Bill O'Reilly Warns that Traditional America is Dead. (So is Increase Mather.)

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IT'S NO SECRET FOX NEWS VIEWERS ARE HAVING TROUBLE digesting the unpalatable electoral results of this past week. In days leading up to actual voting they were hearing from all corners of the conservative world that Romney and Ryan were going to chalk up a truly historic win. The American people were going to rise up and repudiate the Kenyan-in-Chief.

It was bad when that didn't happen.

It was worse when conservatives running for seats in the U. S. Senate got almost universally torched.

It was ugly when voters in four states registered approval of gay marriage and pot was legalized in two more.

When final votes were tallied in Florida and it became clear yesterday that Alan West had suffered defeat in a race to be returned to the U. S. House of Representatives you could hear Sean Hannity weeping softly in the background. West, you may recall, won right-wing acclaim when he insisted that several dozen members of Congress were actually communists and won Tea Party adulation when he suggested that President Barack Obama and Rep. Nancy Pelosi should “get the hell out of the United States.”

(Was this what Mitt Romney meant when he mentioned “self-deportation?”)

How to explain it? That was the right-wing dilemma of the moment. And in a segment last night called “Is Traditional America Gone?” Bill O'Reilly answered that it was. The moral fabric of the country was unraveling. His pal, Dennis Miller, warned that the old America of his youth had been “vaporized.” A guest, pedaling a book called The Entitlement Class (something like that) insisted single women on welfare were getting all their “candy” from Obama and couldn't help themselves if they wanted more.

STILL, IF CONSERVATIVES WANTED SOLACE, it's worth asking why they don't just dig a little deeper into America's grand and glorious past. We know they love the Founding Fathers because they always tell us so. Why not, then, go back a bit farther? We've seen this kind of moral unraveling before and yet the American people have survived and even thrived. So, Bill and Dennis and Allen let's go back to 1692.

The good old days.

Massachusetts wasn't a blue state yet. (It wasn't even a state). But old-fashioned morals were already under serious attack. We survived. The Thirteen Colonies prospered. The Founding Fathers did some founding and America became a better place. In other words, it's going to be okay. Just calm down and look at a little history.

In those halcyon days the Puritans ruled Massachusetts, true religious folk who knew their Bibles, chapter and verse. There was no gay marriage. Oh no. None of that! In 1692 our ancestors held to their convictions and on occasion proved it by hanging homosexuals. The law also allowed for execution in cases of adultery--which might have given someone like General Petraeus reason for pause. There was none of this modern liberal fascination with so-called science, either! In 1692 the good people of the world understood that lightning was a punishment from God and so rang church bells whenever storms approached. You know:  show God they were His loyal followers. We don't do that much these days. Abortion? None of that! In fact, if a couple had sex before marriage then church and government leaders (who were pretty much the same) could require them to marry. Sunday was a real day of rest. You couldn't travel on the Sabbath, unless you were headed for church. (Attendance mandatory, by the way.) The Puritans didn't think you should cook on Sunday, or have sex that day, either, and everyone knew life began at conception. The Puritans also knew if a baby was born on Sunday that the baby had been conceived on Sunday and so the couple had committed a punishable offense.

Yep. The good old days.

MAYBE BILL O'REILLY AND THE FOX FAITHFUL would like to take us all back. Perhaps we could return to 1960:  when a black man couldn't vote in any of the reddest of today's red states, let alone run for president. And win! Maybe to 1931:  when pot was illegal and you couldn't buy a beer or drink a shot of bourbon without violating the law and the moral fiber of our nation was still strong. Maybe 1791, when most states refused to let poor white men vote. That lazy pioneer "entitlement class," near-do-wells like Thomas Lincoln and Daniel Boone.

Still, 1692 is probably the best of times if you like a healthy mix of religion with your politics. Our ancestors in those days feared God, detested sin, and followed the Bible with zeal. Massachusetts was like Texas today:  and a criminal could be sure he or she was going to get the death penalty when he or she deserved it.

When Reverend Increase Mather warned that God was punishing the people of the colony for their sins, sending storms and Indian attacks against them, people actually listened. None of this modern global warming and evolution crap. Just good Bible truth. When a man stole a sheep and denied it and then a minister reported "an Horn growing out of one corner of his Mouth" and said the victim had had to cut "seventeen Inches" from it to keep it from "growing up to his eye," Reverend Mather understood that it was "evidence that there is a God, who judgeth in the Earth." (See:  Hurricane Sandy as punishment from God for America's support of gay marriage.)

Yep. The good old days. And when witches began to appear in Salem in 1692, the God-fearing people of that time, the moral majority of a better era, rose up in righteous anger and hanged a few.

Oh, if only we could go back. Not just to November 5, when Mitt and all the boys really seemed to have a chance to win.

No. Way, way, way back.

A Whole Lotta' Denyin' Goin' On: Dark Days for the Right

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THESE ARE BLEAK TIMES FOR OUR FRIENDS ON THE RIGHT as they face up to the horrid reality that they tried to "Take Back America" and failed in ignominious fashion. The only solace they seem to find since Barack Obama won a second term in (to them) a stunning fashion comes from churning out petitions demanding the right to secede from the Union they so badly wanted to take back.

Still, there are embers in the ashes of even the worst defeats. The Nut Job right still rules the radio air waves. Fox News has four more years to convince unbalanced individuals that Obama is a Muslim or maybe a Cylon. And the U. S. House of Representatives is still firmly in their all-taxes-are-poison political grip. Michele Bachmann, the queen of the Nut Jobs, returns for another term, ready to deny that gay people actually exist. Steven King is back, too, prepared to go to his grave denying that President Obama has ever had a valid U. S. birth certificate. In fact, when last heard from on the topic, King was insisting that Obama's parents might have faked the birth announcements that appeared in two Hawaiian newspapers, which announcements poor Steven King was forced to admit during a town hall meeting that he had personally seen in the Library of Congress records, by sending a telegram from Kenya.

What we're saying, all boiled down, is there's a whole lot of denyin' goin' on!

Marco Rubio doesn't exactly deny that he once supported Mitt Romney long ago; but he has been busy this week denying that he agrees with Romney's post-election statements, which sound suspiciously like Romney's pre-election statements when you think about it. No, says Rubio. The GOP doesn't hate people on food stamps. No. The GOP doesn't think Latinos and women and young voters are stupid and only voted for Obama because he promised lavish "gifts." No, no, no. Rubio denies that Republicans believe any of this. Indeed, based on answers to questions in an interview he did this week, Rubio seemed to be warming up for a possible Nut Job-backed run at the White House in 2016. Talking to a reporter from GQ magazine, Rubio stood by his party's basic position of denial on gay rights. That is:  gay people should vote with us next time around, even if they don't exist, and even if the loudest voices on the right insist God sends hurricanes to punish America for giving gay people who don't really exist something akin to equal rights.

The reporter, apparently realizing that our friends on the right are know at times to deny...well, let's just say basic science...asked Rubio if he might care to comment on the age of the earth. Rubio answered carefully, knowing that on the Nut Job right the deniers are always ready to explode into anger:

I'm not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that's a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I'm not a scientist. I don't think I'm qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to answer that. It's one of the great mysteries.

Meanwhile, three GOP experts in climate change denial now stand in line, one of the trio almost certain to become the next head of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology! (Ironically, this committee oversees NASA, the National Weather Service and the National Science Foundation among other entities.) Representative James Sensebrenner from Wisconsin is mildest in his denunciation of scientists, who he believes are twisting the facts to make climate change sound worse than it is. Lamar Smith of Texas sees it in a more sinister light and sniffs out willful bias in reporting on global warming at ABC, CBS and NBC.

Not Fox, of course. Oh no, oh no.

Dana Rohrabacher, goes all-in on the paranoia when he insists there's an an even bigger conspiracy afoot. As Christine Gorman reported for Scientific American, in a speech on the floor of Congress this past December Rohrabacher warned about an "insidious coalition" of research scientists and politicians:

[A] coalition that has conducted an unrelenting crusade to convince the American people that their health and their safety and–yes–their very survival on this planet is at risk due to manmade global warming. The purpose of this greatest-of-all propaganda campaigns is to enlist public support for, if not just the acquiescence to, a dramatic mandated change in our society and a mandated change to our way of life. This campaign has such momentum and power that it is now a tangible threat to our freedom and to our prosperity as a people.

AT THIS POINT, IT'S GETTING HARD to keep track of all the Nut Job right's denials and a brief recap is probably in order. As it stands, our friends on the right don't believe in:

Thermometers--as in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association records that show September 2012 temperatures marked the 331st month in succession during which global temperatures were above the 20th century average.

Photographs--as in NASA satellite cameras that showed the Arctic ice sheet had been reduced by fifty percent this summer compared to historic coverage limits.

The speed of light--which would seem to prove, according to scientists (but not necessarily anyone like Marco Rubio who might want to run for president with support from the Nut Job right) that the universe is a little older than a few thousand years.

Fossils--sure those ancient sea creatures and dinosaur bones embedded in limestone appear to be tens of millions of years old; but who are you gonna' believe? Scientists, who insist on considering evidence, or Steven King and a book written thousands of years ago to guide the Jews, at a time when no one had heard of light-years or dinosaurs or Bunsen burners.

Sperm--as we all now known, sperm don't work in cases of rape.

Lamestream media--everyone except Megyn Kelly at Fox News and Glenn Beck, in whatever bunker he's currently hiding, hates the right-wing with implacable resolve.

Percentages--as in percentages in any opinion poll that might have shown that President Obama might actually win a second term in office. Which of course, the Nut Job right absolutely knew was mathematically and politically and morally impossible.

Liberal pollsters-- people like Nathan Silver and their lamestream math, with their liberal bias, insisting that President Obama would win all the battleground states except North Carolina, win the popular vote, and pile up more than 300 electoral votes. Which all the real news people at Fox said was impossible, and Rush Limbaugh said it, too. And who are you gonna' believe, real patriots with tea-bag hats or these fossil-loving commie freaks?

Actual voters--in 2010 the Nut Job right scored a huge victory in the mid-term elections; but actual American voters vanished two years later and idiots and members of the "entitlement class" showed up like herds of sheeple and voted for Obama.

American women--who sometimes lived under the same roofs as American men who tended to go for Romney; but somehow these females went for Obama by a sizable margin, perhaps in part because they fell for lamestream reports about the powers of sperm.

Colleges--Americans with advanced degrees voted in favor of Mr. Obama by a sizable margin. This has something to do with the fact that college students are all brain-washed by professors, and maybe the fact that the educated people prefer actual facts and tangible evidence with their political discussions. Like fossils or birth certificates or the speed-of-light.

Finally, our friends on the seem ready to deny the unique place in history of the United States of America, which is, despite various imperfections, still a land of surpassing freedoms. They say they love freedom more than liberals do. They say they believe in the Founding Fathers more than liberals do. They say they believe in the Bill of Rights more, too. They used to say, if you criticized this country, that you ought to move to Russia or some other communist country.

NOW, THEY LOSE ONE ELECTION and they're ready to bail out, to furl the red, white and blue. They're ready to give up on the country they love.

They reveal themselves as babies, not patriots. But if you point that out, they'll deny that, too.

How long until the right-wingers decide President Obama is actually a Cylon in disguise?

The First Thanksgiving: What Your Third Grade Teacher Didn't Mention

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WITH THANKSGIVING UPON US it is time once again to tabulate our blessings. (If you're Donald Trump or any member of the Walton clan that may take longer.) For many Americans it's enough that the Yankees didn't get to the World Series. A majority of our citizens, who apparently received lavish gifts, are thankful Mr. Obama won reelection.

And speaking of stuffing, Rush Limbaugh has angrily been threatening a move to Costa Rica. We should all be so lucky.

Sometimes, you look at the world and wonder if humankind has lost its collective grip on whatever marbles it once had. We might even wonder (if we live in a red state) whether God has forsaken our nation. Our Pilgrim ancestors and their neighbors, the Native Americans, would scoff at our whining.

Maybe, this Thanksgiving, we should start by thanking God for the First Amendment. Religious freedom, which we take for granted (unless we worry about the War on Christmas), was a rarity in the 1600s. In those days it was still possible for judges to order heretics branded on the forehead with an "H" for questioning accepted religious belief. Sometimes you could cut off an ear or two to make the lesson clearer.

So, no. Life wasn't better four centuries ago. When the Pilgrims left England for exile in Holland in 1608, the King James Bible did not yet exist, although arguments about correct church doctrine were still common. Fifty scholars would gather together in 1611 to work on a definitive translation of the ancient texts into English.

Perhaps we should count modern health care among our blessings--including, perhaps, a prayer of thanks to the U. S. Supreme Court for upholding the constitutionality of Obamacare. Disease in the Pilgrim days was a major factor in shaping history. Outbreaks of Black Plague, for example, regularly closed London theaters in the time of Shakespeare, who died in 1616. (Be thankful today that none of your loved ones have to worry about rat-borne killer diseases.)

That same year Shakespeare died (and Pocahontas, visiting England died as well) an epidemic of smallpox brought to the shores of Massachusetts by fishing vessels plying the coastline in search of codfish swept away most of the native population and left the land more or less open for English settlement.

IN 1620, THEN, 105 PASSENGERS BOARDED THE MAYFLOWER and headed for America. Only half of the people aboard, however, were "saints" or church members, technically, real "Pilgrims." London city officials saw a chance to thin out the ranks of orphans, whose support was a drag on the taxpayers. So they packed off Richard More, 7, and Ellen More, his little sister, just to be rid of them. Paul Ryan might have applauded their fiscal discipline. (Then again, Mr. Ryan might recall that the Pilgrims, and the English generally, were no fan of the Roman Catholics.)

Other passengers included William Bradford, who would go on to lead the colony and write a book about it, John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, whose romance became the focus of a famous poem by Longfellow (which few today read) and Elizabeth Hopkins, well advanced in her pregnancy. (She gave birth to a child named "Oceanus" during the voyage.) There were also a number of goats on board; but the goats do not play a role in the story.

The Mayflower finally dropped anchor off Cape Cod in November and scouting parties were soon sent out to locate the best possible site for a settlement. In the cold winter ahead tuberculosis, pneumonia and scurvy took a heavy toll among the settlers. Bradford described the Pilgrim’s lowest point:

That which was most sad...was that in 2 or 3 months time half of their company had died, especially in Jan. and February, being in the depth of winter, and lacking houses and other comforts...There died some times 2 or 3 of a day...[so] that of 100 and odd persons, hardly 50 remained. And of these in times of most distress [trouble], there was but 6 or 7 sound [healthy] persons.
Yeah. Good times. (Be thankful for flu shots.)
 Meanwhile, the Pilgrims had a number of skirmishes with the previous landowners. And the Pilgrims understood if the Indians chose to attack they had little hope of survival. They buried their dead in secret, planted seeds over the graves, and prayed that the “wild men” would not discover their weakness.
Who knows? Maybe God does work in mysterious ways. (Today, we are told he sends Superstorm Sandy to punish America for supporting legalization of gay marriage.) The Pilgrims were lucky, if nothing else. The Native Americans, not so much. The smallpox outbreak of a few years before had been devastating. Thousands of the original inhabitants were wiped from the land, “they not [even] being able to bury one another. Their skulls and bones,” Bradford recalled later, “were found in many places lying still above the ground, where their houses...had been; a very sad spectacle to behold.”

You may recall this part of the story from back when your teacher talked about it in third grade:  How the Pilgrims met Samoset, who stepped out of the forest shadows and greeted them in good English (he had been hanging out with some of the crewmen from those earlier fishing expeditions). He called out to them hearty: “Welcome!”

Then he asked if they had beer. (Fans of watching the NFL this afternoon can relate.)

Anyway, moving along:  Samoset introduced the Pilgrims to Squanto, who understood English even better, since he'd been kidnapped by fishermen and taken to England as a slave, before he escaped, was captured again...and...it's a long story. (See:  People were more religious in those days, more honest, still followed all ten of the Ten Commandments!) Squanto showed his new buddies where to catch lobster and how to raise corn, using fish as fertilizer. (The colony was saved and the way to the foundation of the Red Lobster chain was opened.)
 The plot thickened. Squanto introduced his new friends to Massasoit, leader of the Wampanoag tribe and ruler of the lands surrounding Plymouth Bay. His people had been hard hit by the plague four years before and he was anxious to sign a treaty of peace. In turn, Massasoit hoped for aid against his powerful neighbors, the Narragansetts, long the Wampanoags bloody rivals, and a people almost unscathed by the great disease outbreak. (Or:  as Mitt Romney once put it, "We need to be sure we always have a strong military. With plenty of bayonets.)

Well, that's pretty much the story. The Pilgrims didn't want to get wiped out after a rough winter. The Wampanoags knew that the enemy of their enemy was their friend and a treaty of peace was signed and both sides kept it for half a century.


The pumpkin pies were baked. The invitations went out. Massasoit, with ninety followers, attended the first Thanksgiving in the fall of 1621. The guests brought five deer. The hosts provided fresh bread, roast duck, goose, and wine. Together they celebrated and feasted for three days. There were foot races and games of shooting skill and much fun to be had. (One drunk settler started going on about how Obama wanted to deny hunters the right to carry assault rifles but he soon passed out and was heard from no more.) 

Believe it or not, turkey is not mentioned by any of the eyewitnesses.

Of course, the Pilgrim's survived and thrived. (This is why NFL players still point when they score touchdowns and thank God for granting us the inalienable right to watch football.) Even troubles with tribes beyond Massasoit’s control could not break their spirits. When a sachem named Wituwamat threatened Plymouth the Pilgrims took quick action. The chief and three followers were invited into the settlements to talk. There, without warning, Captain Myles Standish and his soldiers fell upon them and cut them to pieces. Then they chopped off Wituwamat’s head and spiked it atop their fort wall. It remained there for many years as a warning, but apparently did not spoil anyone's appetite at future Thanksgiving dinners. 
Nothing about humanity has changed in four centuries. The first Pilgrim minister seemed “crazed in the brain” and was booted out of the colony. (Pat Robertson?) John Sprague drank too much and was arrested after riding his horse into a friend’s house. (Lindsay Lohan?) John Billington, an original Mayflower passenger, committed murder and was hanged. A married woman was caught having an affair with an Indian. She was whipped and ordered to wear the letters “AD” for adultery on her sleeve. 

In another case of married people behaving badly, a young wife got in trouble after she was left behind while her husband went away on business. When she, too, had an affair, Pilgrim officials arrested everyone involved. All three individuals, husband, wife, and lover were locked up, side by side, in the stocks. (Hear that Paula Broadwell and General David Petraeus?)
 Years later, Bradford sat down to write a history of the Plymouth Bay Colony. He was proud that his people hadhelped English roots take hold in America and compared the Pilgrimsto the first candle that helped light a thousand others. (If Wituwamet had been writing the story he might have told it differently.)

With a deep sense of satisfaction Bradford noted:   
Ourfathers were Englishmen who came over this great ocean, and were ready toperish in this wilderness; but they cried unto the Lord, and He heardtheir voice.  Let them therefore praisethe Lord, because He is good; and His mercies endure forever.

So, there you have it. The story of the First Thanksgiving, with a few details added. (And I'm sorry I had to leave the story of the two Indians who mooned the Pilgrims one day out.) Today, thank God for all your blessings. Be thankful, if for nothing else, that you weren't born in the seventeenth century.

Good wishes to all Americans, liberal and conservative alike. May you all digest your turkey in peace and harmony.

As for Rush? Maybe he'll send us a postcard.



There's myth; and there's history.
Happy holidays to all.

 

Do Right-Wingers Really Read the Constitution?

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OKAY, PRESIDENT OBAMA WON THE ELECTION. The right-wingers got crushed. How are they doing? How are they handling the truth? 

Perhaps we should begin by revisiting the five stages of grieving and see how our friends are dealing with their emotions:

1. Denial: (2008 forward) That guy doesn’t have a birth certificate; (leading up to the 2012 election) the polls are skewed and Romney is going to win; (9 p.m. election night) Karl Rove says the votes in Ohio are still being counted...and...(9:05 p.m.) dear God, no...

2. Anger: Why did Romney have to be such an asshole? Obama supporters wanted handouts. They don't love this country as much as we do.

3. Bargaining: Obama won; well maybe we can secede.

4. Depression: We lost the youth vote; we lost the women’s vote; we lost the Asian American vote; we lost the Latino vote; we lost the vote of Americans with advanced college degrees; all we have left is old white people. 

5. Acceptance:  ????


If contributors to www.reagancoalition.com (liked so far by 45,698 "patriots") are a fair sampling we’re a long way from the point where the right accepts basic math and admits President Obama won re-election.

In fact, if you listen to them, the way they listen to themselves, there’s STILL a way to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. And they’re ready to try anything, because, well, they’re just that freedom-loving.

According to Darin Scott http://www.reagancoalition.com/articles/2012/20121121003-obama-loophole.html here’s how they might stop Obama's return to the Oval Office:

According to Article II of the U.S. Constitution AND the 12th Amendment - if 1/3rd of the States do not cast their votes in the Electoral College, then the matter falls onto the House of Representatives to choose the President. In other words, if we pressure Congressmen, State Party Officials, and groups such as Tea Party Patriots, Heritage Foundation, etc., to call on RED States to NOT have their Electors cast their vote - then the House of Reps CAN choose the next President (and Republicans still have the majority - 233 (R) to 195 (D) - in the House of Representatives)!!!

Here’s the Scott scenario:  the right-wingers need 18 states to refuse tocast electoral votes. (There were 24 red states.) The people of these states (who voted for Romney, at least) rise up to pressure electors until they agree to overturn the entire accepted electoral process, because what the right-wing wants is to SAVE the U. S. Constitution from assaults by liberals.So they blow up the Constitution in order to save it.  

Best of all, Scott continues: “We do NOT have to convince ANY democrats – at all.”

In other words, South Dakota and North Dakota and Montana and Texas hold out. Then the election goes to the House and right-wingers get a president to their liking and nobody in Pennsylvania or New York or California is one bit the wiser.

IT'S BAD ENOUGH THAT SCOTT'S PLAN was so stupid to begin with. It's worse that Scott was too obtuse to imagine that the majority of Americans might not approve of a trick plan to overturn an election.

It worse yet that Scott’s blog post got 20,000 views in less than 24 hours. What made it really pathetic was that Scott was an idiot and so must have been most of his 20,000 viewers. Scott soon had to post an admission:

The original intent of this post was to present a plan, from a fellow patriot, that seemed to be bullet proof. After consulting legal professionals and others, I have am [sic] not certain this plan will work. One of the contentions is that the 2/3rds "quorum" requirement does not apply to the Electoral College; after much deliberation, I believe this is the case, and therefore the strategy as posted below is not as bullet proof as suspected. 

No telling which legal professionals Mr. Scott consulted. No way of knowing how many hours of anguished deliberation he completed. So, let's stick with what we know:  Mr. Scott's plan was absurd from the first syllable and thousands of angry right-wingers were too dense to notice or too lazy to check out the U. S. Constitution. 

Or both.

Article II, Section 1, outlines a somewhat convoluted process for choosing the president and the vice president; and early in our nation's history this led to unforeseen difficulties (including a tie vote in 1800 between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, both of the same party). Still, it does say clearly that the states shall cast their electoral votes and then send them to the U. S. Senate. There, before a gathering of interested members of both houses of Congress, these votes shall be tallied.

Section 1 says nothing about states pitching hissy fits and withholding votes and blocking the whole process.

The 12th Amendment, of course, was ratified in 1804 to insure that tie votes like the one in 1800 would no longer occur. On this topic, Article II, Section 1 and the 12th Amendment are equally clear. The electors send in their ballots to the Senate.

There the ballots are counted.

If no candidate has a majority of the votes, and only if no candidate has a majority, then the election goes to the House of Representatives. There each state shall have ONE vote and then the states shall vote to select a president. At that time only does the idea of a 2/3rd's vote matter:  “A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice.” 

So let's spell it out for the 45,698 Americans who "like" www.reagancoalition.com. If a candidate has a majority of electoral votes:  as in Obama 332, Romney 206, you can't defeat that candidate through trickery in the House of Representatives.

Sad to say, but if 18 red states were to withhold their votes it wouldn’t matter. Except they might save on postage.

The blue states would still send in their electoral votes. Obama would still get 332. There are 538 possilbe electoral votes. So, 332 is a majority.

See, angry right-wingers. We liberals call this math.

If you're a true American, but don't like Obama, and you're not really much in the mood for partying, you need to realize it's time to move on to Stage 5:  Acceptance. And might those of us on the left offer this helpful hint:  If you love the U. S. Constitution as much as you say you do you might try reading it more often.

Helping Conservatives Heal: Have You Hugged Your Gun Today?

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These are hard times for American conservatives. It’s no secret the resultsof the recent election came to them as a shock. So let us offer this article asthe first in a series (we hope) designed to help bring closure to their lives.

It’s true. President Obama is going to ruin your days and haunt the darkest hoursof your nights for four more years. Yes, gays are going to be marching down theaisles to marry. Yes, pot smoking is now legal in two states.  

That’s okay. Stay calm, conservative Americans. The Second Amendment isstill safe and you have all your guns. And by “all your guns,” we mean all your guns. Really, you are some gun-totingfools. No nation comes close to the United States when you’re talking mass firepower.Private citizens in this country possess anestimated 270 million handguns and rifles, or roughly 88.8 weapons for every100 people. That’s the highest gun-ownership rate of any country in the world. Americansown more guns, per capita, than Yemenis (54.8) who come in #2; and Yemen is boggeddown in a civil war.  

What we’re trying to say, conservatives, is don’t despair. The electoralprocess works. It just doesn’t always go your way. Still, don’t forget, in 2009,at the urging of the National Rifle Association, twenty states, including Floridaand Montana, passed “castle laws” expanding the right of citizens to use deadlyforce to defend themselves in their homes. New laws have also made it easier toobtain licenses to carry concealed weapons. Andearlier this month Oklahoma became the fifteenth state to enact an “opencarry” law making it legal to carry a weapon in plain view.  

Heading to the grocery? Got your wallet? Check. Car keys? Check. Pistolstrapped to your hip? Check. You’re ready to roll.

Now get out there and pick up a can of beans. 

Anthony Sykes, the Republican state senator who wrote the Oklahoma lawrecently explained why getting the open-carry law passed mattered so much:  “This enhances Oklahomans’ ability toexercise their Second Amendment rights. I think the evidence is clear that gunowners are some of the most responsible people, and they’ve shown that in notjust Oklahoma, where we’ve had conceal carry for quite some time and there’snever been an incident, but in these other states as well.” More guns mean moresafety. Isn’t that right? Of course it is. So carry your guns proudly,conservative Americans— to the doctor’s office, to the ice cream parlor, to thenearest children’s playground. 

Maybe even to a gay wedding. Assuming you’re ever invited. 

Sure. Liberals will bring up the incident in Florida, where the 15-year-oldboy discharged a weapon on the school bus, killinga 13-year-old girl in front of her younger sister. Well, guns don’t killpeople. Bullets do. Yes, it’s true:  DanFredenberg was shot three times in Kalispell, Montana, after stepping into BriceHarper’s garage to accuse his neighbor of having an affair with his wife.Fredenberg was unarmed at the time. That just goes to show if we all carried weaponswe could shoot back too. 

There you have it conservative friends. Next time you’re feeling gloomyabout the direction this country is taking pick up your gun. Feel the reassuringweight in your hand. Study the blue steel. Isn’t it beautiful! Wrap yourfingers round the grip. This is America, baby, and no one is taking away yourguns.  

Quite the opposite. If you folks keep buying up armament at the same rateyou have since President Obama was first elected, and then re-elected, you’regoing to have to start giving some of your weapons to toddlers and babies.
 

SELECT COMPARISON OF GUNOWNERSHIP AND HOMICIDE RATES 
                         Gunsper 100               Gun-related                 Gun-related
                         Persons                        homicides                    homicides per
                                                                                                 100,000 persons
 

Australia                     15                                     30                           0.14
   (These guys are pussies.)

Bangladesh                   0.5                             1,456                           1.12
   (Most people are too poor to ownguns; but those who do know how to use them.)

Denmark                     12                                     15                           0.27

England & Wales         6.2                                  41                           0.07

Finland                        45.3                                  24                           0.45

France                         31.2                                  35                           0.06
   (A furious Frenchman might chooseto kill you with a frozen baguette to the skull.)

Germany                     30.3                                158                           0.19

Japan                             0.6                                  11                           0.01

Mexico                        15                              11,309                           9.97
   (Drug war violence is clearly outof control.)

Russia                           8.9                                       (no other data)

Sweden                       31.6                                  37                           0.41

Vietnam                        1.7                                834                           0.99

United States              88.8                             9,146                           2.97

Weapon fired on Florida school bus, resulting in 13-year-old girl's death.

Baby Death Panels

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Well, it couldn't happen here. Nah, it just c-c-c-couldn't (blabbering incoherently to one's self...).

At London's Daily Mail, "Now sick babies go on death pathway: Doctor's haunting testimony reveals how children are put on end-of-life plan" (via Gateway Pundit):

Sick children are being discharged from NHS hospitals to die at home or in hospices on controversial ‘death pathways’.

Until now, end of life regime the Liverpool Care Pathway was thought to have involved only elderly and terminally-ill adults.

But the Mail can reveal the practice of withdrawing food and fluid by tube is being used on young patients as well as severely disabled newborn babies.

The investigation, which will include child patients, will look at whether cash payments to hospitals to hit death pathway targets have influenced doctors’ decisions.

Medical critics of the LCP insist it is impossible to say when a patient will die and as a result the LCP death becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. They say it is a form of euthanasia, used to clear hospital beds and save the NHS money.

More at that top link, and also, "Doctors 'are withholding treatment from dying cancer patients because they think it is futile to continue'." Cancer patients are also being placed on LCP, and there's an outcry among physicians. God, I pray that people get the care they need, and that Americans resist the ObamaCare rationing regime. Nothing is permanent in politics, certainly FUBAR legislation like the PPACA.

Unaffordable Cost Seen for Some Under Affordable Care Act

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We're seeing report after report on just how disastrous this legislation is, at Bloomberg, for example:

To Megan Hildebrandt, President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act means she can no longer be denied health insurance because of her lymphatic cancer.
There’s a big catch: Coverage for the 28-year-old artist and many other Americans without insurance will come at a potentially unaffordable cost.

Hildebrandt, who relies on hospital charity, will face more than $1,000 in annual premiums, by one estimate, and probably more in out-of-pocket expenses even with new federal subsidies. She and her husband have a combined income of $25,000.

“It’s great that I’m not going to have to pay some hugely impossible amount,” said Hildebrandt, who lives in Austin, Texas. “Though now I’m in the health-care system and still have to pay money that we can’t really afford.”

The landmark health-care law, which survived the threats of repeal and a Supreme Court review, now confronts another hurdle: living up to expectations. As the administration spells out the details, many uninsured will be surprised at how much they will have to pay. It may involve “very substantial amounts,” and “there still will be a significant number of people who can’t afford health coverage,” said Ron Pollack, head of Families USA, a consumer group that backs the law.

A family of four earning $75,000 will pay $7,125 in annual premiums and as much as $8,333 in co-pays and deductibles, according to a preliminary estimate by the Kaiser Family Foundation. A single 40-year-old earning $30,000 will pay $2,509 in premiums and as much as $3,125 in cost sharing. For a 60- year-old making $40,000, the amount will be $3,800 in premiums and up to $4,167 in out-of-pocket costs, according to Kaiser.

I vaguely remember (snark!) how the president kept claiming that costs would go down. Maybe they will, although meanwhile untold numbers of Americans will be driven from their homes by mandatory costs imposed by faceless ObamaCare bureaucrats in Washington. What a f-king monstrosity.

Continue reading at the link.

In U.S., Majority Now Against Gov't Healthcare Guarantee

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Well, the public is turning around, unexpectedly!

At Gallup:

PRINCETON, NJ -- For the first time in Gallup trends since 2000, a majority of Americans say it is not the federal government's responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage. Prior to 2009, a majority always felt the government should ensure healthcare coverage for all, though Americans' views have become more divided in recent years.

The current results are based on Gallup's annual Health and Healthcare poll, conducted Nov. 15-18 this year.

The shift away from the view that the government should ensure healthcare coverage for all began shortly after President Barack Obama's election and has continued the past several years during the discussions and ultimate passage of the Affordable Care Act in March 2010. Americans are divided on that legislation today -- 48% approve and 45% disapprove -- as they have been over the last several years.

Republicans, including Republican-leaning independents, are mostly responsible for the drop since 2007 in Americans' support for government ensuring universal health coverage. In 2007, 38% of Republicans thought the government should do so; now, 12% do. Among Democrats and Democratic leaners there has been a much smaller drop, from 81% saying the government should make sure all Americans are covered in 2007 to 71% now.

One thing that has not changed is that Americans still widely prefer a system based on private insurance to one run by the government. Currently, 57% prefer a private system and 36% a government-run system, essentially the same as in 2010 and 2011. Prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the percentage of Americans in favor of a government-run system ranged from 32% to 41%.

The report also highlights some of the rosier findings, but as the ObamaCare horror stories continue to pile up like corpses at the morgue, expect support for this socialist monstrosity to continue its free fall.

Image Credit: Michelle Malkin, "Death, taxes & Obamacare: Poster contest, Round Two."

Warning Signs: The Susan Rice Troubles Beyond Benghazi

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Yeah, come to think of it, the ambassador's Benghazi lies are just the start of our worries.

From Anne Bayefsky and Michael Mukasey, at WSJ, "The Trouble With Susan Rice":

Several Republican senators continue to oppose the possible nomination of Susan Rice, currently the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to be secretary of state in President Obama's second term. Their opposition stems largely from Ms. Rice's repeated insistence, five days after terrorists murdered four Americans at a U.S. facility in Libya, that the slaughter stemmed from spontaneous Muslim rage over an amateur video. Sen. John McCain at one point called Ms. Rice "unfit" for the job.

To assess fitness, one might look at those who served previously as secretary of state. More than one has said or done foolish things, or served without notable distinction.

In 1929, Henry Stimson dismantled the nation's only cryptographic facility, located in the State Department, with the airy observation that gentlemen don't read one another's mail. (He sobered up by World War II, when as secretary of war he oversaw a robust code-breaking effort.) More recently, Clinton administration Secretary of State Warren Christopher diminished the office by making several futile pilgrimages to Syria, where he once waited on his airplane for over half an hour in Damascus before being told that Syrian dictator Hafez Assad was too busy to see him. Assad calculated correctly that the slap would be cost-free.

By this modest standard, some might find that Susan Rice is fit. But moral fitness is also relevant, and it is in that category that the Benghazi episode is relevant.

The president has said that Ms. Rice should not be criticized because she "had nothing to do with Benghazi" and so couldn't have known better when she gave her false account. According to Mr. Obama (and to her), she simply repeated talking points provided by an amorphous and anonymous "intelligence community."

But Ms. Rice did know at least a couple of things. She knew that she had nothing to do with Benghazi. She knew that after the attack the president insisted that U.S. leaders not "shoot first and aim later" but rather "make sure that the statements that you make are backed up by the facts." She knew that the video story line was questionable, as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence) and administration officials had already suggested publicly that the attack was al Qaeda-related. And she knew that the president had a political interest in asserting that al Qaeda wasn't successfully attacking senior American officials but was instead "on the run," as he maintained on the campaign trail.

Senators might therefore ask Ms. Rice why she was put forward to speak about Benghazi, and what part her personal ambition might have played in her willingness to assume the role known during the Cold War as "useful idiot."

Ms. Rice might also be asked what she knew about al Qaeda's operations in Libya. As a member of the U.N. Security Council and its "Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee," she is privy, for example, to information about the al Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which is under sanctions and, according to the council, "maintain[s] a presence in eastern Libya."

Senators might also explore Ms. Rice's broader record at the U.N. Why, for example, did she think it was appropriate to absent herself from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's September speech to the General Assembly, the purpose of which was to offer the global community a painstaking explanation of why Iran must be stopped before it can weaponize its growing stock of enriched uranium.

Then there is the matter of U.S. participation for the past three years in the U.N. Human Rights Council, alongside such paragons as China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia (soon to be replaced by Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Ivory Coast and Venezuela)...

Still more at that top link.

The Timely's and the Godsend's

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The year before J1 was born, we bought the house we still live in today. I remember my sister telling my mother "Aw, he bought her a dollhouse.", and that's exactly what it is. She, referring to my dollhouse, sits proudly in an old neighborhood, that's nice and flat, and is covered in a canopy of Oak and Walnut tree's that are older than she is.
When J1 was 18 months old, he met his lifelong friend Z. They met at what I like to call "Baby Harvard" which is the best child care center in the city. The center is housed up on the hill, where both Z's mother and I work. Soon after we met, they moved their family to my neighborhood, and our kids have gone to all the same schools. They are the Timely family.
A year or so later, the Godsend's moved into the old yellow and white Victorian across the street. The house had been broken into two units for decades, and the Godsend's, with all their children, grandchildren, and extended family, restored it to it's original glory of a single family home.
Together, our village has weathered many storms, both figuratively and literally, and we've all been there for each other. Recently, the Godsend's announced that they would soon depart our sweet village, and while I know that change is the only constant, it's a day I've always dreaded.
Once, when we were teenagers, my sister told me she dreamt that I had gone down the drain in the kitchen sink as a big blob of slime. No surprise there, but then she said I suddenly flew back out as a butterfly. I've never forgotten that dream.
I think I'm ready to talk about the long storm I've weathered, because I believe I'm coming out the other side. But this I know for sure, I would have never survived without the support of my village. And for me to tell these stories, you've got to know who the Timely's and Godsend's are, because none of it could have happened without them.

Democrats Used to Love the Filibuster

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Behold yet more epic hypocrisy from the Douchebag Party.

At Washington Examiner, "‘Those who would attack and destroy the institution of the filibuster…’."


More at Memeorandum, especially the idiots at Talking Points Memo, "Dems Defend Filibuster Reform Effort: ‘McConnell Has Broken The Social Contract’."

Anything to justify power for these people, the scummy disgusting Democrat douchebags.

Senator Kelly Ayotte 'More Troubled Today' After Meeting With Ambassador Susan Rice

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I'm not surprised by this at all, although I'm pleased the Senator Ayotte's not rolling over the Obama's corrupt "spontaneous protest" shill Susan Rice.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Senator Vows to Block Any Clinton Successor: After Meeting With Potential Secretary of State Nominee, Republicans Demand More Answers on Fatal Attack in Libya":

WASHINGTON—Ambassador Susan Rice’s attempt to repair her standing with Senate Republicans fell short Tuesday, as a trio of GOP senators emerged from a meeting with her even more harshly critical of the comments she made following the U.S. consulate attack in Libya.

One of the senators, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, said she would try to block the confirmation of Ms. Rice or another nominee to succeed departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “My view is we should hold on this until we get sufficient information,” she said.

Ms. Ayotte and Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said the meeting on Capitol Hill left them more concerned than ever about the public statements Ms. Rice made in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, where U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed. “All I can say is that the concerns I have are greater today than they were before,” Mr. Graham said after the meeting. “We’re not even close to getting the basic answers.”

Ms. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, is seen as a front-runner to succeed Mrs. Clinton. In a statement issued after the meeting, Ms. Rice conceded that part of her comments about the attack in television interviews days afterward were incorrect, but said they were based on evolving intelligence.

In the interviews, Ms. Rice said the attack grew out of protests over an anti-Islamic video; officials later said there was no protest in Benghazi that day.
“The talking points provided by the intelligence community, and the initial assessment upon which they were based, were incorrect in a key respect: There was no protest or demonstration in Benghazi,” she said in her statement. Ms. Rice added that she didn’t intend to mislead and said “the administration updated Congress and the American people as our assessments evolved.”

Ms. Ayotte said there was clear evidence early on that people with ties to al Qaeda had carried out the Libya attack.

Criticism of Ms. Rice by the Republican senators had appeared to be abating, but the Tuesday meeting rekindled hostilities. That may complicate her chances for the secretary of state slot. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, a Democrat, is another possibility for the job. President Barack Obama may announce his choice as soon as this week.

More at The Hill, "McCain: ‘I would be hard-pressed’ to support Rice for secretary of State." (At Memeorandum.)

Young People Getting Even More Screwed Under ObamaCare

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This is freakin' mind-boggling. The news on the ObamaCare monstrosity gets worse by the day.

At Forbes, "Young People under Obamacare: Cash Cow for Older Workers":

It’s official: the health care law will unduly stick it to young Americans by making them pay far higher premiums starting January 1, 2014. New rules announced this month are even worse than expected when it comes to shoveling an unfair burden onto our nation’s youth. Moreover, they also perversely increase the incentives of young people to remain uninsured.

The newly announced rules limit insurers to charge their oldest customers no more than three times as much as younger ones. As shown in the following chart based on estimates by international management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, the rule will force insurers to hike rates for 18- to 24-year-olds by 45 percent even as rates for those 60 and older drop by 13 percent in most states. That means a 22-year-old waitress paying $2,068 for her health insurance will have to fork over $3,000 when Obamacare takes effect.[3] And these figures even underestimate the actual impact....

The real-world consequence of this regulatory misjudgment is that young people will have an even greater economic incentive to simply pay the $695 annual penalty for not having coverage and wait until they are sick before they purchase it. [4] In short, it is now even more likely that Obamacare will amplify the perverse incentives for “free-riding” that it was intended to counter.

Clearly, until we observe actual behavior next January, we won’t know precisely how large an adverse selection problem has been unnecessarily created by these new rules. But what we can say for certain is that for young adults who elect to have health coverage, it will be way more expensive next year than it is today.

Is this fair? Ask the typical 20-24 year-old—whose median weekly earnings are $461—whether it’s fair to be asked to pay 50 percent higher premiums so that workers age 55-64—whose median weekly earnings are $887—can pay lower premiums. Think about that. The median earnings for older workers are $420 a week more than those of younger workers, or roughly $20,000 more a year. How is mandating a price break on health insurance for this far higher income group at the expense of the lower income group possibly fair?

It's not fair.

Seriously. "Fair" isn't even the word for this. Shoot, is it legal? Young Americans are practically being raped by ObamaCare. The effective violations of liberty with this law are so freakin' astounding, people should be screaming violently in rage. And the thing is, young people don't even know what's about to hit them. I know this for a fact. I've been discussing the consequences of the election for the preservation liberty in my classes. Students were literally shocked when I told them they were going to be taxed under the individual mandate if they were uninsured beginning in 2014. Students will be even more glum when we open debate on current events for the remainder of the week.

Ignorance is very costly, and it's sad too since so many young people practically worship this president.

Sucking at the Teat of the Progressive Welfare State

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Well, I thought this was pretty good, at Maggie's Farm, "Normalizing and universalizing welfare: You pitiful masses still have unmet needs."

Welfare includes crony capitalism, tax breaks for businesses, mortgage deductions, bailouts, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid right down to disability and the now ubiquitous EBT cards.

Naturally, we Conservatives think it best to eliminate all forms of welfare and charity from government control except for the most desperate or hopeless of individual cases. Remove welfare from the middle classes and provide a safety net for the desperate: Restoring a True Safety Net.

The Left, on the other hand, aspires to normalize and universalize welfare programs. Hayek's serfdom under a benevolent, altruistic, and all-powerful state. With Obomacare on track to fail resulting in a total government take-over, Liberals are beginning to comtemplate their next project: The Great Society's Next Frontier - Now that Obamacare—the largest expansion of the social-safety net in the last 60 years—is safe, what's next for the liberal economic project?

It's true, you know?

Here's just one example, at the Democrat-socialist Daily Kos, "Let's Defend Social Security and Other Entitlements With the Second Bill of Rights."

Hope and Exchange

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At the Wall Street Journal, "The feds blame the states for refusing to become ObamaCare subsidiaries":

ObamaCare is due to land in a mere 10 months—about 300 days—and the Administration is not even close to ready, so naturally the political and media classes are attacking the Governors and state legislators who decline to help out. Mostly Republicans, they’re facing a torrent of abuse in Washington and pressure from health lobbies at home.

But the real story is that Democrats are reaping the GOP buy-in they earned. Liberals wanted government to re-engineer the entire health-care system and rammed the Affordable Care Act through on a party-line vote, not stopping to wonder whether it would work. Now that implementation is proving to be harder than advertised, they’re blaming the states for not making their jobs easier.

The current rumpus is over ObamaCare’s “exchanges,” the bureaucracies that will regulate the design and sale of insurance and where 30 million people (and likely far more) will sign up for subsidized coverage. States were supposed to tell the Health and Human Services Department if they were going to set up and run an exchange by October, but HHS delayed the deadline to November, and then again at the 11th hour to December.

Sixteen states have already said they won’t participate. Another 11 are undecided, while only 17 have committed to doing the work on their own. Six have opted for a “hybrid” federal-state model. That means HHS will probably be responsible for fallback federal exchanges in full or in part in as many as 25 or 30 states.

Continue reading.

It sucks. It's bad law. It'll be interesting to see how the massive resistance of the states plays out.

More at National Review, "States Should Absolutely Refuse to Set Up Obamacare Exchanges."

Republicans and the Tax Pledge

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At the Wall Street Journal, "Grover Norquist is not the problem in Washington":

One of the more amazing post-election spectacles is the media celebration of Republicans who say they're willing to repudiate their pledge against raising taxes. So the same folks who like to denounce politicians because they can't be trusted are now praising politicians who openly admit they can't be trusted.

The spectacle is part of what is becoming a tripartisan—Democrats, media, some Republicans—attempt to stigmatize Grover Norquist as the source of all Beltway fiscal woes and gridlock. Mr. Norquist, who runs an outfit called Americans for Tax Reform, is the fellow who came up with the no-new-taxes pledge some 20 years ago. He tries to get politicians to sign it, and hundreds of Republicans have done so. He does not hold a gun to their heads.

Grover's—everyone calls him Grover—apparent crime against Washington is that he now actually wants to hold politicians to what they willingly signed. If enough Republicans will disavow their tax pledge, then the capital crowd can go about agreeing to a grand fiscal bargain that raises taxes, pretends to cut spending and avoids the January 1 fiscal crack-up that the politicians have set us up for. Voters are supposed to believe that only Grover stands in the way of this happy ever-after.

Thus we have the sight of powerful Senators like Saxby Chambliss and Lindsey Graham and New York Congressman Peter King patting themselves on the back for having the courage to stand up to a guy who has never held public office. On Monday no less than billionaire Warren Buffett, who can get the President on the phone at will, attacked Mr. Norquist. Who knew one unelected fellow had so much power?

RTWT.

I've got more on Norquist scheduled for today, but don't miss R.S. McCain's essay on this, which I think is rock solid.

"When people criticizing Republicans need to start their argument by announcing that they are 'reality-based,' you know an epistemic closure argument cannot be far behind...'

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I'm going to start this by linking to William Jacobson's entry, "The Epistemic Closure of the Epistemic Closure Pundits." And here's the quote I've used for the title:

The dead give-away was the title of his article, “Revenge of the Reality-Based Community.” When people criticizing Republicans need to start their argument by announcing that they are “reality-based,” you know an epistemic closure argument cannot be far behind...

When I read Bartlett yesterday I was practically rolling on the floor. Anyone who has to publish virtually their entire professional resume going back to their college thesis must be really expecting some pushback. Yeah, Bartlett's got credentials. Unfortunately all the paperwork still doesn't inoculate the dude from making himself look like a damned laughingstock. You have to read it to believe it: "My life on the Republican right—and how I saw it all go wrong."

What a poor, pathetic little man (with little signifying stature rather than physical heft, of which Bartlett is hardly "little"). Seriously. For a second I thought that was a unicorn at the accompanying graphic, the dweeb. #Fail.

How 'Life of Julia' Prevailed

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From William McGurn, at the Wall Street Journal, "How Obama's 'Life of Julia' Prevailed":

The name of the program now escapes me. Several months ago, while flipping channels with the remote, I stopped on an MTV show about a working mom whose whole life was upended when her partner announced that he was splitting. It caught my attention because this mother lived in a nice apartment that looked like one in my suburban New Jersey town, and she was applying for food stamps.

This wasn't your caricature "taker"—the woman had a real job. With her partner leaving, however, she could no longer afford the rent, and she would have trouble providing for her two young boys alone. As she walked up to an office to sign up for food stamps, she said something like, "I can't believe I am applying for public assistance."

Her situation provoked two questions. First, how could her boyfriend just abandon his sons without having to pay child support? Second, what is the conservative response to a woman who finds herself in this situation?

The show comes back to me in wake of the thumping Mitt Romney took in the presidential election among the demographic this mom represents: unmarried women. During the 2012 campaign, we conservatives had great sport at the expense of the Obama administration's "Life of Julia"—a cartoon explaining the cradle-to-grave government programs that provided for Julia's happy and successful life.

The president, alas, had the last laugh. For the voting blocs that went so disproportionately for the president's re-election—notably, Latinos and single women—the Julia view of government clearly resonates. To put it another way, maybe Americans who have reason to feel insecure about their futures don't find a government that promises to be there for them when they need it all that menacing.

The dominant media conclusion from this is that the Republican Party is cooked unless it surrenders its principles. I'm not so sure. To the contrary, it strikes me that now is a pretty good time to get back to principles—and to do more to show people who gave President Obama his victory why their dreams and families would be better served by a philosophy of free markets and limited government.

RTWT.

Well, I couldn't agree more, but it's going to be a long tutorial with the lunkhead progressives. These people are diehard Democrat dependency freaks. I think the trick is actually to get people before they start going Democrat, since weaning people from progressive entitlements will be even harder than encouraging a natural scavenger to hunt for itself.

PREVIOUSLY: "Meet Julia: The Big-Government Dependency Robot and Dream Woman of Leftist Ideology."

RELATED: Recall this piece, "Health-Care Law Spurs a Shift to Part-Time Workers"? (Excerpted here.) I mentioned it in one of my American government classes. Boy were there some glum faces when students realized that the negative externalities of the law might make their lives more difficult and less prosperous. So yes, explaining how ever-increasing government reduces opportunity and increases dependency can have an impact. The lessons may stick, even though the hurdles remain extremely high in the current environment.

The Debate About Tax Rates

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I've been reading the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs, and Grover Norquist's got an essay therein, which is timely, considering how much he's in the news. See, "Are Taxes Too Damn High?":

Andrea Campbell tips her hand partway through her essay “America the Undertaxed” (September/October 2012) when she writes that “the central debate in U.S. politics is whether to keep taxes, particularly federal taxes, at their current levels in the long term or emulate other advanced nations and raise them.”

So the choice facing Americans is between maintaining the size of the government under President Barack Obama and expanding it further? Who knew? In framing things this way, Campbell posits a Brezhnev Doctrine for U.S. government spending and taxation: what the government takes and spends today is forever ceded by Americans to the state, and that portion of their income not yet taken by the government is negotiable. Such ideological blinders limit the author’s ability to understand or explain how the United States arrived at its present level of historically high spending and taxation -- and what the American people would like its government to do and how much it would like it to cost in the future.

The U.S. government was created to maximize liberty. Unlike the European nations Campbell offers as models for how much Americans should be taxed, the United States was not organized around defending or promoting historical land claims or one religion, tribe, or ethnicity. Americans are a people of the book: the Constitution. According to the founders, government should play a limited role in the lives of Americans, by providing for a common defense, the rule of law, property rights, and a justice system that protects them.

Despite these strict limits, the U.S. federal government has grown enormously in size, cost, and power over the last two centuries, mostly as a result of the country’s engagement in successive wars. With each conflict, Washington increased its spending and powers of taxation under the false flag of temporary necessity and appeals to patriotism. After each war, the government refused to return to its previous size and level of power.

This growth can be seen in the numbers. The federal government consumed less than four percent of GDP in 1930, 9.8 percent in 1940, and 16.2 percent in 1948. By 1965, the number had climbed to 25 percent of GDP, and it hit 30 percent in 2000 (compared with the average among members of the Organization for Cooperation and Development of 37 percent). Today, Campbell claims, raising taxes still higher, “perhaps by a few percentage points of GDP,” would “provide the government with much-needed revenue. And it might not have a detrimental impact on the U.S. economy, perhaps even spurring it.” But the economic crisis in Europe, where taxes and spending are already higher, makes that argument a little difficult to swallow.

The United States’ major political parties are now diametrically opposed on the question of the size of government. Gone are the days when Nixon Republicans and Kennedy Democrats argued about whether the government should get bigger or much bigger, and how quickly. No Republican House member voted for the 2009 stimulus package, and only one Republican member of Congress voted for Obamacare’s 20 tax hikes and massive spending increases (and he is no longer in Congress). Meanwhile, the modern Democratic Party has shifted from one that cast 56 Senate votes for the 1964 Kennedy-Johnson tax cut and 33 Senate votes for the 1986 Reagan tax reform into a high-tax ideological party that cast no votes for the 2001 income tax cut, under President George W. Bush, and only one vote for the capital gains and dividends tax cut of 2003 (and that voter is set to retire this year).

The budget that Obama released in February 2012 shows annual federal spending increasing by $1.5 trillion over the next ten years, producing $11 trillion in additional federal debt. Paying for all that spending will require dramatic hikes in taxes. Obama promised in the 2008 presidential campaign that under his plan, “no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.” On August 8, 2012, however, Obama changed his pledge, saying, “If your family makes under $250,000 . . . , you will not see your income taxes increase by a single dime next year.” The promise to oppose all tax increases on incomes less than $250,000 was replaced by a promise to prevent only income tax hikes -- and only for 12 months. Obama’s new language opened the door to a value-added tax (VAT) at any time and to income tax hikes starting in January 1, 2014.
Obama’s shift is important, for as Campbell points out, the difference between U.S. and European levels of taxation is mainly due to the prevalence of VATs in Europe. The United Kingdom has a VAT of 20 percent, France one of 19.6 percent, and Sweden one of 25 percent.

Advocates of higher taxes in the United States know that only a VAT or steep taxes on energy can cover the higher levels of spending in Obama’s budget projections. Higher income tax rates do not raise useful amounts of money. The “Buffett rule,” which would raise rates on earnings of more than $1 million a year would, according to the Congressional Budget Office, take in only $47 billion over a decade, less than one-half of one percent of the $11 trillion in debt that Obama’s planned spending would produce.

Continue reading.

The Campbell essay is here: "America the Undertaxed."

And for the debate on Norquist and congressional Republicans, see Robert Stacy McCain, "Retire #Taxby Chambliss."

BONUS: At NewsBusters, "Grover Norquist: 'Warren Buffett Should Write a Check and Shut Up'." And also, "Greg Mankiw, "A Master of Tax Avoidance."