Quote of the day - government programs

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program. 

~Bob Wells

With added fiscal pain since 2009.

Saturday Learning Series - Bright ideas

James Burke, history made fun.

James Burke's series Connections and The Day The Universe Changed in the late 1970s and mid-1980s respectively were very successful at taking a historical and philosophical look at scientific change.  The two series led to a Connections sequel (Connections 2) in 1994, with James Burke still at the helm of the project (and another, Connections 3 in 1997).

Series continued from Episode 13.

Here's episode 14 of Connections 2,  entitled Bright Ideas.

Friday Musical Interlude - Space Age Love Song.

Happy Black Friday.  A flashback for you today from A Flock of Seagulls - Space Age Love song from 1982, with the requisite hair.

Thursday Hillary Bash - De-Americanization

Last week, RCP carried this video in which Hillary Clinton talks about the dangers of the world de-Americanizing (which she correctly deems as a bad. thing)  However if you listen to the context, her problem was with the risk of debt default and not with the root cause, rampant, voracious overspending and over-commitment to spending on the part of the U.S. government.

Quoting Chinese officials about de-Americanizing the world is in and of itself foolish - akin to asking the Fox if the hen house gate she be removed.  Undoubtedly Hillary will be applauded for standing up for America's values as a result of this, but in context, she really is simply demonstrating that if elected, she will continue to be a part of the problem.  She doesn't see the debt as the problem.  She seems an attempt to do something about it as the problem.  For her, America getting it's act together means that as president she not going to  want any fiscal dissent.

Happy Thanksgiving America.

Thanksgiving is a time when the world gets to see just how blessed and how workable the Christian system is. The emphasis is not on giving or buying, but on being thankful and expressing that appreciation to God and to one another. 

~John Clayton

Banning stuff

It's interesting that a lot of people think that the solution for some problem is to ban it.  If only it were that easy.  It's the equivalent of liberals deciding that mandating a higher minimum wage will solve the problem of poverty. No, it won't.  Banning something to take care of it would be a wonderful tool if it worked (and more importantly it weren't abused as a power.  then again you could just ban abusing the power to ban stuff).  In the poverty example, banning poverty won't eradicate it.  That's not to say that the rationale behind banning something isn't being driven by improper motives.

Meanwhile back in the Mid-West

People getting set for Thanksgiving travel are quite likely going to be impacted by the winter storm hitting just in time for the busiest travel day of the year in the United States.



You know, because of global warming.

UPDATE: I know a single data point doesn't make a trend.  But neither does a decade.  And thinks like this alarmist graph makes absolutely zero sense.

Happy Chanukah.

Wishing all of my Jewish friends and readers a Happy Chanukah today (yes, even the liberal ones who all too often seem to not be very friendly to Israel).  Have a happy day (or eight of them).

Rules They Don't Teach Kids In School

I saw this on Facebook today and I thought it was worth sharing.  It's not actually from Bill Gates, it's from Charles J. Sykes of the Hoover Institution.  The Bill Gates part is urban myth.  However, that does not detract from the actual truths contained in the rules.  For an expanded version go here.

Obama slaps Catholic Church (again)

Why?

The Obama administration, in what’s been called an egregious slap in the face to the Vatican, has moved to shut down the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See — a free-standing facility — and relocate offices onto the grounds of the larger American Embassy in Italy.

The new offices will be in a separate building on the property, Breitbart reported.

And while U.S. officials are touting the relocation as a security measure that’s a cautionary reaction to last year’s attacks on America's facility in Benghazi, several former American envoys are raising the red flag.

It’s a “massive downgrade of U.S.-Vatican ties,” said former U.S. Ambassador James Nicholson in the National Catholic Reporter. “It’s turning this embassy into a stepchild of the embassy to Italy. The Holy See is a pivot point for international affairs and a major listening post for the United States, and … [it’s] an insult to American Catholics and to the Vatican.”

I'm not sure why he would do that.  Oh, wait.  There was this thing once...

Iranian "Let's Make a Deal" deal

Iran must be thrilled by the fantastic deal that they struck with Secretary of State John (I'm a Neville Chamberlain clone) Kerry.  Even Democrats are wary.  Even liberal Chuck Schumer.  Everybody except the Obama administration knows.  Okay, even they have to know but they are too busy trying to paint lipstick onto this pig to care.  It's all about kicking the can down the road so they can let Hillary Clinton deal with it when she inevitably becomes the next president.  Any nuclear terror will come on her watch.

But those of us in the real world will have to come to grips with the failure of this administration to do absolutely anything to halt Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions.

Canadian attacked in New York "Knockout Game"

There's a disturbing trend in case you've missed it called the knockout game.  I ignored it for a while thinking okay, this is a few isolated incidents and the stupid fad will fade.  But then I got to thinking about the bigger picture, which is that news organizations and the ultra-liberal left have been trying to ignore the story because racism is involved - against Caucasian people.  And once they could no longer deny the trend, they decided to deny the racism aspect and then go back in some instances to denying the trend.  At that point it becomes imperative to speak out.

Handicapping the GOP field

Eventually I'll get to the point that I can add more thoughts on the various candidates with respect to all the different issues facing the country.  But for now, I thought it would be interesting to see what a professional handicapping outfit forsees.

Greedy Capitalist Pigs!!

" You see there is only one constant. One universal. It is the only real truth. Causality. Action, reaction. Cause and effect. " ~The Merovingian [The Matrix Reloaded]

Back in the summer I read an interesting article in the Financial Post about the problem with capitalism as it exists today.  The premise was stated very clearly in the opening sentences:

One of the big reasons the U.S. economy is so lousy is the American companies are hoarding cash and “maximizing profits” instead of investing in their people and future projects.

This behavior is contributing to record income inequality in the country and starving the primary engine of U.S. economic growth–the vast American middle class–of purchasing power.

Saturday Learning Series - The Big Spin

James Burke, brilliant.

I've made a few more of the fixes to the Saturday Learning Series as far as the James Burke items are concerned.  It's still not complete but the Connections 2 specific episodes have been dealt with and pointed to a new source that works.

James Burke's series Connections and The Day The Universe Changed in the late 1970s and mid-1980s respectively were very successful at taking a historical and philosophical look at scientific change.  The two series led to a Connections sequel (Connections 2) in 1994, with James Burke still at the helm of the project (and another, Connections 3 in 1997). 

Series continued from Episode 12.

Here's episode 13 of Connections 2,  entitled The Big Spin.

Friday Musical Interlude - 7 Seconds

Youssou N'Dour's 7 Seconds from 1994.

Thursday Hillary Bash - Obamacare IS Hillarycare

Hillarycare is Obamacare and vice versa.  Both candidates in 2008 supported universal health care.  Hillary Clinton, if she hopes to win in 2016, has to be for universal health care while being against it.  Trying to thread that needle will be difficult to say the least.  As with Benghazi, the Hillarycare-Obamacare questions will weigh down her candidacy with both the left (who fear pulling away from Obamacare) and the right who know in her heart she supports this stuff.

Canadian government's "not spending" scandal

Most of the news coming out of Canada right now is about Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, and here in Canada about a senate expenses scandal, but neither is the really big story which is not getting a lot of press anywhere.  The Canadian government has been under-spending it's annual budgets by billions of dollars for a few years now.  Don't you wish that sort of problem existed in the U.S.?

Canada's annual deficit/surplus as a percentage of GDP: click for source.

Obama repeats the past, only worse

Decades ago when Social Security was enacted,  and later Medicare and Medicaid as well, planners planned based on assumptions about what I would call a static growth model.  That is to say that the success (or more correctly, sustainability)  of those programs was, and is, dependent upon two things:

1. that the population would continue to grow, or at least not shrink, and 
2. that the make up of the population would not change significantly over time.  

Of course neither of those conditions are certain and one has in fact, already proven to be wrong.

More Obama excuses from others

Gloria Borger at Time, sums up the president's problems being positioned as everybody's fault but his:

As the story of the Obamacare website fiacso unfolds, senior administration aides tell me that the president is “mad, frustrated and angry.”

Mad that his signature legislative achievement is stuck at the gate, frustrated that he’s running out of time to fix it, and angry that he’s got a second term agenda now going nowhere. He’s so furious, in fact, that he stepped out of character to vent to an assembled group of top aides. “If I had known [about the website problems] ,” the steaming president reportedly said, according to the New York Times, “We could have delayed the website.”

All of which begs the real question: how could he not have known?

Indeed. To put a finer point on it, Borger continues:

It’s a real head-scratcher. Most powerful man in the free world. Most important issue. Most politically explosive, particularly coming on the heels of the government shutdown. Consider the context: Republicans had just tried to defund Obamacare, and they lost in a heap of public humiliation. So the rollout of Obamacare had to be really impressive, because the Republicans had to be proven wrong.

In politics, brand matters. TIP: brand is local.

Proving that brand matters, an endorsement from a Duck Dynasty star made a difference in a race for Louisiana's 5th congressional district.  This is not something to simply be shed as unimportant - brand is the currency of politics these days.

An unknown political novice who has never visited Washington, D.C., won a special election for Louisiana's 5th District seat Saturday on the endorsement of the “Duck Dynasty” family and a promise to fix Obamacare.

Vance McAllister beat establishment candidate Neil Riser, a state senator, in Saturday's runoff election created when former Rep. Rodney Alexander resigned on Sept. 26 to become secretary of the Louisiana Department of Veterans Affairs under Republican Governor Bobby Jindal.

Saturday Learning Series - Hot Pickle

James Burke, historian.

I've finally made a few of the fixes to the Saturday Learning Series as far as the James Burke items are concerned.  It's not complete but the last few episodes have been fixed and pointed to a new source that works.

James Burke's series Connections and The Day The Universe Changed in the late 1970s and mid-1980s respectively were very successful at taking a historical and philosophical look at scientific change.  The two series led to a Connections sequel (Connections 2) in 1994, with James Burke still at the helm of the project (and another, Connections 3 in 1997). 

 

Series continued from Episode 11.

 

Here's episode 12 of Connections 2,  entitled Hot Pickle.

Friday Musical Interlude - Swing Republic offering

"I'm Leaving" was released in 2011 by Swing Republic. It's good.

Enjoy...

Thursday Hillary Bash - Her own false promise version of Obamacare

Back in 2007 during the Democratic primaries which Hillary Clinton lost to now president Obama, she made promises similar to Obama's promise.  The problem is that with what would have been dubbed HillaryCare II, the promise would have been a lie as well.

In 2007, campaigning in Iowa, Clinton like Obama, promised Americans that if they liked their plans they could keep them. Clinton, also like Obama, left out the fine print that her plan had a provision similar to Obamacare which would have kicked millions off of their own insurance plans.

I'm not convinced this is the person America needs to clean up the mess Obama will inevitably be leaving behind.

Thursday Hillary Bash - Odds on Favorite

There's a thought that's been keeping me up at night with worry.  It doesn't keep me up all night because (a) I'm not a troubled sleeper and (b) I don't see this scenario happening. 

Hope, it turns out, doesn't float

I have not seen this movie.

For Obamacare at least, change has destroyed hope.  The Healthcare.gov website (no link intended) is not going to be ready in time.  The timeline to fix the website is impossible, and it won't be met.  Frankly the chance of it being partially met are dubious as well.  The notion that you can keep your health insurance if you like it, was a myth created to sell the change to Obamacare and it is being shattered.  It has nothing to do really with the website but rather the rules embedded in the law that make the law unworkable.  No one is signing up.  That's not a website issue entirely either.  It's raw skepticism.

 

None of that seems to matter to this administration.  Not even credibility seems to matter anymore.  Remember how lackadaisical the Obama response was to the BP oil spill?  You are seeing that same level of aloof apathy here.  The president has dug a deep hole, jumped in and is now stuck.  And he just doesn't seem to care? Either that, or else he has no clue how to get out.

 

American voters' chickens have come home to roost.  Change with this president was inevitable.  But hope doesn't float.  Not with the trust he was given by voters being stomped into the dirt in a rush to enact all of his wild-eyed ideas about a progressive utopia and America-be-damned attitude.  Hope for those who believed in the pretty packaging Obama came wrapped in, is quickly evaporating.  Hope for those who opposed his leftist agenda is waning too.  Things are not going to get better until they've gotten worse still.

 

 

Are we reaching "peak lithium"?

 President Obama's determination to kill the coal and oil industries may have to be put on hold.  It turns out one of the key ingredients in rechargeable batteries, lithium, is facing a peak a potential supply issue much sooner than either oil or coal.  President Obama may be stuck pushing solar power (something he really doesn't want to dredge up from his past) or wind power which despite the posters, is not a proven, winning  replacement for oil or coal (can you imagine a wind-powered automobile?).  Yet despite the warning signs, utopian progressives keep insisting, peak lithium is not going to be a problem.  They are quite possibly wrong.  Yet again.

Bill Clinton to Obama: Honor your word

The cynic in me says that Bill is trying to distance Hillary from Obamacare so she has breathing room in 2016 on the issue.  But then again she could do that herself.  Of course she has said bleep-all about it and hopes to eventually plot a course through the middle - wherever that turns out to be.  The ultra-cynic in me thinks that if Bill Clinton is doing all the talking for Hillary on issues because she's afraid to comment for fear of dissuading anyone from wanting her to be the next president, then isn't Bill Clinton really going to be the next president if she wins?

In any case, here's what Bill Clinton has to say, whatever it does to help Hillary, it does absolutely zero to help Obama.  In fact, I'd argue that it harms him.  Are the knives finally coming out for the lame duck feast?

James O'Keefe does it again: Obamacare fraud exposed

James O'Keefe strikes again, this time exposing the fraud in Obamacare that we all knew was inevitable:

The Obama Administration's campaign to sign everyone up for government healthcare inspired Project Veritas to go straight to the source and investigate what's really going on.

What we found is shocking: navigators, in positions of public trust, told our undercover journalists to lie and defraud the government. Over and over again.

Yes, as if the roll-out of Obamacare hasn't been disastrous enough, Project Veritas has caught Obamacare navigators counseling citizens to lie about their income and deceive the IRS, commit fraud on applications by not reporting full health history, and worse.

Don't just watch this, share it. 

Chris Christie's conservatism - chicken and egg

Chris Christie looks to be becoming the Republican juggernaut candidate the left would like him to be.  The sense of his impending primary victory has become as palpable in the media as the impending Hillary Clinton presidency.  Maybe on paper that's how it looks, but as Politico points out in a discussion with Gov. Rick Perry, there will be a discussion about Christie's conservatism when the time comes.

Skunk vs. Dog (a personal, non-political anecdote)

Last night our dog decided to get drenched in skunk spray.  My eyes are still watering, and I'm pretty sure they did as I slept last night too.  As an FYI, apparently tomato juice is not the best solution for dogs.  Google was helpful in our discovering of that fact (more on that later).  I have to admit, the panic in our house at the awful odor was pretty funny, even in the midst of it.

Not our dog but a remarkable lookalike.

The dog upon coming inside when I called him (there's a first for everything) decided the best thing to do would be to rub his face all over the carpet that we had just steam cleaned on Saturday.  My wife grabbed him as quickly as she could and headed to the bathtub.  I headed for the tomato juice and my son started opening windows, including ones in the area we think the skunk was at. Luckily the skunk was likely long gone by that point.

When my son was done opening the windows, that's when he noticed me pouring tomato juice into a bowl and stopped me. He told me what he had learned from my dad when the same thing had happened to his dog while my son was visiting a few summers ago. He quickly looked up the solution on his phone because he remembered a peroxide/dish-soap/baking soda solution. (a quick search confirmed it).  It turns out that mix works very well at getting the dog scent free.  While we were bathing the dog, I told my son to work on the carpet where the dog had rubbed his face.  

Our dog is a papillon and has long hair.  They are a small breed and look like drowned rats when they are bathed.  A picture of that would definitely cause you a chuckle, unfortunately we were too busy to snap a picture.  

It was cold enough here last night for frost, but we had to keep the windows open for a while.  I don't know why the house filled up with the scent so strongly, but it did.  The smell is gone from dog and the carpet, but it just seemed to float in the air overnight and I think lingered this morning as well. I can't tell today at work if I smell like skunk or it is just in my own nostrils.  My co-workers said they can't smell it, but they are nice people and could just be trying to spare my feelings.  That's the Canadian thing to do.

Luckily our little guy did not get sprayed in the eyes, but he's not the brightest bulb so I doubt he'll be taking away any insights from his back yard encounter.  I on the other hand have learned to check the yard before letting the dog out at night.  It hasn't been a problem in the past, but that doesn't matter now.  Live and learn.

In any case, my blogging will be a little slower than normal today and tomorrow as a short term result.  I'm itching to write a bunch of stuff but I haven't had the time and this skunk incident has done nothing to help the amount of time I have available. 

Obama's approval rating doesn't matter.

According to the latest round of Gallup Dailies on Obama's Job Approval, the president has climbed back up to the "magical" 40% approval mark.  In other words, it's still terrible.  In fact if you look at the Gallup Obama job approval numbers since election day 2012, they have almost reversed from an approve/disapprove of  52/44 then to 40/53 now.  The thing is, the numbers don't matter.  Obama doesn't have to run for re-election again. He's already won his two terms.  He'll have another 2+ years to inflict his brand of progressivist agenda on the nation, provided the Obamacare train wreck doesn't negate that possibility  (and it just might).

But 5 years in, we know this president and like bad news, reality does not penetrate the his firewall. His agenda has primacy, always.  Regardless of the approval rating being terrible,  mediocre or great, he will pursue and push his agenda.  Regardless of the success or failure of his attempts,  he will pursue his agenda. Regardless of the damage to the nation,  his party or the people he will pursue his agenda.

That's why the polls do not matter. They change nothing, even though now they probably should.

Blog technical repairs continue, only slightly abated

Not this kind of slider.

Most of the repairs to this blog have ben completed, except for the slider at the top, which remains maddeningly unfixed.  Not being a javascript expert (or even novice for that matter), trying to comb through code to see where the problem exists is slow going.  Happily though, the blog is repaired enough, to be able to resume a more regular posting effort.  Look for more on-topic posts coming soon.

 

For those of you interested in the mechanics of the situation, my blogger interface had slowed to a hang when I was in the edit html mode.  That was the case whether I tried to tackle it with Internet Explorer, Chrome or Firefox.  I was able to delete all of the html in Chrome, and create a shell code with the simple template and rebuild from there.  I was only smart enough to save some of my script widgets ahead of time (most of the ones that weren't blogger standard).

Not this either.

 

While I have my own domain name, the blog is still hosted at blogger.  Aside from ease of use, I often wonder why.  Google support for and innovation at Blogger is sporadic at best.  Wordpress offers a lot more options and definitely a better menu of template options.  That blogger doesn't even have a prepackaged widget for a slider on top is surprising.  Top sites use them.  Blogger consequently feels dated.  Conversely, Wordpress isn't ad friendly.  While I make a mere pittance on my blog, the option to do so is important to me.  And I'm certainly not making enough to justify a hosted option like GoDaddy or Hostgator.  Not yet at least.

 

Fixing the slider will be difficult because it's embedded in several sections of a news template xml file that I downloaded.  It will work if I revert to the default xml but as soon as I try to adjust the slider pages, it seizes up and doesn't slide.

THIS, is what I'm talking about.

 

The fixing effort continues.

Quick thoughts on current news - it's all bad.

My blog is still giving me a major headache.  I thought I had almost had it fixed and suddenly my slider is locking up. Arg! I hate blogger but I don't think any other platform would be without its own idiosyncrasies.  The battle to fix the site continues.

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Our less than illustrious leader, Toronto mayor Rob Ford has admitted to having used crack cocaine.  He's following in the not so proud footsteps of former D.C. mayor Marion Barry.  He's the butt of jokes around the world.  Yet he's the only conservative politician to have won the post in basically forever, and those who are loyal to his political aims, are stuck being embarrassed by him.  There's no other conservative candidate here on the horizon who can possibly win, and liberals, progressives and socialists are filled with glee at the notion that next year, they will be able to take the office back.  Ford could still win re-election as the conservative standard bearer, but he's nobody's first choice.

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Speaking of standard bearers, how does it feel in the U.S. as a conservative to be faced with the prospect of Chris Christie, noted RINO by many, as your conservative standard bearer? His win for governor of New Jersey was truly mammoth (pardon the weighty pun).  His odds of being the GOP nominee for president in 2016 were to say the least, not hurt yesterday.  Liberals are probably thrilled at the prospect of a Christie nomination as they believe he cannot beat Hillary Clinton head-to-head in 2016.  They may be right.

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In that vein, I'll be taking a detailed look at handicapping the GOP race for president in 2016 soon.  I did so early on in the race for 2012 (back in 2010).  It was somewhat off-base in terms of who ended up running, but it was not without its merits.  Plus, it's fun to think about a brighter, less socialist future from time to time.

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More socialist, meanwhile is Virginia, which narrowly elected Terry McAuliffe to be its new governor.  I hate to say I told you so on this one but I just could not see Ken Cuccinelli catching up in time for election day.  Despite a massive disadvantage in spending he almost closed the gap.  But in the end, the Democrat McAuliffe still won.  He's a Clinton loyalist, and an Obamacare proponent.  Geographically, most of the state went red, but the urban northeast districts were enough to drag McAuliffe across the finish line.  By all rights he should have swamped Cuccinelli.  that he didn't should be a silver lining for conservatives, but really, it's not.  A win is a win and a loss is a loss.  Let's not be the Bad News Bears and settle for losing.

Blog repair in progress

I'm slowly pulling all of the elements back together to fix the blog after yesterday's corruption.  Interestingly, some of the widgets that have disappeared are no longer recoverable.  Google Friend Connect for example, seems to be lost forever, which sucks.

None of the workarounds I've tried seem to work for it and it should not really be surprising since Google has discontinued support for it and is trying to push everyone to Google+.  But the blog only has 2 followers on Google+, so I'm in no hurry to share that.  My own Google+ fares much better but I can't seem to link my own Google+ to the blog.  So don't expect to see that here any time soon unless I can figure it out.

In any case, regular posting should resume within a day.

I hope.

Blog template corrupted

You may have noticed my blog doesn't look like it's normal self.  There's been a corruption of the template and I am in the process of fixing it.  Hopefully we will be returning to normal soon.

Truth, and teachers

If only liberal academia believed this quote (and lived by it).  Sadly, even when they adhere to such a principle, they often steer students towards their version of the truth.

Random news item thoughts for election day

It's election day and there are some high profile items worth mentioning in passing as I struggle to keep up with the news cycle.  Here are some quick hits.

Chris Christie is expected to romp to a wide-margin victory today and be re-elected as a Republican governor in liberal New Jersey.  A lot has been made of his less-than-perfect-conservative decisioning on many items, and whether he could win a GOP nomination for president in 2016.  He could have enough cross-over appeal to be able to beat a Hillary Clinton in 2016.  But is just winning the presidency enough for conservatives?  It's like trying to decide between prune juice and beet juice.

 

Sean Trende does his usual excellent job in breaking down the significance of a big Christie victory.  For handicappers, it's an excellent read.

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Virginian could be an upset GOP win and liberal Terry McAuliffe, Clinton ally, could end up not being the next governor there.  It's a long shot.  But noted libertarian star Ron Paul, is urging Virginia libertarians to not vote libertarian, and that could help.  There's a man with some bigger picture understanding.

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Speaking of Virginia, here's Republican Cuccinelli's campaign in 60 seconds , via Politico;

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The GOP are finally prepared to step aside and let Obamacare implode under it's own Byzantine web and the weight of it's implausibility.  Good.  They can argue in 2016 (it may be too early in the process to impact 2014 midterm elections) that they fought tooth and nail to overturn the behemoth and finally could no longer fight it and now the country is reaping when it sewed.  If Obamacare turns out to be half of the disaster we expect it to be, then it will be an effective campaign for president, congressional candiates and senate candidates from the GOP.  Politically it's a good move.  Of course Obamacare is going to continue to be an albatross around the neck of the country until it is gone, but hopefully that remains only a short term issue.

 

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Apparently environmentalism causes amnesia.  It also causes alarmist hysteria, unneeded depression, false anxiety and leads to a tenuous grasp on the reality of facts.  But hey, it sells to suckers and that's all that matters if you are looking for another government grant for your scientific study.

 

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The talk of Hillary's demise on the left, is premature.  She will run, she will secure the Democratic nomination and still has a very viable shot at the presidency (sadly).  She is certainly beatable, but her favorability ratings tumble has more to do with her being out of the public eye than it has to do with voters not liking her any less.  Evidence exists in that her unfavorability numbers are basically unchanged.

 

Another Feinstein mess you've gotten us into

I first saw this this morning on Hot Air.  It left me incredulous.  How is this woman allowed to sit as a senator?  She is either incredibly vapid or a villainous liar, complicit in the Obamacare lies and deception.  Read the article at Hot Air - Ed Morrissey articulates very well what I'm too aghast to convey just yet.

Back again - assorted quick hits



Quick hits eye candy?



I haven't had a chance to blog in a few days and I missed it.  I'm back again today playing catch up.  Be prepared for some quick hits type thoughts and not detailed essays today.

 

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The Virginia governor election is tomorrow.  There's talk that Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton ally Democratic nominee is reportedly tanking in the waning days of the campaign and Republican nominee could steal the election from the heavily favored Democrat.  As much as I'd love to believe that, I don't buy it.  We were told by many pollsters that Mitt Romney was going become president in 2012.  He not only lost, he lost dramatically.  Until I see a win, I'm not counting it.  If the election were to be held in another 2-3 weeks, I'd be willing to believe that McAuliffe could fall far enough fast enough to secure a GOP win.  Right now, I'm more than skeptical.

 

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All politics is local.  That does not change.  Tea Party supporters who believe that we should run ultra-conservative candidates in Vermont because it's the right thing to do, miss the point that politics is a long haul game.  You can't win it in a single election.  Liberal Democrats took decades to get the country into the mess it is in today and it can be fixed all at once because people's perceptions about right and wrong took decades to change in sufficient numbers and will take a similar amount of time to change back.  But Tea Party supporters aren't alone in their desire to be right about conservatives winning elections.  Liberalesque Chris Christie believes he knows better than the GOP how to win elections.  Tactically, he may have some credibility.  The problem with his notion is that while it may work in New Jersey, that same logic may not apply in Alabama.  All politics is local is still true.  Just like 50 different states can come up with better, more specific solutions to needs than a one size fits all solution (like for healthcare) winning elections takes effort at as local a level as possible.  Obama won in 2012 by taking the approach that an individual is as local as you can get.  They used regression models to target the most likely unlikely voters.  The future of elections borrows from the past.

 

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With cratering public approval the Obama presidency has entered it's waning phase, also known as lame duck status.  Or has it?  Adding to the NSA spying scandal (clearly first among the plague of Obama scandals), the Obamacare website woes, and the shattering illusion of keeping your coverage and keeping your doctor under Obamacare have hit the president's job approval hard.  He's at 40% popularity.  Liberal satirists don't mind poking him now and again lately.  They are preparing to turn their attention to electing Hillary Clinton in 2016.  But the president understands that he's no lame duck.  The polls that counted have already happened in 2008 and 2012.  Yes his influence is waning but he's no lame duck.  He's got court justices to appoint.  He's got an agenda to try to fulfil.  He's got executive orders, and vetoes and pardons to dispense.  He's got fundraisers and speeches he can use to try to continue to shape public opinion in 2014, and 2016 and indeed beyond.  Wait until liberals have an Obama legacy to canonize - he'll be in vogue again in 2017.  And he can clearly still continue to have an impact on America until at least 2016.  Sadly for the country the impact is a very negative one, even if not all voters realize it yet.