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.

Why can't Israel determine its own capital?

When Mitt Romney said in his visit to Israel that Jerusalem was its capital, he was really stating what should be the obvious. But (despite a Congressional declaration years ago) the United States has refused to recognize this fact, and has put its embassy in Tel Aviv as a sop to Arab sentiment. Still, it would seem to me that openly denying that Israel has a right to put its capital wherever it chooses — a right that every other nation in the world unquestionably has — goes way too far. Yet the Obama White House has done just that: denied that Israel has the right to locate its capital in the city of its choice:

In what marks a decisive difference in the presidential campaign, one day after Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called Jerusalem the capital of Israel, the White House asserted that Romney’s position was different from that of the Obama administration.

“Our view is that that is a different position than this administration holds. It’s the view of this administration that the capital should be determined in final status negotiations between parties,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Monday.

In other words, Israel's choice of a capital is hostage to “final status negotiations between parties” — it cannot designate its own capital until the Arabs have deemed that negotiations have gone far enough to go into their final phase — something that seems unlikely ever to happen. How would President Obama feel if some foreign country denied that Washington was our nation's capital? Oh yes, he's not all that proud of this country anyway, so he might welcome some foreign country telling us that our capital is where they tell us it is.

Is there any doubt that Pres. Obama needs to be retired this November?

And now, the First Amendment argument against Obamacare hits the courts

The individual mandate in “Obamacare” survived constitutional challenge by virtue of Chief Justice roberts' ruling that its “penalty” was a tax and thus permitted under the first clause of Article I Section 8: “To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” But further challenges are hitting the courts now. The Catholic Church has long believed that birth control was immoral, and the fact that Catholic institutions (except for those defined by such a narrow criterion as to exclude most of them) must, under Obamacare, provide free contraception, to them constites a violation of the freedom of religion clause of the First Amendment. And at least one judge agrees. According to the Daily Caller:

A coalition of civil rights groups has persuaded a Denver, Colo. judge that Obamacare’s preventive care coverage provides a “substantial burden” on a Colorado company’s free exercise of religion.

Judge John Kane, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter, granted a “preliminary injunction” barring enforcement of the law against the family-owned company, pending a full trial.

The judge said, among other things, that the Obamacare mandate “could easily be served by the government providing contraceptive themselves … if there was the political will.” And this is clearly correct. Making observant Catholics pay for something they find morally repugnant is so clearly a First Amendment violation that I cannot see how anyone could think otherwise.

Romney's trip to Israel

Some people seem to think that some things that Mitt Romney said in Israel were gaffes — he proclaimed that Israel's capital was in Jerusalem, which is what the Israelis have always said (and one would think Israel had the right to locate its capital wherever it wants!) and where the Congress of the United States has by a substantial majority said it was (even if it is contrary to Obama administration policy!); he never once mentioned the word “Palestinian” (and I think this is a good thing, as I have said before; there never has been in history any such thing as a “Palestinian people”), and as a result of the latter, the prime minister of the “Palestinian Authority” was offended. (Well, let the PA recognize that the Jewish people have a right to a homeland, and then they might have a case for more consideration!)

I think Mitt Romney is right on the truth there. It is the Obama administration that has been cozying up to the Arabs and needs to be set straight.

"Moderates," "centrists," and labels

Among the blogs I read frequently are some that use the terms “center” or “moderate.” For example, there is Solomon Kleinsmith's “Rise of the Center” and Rick Bayan's “The New Moderate.” And while I generally think of myself as a “moderate,” I certainly have my disagreements with these blogs. In fact, the comment pages of this blog have seen discussions with Kleinsmith highlighting strong disagreements. Presumably, if other “moderates” read this blog, they also disagree with me on some of the issues I discuss. Which is why I hate these one-word labels.

One thing that got me to thinking again about these labels, and why they are so problematic, is the recent spate of news articles about Jeff Bezos' support — backed up with two and a half million dollars! — for the pro-gay marriage side in the referendum to be held in Washington State. We will have a similar referendum in Maryland this same November. And I will be voting for gay marriage, of course, as anyone who has read this blog could figure out. But I will also be voting to scuttle another law that Governor Martin O'Malley has pushed through Maryland's legislature: the so-called “DREAM Act.” (Unlike the Federal version, Maryland's simply extends in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens resident in Maryland — although they are actually not properly termed “resident in Maryland” since they are not legally resident anywhere in the United States!) In a sense, this is a “moderate” position, as I'm supporting a “left” position on one issue and a “right” position on the other. But I would bet that more people are going to vote exactly the opposite way from me on both issues. And are they to be called “moderate” as well?

Kleinsmith, I know from his comments on this blog, has his own definition of “centrist.” And I don't think I would qualify, though I will not try to put words into his mouth, so I'll let him, if he is still reading this blog and decides to comment, say whether he would call me a centrist or not. But two years ago I supported a primary candidate for Senate, Dr. Neil Cohen, who frankly proclaimed we needed a “moderate” candidate. And I did this mainly because he and I were in agreement on a lot of issues. I certainly agreed with Cohen a lot more than I did with Eric Wargotz, the eventual nominee. And I agreed with him even more than I did with Barbara Mikulski, the actual winner of the Senate election that November. So in that sense I do qualify as a “moderate.”

And yet, I don't really know what that means. Two people might both call themselves “moderates” and yet differ on every important issue.That's what is so bad about one-word labels.

A follow-up to yesterday's post

In the Wikipedia article about Jeff Bezos, he is described as a libertarian. However, the term seems to have many meanings. I consider myself to have a high degree of libertarianism in my political philosophy, but neither Ron Paul, who ran as the Libertarian Party candidate for President in 1988, nor Gary Johnson, who is running this year on the same ticket, closely represents my views. I think that the aspect of my political philosophy that can be described as “libertarian” can be summed up by the sentence, “As long as it harms nobody else, anything should be permitted.” But then there are questions, which seriously divide self-proclaimed libertarians, as to what constitutes “harm,” and what constitutes “somebody else.”

For example, arguments come up on the abortion issue between those who argue that “human life begins at conception” and thus that a fetus is “another human being,” in the formulation of libertarian philosophy, and those like myself that it is not another person until it could be delivered and survive on its own without being in a mother's womb. (See my post dated June 6, 2006 for my own opinion.) Similarly, I differ strongly with other self-declared libertarians on the issue of gun control. (I also described my position on this issue in 2006; see that post.) So “libertarian” by itself cannot fully describe a political philosophy. But I think, based on what I read, and described in yesterday's post, about Jeff Bezos, it is clear that the term describes him well.

Of course, he's opposed Internet sales taxes in the past — but while this can be seen as a “libertarian” position in general, Bezos is hardly to be so characterized for this political stand; it's simply something that personally affects him as the head of Amazon and even a non-libertarian in his position would be expected to take that stand. Just as Barney Frank's support of gay marriage would not classify him as “libertarian,” Bezos' support of freedom of Internet purchases from sales tax does not mean Bezos deserves that label. His being willing to contribute two and a half million dollars to support gay marriage in the Washington state referendum — since he is undoubtedly not going to benefit by it, as he is married to a woman — does, however, point to an underlying “libertarian” philosophy.

And I applaud him for it.

Forget Chick-fil-A. Amazon (much bigger fish) takess a pro-gay-marriage stand

The state of Washington, like Maryland, is going to have a referendum on gay-marriage this year, as the bigoted religious Right tries to reverse a law passed by the State government. And Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, has just agreed to put in a contribution of $2,500,000 to help make the case that gay marriage should not be repealed in that State. He made this pledge in an e-mail to a former Amazon employee, Jennifer Cast, a lesbian mother of four children who is now a fundraising chairwoman of the pro-referendum effort.

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, of Microsoft fame, have also weighed in, but Bezos' contribution is a lot bigger. Certainly, for Amazon's founder to put his money where his mouth is to such an extent matters.

More on Obama's "You didn't build that" quote

It looks as though President Obama's quote is so powerful an indictment of himself that Mitt Romney's campaign is e-mailing links to a video of it to people! When you say something on the campaign trail, and the other side proudly invites people to listen, that is a pretty meaningful sign.

Look at this video.

I can't sympathize with Chick-fil-A

The Voice of Reason blog does not like Boston Mayor Thomas Menino's criticism of Chick-fil-A for its anti-gay-marriage stance. And, curiously, the blog owner calls Menino a bigot! I can't agree. The Cathy family (S. Truett Cathy, who founded the company, and Dan Cathy, his son and current president) has a record of intolerance and bigotry second to none. Well before this flap over gay marriage, I began boycotting Chick-fil-A because of its policy forbidding franchisees from opening on Sundays. I see no reason to relax my boycott, and probably never will, because the Cathy family seems unlikely to change its stance. I've never tasted their product, but I'm sure I can live without it.

Let me be clear: Certainly, in their capacity of private businessmen, the Cathys have the First Amendment right to express their religious beliefs. But those of us who feel differently have an equal right to withhold our custom. And given that gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, Mayor Menino has every right to do what he can to make it difficult for Chick-fil-A in Boston.

Another commendation, of course, goes to Jim Henson, whose company had been supplying toys to Chick-fil-A for kids' meals but has withdrawn from their partnership.

The Cathys, of course, can console themselves with the strong support that Mike Huckabee has given them. But to me that is simply one bigoted Religious Right person supporting another. I've never thought very highly of Huckabee to begin with, and this is just a sign of his consistently being on the wrong side.

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'work' is."!

Yesterday, the following news article was posted:

Discussing his economic policies at a fundraiser in Oakland, California, last night, President Obama, told supporters that “we tried our plan — and it worked.”

“We tried that and it didn’t work,” Obama said of Mitt Romney’s proposed tax cuts and spending cuts, which he dismissed as a Bush-style “top down” economic policy. “Just like we’ve tried their plan, we tried our plan — and it worked,” he added later in the speech. “That’s the difference. That’s the choice in this election. That’s why I’m running for a second term.”

Obama made these comments in Oakland, where the unemployment rate was 13.7 percent in May 2012. The national unemployment rate is 8.2 percent — up from 8.1 percent in May — for the second straight month.

I guess this is like Bill Clinton's comment, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” In this case, the word in question in “work.”

Sanctimoniousness in Europe

The shootings in Colorado perhaps ought to lead to more control on guns. And I would wish they would, but I don't expect it — the NRA is too powerful. But the Europeans are ill-advised to poke fun at us. A column in today's Washington Post by Charles Lane is very well taken. Lane begins:

Americans mourn the victims in Aurora, Colo. In Europe, too, there is grief — mingled with incomprehension. The media chorus: How many more massacres before the United States adopts European-style gun control?

Christoph Prantner of Austria’s Der Standard bemoans American insistence on Second Amendment rights, “even when this freedom occasionally has a very high price and, in a bloody perversion, fatally impairs the freedom of others.”

A point that might gain my approval. It certainly might gain Lane's, too, but, as Lane points out,

I can’t disagree. I just wish Prantner had pointed out that James Holmes was allegedly wielding Austrian weaponry when he barged into that darkened theater: specifically, a .40-caliber semiautomatic Glock pistol.

For all the tut-tutting across the pond, America’s gun culture exists in symbiosis with Europe’s own culture of precision manufacturing — of which the Glock is a notable expression.

Thirty years ago, Gaston Glock designed this lightweight, rapid-fire killing machine and sold 20,000 to Austria’s army.

Now his state-supported invention is one of Austria’s most successful exports. The tiny alpine nation exported 431,118 handguns to the United States in 2010, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Only giant Brazil sold more.

Charles Lane continues and points out that Germany and Italy also are large exporters of guns to the U. S. A. The Europeans may complain about our slavish adherence to the Second Amendment, but they certainly have found a way to profit by it. If we were able to ban guns successfully, European manufacturers might lose a lot of business (and consequently money). So it seems that European sanctimoniousness about this matter ill behooves them.

Some months ago, in a fit of pique over U. S. capital punishment laws, Europeans decided to take a stand, as Lane noted:

Last December, the European Union restricted sales to the United States of sodium thiopental, an occasionally life-saving anesthetic. The drug was also being used in death-penalty lethal injections — which Europe abhors.

I guess there was not enough money involved in exports of sodium thiopental so the EU could take a stand. Too much in export profits are at stake for them to do the same with guns.

Another political quiz site

There is a site called isidewith.com that enables you to take a quiz to see which candidate you most match. You can take their quiz at http://www.isidewith.com/presidential-election-quiz if you want. I took the quiz yesterday, and the results I got were partly expected and partly surprising.

As expected, I side with Mitt Romney on most issues in the 2012 Presidential Election. The match percentages with candidates were:

76% with Mitt Romney, on immigration, healthcare, foreign policy, and domestic policy issues.

72% with Barack Obama, on social, science, foreign policy, and healthcare issues.

61% with Jill Stein, on science, domestic policy, and economic issues.

55% with Ron Paul, on immigration and social issues.

51% with Jimmy McMillan, on immigration and social issues.

46% with Gary Johnson, on social issues.

33% with Virgil Goode, on immigration issues.

27% with Stewart Alexander, on social issues.

I must say, I had never heard of Stewart Alexander, though I found out in a search that he is the Socialist candidate; no great surprise that he had the lowest match percentage with me. But the biggest surprise was that I had a bigger match percentage with Barack Obama than with any of the third-party candidates!

There were also two other figures the site gave me: My match percentages were:

62% with Maryland Voters, on science, social, and immigration issues, and

66% with American Voters, on social, science, and immigration issues. The fact that my figures in the latter two were so high means that I think I can fairly characterize myself as a moderate, as I have in the past.

Obama can't run on his record, so he tries to demean Romney's

Today there appeared an article in the New York Daily News, entitled “President Obama distorts Mitt Romney’s record and ignores his own,” which points out that we have a President, Barack Obama, who, because he has a woeful record to show for the 3½ years he has been President, is forced to make false claims about his opponent, Governor Mitt Romney. There are so many points made in this article that it is better to reproduce the full article than to try to excerpt it, and so I do so:

Running far less on his own record than against that of his opponent, President Obama has latched on to Mitt Romney’s career in venture capitalism as a centerpiece of his reelection campaign.

These desperate times for Americans have called forth desperate measures from an incumbent weighed down by an 8.2% unemployment rate and the barest flicker of job growth. Say, why not suggest that Romney could even be a felon? Oh, right, an Obama aide did that.

Masterfully and disappointingly, the President’s campaign is branding Romney as a rich (repeat, filthy rich) corporate buccaneer who made a fortune sending jobs overseas and bankrupting companies.

In states where voters are in neither camp solidly — the crucial swing states — Obama is executing a distort-and-destroy media blitz. A primary goal in campaign-speak is to “define” Romney as not just out of touch, but as an agent of fat cats who want to take everything.

Secondarily — never mind the results of his almost four years in office — Obama is trying to frame the campaign as a referendum on a clash between a compassionate there-for-you Democrat and Republican forces that would strip government bare to get theirs.

The rhetoric distills to class warfare and is intended to deflect discussion of how exactly Obama would rev the economy any better in a second term. Follow his logic, and you arrive at the extreme Obama reached in a speech in Virginia, where he described how “wealthy, successful” Americans achieved their standing.

“I’m always struck by people who think, ‘Well, it must be because I was just so smart,’ ” he said. “There are a lot of smart people out there. ‘It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.’ Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

Regardless of whether Obama was talking about “roads and bridges” or about “a business” when he said, “you didn’t build that,” there is no question that as he extolled the virtues of government — the government he claims Romney would dismantle — the President demeaned the qualities of initiative, industriousness and ingenuity that drive America’s ladder-climbers.

Just as revealing have been Obama’s attacks on Romney’s tenure as head of Bain Capital, the firm he created in 1984 and built into a powerhouse with a strategy of buying underperforming companies and attempting to straighten them out and increase their value.

Romney’s record at Bain is more than fair game, not least because he has used economic savvy and jobs that Bain helped to create as key credentials for the White House. But the President’s swing-state advertising blitz on the topic was rife with cynical mischaracterizations.

The ads labeled Romney a “corporate raider” who had “shipped jobs to China and Mexico.” Really? The invaluable nonpartisan truth squad at FactCheck.org researched the Obama assertions and reported that “we found no evidence to support the claim that Romney — while he was still running Bain Capital — shipped American jobs overseas.”

The campaign similarly leaped on Bain paperwork that seemed to suggest Romney had stayed involved with Bain in years when the firm took actions that might be stretched to weakly support the outsourcing accusation. Out of this came the suggestion of a felony.

Actually, the evidence all but conclusively indicates that Romney had broken from decision-making at Bain in 1999 to devote his energies to rescuing the scandal-scarred Salt Lake City Olympics from collapse.

He made the games a hit, as well as a financial winner. Obama avoids that part of Romney’s record, just as he has shied from putting his own tenure front and center before voters.

This cannot be much of a surprise. President Obama has no record worth defending — and he is a Chicago machine politician who knows no shame regarding trying to drag down opponents, no matter how ridiculous the allegations. He is playing true to form — look at my posts from four years ago to see what kind of things he has been capable of in the past. On the other hand, Mitt Romney is ill-disposed to brag about the things he ought to, so it behooves the rest of us to call the people’s attention to the record that Mitt Romney has amassed — as Governor, as head of the committee saving the Salt Lake City Olympics, and yes, as founder of Bain Capital. If Obama had a fraction of Romney’s accomplishments, it might be worth dwelling on them. But, of course, he doesn’t.

A morsel of truth

Of course, when President Obama, in that now-famous campaign speech with the “you didn’t build that” line, said:

The point is, when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

there was a morsel of truth in what he said. There are some things we don’t do on our own. The point is, every dollar the Government takes from us to do these things is a dollar we can't control, and possibly use in a way that benefits us more. So it is important to look at what Government wants to spend our money on (and yes, it's our money, not the Government's) and decide whether we feel it's high enough in priority to justify Government's taking our money to use it on these things.

Here is where Pres. Obama gets it wrong. He decides what he thinks Government needs to spend, and then decides to raise taxes enough so that Government will have enough to spend on these programs. What ought to be the process is that a President decides what he would like Government to do, and then would weigh it against what the American people would be giving up if taxes were raised enough to enable these programs, and decide whether the American people would be better served by not having all these programs and instead using their money in ways that we all, individually, would view as more beneficial. And the people must all, individually, do a comparable weighing of alternatives. I might want Government to do something (like build a transit line) that benefits me and that I cannot, by myself, accomplish. Others do not see the benefits of the transit line. It is competition between these different assessments of benefits that leads to decisions as to what programs get to be initiated. But whatever they are, we must keep in sight the fact that other things — which might have been accomplished with the same money in private hands — will not get done if the money is taxed away.

And in this economy, one of those big “other things” that will not get done if Pres. Obama raises taxes on those he deems to be “too rich” is hiring of people by the businesses that many of these people own. And this means Pres. Obama's plans work against bringing our unemployment rates down.

And this is why Obama needs to be retired in November.

Perhaps he didn't mean it?

Some of President Barack Obama's supporters seem to be implying that when he said

If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

he didn't really mean what those words seem to imply. The “that” that Obama said “you didn’t build” means (they say) the roads and bridges that he had mentioned in an earlier sentence in that speech. Well, the Christian Science Monitor points out:

In fact, the most conservative attack on Mr. Obama’s clumsy phrasing leaves the words just as they are.

Here’s a fuller reading of Obama’s statement:

“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

“The point is, when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.”

As Representative Labrador pointed out on Thursday, taking the president at his word — that he meant not that government built American businesses but instead that government built and/or fostered the roads, Internet, and public safety necessary for business to flourish — is still ripe for conservative attack.

“It’s not the government’s money!” Labrador said. “It was business people who gave the government money so we could have roads and buildings and infrastructure. That is what is fundamentally deficient in this administration… He completely and fundamentally misunderstands what creates business, what creates a thriving economy.”

Referring to his colleague, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R) of South Carolina, who noted on the House floor that he drove some 60,000 miles building his business, Labrador noted that Representative Duncan “was paying for the roads that he was driving.”

“I want to know what government entity created a business that paid for those roads,” he said. “Not a single one!"

In other words, the money the government used to build the roads and develop the Internet came from somewhere. That somewhere was private enterprise — and some say that Obama’s inability to recognize that is his fatal flaw, economically speaking.

The socialist mindset of President Obama fails to see that the Government does not create wealth — it simply takes money from all of us and redistributes it to where it feels it can best be used.

And yet there is still another question. Suppose Pres. Obama didn't mean “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” to mean what those words manifestly mean. Isn't that a sign that Pres. Obama is not the great orator everyone says he is? He mangles his meaning so badly that you can't understand what he's trying to say. It is not the first time Obama has shown himself to have feet of clay. Earlier on, he said it would be “unprecedented” for the Supreme Court to rule that an act of Congress was unconstitutional — which it has been doing regularly since 1803. And way back in 2008, he said he had been to “fifty-seven states” — I wonder when all these new states joined the Union; I remember when Hawaii came in as the fiftieth, but I don't recall a single new state being admitted since then!

The President's knowledge of economics, of Constitutional law (a subject he [shudder!] taught), of United States geography, all have been shown to be flawed. And his conduct of the Presidency has brought the economy to a standstill. I just wonder why there are still people who support this manifestly unqualified man.

Let's hope that this is the case

Today I spotted a posting by James Pethokoukis on the American Enterprise Institute's blog, “AEIdeas.” It points out that there is a pretty good correlation between consumer confidence and whether a president gets reelected. And the consumer confidence index for President Barack Obama is down there in the range of where President George H. W. Bush was scoring back in 1992. (It is not as bad as Jimmy Carter's 1980 figure, but that's only a small comfort to Obama's people, I'm sure.)