Congressman-D - I won't say he lied, but it clearly wasn't true...

So, one of the things that's fun to watch right now is Democratic elected officials playing "choose a euphemism for lying" in order to discuss the President's patently untrue Obamacare sales pitch.

I think the president was grossly misleading to the American public. I know right away as a veterinarian, I have my own business, that my policies got cancelled even before the Affordable Care Act. I know that I would change policies on a regular basis, trying to find the best deal for myself and my employees. But a lot of Americans, a lot of Oregonians, have stayed with the same policy for a number of years and are shocked that their policy got cancelled.

- Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Oregon

No, Congressman - the President lied. Period.

Of course, as it was obviously a lie right from the start, the only people who were "misled" were people who believed him. Everyone was lied to; only about half were "misled."

Today's oxymoron - "Fiscally Conservative Democrats"

Roll Call News (in a piece titled "Blue Dogs Brace for Another Drubbing"):

The House Blue Dog Coalition, still reeling from 2010 elections that cut its ranks in half, looks likely to sustain additional losses this year that would cast doubt on the group’s influence in the 113th Congress.

The number of Blue Dogs grew steadily beginning in 1997, peaking at 54 members in the 111th Congress, when the fiscally conservative Democrats reached the pinnacle of their influence during the health care debate. That may have also been the coalition’s undoing: The unforgiving tea party wave of 2010 and opposition to President Barack Obama’s health care law decimated the ranks.

Now, the coalition faces the prospect of membership falling to its lowest ever, less than the 21 lawmakers it counted at the start of the 105th Congress. It ended that term with 25; currently there are 24 members of the group.

There is no such thing as a "fiscally conservative Democrat." Not in the United States Congress, in any event. There may be some Democratic Representatives who think that they are fiscally conservative, or would incline towards fiscal conservatism, or who want to be fiscally conservative, but they aren't. If they were really fiscally conservative, they would not be Democrats. There is nothing - nothing - that the national Democratic Party stands for which is "fiscally conservative" in any way, shape or form. If you are really a "fiscal conservative," you don't caucus with a party whose leaders are Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama and Harry Reid and Charles Rangel and Barney Frank. You're lying to yourself if you vote for Nancy Pelosi to lead your caucus and then think that you are a "fiscal conservative." You're lying to your constituents if you vote for Nancy Pelosi to lead your caucus and then call yourself a "fiscal conservative."

And if the health care debate represented the "pinnacle of their influence," then they never had any "conservative" influence whatsoever. 

So if their constituents really want "fiscal conservatives," let them vote for Republicans.  If they want Democrats, let them vote for real Democrats, and own the results.  But right now, at this stage in our nation's history, in this political climate, there is not such thing as a real "fiscal conservative" who is an elected official in Washington with a "-D" behind his name. 

So good bye to the blue dogs.  And good riddance.

"The Chickens Come Home to Roost"

Paul Rahe explains a big part of the reason why the debate went the way it went...

Obama inherited a recession and, without bothering to disguise what he was up to, dedicated himself to exploiting it for the purpose of jamming through a radical program, dear to his party, that never had public support. About the recession, he did nothing, assuming that the economy would bounce back quickly, as it usually does, and that he would get the credit for the recovery. In fact, everything that he did do when he and his party were fully in control -- the looting bill thinly disguised as a stimulus bill, Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank -- retarded the recovery by running up the deficit, loading on new taxes, and making it more expensive to do business. To this the President added the threat of further tax increases -- targeted on the investing class: those especially apt, when future developments are exceedingly unclear, to be hesitant to risk their hard-earned capital in funding new ventures or in expanding old ones. The truth is that the programs passed by the Democrats, when they had the initiative, produced stagnation and prolonged and deepened the downturn.

Truth.

"A celebration of failure..."

That's Mitt Romney's assessment of the DNC thus far...

Romney and his allies have pounced on Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's comments over the weekend that Americans are not better off than they were four years ago. The top Democratic surrogate has since walked back those remarks, and officials with the Obama campaign have contended this week that Americans are better off under Obama's presidency.

But the Republican nominee brushed aside those assertions in an interview with Fox News, noting that the "better off" message hasn't been expressed from the stage in Charlotte, N.C.

"You know no one in the convention so far has had the temerity to say that people are better off in America because they realize that’s not the case," Romney said. "The convention so far is a celebration of failure."

Romney cited record numbers of Americans on food stamps, a rising national debt and declining incomes as evidence of a failed presidency.

"This has been a very difficult four years, and they’re doing their best to celebrate something; but it’s a celebration of failure," he reiterated.

Yup.

Dems cheer abortion, boo God...

Sometimes the story really does speak for itself...

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the convention’s chairman, kicked off Wednesday’s proceedings by trying to clean up a mess Democrats made by omitting from their official party platform mentions of God and of Jerusalem as the preferred capital of Israel.

Villaraigosa called for a voice vote on an amendment offered by former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, who chaired the platform drafting committee. Facing boos and nays, he tried again, before announcing that in his judgment, a two-thirds majority had approved the measure. He was booed again as he walked off the stage.

"The Marriage Problem That Comes Every Four Years"

This passage is something that would seem ham-handed in a novel about modern liberals...

As Isaac Pollak, an ardent Republican, kissed his wife goodbye before heading out on a business trip to Asia several years ago, he handed her his absentee ballot for the coming presidential election and asked her to mail it.

Bonnie Pollak, a Democrat, weighed her options. Should she be loyal to her spouse, respect his legal right and mail the ballot? Or remain faithful to her deeply held beliefs and suppress his vote?

"It was a real dilemma," says Ms. Pollak, 58 years old, a student in a doctoral program in social welfare who lives in Manhattan. "I decided to do the right thing."

Ms. Pollak threw the ballot away.

The one trope missing is that they do actually share the same last name. Otherwise...
 

I'm actually not certain whether I'm more amused or irritated.  But, in addition to illustrating the little liberal tropes (Ms. vs. Mrs., the advanced degree in a questionable soft subject), it illustrates one of the big ones - the conflation of public policy with private virtue.  She is so self-righteous in her public policy beliefs, that she believes the virtuous course of action is to betray her spouse in order to prevent one vote for Republicans,  a vote which would have had no impact on any race.

And that's just one event, one action by one person, so you can't blame everyone who shares her party and policy positions.  But it's symbolic of an attitude that I see expressed repeatedly.

How 'Pro-Choice' are Democrats?

ReasonTV goes to the Democratic National Convention and demonstrates - again - that, for many Democrats, "pro-choice" just means "pro-abortion...."

That didn't take long...

The apology-requiring material started early in Charlotte.



RNC:

"We own this country. We -- we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours."

- Clint Eastwood

DNC video:

"The government's the only thing we all belong to."

Maybe there's a little difference between the parties.

But I'm sure they don't really mean it that way. Just another accidental slip of the tongue...

DNC pre-game report

As I’ve already noted, my exposure to the events in Charlotte this week will be, if for no other reason than to keep my blood pressure reasonable, limited.  But I’ve got a couple of thoughts on what’s going to happen as they get underway.

• In contradiction to Jonah Goldberg’s prediction, I think we do get the “four more years” chant, on more than one occasion.  The awkward questions that this ought to raise in response won’t be asked by the media.
• Any mention of the national debt will be made in the context of what a problem George W. Bush and the Republican Congress left.  No member of the mainstream press will opine, or ask  any question which implies, that this is not the correct framework for thinking about the debt.
• The Democrats will repeatedly, and loudly, proclaim a position on abortion which is far further from the consensus of American public opinion than that held by the Republicans.  They will do this while calling the Republicans’ position “radical.”  At no time will any member of the mainstream media reveal this, nor challenge them on it.
• The Democrats will convey the message, both implicitly and explicitly, that "real women" have to hold certain positions on certain issues.  The mainstream press will never think to call this position, that women are limited in their thought processes by biological determinism, "sexism."
• The Democrats will convey the message, both implicitly and explicitly, that African- Americans have to hold certain positions on certain issues.  The mainstream press will never think to call this position, that people with dark skin are limited in their thought processes by biological determinism, "racism."
• The Democrats will be addressed by a graduate student whose claim to fame is that she previously appeared before Congress to insist that the Federal Government mandate that all insurance policies cover birth control, and, in the process, provoked an intemperate remark from a radio host.  Their advocacy of this position is indicative of either a) their serious lack of understanding of the American body politic or b) mine.  
• Some people will defend Sandra Fluke, and the contraceptive mandate, as a shining example of "separation of church and state."  Those people have a radically different understanding of the Constitution and the first amendment than I do.
• The Democrats will claim, repeatedly, that the stimulus bill and other economic measures passed by the Democratic Congress in 2009 and 2010, and signed by President Obama, left the country better off than it would have otherwise been.  The impossibility of proving counterfactuals leaves this as a position that, though wildly improbable, is not necessarily false.  There might actually be some questioning from the media on this, but it will be largely in a helpful, share-with-our-viewers kind of way, with no significant challenges.
• Joe Biden's convention speech will be filled with the kind of blatant factual errors that the mainstream "fact checkers" tried - incorrectly - to portray Paul Ryan's speech as containing.  The "fact checkers" won't find anything worthy of comment.
• The storyline going in to the Convention is “Democrats dispirited, unenthusiastic.”  That sounds like the media actually sharing negativity about the Democrats, but that’s not the correct understanding.  (The Republicans are living up to the “stupid party” nickname by gathering and sharing these stories.)  The proper frame for understanding the “enthusiasm gap” stories appearing today is as background context for Friday’s “Democrats united and enthusiastic after great convention” stories. 

By the way...

...you should expect significantly less commentary from me on the DNC than you got on the RNC.  There may be a few minutes that I'll sit through, but very few, and "none" is probably more likely than not.  I know everything I need to know of the Democrats, and this President, to make any and all upcoming voting decisions.

2012 Democratic National Racist Convention

By their own standards.

Credential Distribution - 2012 Democratic National Convention
Authorized Pickup

All pickup persons must have a state-issued ID that matches the name submitted below.

Now, I don't believe that requiring ID to do things like board airplanes, purchase alcohol, enter national party convention sites or vote is racist. But the Democrats do, fighting Voter ID laws whenever states attempt to enact them. So, by their own standards, their convention is racist...

Spoiling Julia Rotten

This is a really good piece from Jay Cost in The Weekly Standard, about the modern Democratic Party's clientism problem.

And under the Obama administration, clientele liberalism has achieved a kind of apotheosis. The stimulus, the health care bill, cap and trade, and the financial reform package were all designed with heavy input from the party’s clients, and ultimately each reflects their priorities, so much so that any kind of national purpose the legislation might have served was totally undermined. The stimulus catered far too much to Democratic clients, hence its measly effect on the economy; Obamacare was a veritable smorgasbord of goodies for Democratic backers, from feminists to unions to big business, while the average American will see no material improvement in the cost or security of his health insurance; and financial reform ultimately won the backing of the mega-banks on Wall Street, which not coincidentally had given overwhelmingly to Democrats in the 2008 cycle.

When viewed in light of these legislative monstrosities, “The Life of Julia” begins to make more sense. It is not merely an artless appeal to a swing demographic, it also symbolizes the modus operandi of the modern party. No longer interested in or capable of operating on behalf of the public good, the party is intent on buying its way to 50 percent-plus-one of the electorate. The message: Vote for Obama and you’ll get stuff!

Read it all...

"Democrats Have Nothing To Offer Voters This Election But Fear"

Investors.com:

Asked why the Senate hasn't produced a budget in three years, the head of the Democratic Party instead stoked fear about the "Romney-Ryan budget that ends Medicare as we know it." FDR, call your office.

'The Romney/Ryan budget is painful for Americans," head Debbie Wasserman Schultz said on that same Fox News program.

Her comments are tame compared with what other Democrats have said, including President Obama, who called Rep. Paul Ryan's budget "thinly veiled social Darwinism" that would "impose a radical vision on our country" and that is "antithetical to our entire history."

So what do Democrats have to offer instead? Nothing.

The Senate hasn't produced a budget since 2009 and refuses to this year, which means that once again the red-ink hemorrhaging federal government will be operating without any spending guidelines. Obama's budget plan was so ludicrous that not one House Democrat would vote for it.

The Democrats' refusal to govern hardly ends here.

The country faces monumental problems — a national debt crisis, an entitlement crisis, an energy crisis, to say nothing of the lingering economic crisis.

But on issue after issue, Democrats have absolutely nothing constructive to offer — no entitlement-reform ideas, no budget-reform proposals, no debt-reduction plans, no credible energy policies.

Read it all...

What Do Democrats Really Stand For Today?

There's been a lot of analysis done of Thomas Edsall's NY Times piece from Sunday, in which he states that "preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class." The most interesting and cogent of which, I think, is this bit from Jim Geraghty:

You think the Democratic Party cares about wealth? Come on. In their minds, George Soros spending his money to help out his political views is noble, but the Koch Brothers are evil incarnate. Higher taxes are good, but no one will complain if Tim Geithner or Charlie Rangel cut corners on paying them. One might be tempted to argue that the righteousness of unions represent an inviolate principle to Democrats, but in New York, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is trimming here and there and living to tell the tale.

No, the party really is about identity politics now; us vs. them. And everybody knows which side they’re on.

Obviously, they've been about identity politics for a long time. But right now, there doesn't seem to be anything else. It's us vs. them, period.

Meltdown

Allahpundit:

The Democrats’ strategy, led by President Present, is to sit back and let the tea party bleed some of its popularity on an aggressive “tough choices” agenda and the occasional serendipitous (for Democrats) political overreach. That way, when the real battle finally begins over entitlements, independents will be more suspicious of the tea-party brand than they were before. It’s a gutless, cynical, irresponsible strategy given the magnitude of our spending problem, but it’s not stupid. It may have worked to some extent here.

Let me just say this - if the American electorate lets them get away with this gutless, cynical, irresponsible strategy, then that electorate deserves the economic catastrophe that results.

I haven't read any Heinlein, but I love this quote, and it's been circulating a lot recently. For good reason.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck."

In many ways, the worst excesses of Rand's looters are being played out before our eyes...

Worldview

There are some interesting points in this Wall Street Journal interview with Eric Cantor.

Obama and the Narcissism of Big Differences

The "philosophical starting point" of today's Democrats, as Mr. Cantor sees it, is that they "believe in a welfare state before they believe in capitalism. They promote economic programs of redistribution to close the gap of the disparity between the classes. That's what they're about: redistributive politics." The Virginian's contempt is obvious in his Tidewater drawl. "The assumption . . . is that there is some kind of perpetual engine of economic prosperity in America that is going to just continue. And therefore they are able to take from those who create and give to those who don't. We just have a fundamentally different view."

...

Mr. Cantor quit the talks in late June amid Democratic tax demands, which he considered non-negotiable. Their position, he says, was that "we can't do this unless you Republicans are going to relent on revenues." His truculence did not endear him to Washington—though of course no one likened Mr. Obama to a terrorist for similarly refusing to give on any part of his new health-care entitlement, which was not even in the vicinity of "the table."

...

In private, however, the debate always returned to the status of the top marginal rate for individuals earning over $200,000 and $250,000 for couples—aka the Bush tax cuts for people who do not own private aircraft. Mr. Cantor argued that some large portion of the income that flows through the top bracket comes from "pass-through entities"—that is, businesses—and "to me, that strikes at the core of what I believe should be the policy, and that is to provide incentives for entrepreneurs to grow."

By contrast, he says, "Never was there ever an underlying economic argument" from Democrats. "It was all about social justice. Honestly, one of them said to me, 'Some people just make too much money.'"

‪Welcome to the Recovery‬‏

The RSCC has ‪lots of material to work with...

Open-minded (as long as you agree...)

There's an interesting - and telling - comment inside this Slate piece. (H/T Instapundit)

Inside Match.com:

As a result, Match began "weighting" variables differently, according to how users behaved. For example, if conservative users were actually looking at profiles of liberals, the algorithm would learn from that and recommend more liberal users to them. Indeed, says Thombre, "the politics one is quite interesting. Conservatives are far more open to reaching out to someone with a different point of view than a liberal is." That is, when it comes to looking for love, conservatives are more open-minded than liberals.

I find this not surprising in the least. And it's based on something that I noticed years ago, and it seems to play out in almost all political discussions. In short form, it's this:

Conservatives think Liberals are wrong. Liberals think Conservatives are evil.

Is that a generalization? An overstatement? Sure.

But there's a lot of truth there, too. Look at any of the "hot-button" issues over which there's a partisan divide, and you'll see a tendency for Liberals to disparage the Conservatives as "greedy" or "sexist" or "racist" or "fascist" or "homophobic." Are there legitimate arguments to be made against the minimum wage or higher tax rates or AFDC or WIC or universal health care? No, opponents are greedy, selfish, "they've got theirs and don't want to help anyone else." Are there legitimate arguments to be made against affirmative action? "Sexists! Racists!" Are there legitimate arguments to be made against government recognition of gay marriages? "Homophobes!" Are there legitimate police powers that the Federal government should exercise in combating terrorists? "Fascists!"

Am I saying that Conservatives do not engage in name-calling? Not at all. But the labels are qualitatively different. There's a difference between the labels "knee-jerk bleeding heart tree-hugger" and "sexist racist fascist." The former might describe someone who, as cliche might put it, "cares too much."¹ The latter just describes a bad person.

Again, this doesn't describe everyone. It's a generalization. But it's a generalization that describes a lot of political interactions...





¹ - And none of this is surprising when you look at the actual policy discussions. The Liberal point-of-view is always aimed at specific happy outcomes. Unfortunately, the prescriptions tend to assume that intending the specific happy outcomes is good enough. "Everyone should get a first-rate education" means "spend more money on education" and "government loans for college." "It's hard financially to be a teenage mother" translates into "give money to teenage girls who get pregnant." "It's not fair that some people have more than others," so we institute graduated tax rates. Whether the proposed solutions actually address the problems, never mind actually fix them without making anything worse, is rarely addressed.

Let's look, for a shining recent example, at the banking/housing/mortgage industry. If we start with the position that "everyone should be able to afford a home of their own," then it makes all kinds of sense to start pushing banks to give mortgages to pretty much anyone who wants one, regardless of qualifications. So we did. What results from that? Well, more people buy houses, that's true. And, as we increase the number of people that can afford a mortgage to buy a house, we increase the "quantity demanded" of housing. Which pushes up the price. But the government, in the form of Fannie and Freddie, step in and continue to push money into the housing market, and you end up with a) an enormous bubble of b) overpriced housing held by c) people who really shouldn't have qualified for the mortgages. And what happens when the bubble bursts, and the people who couldn't afford the mortgages can't make the payments? Why, the quantity demanded drops, the price drops, and now even people who legitimately qualified for the mortgages they got are underwater.

Sometimes, the short-term "compassionate" thing to do is not in the long-term best interest of the one on the receiving end. And many times, there are negative externalities, so that not only are the intended beneficiaries harmed, but many others who had nothing directly to do with the transaction. As we've all witnessed over the last few years.

Senate Democrats Promise To Cause Default Rather Than Cutting Spending

The Democrats have sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner warning the House not to bother passing a debt-ceiling bill that doesn't push our financial problems past the next election, because they won't support it. Despite the panic-mongering of the President, and the rest of the Democrats, about the economic catastrophe on our doorstep, if they don't get what they want (increased taxes and this issue pushed past the 2012 elections) they're going to go ahead and push the nuclear button. They say.

I've taken the liberty of correcting the letter, a little bit...

Senate Democrats Promise to Reject Boehner Plan

Dear Speaker Boehner,

With five days until our nation faces an unprecedented financial crisis [largely of our own making], we need to work together to ensure that our nation does not default on our obligations for the first time in our history [witness us fighting against fiscal sanity during an election campaign]. We heard that in your caucus you said the Senate will support your bill. We are writing to tell you that we will not support it, and give you the reasons why.

A short-term extension like the one in your bill would put America [Democratic politicians] at risk [of having this discussion again before the election], along with every family and business in it. Your approach would force us once again to face the threat of default [consequences of our profligate spending] in five or six short months. Every day, another expert warns us that your short-term approach [our failure to control spending] could be nearly as disastrous as a default [that we're threatening to force if you don't raise taxes] and would lead to a downgrade in our credit rating. If our credit is downgraded, it would cost us billions of dollars more in interest payments on our existing debt and drive up our deficit. Even more worrisome, a downgrade would [cost us the Senate and the White House in 2012 and] spike interest rates, making everything from mortgages, car loans and credit cards more expensive for families and businesses nationwide. [Despite those catastrophic results, we'll go ahead and cause this anyway if we don't get the taxes we want and a ceiling high enough to last past the next election.]

In addition to risking [Despite the bill preventing] a downgrade and catastrophic default, we are concerned that in five or six months, the House will once again hold the economy captive [attempt to deal with the budget problems] and refuse to avoid another default unless we accept unbalanced, deep cuts [meaningful and rational restructuring] to programs like Medicare and Social Security, without asking anything of the wealthiest [(which, under our definitions, means pretty much anyone with a job)] Americans [other than that they continue funding the whole thing as they're already doing].

We now have only five days left to act [but if we don't get our way, we'll force the default]. The entire world is watching Congress. We need to do the right [politically expedient] thing to solve this problem [avoid debating this again in an election year]. We must work together to avoid a default [cutting spending] the responsible way – not in a way that will do America more harm than good [by limiting our ability to use tax dollars to buy votes from our interest groups].

House Dems to call for tax hikes

Remember how the New York Times criticized the Republicans last week for offering "more of the same" on the economy? Somehow, I don't think that the Democrats are going to get the same commentary on this:

A group of House Democrats is calling for any deal to raise the debt ceiling to bring about the end of the Bush tax rates for the wealthy.

The lawmakers, led by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), also say that, following last week’s weak job report, they are concerned that certain decreases in federal spending could hurt the economy’s recovery...Republicans have said new tax revenue is the one deficit-reduction approach they will not consider in any deal to increase the debt limit, arguing that Americans want to see Washington get more serious about rolling back spending.

But Democrats have said taxes need to be part of the discussion.

For the Democrats, a good day to raise taxes is any day that ends with a "y"...