize that people are individuals, and each individual has his own set of needs.  Government socialism is by definition a "one size fits all" solution.  Therefore, people truly in need will fall through the cracks of the system if they fail to meet some obscure regulation, while others who don't really need the help receive it in excess by simply learning how to exploit those regulations to their own benefit.

The fruits of socialism are corruption, waste, fraud, and failure.  It fails to lift people out of dependence while teaching them how to turn their dependence into a money-making lifestyle.  It fails to deal with people as individuals and solve each needy person's individual problem.

Worst of all, socialism is the last step on the way to dictatorship and authoritarianism.  Because it kills initiative and industry by punishing achievers in order to reward bureaucrats and sloths.

Therefore, the prayer itself is a sin.