Final words from last week's convention

I wanted to devote a special post to the acceptance speeches of the candidates. In Mitt Romney's case, he started, of course, with the first sentence in which he formally accepted the nomination (just imagine a candidate who, after working all these months to gain the nomination, refused it!). And his speech next devoted a few sentences to Paul Ryan — saying why he thinks Ryan is good for America (even though they disagree on music — something that Ryan also mentioned in his speech!).

But Mitt Romney showed quickly that he knows that he cannot be elected without receiving some of the votes of people who voted in 2008 for Barack Obama — after all, John McCain lost the election, so even if he got the vote of every citizen who voted last time for McCain (and he won't: look at Charlie Crist!) it would not win the election. So immediately after the opening words accepting the nomination and praising Paul Ryan, he went to an appeal for the voters of those 2008 Obama supporters who might have changed their minds:

Four years ago, I know that many Americans felt a fresh excitement about the possibilities of a new president. That president was not the choice of our party, but Americans always come together after elections. We are a good and generous people who are united by so much more than what divides us.

When that hard fought election was over, when the yard signs came down and the television commercials finally came off the air, Americans were eager to go back to work, to live our lives the way Americans always have — optimistic and positive and confident in the future.

And then, he described the America that he loves:

That very optimism is uniquely American.

It is what brought us to America. We are a nation of immigrants. We are the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the ones who wanted a better life, the driven ones, the ones who woke up at night hearing that voice telling them that life in that place called America could be better.

They came not just in pursuit of the riches of this world but for the richness of this life.

Freedom.

Freedom of religion.

Freedom to speak their mind.

Freedom to build a life.

But now here comes the reminder of President Obama's “You didn't build that” speech:

And yes, freedom to build a business. With their own hands.

This is the essence of the American experience.

After a couple more sentences about the greatness of America he came to the real reason disaffected 2008 Obama supporters have for changing their minds:

… today, four years from the excitement of the last election, for the first time, the majority of Americans now doubt that our children will have a better future.

It is not what we were promised.

Every family in America wanted this to be a time when they could get ahead a little more, put aside a little more for college, do more for their elderly mom who’s living alone now or give a little more to their church or charity.

Every small business wanted these to be their best years ever, when they could hire more, do more for those who had stuck with them through the hard times, open a new store or sponsor that Little League team.

Every new college graduate thought they'd have a good job by now, a place of their own, and that they could start paying back some of their loans and build for the future.

This is when our nation was supposed to start paying down the national debt and rolling back those massive deficits.

This was the hope and change America voted for.

It’s not just what we wanted. It’s not just what we expected.

It’s what Americans deserved.

You deserved it because during these years, you worked harder than ever before. You deserved it because when it cost more to fill up your car, you cut out movie nights and put in longer hours. Or when you lost that job that paid $22.50 an hour with benefits, you took two jobs at 9 bucks an hour and fewer benefits. You did it because your family depended on you. You did it because you’re an American and you don’t quit. You did it because it was what you had to do.

But driving home late from that second job, or standing there watching the gas pump hit 50 dollars and still going, when the realtor told you that to sell your house you’d have to take a big loss, in those moments you knew that this just wasn’t right.

But what could you do? Except work harder, do with less, try to stay optimistic. Hug your kids a little longer; maybe spend a little more time praying that tomorrow would be a better day.

I wish President Obama had succeeded because I want America to succeed. But his promises gave way to disappointment and division. This isn't something we have to accept. Now is the moment when we CAN do something. With your help we will do something.

Now is the moment when we can stand up and say, “I’m an American. I make my destiny. And we deserve better! My children deserve better! My family deserves better. My country deserves better!”

So here we stand. Americans have a choice. A decision.

Next came some sentences I will omit, but one thing I want to quote is his words about George Romney, his father, who would (I believe) have made a great President but was deprived of that honor:

My dad had been born in Mexico and his family had to leave during the Mexican revolution. I grew up with stories of his family being fed by the US Government as war refugees. My dad never made it through college and apprenticed as a lath and plaster carpenter. And he had big dreams. He convinced my mom, a beautiful young actress, to give up Hollywood to marry him. He moved to Detroit, led a great automobile company and became Governor of the Great State of Michigan.

He was also clear to mention a group that has seemed reluctant to warm to him: women, to whom Obama has tried to appeal with his “war on women” language:

…When my mom ran for the Senate, my dad was there for her every step of the way. I can still hear her saying in her beautiful voice, “Why should women have any less say than men, about the great decisions facing our nation?”

I wish she could have been here at the convention and heard leaders like Governor Mary Fallin, Governor Nikki Haley, Governor Susana Martinez, Senator Kelly Ayotte and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

As Governor of Massachusetts, I chose a woman Lt. Governor, a woman chief of staff, half of my cabinet and senior officials were women, and in business, I mentored and supported great women leaders who went on to run great companies.

But the important point in his speech was the disappointment that many 2008 Obama supporters felt with their choice when he actually became President:

…How many days have you woken up feeling that something really special was happening in America?

Many of you felt that way on Election Day four years ago. Hope and Change had a powerful appeal. But tonight I'd ask a simple question: If you felt that excitement when you voted for Barack Obama, shouldn’t you feel that way now that he’s President Obama? You know there’s something wrong with the kind of job he’s done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him.

The President hasn’t disappointed you because he wanted to. The President has disappointed America because he hasn’t led America in the right direction. He took office without the basic qualification that most Americans have and one that was essential to his task. He had almost no experience working in a business. Jobs to him are about government.

And while President Obama has attacked Gov. Romney's Bain Capital years, Romney described the true story of Bain, including “a lot of happy retired [Episcopal] priests” who belong to a Bain-managed pension fund. And some of the companies, like “[a]n office supply company called Staples — where I'm pleased to see the Obama campaign has been shopping” and The Sports Authority, which might not be flourishing today if Bain had not supplied the seed money for them. He can honestly point to these, and concluded that part with his words:

These are American success stories. And yet the centerpiece of the President’s entire re-election campaign is attacking success. Is it any wonder that someone who attacks success has led the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression? In America, we celebrate success, we don't apologize for it.

He admitted that “[w]e weren’t always successful at Bain.” But he continued:

But no one ever is in the real world of business.

That’s what this President doesn’t seem to understand. Business and growing jobs is about taking risk, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, but always striving. It is about dreams. Usually, it doesn't work out exactly as you might have imagined. Steve Jobs was fired at Apple. He came back and changed the world.

And continuing to contrast our economic system with the socialistic ideas that influenced Barack Obama, he went on:

It’s the genius of the American free enterprise system — to harness the extraordinary creativity and talent and industry of the American people with a system that is dedicated to creating tomorrow’s prosperity rather than trying to redistribute today's.

That is why every president since the Great Depression who came before the American people asking for a second term could look back at the last four years and say with satisfaction: "you are better off today than you were four years ago."

Except Jimmy Carter. And except this president.

That's a damning indictment. And by using the words “every president since the Great Depression,” he's comparing those two — Carter and Obama — not just to Republican presidents, but as well to Democrats like Bill Clinton. And so:

This president can ask us to be patient.

This president can tell us it was someone else’s fault.

This president can tell us that the next four years he’ll get it right.

But this president cannot tell us that YOU are better off today than when he took office.

And now Romney gets to the main point of the speech:

…Today the time has come for us to put the disappointments of the last four years behind us.

To put aside the divisiveness and the recriminations.

To forget about what might have been and to look ahead to what can be.

Now is the time to restore the Promise of America.

As has been the case throughout his campaign, he pointed to the main issue of 2012:

What is needed in our country today is not complicated or profound. It doesn't take a special government commission to tell us what America needs.

What America needs is jobs.

Lots of jobs.

In the richest country in the history of the world, this Obama economy has crushed the middle class. Family income has fallen by $4,000, but health insurance premiums are higher, food prices are higher, utility bills are higher, and gasoline prices have doubled. Today more Americans wake up in poverty than ever before. Nearly one out of six Americans is living in poverty. Look around you. These are not strangers. These are our brothers and sisters, our fellow Americans.

His policies have not helped create jobs, they have depressed them.

And of course, he pointed out, regarding the current President:

And this I can tell you about where President Obama would take America:

His plan to raise taxes on small business won't add jobs, it will eliminate them;

His assault on coal and gas and oil will send energy and manufacturing jobs to China;

His trillion dollar cuts to our military will eliminate hundreds of thousands of jobs, and also put our security at greater risk;

His $716 billion cut to Medicare to finance Obamacare will both hurt today's seniors, and depress innovation — and jobs — in medicine.

And his trillion-dollar deficits will slow our economy, restrain employment, and cause wages to stall.

To the majority of Americans who now believe that the future will not be better than the past, I can guarantee you this: if Barack Obama is re-elected, you will be right.

The choice is clear. And Romney's call for renewal is clear:

I am running for president to help create a better future. A future where everyone who wants a job can find one. Where no senior fears for the security of their retirement. An America where every parent knows that their child will get an education that leads them to a good job and a bright horizon.

And unlike the President, I have a plan to create 12 million new jobs. It has 5 steps.

First, by 2020, North America will be energy independent by taking full advantage of our oil and coal and gas and nuclear and renewables.

Second, we will give our fellow citizens the skills they need for the jobs of today and the careers of tomorrow. When it comes to the school your child will attend, every parent should have a choice, and every child should have a chance.

Third, we will make trade work for America by forging new trade agreements. And when nations cheat in trade, there will be unmistakable consequences.

Fourth, to assure every entrepreneur and every job creator that their investments in America will not vanish as have those in Greece, we will cut the deficit and put America on track to a balanced budget.

And fifth, we will champion SMALL businesses, America’s engine of job growth. That means reducing taxes on business, not raising them. It means simplifying and modernizing the regulations that hurt small business the most. And it means that we must rein in the skyrocketing cost of healthcare by repealing and replacing Obamacare.

Today, women are more likely than men to start a business. They need a president who respects and understands what they do.

And let me make this very clear — unlike President Obama, I will not raise taxes on the middle class.

There was more to this speech, but I think that the parts I have quoted are the key.

Paul Ryan's acceptance speech made some important points as well. The cutest quote is

After four years of getting the run-around, America needs a turnaround, and the man for the job is Governor Mitt Romney.

But he quickly gets to something I have noticed. A president with no record to boast of can only throw mud, or as Paul Ryan put it:

I have never seen opponents so silent about their record, and so desperate to keep their power.

They’ve run out of ideas. Their moment came and went. Fear and division are all they’ve got left.

With all their attack ads, the president is just throwing away money — and he’s pretty experienced at that. You see, some people can’t be dragged down by the usual cheap tactics, because their ability, character, and plain decency are so obvious — and ladies and gentlemen, that is Mitt Romney.

After some autobiographical notes which might be necessary, since Ryan is hardly known out of the Janesville, Wisconsin area, Congressman Ryan got to the meat of the speech, which, like Romney's, appealed to disaffected 2008 Obama voters:

When Governor Romney asked me to join the ticket, I said, “Let’s get this done” — and that is exactly, what we’re going to do.

President Barack Obama came to office during an economic crisis, as he has reminded us a time or two. Those were very tough days, and any fair measure of his record has to take that into account. My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.

A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: “I believe that if our government is there to support you this plant will be here for another hundred years.” That’s what he said in 2008.

Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.

Now some people on Obama's team, including a governor, have said that Ryan was making something up — that that Janesville GM plant was already closed in 2008. But someone checked the facts: that plan was still making cars in 2009! So the plant that “will be here for another hundred years” closed in the early days of Obama's administration. Continuing, we come to a telling point:

So here’s the question: Without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?

The first troubling sign came with the stimulus. It was President Obama’s first and best shot at fixing the economy, at a time when he got everything he wanted under one-party rule. It cost $831 billion — the largest one-time expenditure ever by our federal government.

It went to companies like Solyndra, with their gold-plated connections, subsidized jobs, and make-believe markets. The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate welfare, and cronyism at their worst. You, the working men and women of this country, were cut out of the deal.

What did the taxpayers get out of the Obama stimulus? More debt. That money wasn’t just spent and wasted — it was borrowed, spent, and wasted.

Maybe the greatest waste of all was time. Here we were, faced with a massive job crisis — so deep that if everyone out of work stood in single file, that unemployment line would stretch the length of the entire American continent. You would think that any president, whatever his party, would make job creation, and nothing else, his first order of economic business.

But this president didn’t do that. Instead, we got a long, divisive, all-or-nothing attempt to put the federal government in charge of health care.

Obamacare comes to more than two thousand pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees, and fines that have no place in a free country.

The president has declared that the debate over government-controlled health care is over. That will come as news to the millions of Americans who will elect Mitt Romney so we can repeal Obamacare.

And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obamacare came at the expense of the elderly.

You see, even with all the hidden taxes to pay for the health care takeover, even with new taxes on nearly a million small businesses, the planners in Washington still didn’t have enough money. They needed more. They needed hundreds of billions more. So, they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didn’t even ask for. The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and we’re going to stop it.

And one of the points I've made about the way Obama robs Medicare in his budget is that, although it does not — there he is accurate — decrease Medicare benefits, it reduces payments to doctors, which would make them more likely to refuse taking Medicare patients: a point that may have helped to convince one undecided person I've heard of.

More appeal to those who might have supported Obama in the 2008 election soon followed:

Obamacare, as much as anything else, explains why a presidency that began with such anticipation now comes to such a disappointing close.

It began with a financial crisis; it ends with a job crisis.

It began with a housing crisis they alone didn’t cause; it ends with a housing crisis they didn’t correct.

It began with a perfect Triple-A credit rating for the United States; it ends with a downgraded America.

It all started off with stirring speeches, Greek columns, the thrill of something new. Now all that’s left is a presidency adrift, surviving on slogans that already seem tired, grasping at a moment that has already passed, like a ship trying to sail on yesterday’s wind.

President Obama was asked not long ago to reflect on any mistakes he might have made. He said, well, “I haven’t communicated enough.” He said his job is to “tell a story to the American people” — as if that’s the whole problem here? He needs to talk more, and we need to be better listeners?

Ladies and gentlemen, these past four years we have suffered no shortage of words in the White House. What’s missing is leadership in the White House. And the story that Barack Obama does tell, forever shifting blame to the last administration, is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago — isn’t it about time he assumed responsibility?

There is one important point: Obama still, 3½ years after taking office, tries to blame the previous administration for all that is wrong with our economy. He has had 3½ years to fix it; what has he done? Not much! But Ryan offers a promise, on behalf of the Romney-Ryan ticket:

The present administration has made its choices. And Mitt Romney and I have made ours: Before the math and the momentum overwhelm us all, we are going to solve this nation’s economic problems.

And I’m going to level with you: We don’t have that much time. But if we are serious, and smart, and we lead, we can do this.

After four years of government trying to divide up the wealth, we will get America creating wealth again. With tax fairness and regulatory reform, we’ll put government back on the side of the men and women who create jobs, and the men and women who need jobs.

Some have argued that, if Mitt Romney believes that business experience is a sine qua non for the Presidency, and this is the cause of Obama's being unsuited to the office, why did he pick Paul Ryan, who never was in business himself? But Ryan at least has been up close to someone in business, and knows what it takes to run one:

My Mom started a small business, and I’ve seen what it takes. Mom was 50 when my Dad died. She got on a bus every weekday for years, and rode 40 miles each morning to Madison. She earned a new degree and learned new skills to start her small business. It wasn’t just a new livelihood. It was a new life. And it transformed my Mom from a widow in grief to a small businesswoman whose happiness wasn’t just in the past. Her work gave her hope. It made our family proud. And to this day, my Mom is my role model.

Reminding us of Obama's snotty “you didn't build that” remark, he continues:

Behind every small business, there’s a story worth knowing. All the corner shops in our towns and cities, the restaurants, cleaners, gyms, hair salons, hardware stores — these didn’t come out of nowhere. A lot of heart goes into each one. And if small businesspeople say they made it on their own, all they are saying is that nobody else worked seven days a week in their place. Nobody showed up in their place to open the door at five in the morning. Nobody did their thinking, and worrying, and sweating for them. After all that work, and in a bad economy, it sure doesn’t help to hear from their president that government gets the credit. What they deserve to hear is the truth: Yes, you did build that.

And I think a major part of Ryan's speech is the following:

President Obama is the kind of politician who puts promises on the record, and then calls that the record. But we are four years into this presidency. The issue is not the economy as Barack Obama inherited it, not the economy as he envisions it, but this economy as we are living it.

College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life. Everyone who feels stuck in the Obama economy is right to focus on the here and now. And I hope you understand this too, if you’re feeling left out or passed by: You have not failed, your leaders have failed you.

None of us have to settle for the best this administration offers — a dull, adventureless journey from one entitlement to the next, a government-planned life, a country where everything is free but us.

…

By themselves, the failures of one administration are not a mandate for a new administration. A challenger must stand on his own merits. He must be ready and worthy to serve in the office of president.

And with these words, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have made me happy to support their fight to take over the government. I hope enough people vote for these two men in November that next January we will see them take the oaths of office as President and Vice-President.

Highlights of last week's convention

This past week, the Republican Party has met in Tampa, Florida, for their quadrennial convention. A lot of speeches were made, and I want to thank Tom Bowler for putting a lot of the more important ones on his blog, "Libertarian Leanings". (He did not put Chris Christie's speech on his blog, but I was able to find that one on Fox News' site.) I'm not going to quote all the speeches in ful, but I want to say what I think the most important points were.

Chris Christie has been criticized for making his speech more about himself than about Mitt Romney. But these criticisms have mostly come from Democrats who, I suppose, do not understand Republican ideas and ideals. Gov. Christie spoke of what he accomplished in the Governorship, not to brag about himself, but to show that Republican ideas can be implemented if the case can be made clear to the people, and the most important part of his speech was not where he spoke about his own background, nor when he spoke about Gov. Romney, but in between, where he distinguished between what the two parties' core beliefs are:

Our ideas are right for America and their ideas have failed America.

Let me be clear with the American people tonight. Here is what we believe as Republicans and what they believe as Democrats.

We believe in telling hardworking families the truth about our country's fiscal realities, telling them what they already know, the math of federal spending does not add up.

With $5 trillion in debt added over the last four years, we have no other option but to make the hard choices, cut federal spending and fundamentally reduce the size of this government.

Want to know what they believe? They believe that the American people [don't] want to hear the truth about the extent of our fiscal difficulties. They believe the American people need to be coddled by big government. They believe the American people are content to live the lie with them. They are wrong.

We believe in telling our seniors the truth about our overburdened entitlements. We know seniors not only want these programs to survive, but they just as badly want them secured for their grandchildren.

Our seniors are not children.

Here's what they believe. They believe seniors will always put themselves ahead of their grandchildren. And here's what they do. They prey on their vulnerabilities and scare them with misinformation for the single cynical purpose of winning the next election. Here is their plan. Whistling happy tune while driving us off a fiscal cliff as long as they are behind the wheel of power when we fall.

Now, we believe that the majority of teachers in America know our system must be reformed, to put students first so that America can compete, that teachers don't teach to become rich or famous. They teach because they love children.

We believe — we believe we should honor and reward the good ones, while doing what's best for our nation's future, demanding accountability, demanding higher standards, and demanding the best teacher in every classroom in America.

Get ready. Here is what they believe.

They believe the educational savages will only put themselves ahead of children, that self-interest will always trump common sense, they believe in pitting unions against teachers, educators against parents, lobbyists against children. They believe in teachers' unions. We believe in teachers.

We believe — we believe that, if we tell the people the truth, that they will act bigger than the pettiness we see in Washington, D.C. We believe it is possible to forge bipartisan compromise, and stand up for our conservative principles.

As readers of this blog know, I'm a big fan of Chris Christie. And his speech made me feel that as long as people like him are in the Republican Party, I am still happy to be in there too.

I'm also a fan of Condoleezza Rice. So I was interested in seeing her words. She is, of course, an expert on foreign policy. So it was no surprise that one of her main points was that:

Our friends and allies must be able to trust us. From Israel to Poland to the Philippines to Colombia and across the world — they must know that we are reliable and consistent and determined. And our adversaries must have no reason to doubt our resolve — because peace really does come through strength. Our military capability and technological advantage will be safe in Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s hands.

But in an election that mostly turns on economic matters and the sad Obama record in that department, her words in this area were also inspiring:

… most importantly, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will rebuild the foundation of American strength — our economy — stimulating private sector led growth and small business entrepreneurship. When the world looks at us today they see an American government that cannot live within its means. They see a government that continues to borrow money, mortgaging the future of generations to come. The world knows that when a nation loses control of its finances, it eventually loses control of its destiny. That is not the America that has inspired others to follow our lead.

I have been less convinced of Marco Rubio as a spokesman for our party. But I like his response to Obams's “you didn't build that” speech:

Mitt Romney knows America's prosperity didn't happen because our government simply spent more. It happened because our people used their own money to open a business. And when they succeed, they hire more people, who then invest or spend their money in the economy, helping others start a business and create jobs.

And he certainly summarized the nature of the 2012 election in his words:

Our problem with President Obama isn't that he's a bad person. By all accounts, he too is a good husband, and a good father — and thanks to lots of practice, a pretty good golfer.

Our problem is he's a bad president.

And as someone whose parents escaped to this country from communist Cuba, his most telling point was his criticism of Obama's ideas on government as

…Ideas that people come to America to get away from. Ideas that threaten to make America more like the rest of the world, instead of helping the world become more like America.

The convention, of course, tried to show that the Republican Party is not just white males, packing the speaker's list with African Americans like Rice, Artur Davis (who went from seconding Obama's nomination four years ago to being a Republican convention speaker last week), and Mia Love (of whom I admit I'd never heard till last week), an African-American Congresswoman who is proud to identify as a Republican, and Hispanics like Rubio and Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico, who proclaimed:

I fear some of our leaders today have lost the courage to stand up. What we have now are politicians. They won't offer real plans, and only stand up when they want to blame someone else.

Which describes Obama to a T. All he can do is blame George W. Bush for everything wrong with our economy, even after 3½ years.

I have not discussed the two candidates' speeches. This will be put to another post.

As a columnist put it, "Nothing scares Obama like truth"

Yesterday I read an article on the Boston Herald’s website called “Nothing scares Obama like truth” by Michael Graham. I found it so apropos that I will repeat it here:

To paraphrase Mark Twain, there are three kinds of liars: Liars, damned liars… and screaming, foamy-mouthed MSNBC hosts watching Paul Ryan speak.

We have now moved into what academics might call the “post-factual” portion of the Obama campaign. For example: Tuesday night Ann Romney gives a warm, charmingly earnest speech. Obama flak Robert Gibbs calls it an “angry” night “full of insults.” What “insults?” He doesn’t say. He just says “Republicans are angry!”

Why? Because he needs them to be.

The RNC features black Republicans like Condoleezza Rice, Rep. Artur Davis and Mia Love. CNN and MSNBC fill their panels with nuts like Toure and the Rev. Al Sharpton decrying the “racism” in Tampa. Their proof? They don’t need “proof.” For Obama to win, they need Republicans to be “racist” — so the pundits say they are.

Republican Mitch McCon- nell quips “Obama hasn’t been working to earn re-election. He’s been working to earn a spot on the PGA tour.” MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell knows what’s up: “He’s aligning… the lifestyle of Tiger Woods to Obama.”

And in perhaps the most blatant example, DNC spokesflak Debbie Wasserman Schultz used a Los Angeles Times article to claim that Mitt Romney is responsible for the abortion plank of the GOP platform. CNN’s Anderson Cooper confronted her with the fact that the Times article she quoted said the exact opposite — that Romney did not support the plank as written.

Wasserman Schultz’s answer? “Anderson, it doesn’t matter.”

Wow.

Liberal “news” man Howard Fineman did us a favor Wednesday, laying out the Democrats’ strategy: “Prove clearly” that Paul Ryan — and Mitt Romney and anyone else who can do math — is “lying”… whether they are or not.

Why? Because Obama supporters can’t handle the truth. The facts about the Obama record are so awful, so indefensible that the very idea of “facts” must be destroyed.

Here’s a story Ryan told in his speech about a promise Obama made at a Janesville, Wis., auto plant: “Candidate Obama said, ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you, this plant will be here for another 100 years.’ That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year.”

It’s an effective metaphor for the many promises Obama has made about the economy that didn’t come true. And that was the problem. It’s too effective. And so the Fineman Effect kicked in: Ryan was declared a liar.

“That plant was already closed in 2008,” screamed Chris Matthews, who nearly had to be placed in Hannibal Lecter restraints for his own protection. Thursday morning, Obama lackeys in the “politi-fact” business jumped in, claiming Ryan’s statement as false

One problem: Ryan was right. Local media at the time reported the factory still making cars in 2009, and even GM, the plant’s owner, has posted on the Web: “Janesville was placed on standby capacity in May 2009.”

After their failure in convincing Americans of a “GOP War On Women,” Democrats have declared their own war: A war on truth itself.

This is why the movie “Obama’s America:2016” got a 1½-star review in the Washington Post, for example. The truth is the scariest thing to Obama — because the more people learn the truth, the less they are likely to vote for him this November.

Normally I have no brief for Mike Huckabee, but...

At the convention in Tampa, Mike Huckabee addressed the delegates saying that President Obama is the only “self-professed evangelical” in the race, yet “he tells people of faith that they have to bow their knees to the god of government and violate their faith and conscience in order to comply with what he calls health care. Friends… let me say it as clearly as possible, that the attack on my Catholic brothers and sisters is an attack on me.” Now I've had very little good to say about Gov. Huckabee, but in this respect he's hit it on the head. We have freedom of religion in this country, and this really includes the right to not pay for what your religion considers immoral. Contraception, of course, is not immoral to me — I'm not a Catholic. But I defend Catholic religious institutions' right to hold to their beliefs, and act on them. This time, I applaud Gov. Huckabee's comments.

An e-mail received

I received the following in my e-mail today, sent by Chip DiPaula:

As members of my party gather in Tampa for the Republican National Convention, I wanted to write to you about an issue that I believe transcends party lines — the issue of marriage equality and fairness for every American.

12 years ago I served as Convention Manager when my party nominated George W. Bush. Later I served as campaign manager and Chief of Staff when Bob Ehrlich became our first Republican Governor in nearly 40 years. As a lifelong Marylander, it was a great honor to serve him and the citizens of the state I love.

I am not alone among Republicans in my support for marriage equality. Former Vice President Dick Cheney and former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman do, too. Clearly, Republicans and Democrats can agree that equal marriage rights are essential in a free society.

Will you show your support for equality in Maryland and join me in voting FOR question 6 on November 6th?

Whether we are Republicans or Democrats, we can all agree that everyone deserves to be treated equally under the law.

“Like” this post if you agree and help send the message that marriage equality is about protecting all families — regardless of party lines.

Freedom is not a Democratic or Republican value. It is an American value. Freedom means every citizen enjoys equal rights under the law. Please join me and the hundreds of thousands of Marylanders who support this important issue.

Thank you,

Chip DiPaula

I'm glad to see this. Republicans who agree with the need to support marriage equality must not desert this cause just because it was mainly pushed by a Democratic Governor and Democrats in the General Assembly. I do not have a Facebook account, for reasons I wish not to go into, so I cannot “like” this post, as requested in the e-mail message, but I am happy to “help send the message” by relaying it here on this blog; I already indicated my intent to vote FOR Question 6. I heartily encourage Maryland voters who read my blog to do likewise.

Likeable? Obama?

President Barack Obama keeps getting high likeability ratings in polls. I wonder why. I never liked him — getting his start by stabbing Alice Palmer in the back being just one thing about him that I find distasteful. He's always struck me as a cross between a dangerous radical and a Chicago machine politician — and why is such a character deemed “likeable” by so many people?

“Obama 2016” — the movie to see

Yesterday my wife and I saw the movie “Obama 2016,” which is getting an amazing degree of box-office success for a “documentary.” Our reactions were a little different — it may finally make her decide once and for all to vote for Mitt Romney, whereas for me it seemed to say a lot that I already knew — but the only reason for the difference is that I had been aware of so much that was in the movie, which was in fact based on two books by Dinesh D'Souza. She has discounted some of the information I've given her in the past because it came from me, and she is aware of what I think of President Obama, but the point I made after the movie was that a lot of the reason I oppose the President is because I already knew some of what she learned in the movie.

There are things that even I learned about President Obama: that one of the professors whose classes Obama attended at Columbia University in New York City was Edward Said, the virulently anti-Israel writer (though the movie makes it clear that the anti-colonial point of view Obama inherited from his father is strongly anti-Israel to begin with), that his maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham, was the one who introduced Barack to the Communist Frank Marshall Davis, who became Obama's earliest mentor, which implies that that side of the family (with which he had much more contact than his father's side), must have been pretty left-wing, and that the reason his mother divorced his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, was that Soetoro was becoming less enchanted with left-wing politics and actually interested in getting “in” with the business community — which is even more evidence of how left-wing his mother's side of the family was.

While the movie probably made my wife more likely to vote for Mitt Romney — her remark afterward was that this (Obama) is not the kind of person she believes should be running this country — it only was a confirmation of what I was already thinking for me. So a lot will depend on what you already know. Which is why one reporter said you don't need to see it. But if there is any doubt in your mind that Barack Obama is actually anti-American, pro-extreme-left-wing, and opposed to the ideas that made this country great, you must see the movie. I haven't seen a movie in a decade — even with a senior-citizen discount, it cost me $8 (when I was a kid, adults got to see movies for 40¢, and you saw 2 movies for that price! Nothing else costs 40 times what it did then — for most things it's about 10.) so movies are much too expensive to see very often. But this one is worth seeing.

I guess I was wrong

Two years ago, I was disappointed that Charlie Crist was defeated in the Republican primary for Florida's Senate seat, and I wrote two postings: “I'm glad I don't live in Florida,” in which I hoped for Crist, running as an independent, to win that Senate seat, and “Postmortems - Part 1,” in which I analyzed the results of Florida's election, saying:

In Florida, the "Tea Party" candidate, Marco Rubio, succeeded in gaining the support of the entire Republican electorate. While I might have liked to see a better showing by Charlie Crist, he made a serious mistake. He let himself be painted "blue" (i. e. a secret Democrat). First, when some people were saying he might join the Democratic caucus if he were elected to the Senate, he refused to come out and say he was a Republican who would never support the Democratic leadership (i. e. Harry Reid et al), which lost him voters who wanted to express their hatred for the Obama/Reid/Pelosi agenda. Second, when such as Bill Clinton worked to get Kendrick Meek to withdraw so that the Democrats could unite to defeat Rubio, Crist accepted this role without saying anything that might have inspired Republicans to stay with him. This made Crist seem to be a Democrat while Rubio managed to unite all the Republicans, even those who had originally supported Crist. So Crist and Meek split the Democratic vote, instead of Crist taking both the moderates among the Republicans and those among the Democrats, which would have been the way to win. Too bad. But at least the winner in this scenario was a Republican, though further to the right than I'd like.

I'm sorry to say, I was apparently a poor judge of Charlie Crist. It's clear he was more willing to join the Democrats' fold than I imagined. In fact, he has actually endorsed President Barack Obama's re-election.

I have to apologize for anything positive I ever said about Charlie Crist. Anyone who can endorse Obama does not deserve any respect from me, at least for his political views.

Another take on the Missouri Senate election

In the past, I've rather liked a lot of the posts by Washington Examiner columnist Noemie Emery. Friday's paper had an interesting column regarding the Senate election in Missouri, for whom the Republican primary winner, Todd Akin, has gone so off-the wall that the likes of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh think he should give up:

In 2006, unexpectedly bounced from his own party's ballot, Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman decided to run as an independent on a third-party line. The moment he did, he became the de facto Republican candidate, as the GOP decided to ignore its own nominee, neither funding nor mentioning him. Everyone understood what was happening, and Republicans voted for Lieberman. The state was (and is) Democratic, and Lieberman won.

In 2012, the Republicans' best way out of the mess in Missouri, now that they are left with a loon as a candidate, may be to do the same thing: Run a third-party line with the “real” candidate. But this time, actively fund and back him, with rollouts, endorsements and cash. This is because the installed nominee is not merely a blank, as he was in Connecticut, but a full-blown flake and media flame-out who needs to be wholly disowned.

Distance must be put between Todd Akin and the rest of the party and ticket, and this is best done by running against him. Link him to the Democrats and to Claire McCaskill, whose creature he does seem to be. During the primary, Democrats spent at least $1.5 million on television promoting him to Republican voters as the most conservative candidate. They also urged Democrats to go out and vote for him. By defining him now as a Trojan horse figure set to blow up and embarrass his party, Republicans could make the campaign against him appear more legitimate. They could also undermine liberals' efforts to link him to Romney, Ryan and other conservatives. If these are actively running against him, how tied together can they possibly be?

It's an open question who the third candidate should be, but it is one easily solved. Jennifer Rubin has brought up the name of John Danforth. Sarah Palin suggests Sarah Steelman (whom she endorsed), but she ran a few points behind Akin in the primary, and Missouri's “sore loser” law prevents runners-up from running in write-in campaigns. As the National Review's Jim Geraghty notes, a successful write-in candidate needs a simple name that is hard to misspell and a proven appeal to large blocs of voters, traits that he finds in one possible entrant: “If only some figure, well known to Missouri voters… would step forward and declare, “The name's Bond … Kit Bond.”

Other ex-senators are thick on the ground, and if Steelman can't run, she could campaign with and for them, driving a stake through the fake ‘war on women’ that the left wing is trying to wage. Campaigns such as these would give Missouri's voters a choice other than the other two ghastly options, and sever the links the liberals are trying to forge between Akin and saner Republicans. Who knows? They might even win.

Having nothing to say, Democrats are avid to run on distractions, from Seamus the dog to Rafalca the horse to Harvey, the invisible friend of Harry Reid, who keeps feeding him tidbits about Romney's taxes. They will continue to feed such distractions to the public till November, to drown out all talk of real issues like downturns and downgrades and “jobs,” the three-letter word that Joe Biden immortalized. This will never blow over, until it is made to. Unless Akin bows out, there's just one way to do it.

Ms. Emery has an interesting idea. The problem is that it will only work if one alternative candidate comes out. Otherwise, the vote will be split, and Claire McCaskill will still win. So who will do it?

What is a Person?

So much of the disagreement on abortion hinges on one particular issue: When does a person begin to exist, with all the rights of a person? (Certainly, even the “right-to-life” terminology, taking its words from the Declaration of Independence, with its statement that “all men [we would now say ‘persons’] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” depends on this question as to whether a fetus is a person!) Certainly, my leg or my finger is not a person, though it is alive and all of the cells therein are definitely human, so we have never heard of “pro-life” activists protesting surgical amputations. I have heard that the people who insist that a fetus is a person use, as the basis for this claim, that it has a new genome, different from either parent. The problem with this “independent genome” argument is that by this criterion, two identical twins (the technical term, actually, is “monozygotic” twins) are not separate persons. Their genomes are alike. (I have pointed this out in a previous post, which has been read by many visitors.) This is why I have thought that the “independent viability” criterion is the one to use; if a purported person can be separated from any other human being and can survive, then it counts as a separate human being. The only thing, this definition has problems too. Consider “Siamese” twins. They can usually be separated and both survive. But in some cases, they share a vital organ. One could not separate them without killing one. Yet I certainly would admit that these are two separate persons. (The “independent genome” definition, favored by “pro-lifers,” fails just as well; these twins certainly have a common genome!)

I don't know. How do you define a person in a way that would take care of such a case? I'd be interested in others' ideas.

One difference between Republicans and Democrats

Gregory Kane is a columnist whose column I read in the Washington Examiner a couple of times a week. as you might know, sometimes I agree with his columns, and sometimes I disagree strongly. But a column of his that appeared in yesterday's paper pointed out one important point. Most of the column was talking about Congressman Todd Akin's comment on abortion. And while you can read the whole column, I'm not going to quote anything but the one part I want to emphasize, the end of his column:

Finally, Mr. President, although you tried to lump all Republicans into the Todd Akin bin, I feel compelled to remind you that there are pro-choice Republicans. One of them is former Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich, who heads Mitt Romney's campaign in that state.

Mr. President, can you name one prominent pro-life Democrat?

The point is that the Republican Party still has room for a lot of different opinions. The Democratic Party seems not to.

I am so glad I do not live in Missouri!

I would hate to be living in the State of Missouri this year — as I would have hated to live in Delaware two years ago. As Delawareans did in 2010, Missourians have nominated a Republican candidate who is beyond the fringe of acceptability. To have to choose between a weird Republican candidate who deserves to be deprived of any sort of office of importance and a Democrat who would, if elected, help perpetuate Harry Reid's control of the Senate is the kind of torture I hope never to have to endure myself, and I certainly do not have anything but sympathy for Missourians who have to make this choice in November.

Representative Todd Akin seems to think he is being pilloried for using one word — “legitimate” — to describe rape. But in fact, there is more than just this. If it was just the case of his saying “legitimate rape” to mean “true rape,” I do not think it would be that bad. But it was his expressed belief that a woman who is truly a rape victim could not become pregnant — a bit of idiocy that ill behooves a candidate for the United States Senate.

Then, there is one further position which Todd Akin has taken that would make it impossible for me to support him, if I'd been a Missourian. The fact is that Rep. Akin has made it clear that his main issue is abortion. Now I can support a candidate who is anti-abortion, if this is not his main issue and if, on issues that the candidate and I consider more important, we are in general agreement. But if the main issue on which a candidate is basing his campaign is one I oppose, it is clear that I cannot support him. And my position on abortion is clear. I don't believe in unrestricted abortion on demand with the woman being the only one to make the decision. I believe there should be some restrictions — for example, if she is married and her husband wants the child, he should be able to prevent an abortion — but in general, I am much closer to the “pro-choice” side than to the “pro-life” side in this spectrum. And so Todd Akin is outside the pale for me, while Romney-Ryan (who are “pro-life,” but do not make it one of their top issues) still get my support.

Obama can't keep his own stories straight

Nancy Cordes, a CBS News reported, asked President Barack Obama a question about his campaign. “As you know, your opponent recently accused you of waging a campaign filled with anger and hate. You told Entertainment Tonight that anyone who attends your rallies can see that they are not angry or hate-filled affairs. But in recent weeks, your campaign has suggested repeatedly — without proof — that Mr. Romney might be hiding something in his tax returns. They have suggested that Mr. Romney might be a felon for the way that he handed over power of Bain Capital. And your campaign and the White House have declined to condemn an ad by one of your top supporters that links Mr. Romney to a woman's death from cancer. Are you comfortable with the tone being set with your campaign? Have you asked them to change their tone when it comes to defining Mr. Romney?”

To which the president responded: “Well, first of all, I am not sure that all of those characterizations that you laid out there were accurate. For example, nobody accused Mr. Romney of being a felon.” This is rather strange, as Stephanie Cutter, Obama's deputy campaign manager, made a conference call, which is on record, to reporters in July in which she accused Romney of “through his own words and his own signature, … misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony.”

Doesn't President Obama know what his own campaign staff has said? Or is this his way of taking the accusation back?

A little bit unusual

The legislature passed, and Gov. O'Malley signed, a bill to legalize same-sex marriage, and a petition to invalidate this law was filed by homophobic bigots. So you would think that a "for" vote would be for the petition; namely, to void the law. But in fact, the way the ballot question is worded, a vote "for" Question 6 will be to uphold the law. In fact, as is the case for two other referenda on the ballot, it seemes that when a referendum on a law is petitioned, the ballot will show the question as “FOR the Referred Law” and “AGAINST the Referred Law.” The question is worded:

Question 6

Referendum Petition

Civil Marriage Protection Act (Ch. 2 of the 2012 Legislative Session)

Establishes that Maryland’s civil marriage laws allow gay and lesbian couples to obtain a civil marriage license, provided they are not otherwise prohibited from marrying; protects clergy from having to perform any particular marriage ceremony in violation of their religious beliefs; affirms that each religious faith has exclusive control over its own theological doctrine regarding who may marry within that faith; and provides that religious organizations and certain related entities are not required to provide goods, services, or benefits to an individual related to the celebration or promotion of marriage in violation of their religious beliefs.

So a vote FOR is a vote to allow the law to take effect. And I wll be voting that way, and hoping that the majority goes that way.

There will be, as I stated, two other questions, Questions 4 (the Maryland version of the DREAM Act) and 5 (O'Malley's Congressional gerrymander) on the ballot, and I will be opposing both of them: in short, AGAINST Questions 4 and 5, FOR Question 6.

Even a Democrat has to admit it

When I was growing up in New York City, the New York Post, which my parents regularly read, was a liberal Democratic paper, published by Dorothy Schiff and putting Herblock's cartoons from the Washington Post on its editorial page. After a couple of changes of ownership, it is now, under Rupert Murdoch, a solidly conservative and Republican paper; Murdoch may be a lot of things I do not like, but he's well to the right of the ownership of the Post in my youth. But the column from the Post that I saw today, entitled “See no evil,” was by Phil Mushnick, who describes himself as a “registered but less-than-loyal Democrat.” And it deserves quoting, because it really goes to show how biased most of the media are today:

As a registered but less-than-loyal Democrat, I long scoffed at the long-held notion that the news media have a left-leaning, anti-Republican bias.

I didn’t believe it, primarily because I chose not to believe it. Plus, the media confirmed for me that mine was the noble side. Heck, there was no other side.

But I now know — and have for some time — that I was pulling my own leg. The notion of such a bias is not merely a notion; it’s true.

Our news media, especially as seen and heard during nationally broadcasted news, engages in highly selective story-choosing, story-telling and subsequent indignations and outrages that are first weighed on political scales.

After this preamble, Mushnick goes to the specific incident that led to this conclusion:

David Plouffe helped Obama get elected in 2008, and rejoined his campaign this year. In between, he cashed in.

Early this month a spectacular story was given tiny attention, and none, as far as I watched, on nightly national newscasts.

In December 2010, David Plouffe, soon to be reappointed a senior adviser to President Obama, gave two speeches in the desperately poor country of Nigeria.

Speeches for which he was paid a total of $100,000.

Holy moly! What did he have to say in Nigeria that was worth 100 grand? He must have revealed the cure for a country ranked 158th among 177 in economic development, a country in which an estimated 70% of humanity live — barely, and not for long — in severe poverty and in the mortally unhealthy conditions that accompany nothingness.

But, no, that wasn’t it.

Plouffe was invited and paid by MTN, Africa’s largest wireless-phone operator — and a company that does business with nuclear weapons-headed, radical-Islamized Iran.

Oh, so he must be a telecommunications wizard, a guy whose take on tech is well worth, oh, $50,000 an hour, even in Nigeria.

But no, that wasn’t it, either.

So, why was Plouffe paid $100,000? What could he share with MTN and Nigeria? Shoot, for 100 grand MTN could have landed KC and the Sunshine Band!

According to MTN, Plouffe was in demand “because of his expertise and knowledge of the US political scene.”

Whoa!

A penny for your thoughts? For 100 grand, this fella should have been registered as a foreign agent, or at least as a reverse lobbyist for a large international business.

A few months later, Plouffe rejoined the Obama administration as a top adviser.

But MTN wasn’t Plouffe’s only questionable off-season client. In 2009, during his first break from being an Obama adviser — Plouffe managed Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign — Plouffe accepted $50,000 to speak to a group in Islamic, oil-rich Azerbaijan.

Turns out this group was connected to Azerbaijan’s occasionally democratic, occasionally despotic and often corrupt government.

When human-rights organizations protested Plouffe’s acceptance of such big dough from such a connected group — as if a senior White House advisor had no idea with whom he was dealing and knew nothing about the country in which he was speaking — Plouffe donated his fee to the purportedly nonpartisan National Democratic Institute.

So, Plouffe floats in and out, in and out: In as a top advisor in the Obama administration White House, out to give big-ticket speeches carrying insights on dealing with US politics and governance to dubious audiences in faraway places. And he’s now back in again.

Incredible stuff.

Yet, nine days ago, White House spokesperson Eric Schultz insisted that any attempt to suggest that Plouffe is not on the up-and-up or that there are any strings attached to the man is “simply misplaced.”

Really?

But that’s plenty good enough for the vast majority of the news and political media, as this Plouffe story never generated the attention it deserved — and still deserves. It was dead on arrival.

Now, imagine if a senior advisor in the last Bush administration — either Bush administration — had done as Plouffe has. Imagine if a top, inside Bush operative and persuader had such a résumé, eager for personal foreign business enrichments in exchange for “his expertise and knowledge of the US political scene.”

Woo, boy, fireworks! All over the nightly news! For weeks! Forever! And for good reason!

Nearly everyone, as opposed to just a few, would be familiar with the name David Plouffe — surely the caper would have been branded “Plouffegate” — and Plouffe would be forced to resign.

Take it from a registered Democrat no longer in denial: Fireworks!

And while the Plouffe story was mostly being ignored, Mitt Romney was in Israel, where he had the audacity to note, with gentle yet indisputable accuracy, the “cultural” achievement in that country compared to the rest of that part of the world.

Now that caused fireworks.

TV news and political reporters not only characterized Romney’s truth-telling as “a gaffe” — hard evidence that the GOP presidential candidate speaks first and thinks later — they gathered before him, offering him — shouting to him — an opportunity to “apologize.”

It was the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, stuck to describe pornography, who famously said, “I know it when I see it.”

Similar goes for news media bias in this uninspected, widely ignored Plouffe intrigue: I know it when I don’t see it.

It's a shame that this is so, but when I look at the whole picture, I think Mushnick has something there. I knew about this story, because I read it in the Washington Examiner, which is one of the exceptions to this leftist bias of our newspapers. But as he said, it got little press. Doing a Google search (using "david plouffe" nigeria as my key), I found several stories about this, but none of the top ones were in the sites of well-known publications. All were on relatively little-known sites. So I think Mushnick is confirmed.

More about Obamacare and Paul Ryan

My last post referred to a column by Yuval Levin in which he explained the Ryan-Wyden Medicare reform proposal. It seems that I hadn't noticed until today that he posted another column one day later which is also extremely good.

… I was struck by how even knowledgeable liberals still do not understand what Obamacare has done to them. They have a sense that health care is no longer a good issue for them, that it might have cost them the 2010 elections and will hurt in 2012, but they haven’t grasped that Medicare — which for decades has been a trusty battering ram against Republicans in the contest for the votes of seniors and others — is also no longer their issue.

This becomes evident in part when you consider that the arguments the Democrats naturally fall back upon regarding Medicare are just false now. So for instance David Axelrod on CNN’s State of the Union referred to “Congressman Ryan’s idea that we should turn Medicare into a voucher program, shifting thousands of dollars ultimately onto the backs of seniors.” But that’s simply a lie — Ryan’s actual Medicare proposal (which Romney has backed) simply doesn’t shift costs to seniors.

But it’s even more evident when liberals try to confront what they themselves — the supporters of Obamacare — propose to do to Medicare. Thus we find Rachel Maddow like a deer in headlights when Rich Lowry asked her a simple question on Meet the Press yesterday: “Do you support $700 billion in cuts in Medicare over the next ten years?” Obamacare takes that amount out of the program and spends it on other things, especially its new exchange subsidies. Maddow literally refused to answer the question. At one point she even said she shouldn’t have to answer it because “I’m not running for anything,” even though her occupation, as I understand it, is to express her opinion. And in the end, her defense of the cuts (though she still never said she supported them) was that Paul Ryan’s budget actually keeps them in place, eliminating Obamacare’s spending but not its Medicare cuts.

It’s at least a bit odd for Democrats who say Ryan is the devil to defend President Obama’s raid on Medicare by saying Paul Ryan does the same thing — and what’s more, it’s not true. The Ryan budget puts those $700 billion into the Medicare trust fund, to shore up the program’s future and reduce the deficit, rather than spending the money on yet another new entitlement. And Mitt Romney proposes not to make those Obamacare cuts in the first place — keeping the money in Medicare’s operating budget and so leaving the program simply as it is for today’s seniors and starting his premium-support reform for younger Americans when they retire, beginning a decade from now. Both undo Obama’s raid on Medicare, and both support a plan to save Medicare from bankruptcy in the years ahead.

Interestingly, Levin next says something that I find surprising:

I don’t think Axelrod and Maddow were just setting out to lie exactly — it’s worse than that. Listening to them, it seemed as if they really hadn’t realized until now the situation they were in. They’re used to a certain order of things on Medicare and have not stopped to grasp what Obamacare has done to them. They assume it must be true that Republicans want to cut benefits and Democrats want to preserve them. But it’s not true, not anymore. You could see that panicked realization slowly rising in Maddow’s eyes as she was pressed.

What she was probably recognizing was this: Obamacare changed everything. In the wake of that law, it is now clearer than it ever could have been before that the market solution is also the best one for seniors — that the conservative approach that would dramatically reduce the deficit is also the one that would avoid any disruptions for current beneficiaries and the one that would save Medicare in the longer run without shifting costs to future beneficiaries. And the Left can’t claim any of those benefits for its own approach to Medicare.

Levin's next part is rather interesting, because it makes it clear that both the Left and the Right seem unaware of what Obamacare has done, in his opinion:

Even some conservatives haven’t quite realized this, and have been uneasy about criticizing Obama’s Medicare cuts — after all, aren’t we supposed to be for Medicare cuts? But this attitude fails to consider the nature of Obama’s cuts (an arbitrary raid of the system to fund a new unsustainable entitlement) and the nature of the Romney-Ryan alternative (a market solution that would turn recipients into consumers and make Medicare a model of how competition can create efficiency and reduce costs without undermining value or access). There’s a broad consensus in America that the elderly should have access to highly subsidized health coverage. Cutting the cost of the program does not need to mean cutting the level of that coverage — unless, that is, you think central planning is the only way to run the program. The Left apparently does believe that, and now they’ll have to face the consequences.

President Obama has put Democrats in the position of being the party that seeks to cut current seniors’ benefits (especially those in Medicare Advantage) and access to care (thanks to the IPAB) while still allowing the program to collapse in the coming years and so watching the deficit explode and bringing on fiscal disaster. And Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have put the Republicans in the position of being the party that wants to protect current seniors’ benefits and make them available to future seniors while still saving the program from collapse in the coming years and so dramatically reducing the deficit and averting fiscal disaster.

Whether you’re now a senior and concerned about your health coverage, are younger and worry if you’ll have affordable coverage when you retire, or are most concerned about the nation’s fiscal health and economic future, the Democrats offer you a very bad deal on Medicare and the Republicans offer you a good one.

The Democrats still don’t see that, and think that turning to Medicare in the wake of Ryan’s selection will yield great political rewards. Perhaps Romney and Ryan should inform them of how the two parties actually stand on the issue. And they might think about informing some voters as well.

Well, let us see what Romney and Ryan do have to say about Medicare in the next few months. It might make for an interesting election-year debate.

The real Ryan proposal on Medicare

The Obama campaign is (not surprisingly) trying to scare people with the statement that Paul Ryan's Medicare reform proposals will “end Medicare as we know it.” Of course, “Medicare as we know it” will also end under any healthcare proposals that Obama would support — “Obamacare” diverts funds from Medicare to pay for its own plan. So one wonders, what would replace “Medicare as we know it” under Romney-Ryan?

First of all, note that “Obamacare” was a partisan scheme that managed to gain only one Republican vote in the House of Representatives (and not a single vote from the Republicans in the Senate)! Paul Ryan's plan was a bipartisan plan, jointly designed with Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, thus taking into account ideas which Democrats should be willing to support. (Note that Mitt Romney, while Governor of Massachusetts, had to work with an overwhelmingly Democratic state legislature — so both Romney and Ryan have a record of being willing to work with the other party, unlike President Obama!) And if one looks at the Ryan-Wyden plan, which is described in great detail in a blog post by Yuval Levin, it is hardly the “kill-the-safety-net” proposal that Obama's people claim:

…every senior would be guaranteed to have at least one comprehensive coverage option that cost no more than the premium-support payment he received (and thus involved no more out-of-pocket costs than Medicare does today), and would also have other options that cost more (whether because the offering companies could not manage to be as efficient in working with their provider networks or because they offered more benefits than the required minimum and thus charged a higher premium).

I for one think such a system would be attractive to seniors. And in fact, for most seniors, there is even less worry:

The proposal would also have this reform begin only ten years from now, and affect only new entrants into Medicare, so that all current seniors and everyone now over 55 would be left entirely untouched for the rest of their lives, unless they chose to enter the new system. Thus, today’s seniors have no reason to complain about the proposal, since it would not affect them, and tomorrow’s seniors have essentially nothing to lose by it, since they would still be guaranteed a comprehensive benefit at only today’s out-of-pocket costs.

It is, of course, true that if Romney and Ryan are elected, the plan that would ultimately become passed by Congress and signed into law by President Romney would probably differ in detail from the Ryan-Wyden proposal as it is described in Levin's blog. But it would probably resemble Ryan-Wyden much more closely than Obama's mischaracterization of Paul Ryan's ideas does.

So stop running scared.

What the choice of Paul Ryan means

It is clear that Mitt Romney seriously intends to run on one issue — the economy. If this was not obvious before he chose Paul Ryan, this makes it clear — not only Romney, but also Ryan, has economic strength and is known for little else. While it might have been Romney's decision to pick someone who was strong in areas where he was weak, this was not what he decided.

On the plus side, it meant he did not kowtow to the “social conservative” wing of the GOP. Some people were trying to pull him this way. I'm very happy with that.

Where some will criticize Ryan is his suggestions to reform Medicare. He's made suggestions to turn all of Medicare into something like the way the drug part (Part D) works, where you get a subsidy but the right to choose a plan, and some people think this will ruin Medicare. But, as a retiree myself, I can say that I like the way Part D works. Some people might choose a cheaper-premium plan and pay more in co-payments, while I have chosen a plan which costs me more each month, but where I never have to pay copayments on the medicines I take. I prefer this choice. Giving people the right to choose the plan that is right for them is a good idea. So I — who am on Medicare now — have no fears about Paul Ryan's ideas.

Ryan was not my absolute first choice — but, the truth be told, neither was Romney — but the Romney-Ryan ticket is still so much better than what the other side has to offer that I am totally happy to endorse it.

A guest post by my wife

I am “Opinionator's” wife, Deb, and while I am far less conservative than he, in this election I may well vote for Mitt and company. Am I enthusiastic about this choice? No, I am a nominal Democrat but really an Independent. However, I have been looking for a permanent fulltime job in a field I have done well (retail) for over a year and have only found temp parttime work. Is this the “Change you can believe in” promised about 3½ years ago by Barack? Doesn't seem so to me, and at this point I don't think you can blame everything in this area that didn't work out on G.W. Bush!

When I heard about that speech that Obama gave saying that “You didn't build” your business, I carefully got ahold of — well, really “Opinionator” got ahold of :) — and read the complete speech. I still was left with the impression that Obama didn't seem to know much about business at all (I never ran one, but I worked for someone who did — you have to work very hard and be very smart in a stategic thinking way — and you still might not succeed). Despite my reservations about Mitt, I think that at this point he may be the best alternative available. I guess I'll be voting this time for the one who gives me less pause. Maybe we need, indeed, to give this guy a chance and see what he can do.

Paul Ryan

So Paul Ryan is the pick for Vice President. He's not the one I expected — Ann Romney's reference to “a woman” led me to expect Kelly Ayotte — but I can't say there's anything wrong with the pick.

The 2012 election will hinge on economics — and who knows more about Government economics than the chairman of the House Budget Committee? Paul Ryan has been a strong Romney supporter, and Obama will be using Ryan's budget ideas as ammunition against Romney anyway; who can better demonstrate why they are good ideas than Paul Ryan himself?

Now I know that my vote — though it will probably not count, since I'm in so blue a state — will be for the Romney-Ryan ticket. And I hope that others will do the same — especially in states where it will make a difference.

Obama's mischaracterization of Romney's tax plan

President Obama has criticized Mitt Romney's proposed tax plan's as “Robin Hood in reverse,” taking from those less well off to give breaks to the wealthy.:

Obama says Romney's tax plan would give tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans while forcing middle-class families to pay up to $2,000 a year in additional taxes.

The president cites a study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center that says millionaires would receive a tax cut of approximately $250,000 a year if the former Massachusetts governor gets his way.

“He'd ask the middle class to pay more in taxes so that he could give another $250,000 tax cut to people making more than three million dollars a year,” Mr. Obama said.

The only thing is, that's total nonsense. Romney's plan does not raise taxes on anyone: it lowers them on anyone that would see any change at all.

As I read in Diana Furchtgott-Roth's column in the Washington Examiner:

What's the best way of trashing Mitt Romney's tax plan? In these days of class warfare, it's to say his plan would result in tax cuts for high-income earners but tax increases for everyone else.

That's what the Tax Policy Center, a nongovernmental think tank under the auspices of the left-leaning Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, reported last week.

But here's the trick — the TPC did not analyze the Romney proposal. Instead, it analyzed tax proposals not found at the Romney website. It also imposed its own set of conditions on the tax changes, such as requiring that they be “revenue-neutral.”

As a result of this manipulation, the TPC claims Romney's proposal would lead to tax relief for high-income filers and tax increases for everyone else. In fact, Romney's proposal does not call for a single tax increase.

In most of America, such claims would be dismissed as second-rate political mischief. In Washington, the TPC's claims are cited by leading politicians.

President Obama cited the Center's document last week at Rollins College in Florida, a battleground state. He said, “He's asking you to pay more so that people like him can pay less. So that people like me pay less.”

Donald Marron, director of the Center, told me he assumed the proposal was revenue-neutral because of comments made by Romney in the past, even though he admitted that revenue neutrality is not part of the tax proposal.

However, when the Congressional Budget Office or the Joint Tax Committee analyzes the effects of budget and tax legislation, they use written proposals, not sponsors' comments, taken in or out of context.

Had the Tax Policy Center been more meticulous, it would have noticed the simple description of the Romney tax proposal on his website. After describing the damage that high top marginal rates do to small-business hiring, the site states that Romney's plan would:

• Make a permanent, across-the-board 20 percent cut in marginal rates
• Maintain current tax rates on interest, dividends and capital gains
• Eliminate taxes for taxpayers with adjusted gross income below $200,000 on interest, dividends and capital gains
• Eliminate the death tax
• Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax

Most fifth-graders could read this plan and see that it never once calls for raising taxes on anyone. Nor does the Romney tax plan call for giving tax cuts to high-income Americans before there are tax cuts for middle- and low-income Americans, as alleged by the TPC.

In fact, low-and middle-income earners would get tax cuts that upper-income Americans will not enjoy, such as a zero tax rate on income from dividends and long-term capital gains.

After falsely claiming the tax plan must be “revenue-neutral,” the TPC asserts that lower rates must be funded by getting rid of tax breaks such as “the mortgage interest deduction, the exclusion for employer-provided health insurance, the deduction for charitable contributions, and benefits for low- and middle-income families and children like the [earned income tax credit] and child tax credit.”

These draconian provisions are invented by the TPC to make Romney's tax plan look ridiculous. It is impossible to find them in the Romney plan.

Examiner readers can judge for themselves. Read the plan printed above. Does a 20 percent cut in your income taxes rate, and no taxes on dividends, interest, and capital gains for low- and middle-income earners, sound like a tax hike to you?

President Obama has no business attacking Mitt Romney for making tax proposals he never made. But he's never cared that much for the truth anyway.

For Harry Reid, is it 1974 all over again?

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is trying to shift the debate in this election from “who is more likely to improve this nation's economy” to Mitt Romney's keeping his tax returns private — a red herring if ever there was one. But apparently this is not the first time he's used tax return privacy as an excuse to make points in an election campaign. It's how Reid got into the Senate in 1974. A posting by Carl M. Cannon that I read yeasterday on the Real Clear Politics site states:

Reid first ran for the U.S. Senate 38 years ago against Paul Laxalt, a former Nevada governor. Laxalt was popular, but 1974 was a terrible year for Republican candidates. Tied in the polls, Reid concocted an October surprise: He handed out to the press a packet of financial statements and tax returns from him and his three brothers — and called on Laxalt, who owned an interest in a casino — and his family — to do likewise.

“Any man or woman who will not be completely candid about his or her finances does not deserve to be in public office," Reid said, according to a contemporaneous wire service account. And he foreshadowed his recent attack on Romney by asserting that Laxalt had paid no income taxes in some years.

This claim turned out to be true, but that was because Laxalt had suffered business losses the previous two years. But Laxalt took Reid up on his gambit, disclosing financial information that not only showed his net worth had decreased while in the governor’s office, but that his family was clean.

“I made a real stink about it, insisting that Laxalt’s whole family disclose their finances,” Reid recalled in his 2008 autobiography. “To my embarrassment, Laxalt complied. Why yes, he said, my sister the nun who had taken a vow of poverty would be more than happy to inventory her meager finances.”

Reid’s self-assessment about leading with your chin when it comes to an opponent’s taxes: “It made me look bad,” he said then.

Nevertheless, nearly four decades later he’s doing it again on behalf of the president of the United States.

Well, let's keep our mind on what is important — our nation's economy and who is best qualified to fix it — not how many tax returns Mitt Romney has made public.

The best summary of what this 2012 election about is what Mitt Romney said this past Sunday on CNN:

The great majority of small businesses pay taxes at the individual rate so as he raises these taxes “on the wealthy” he is raising taxes on small business. That kills jobs.

If your priority in this country is to punish success vote for President Obama; if you priority is to create more success and more jobs vote for me.

Nothing else is more important this year. Nobody cared how much John F. Kennedy or Franklin Delano Roosevelt paid in taxes. They also were rich — and, just as Mitt Romney, or any other rich man, did, I am sure they made use of every quirk in the tax laws that they could use to reduce their tax liability. Even Warren Buffett, whose comments President Obama has used to justify his tax hikes, was not forced to take all the deductions he did. Let's get back to what really matters.

Why this year we really need Mitt Romney

On Sunday, I was discussing the election and the relative merits of Pres. Obama and Mitt Romney. And it dawned on me that Mitt Romney's founding of Bain Capital — something Pres. Obama has tried to use against him — is the biggest reason we need him to be elected as President in 2012. What is our greatest need? Jobs. Where will jobs come? By having America's businesses grow. And who best knows how to make businesses grow than a man who founded a company whose primary mission was to take weak companies and make them profitable.

Barack Obama has never owned a business, or managed one. His first executive position was the Presidency of the United States — talk about “on-the-job training!” Mitt Romney has been executive in charge of a business (Bain Capital), a non-profit organization (the Salt Lake City Olympic committee), and a State government. His business was specifically involved in getting other businesses to be profitable — and he had an 80% success rate at that; pretty impressive.

I can't see why anyone could support Barack Obama, whose 3½ years in the Presidency have been pretty darn awful, against Mitt Romney, who has had such a clear record of accomplishment, and even in the area we need most now — getting the businesses of this country healthy again.

Many small businesses in this country file their taxes as individuals; these include a lot of those “rich” people that Barack Obama is so eager to raise taxes on that he has threatened to veto any bill that fails to raise their taxes. But no big surprise — Obama understands nothing of business and is a Marxist by political orientation, so he looks at them with hostility. Hardly a way to encourage job creation. And more reason to retire Barack Obama in November.

An official Government site?

The full text of President Obama's speech at Roanoke, Va. on July 13 is online at the White House site. That it is there makes me wonder. Isn't there supposed to be a separation between the President's official activities as President and his political activities as a candidate? The speech was certainly a political one, as demonstrated by his comparisons with Mitt Romney's positions. Yet it occurs on the official White House Website.

Seems to me there's something wrong there.

What will make someone choose a candidate?

Sometimes it puzzles me what will influence someone's thinking in deciding whom to vote for. A case in point: My wife is a nominal Democrat, but more correctly described as an independent, as she has voted for candidates of both parties for the Presidency.

Four years ago, my wife voted for John McCain, primarily on the basis of character; in particular, she recalled that in 1996 she had voted for Bill Clinton over Bob Dole because Dole seemed too conservative for her, but Clinton's behavior in the Presidency had convinced her that character was important. In retrospect, she was sorry for her 1996 vote, and might possibly have (if there had been such a thing as turning the clock back) changed that vote to Dole. The 2008 election seemed even more a case of character counting, since she considered McCain an honorable man (and cited his Vietnam War experience), while Barack Obama was anything but. (I think the Alice Palmer episode was the major factor in her evaluation of Obama's character.) When the economy tanked in 2008, she briefly considered voting for Obama, but in the end, her estimates of the character of the two major candidates won her vote for McCain. (Her mother accused her of being too influenced by me; but I really had no hand in determining her vote except to bring her attention to what Obama had done to Alice Palmer in 1996.)

This year, although Obama was the same Barack Obama as he had been four years ago, and if anything carried more baggage now (she could see the effects of his Presidency: she had a job in 2008, but except for some temporary positions, has been unemployed since Borders closed her store in April 2011.), it has been hard to convince her to vote for Mitt Romney. Romney's favorable comments on Ronald Reagan's downsizing of the Federal Government have scared her. When Reagan did that, she had to compete with many ex-Federal employees for jobs, and it was a hard time for her. She has been afraid Romney might do the same.

It took a Romney television ad featuring Obama's July 13 Roanoke speech to convince her. She never owned a business herself, but she worked in some places where she could see the hard work the business owner was putting in. And she felt that if Obama could not understand this, he was the wrong person to get our economy going again. And currently she is leaning toward Romney. She still hasn't committed. But this one remark by Obama — in a prepared speech, not an off-hand remark to a reporter — has done a lot to convince her.

Please don't blame the whole Republican Party!

As a result of this to-do over Chick-fil-A, some like Mike Huckabee and Rush Limbaugh have proclaimed a “liberal war on Christianity” and the other side has made statements that this is rather a Republican war on gay rights, and all others who do not share the Cathy family's fundamentalist Christian views. It is not the Republican Party that should be blamed. Mike Huckabee does not represent the views of all Republicans. He certainly does not represent my views; I've been boycotting Chick-fil-A for a long time, years before this latest spat over gay marriage came out. And let us face it, the Republican Party includes Huckabee, but it also includes Richard Tisei, an openly gay candidate for a Massachusetts Congressional seat this November. Just like the Democratic Party includes a large range of political opinions — look at former Congressman Bart Stupak, for example.

What really gets to me is the Religious Right's “war on Christianity” claim. The Christians in this country still have too much domination here. The only day I cannot go to the Smithsonian Institution's museums, for example, is December 25^th — not because it is Isaac Newton's birthday, but because it is the day Christians celebrate as the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, whom they call “Christ.” Banks are allowed to close on Sundays, and except for the Toronto Dominion Bank's U. S. branches, they do. They can't close on Saturday and stay open on Sunday, even if they have a Jewish CEO. There are still so many ways that Christians can impose their worldview on everyone else. I wish there were a war on Christianity's excesses, at least. I'd join it.