The Republican Nomination For President: The Race For The Race For The White House

A Curious Insularity


In the world of Barack Obama, inflating tires and “tuning up” modern car engines precludes off-shore drilling. Four-dollar-a-gallon gas prices can be ameliorated by having the average consumer trade in his 8-mpg clunker. Medical bills soar because doctors unnecessarily rip out tonsils and lop off limbs. “Skyrocketing” power bills and bankrupt coal companies are abstractions, and do not involve personal tragedies. One third of the border fenced means that the fence is “basically” completed. Nine percent unemployment is due in part to automation like ATMs, which apparently first came on the scene during the Obama administration to eliminate jobs. Shovel-ready jobs were not so shovel-ready. Criticism is dismissed as “enemies” deserving “punishment” or opponents relegated to the “back seat” or adversaries caricatured with “moats and alligators.” And so on.

Two themes predominate: a cluelessness about how things work outside the Ivy League–Chicago–D.C. political nexus, and a sense that nothing is ever Barack Obama’s fault. In that regard, he has two legitimate mea culpas: One, Obama has never run a business, spent any considerable time off the public payroll or outside of politics, or spent any time with those who were once characterized as “clingers,” and thus cannot be expected to know much about how cars work, doctors are paid, illegal immigrants cross the border, or the basics of economics. Intelligence and achievement are instead measured solely in terms of what universities or the elite media decide. Second, at no point in his past soaring cursus honorum (Occidental, Columbia, Harvard Law Review, Chicago Law School, Chicago politics and organizing, the U.S. Senate) did anyone hold him to account, as in saying, “First, let us see exactly what you achieved that might justify yet another honor or promotion” — as in a stellar GPA, high LSAT score, brilliant law-review essay, a seminal tenure-winning book on the law, an award-winning law course, a landmark new community-organizing program, or a hallmark piece of senatorial legislation.

Therefore, it is not surprising that Obama (a) continues to say some rather strange things that seem naive and out of touch with the lives of average Americans to the point of absurdity, and (b) seems miffed that anyone might for the first time in his life dare to scrutinize his record, and collate what he said in 2008 and early 2009 with the reality of what has actually transpired by mid-2011.

I think a majority of Americans have now come to the above conclusions (as evidenced in the 2010 midterm election), and those in business, from the small entrepreneur to the captain of industry, have decided that it is wisest to sit out what is left of this administration, and wait to hire, buy, invest, and expand until someone at the top shows a basic knowledge of finance and economics, and some sympathy concerning what those in the private sector must contend with.

June 15, 2011 1:49 P.M.
By Victor Davis Hanson

In the wake of Monday’s GOP presidential debate, perhaps the biggest “winner” was Michelle Bachmann who is now polling second with 19% of the vote. She is behind Mitt Romney, who is holding a solid 33% of the vote. Herman Cain comes in third with 10% of the vote. According to Gallup polls, 44% of registered voters say they are more likely to vote for "the Republican Party's candidate" compared to 39% who would support Barack Obama.

It was a telling week for Democrats and the ObamaMedia, which attempted to spin the debate as, “With the economy in shambles, the Republicans only talked about social issues.” Get used to this, folks. Liberals will try to steer the debate as far from economics as possible because they know that their guy, Barack Obama, doesn’t have a leg to stand on. And by focusing on social issues, it alienates independent voters who are turned off by the Republican obsession with a woman’s womb.

Boortz

Whatever possessed you to utter a truth, h20boy. I dare say that's almost certainly a first from you.

JTard, it's just the first time your narrow mind allowed the truth to take root.

I disagree. Your contention is specious.

A gay judge desiring to marry his gay partner clearly has much more to gain from overturning a ban on same sex marriage then a straight judge does in upholding it.

What the proponents of Prop believe is immaterial to the question of recusal.

It begins when a judge can personally benefit from a ruling he or she makes.

A possible event that was, presumably, very important to Judge Walker was directly and favorably affected by the way he ruled.

I feel certain you would have little trouble understanding the concept if you disagreed with Walker's ruling. If a judge with considerable shares in Microsoft issues a ruling in a case against Microsoft; which preserved or increased the value of those share, I've no doubt you would be arguing he should have recused himself because of his obvious personal interest in the case.

Ware's ruling was in error.

It may ultimately be the last word in the case, but it was in error.

You and others (like Ware) keep throwing up ridiculous analogies.

Unless a judge has a divorce case pending with the same argument upon which he is about to rule, there's no reason for him to recuse himself whether he is gay or straight.

Don't suppose there's any chance of this guying throwing his hat in the ring?

Senator Roy McDonald, one of a handful of Republicans bucking their own party who will vote to legalize gay marriage in the state of New York, got sick and tired of being pushed around by gay marriage opponents. He released a statement to the press with the following quote:


"You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn't black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing," McDonald, 64, told reporters. "You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, **** it, I don't care what you think. I'm trying to do the right thing. "I'm tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I'm trying to do the right thing, and that's where I'm going with this."

Sure. Everyone else with a suit and tie has.

Or the female equivalant, of course.

If his politics is similar to his views about political parties and what they stand for, he has a good chance of getting my vote.

I was thinking the same thing after I read his remarks.

Be careful guys. Obama made lots of popular statements that he reniged on. All pols lie. Its the one fact I can hang my hat on.

You can even bet all your assets on it, if somebody is stupid enough to take you on.

MB: "President Bachmann will allow you to buy any light bulb you want."
She is proposing a Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act which would repeal a portion of a 2007 act requiring traditional incandescent light bulbs to be 30% more energy efficient by 2012.

There is a problem with your argument Finn..

You are alleging with NO EVIDENCE at all that the judge has a wedding pending.

I can just as easily argue with NO EVIDENCE that every married judge has a divorce case pending.

My analogy isn't nearly as ridiculous as your claim about a pending wedding.

Cool!

Well not if they are incandescent, then they'd be hot!

Feel free to skip over this post. I am invoking the A2K 12-hour rule which states that any thread that has no response in that time frame is fair game for seemingly extraneous bullshit.

More Then Anything You Would Want To Know About Light bulbs

Bachmann, H2O Man and others feel that it is totally inappropriate for the government - Big Brother - to decree what kind of light bulbs we should be forced to buy. Others, like myself and even the electric companies, believe it is in our common interest to become more energy efficient. The companies have to have the capacity to produce for projected peak demand (3 - 6 pm, say). Plants, expensive plants, produce nothing for the other 21 hours a day.
We search for the silver bullet: solar, wind, tides, etc. but there is, in my mind no silver bullet.
Instead we need to take small bites at the issue. Which brings me to the lowly light bulb.
Jim The Light Bulb Salesman came into my anchor store today, as he has every 6 weeks for the last 15 or 20 years. He knows lightbulbs. We have, perhaps, 200 4-foot fluorescent fixtures.
We bought our bulbs at Lowe's for $1 a piece and it took 4 per fixture and they might last a year. We ran the numbers on bulbs that cost $15 but you would need only 2 to get the same light. They used a lot less energy and would last for 5 years. The payback time was great and back then I wasn't even aware of the mercury etc. and the need to recycle.
So the feds started to mandate that the light bulb industry increase energy efficiency. That was perhaps 15 years ago and continued under Dem and Repub administrations. Oftentimes the mandated goals were way ahead of what the light bulb industry had on their drawing boards as feasible given the technology.
Which brings us to Michelle Bachmann and her Freedom of Light Bulb Act.
She likely is a bit more then late on this. Production lines are being shut down on incandescent bulbs (starting with 100W) and new manufacturing has been set up in order to comply with the 2012 requirements, and her proposal is whimsical, it is not at all practical.
Are you sorry you waded through reading all this?

rjb, When we had our ceiling lighting fixture changed some years ago, the electrician installed fixtures that holds those narrow fluorescent bulbs - same 4 ft long. We haven't had to replace the bulbs for over two years, and I'm not sure how long they're supposed to last.