The blame is shared

Most of the time, I have been siding with the Republicans in their opposition to President Barack Obama's ideas. And in fact I still think that the President must be faulted in these “fiscal cliff” negotiations for his absolute refusal to make the slightest move toward a compromise. But the Republicans are not doing so well in this exchange either. I don't see much willingness to compromise on their part, and I have to give credit to at least one Democrat, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, for actually putting forth an idea: Accept that some of the highest-income taxpayers will have to see a tax rate increase — that's what any compromise must be between Obama's “raise the rates on all over $250,000” plan and the GOP's “raise no rates on anybody” plan. But set the barrier higher. Sen. Schumer proposed $1,000,000, and perhaps a GOP counterproposal would move towards that point; but setting it still higher, say $2,500,000. But I don't see anyone on the GOP side making proposals like this.

If nobody on either side is willing to move toward the other, we will surely go over the cliff. And except for Sen. Schumer, I see nobody moving an inch.

Angus Jones, Gregory Kane, and "values"

Before getting into the main point of this post, let me say that, although I used to watch a good deal of television, and mostly situation comedies, I do not have time to devote to watching the “tube,” and have never seen a single episode of “Two and a Half Men,” so this is not a comment on whether that show is “filth” or not, as its teen-aged co-star, Angus Jones, recently claimed. This post is not about the show, but addresses both Jones' comments and the column, appearing in yesterday's Washington Examiner, in which columnist Gregory Kane strongly defended Jones.

First of all, I have no problem with either Jones or Kane's right to express their opinions. But in Jones' case, it seems to me that if he really thinks as he says he does, and feels that the show, which has been the cause of his earning millions of dollars, is such “filth,” he should take all that money and (assuming the producers are not going to accept its return) donate it to charity, so he can live the life of a typical boy of his age. But he seems happy to keep his money.

In Kane's case, my point is somewhat different. It seems that Kane thinks Jones was unfairly criticized because he stood up for his religious values. Well, just as Kane has the right of freedom of speech, under our First Amendment, so do the more secular, and even atheistic, people he denounces. Kane seems to feel that in this country, people who favor “Christian values” (or “religious values” in general, as he manages to include Muslim minister Louis Farrakhan among those he singles out for praise) are being silenced in this country, while those advocating their contrary are given open free rein. I just see that everyone is able to speak out on both sides. Kane asked why Jones had to apologize — I think Jones' apology, as hypocritical as it might be, was because he realized he might be out a lot of money, not because secular forces were exerting pressure on him! (Kane also takes the media to task for not proofreading their headlines. That's the sort of thing I admit I might do, as I am a compulsive corrector of spelling/grammatical errors. But I've seen errors in the Examiner, too, so that is not really fair of him.)

So to recapitulate, I condemn neither Jones nor Kane for expressing themselves. But I think they both need to acknowledge the opposite side's right to express itself as well, and Jones, in particular, is ill-poised to condemn the people who have given him an amount of money that most teenagers (or even adults) would find beyond their dreams.

And he still won't give an inch

It looks as though President Barack Obama is still unable to compromise on the issues involved in the “fiscal cliff” — he has just made a proposal to Congress that says, in effect, “Take it or leave it: my way or the highway.” Of course, the plan won't get out of committee in the House. But he'll try to blame the Republicans — and a lot of the American people will fall for his charges, I'm afraid.

If only John McCain were in the White House.

The post-mortems are simply wrong!

There are a number of people writing comments about the recently-concluded election. Some say Mitt Romney lost becuse he did not go conservative enough, or because he did not reach out to moderates. Some say Romney lost because he failed to get his message across, or because the economy had started to improve, or because of comments like “47%” (as though Obama didn't say “You didn't build that!”) None of these are correct. Mitt Romney lost (and anyone on the GOP ticket except Herman Cain would have, and even Cain might have because he might have been painted as an “Uncle Tom”) for one reason, and one reason only: He was a white man, running against an African-American. There was no way the GOP could counter this obstacle. And though another blogger with whom I generally agree says he cannot characterize this attitude of the African-American voters as “racist” (he is African-American, though well to the right of the typical member of his race) I have to say, as politically incorrect as it is, that I cannot characterize it in any other way.

Mitt Romney got almost 60% of the white vote — more than most recent GOP candidates. But the African-American population is 12.6% of the total. And it went 93% for Obama. John Kerry got 88 percent in 2004. Most Democrats get a lot less than 93%. If African-Americans go back to their normal split — and they will in 2016, since Obama cannot run again, unless the Democrats nominate someone like Cory Booker or Deval Patrick — the 2016 GOP nominee will easily win, as long as he does as well among white voters as Romney did in 2012. The GOP does not need to do anything to improve its chances in 2016. Romney did as well as any white American could have.

When will Barack Obama learn what "compromise" means?

For a brief moment, it looked as though President Barack Obama might have achieved a compromise with Speaker of the House John Boehner and the Republicans. He had hinted that he might approve a plan that would increase revenues from the well-to-do, without necessarily raising tax rates. But it is now clear that this will not be. He now says that he has a mandate from this election to raise those rates. And of course this means no compromise is in the works.

It looks as though the “fiscal cliff” is in the offing. Obama has no concept of what a compromise is. To him it means he calls the shots, and everyone else accepts his ideas, no matter how repugnant they may be.

It's going to be a long two years (or four, depending on the 2014 elections).

Comments on this election

Tom Bowler has a blog he calls “Libertarian Leanings,” with which I am often in agreement. And he wrote a post dated November 8, called “Four More Years,” which bears some repetition.

To say that I'm surprised by the outcome of the election is an understatement. I thought Romney would win, and win big, but look how wrong I was. We get another four of Barack Obama.

It's really quite disheartening. Call it a missed opportunity. For all of his faults Mitt Romney is a smart and talented executive. A Romney presidency would undoubtedly have meant explosive economic growth, and might also have gotten us long way toward putting our nation's finances on a sound footing. We have that debt crisis facing us. We need economic growth.

Obama doesn't. In his second term Barack Obama has once again inherited the mess left by George W. Bush. We'll be hearing about that mess for another four years. Obama's victory speech confirms it: The continuing economic stagnation is in no way connected to Barack Obama's policies. Just look at his prescription.

But that doesn't mean your work is done. The role of citizens in our democracy does not end with your vote. America's never been about what can be done for us; it's about what can be done by us together, through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. (Cheers, applause.) That's the principle we were founded on.

This country has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history, but that's not what makes us strong. Our university, our culture are all the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores. What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on Earth, the belief that our destiny is shared — (cheers, applause) — that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations, so that the freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights, and among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That's what makes America great. (Cheers, applause.)

I am hopeful tonight because I have seen this spirit at work in America. I've seen it in the family business whose owners would rather cut their own pay than lay off their neighbors and in the workers who would rather cut back their hours than see a friend lose a job.

In his only mention [of] liberty[,] Obama instructs us that our arguments are “a mark of our liberty.” We might have thought that liberty is what draws people to our shores. No. They are drawn by “the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth.” It is our strength, he tells us.

He says nothing about the freedom to strive for a better life for ourselves and our families. Instead, we must share. You business owners, sacrifice. You workers, expect less. Take that pay cut so that fellow part-timers can share in the ever shrinking wages. There's just not going to be enough to go around, and you'd better get used to it.

While a Romney presidency promised to unleash the entrepreneurial spirit, in Obama's world entrepreneur is just another job, a government job. The best and brightest will find their way to prosperity in striving to be middlemen, standing between citizens and their entitlements, doling them out according to prescribed formulas of fairness. That is the true strength of Obama's America.

While I might have disagreed with Bowler's expectation that “Romney would win, and win big,” (I figured it would be close, but I thought Romney could pull it out) I certainly agree with most of what he said in this post. But one thing I will not join in is a chorus of columns and blog posts saying what the writer thinks the GOP must do in subsequent elections to come up with a winning candidate. For example, Byron York's column in Friday's Washington Examiner is titled “In 2016, GOP needs a candidate voters believe in.” Frankly, I don't know what it takes to win an election in this country. I simply cannot imagine why anyone at all would vote for a Barack Obama against either a John McCain or a Mitt Romney — and yet, majorities of the people have done so. And because of that, I just give up on trying to figure out what it takes to win an election.

Of course, I can probably point to racism as the real reason that Obama could win both elections: not a racism of whites against African-Americans, as the absence of that was proved by the fact that Obama got millions of whites' votes, but a racism of African-Americans against whites, in that the African-American population refused to vote for a white candidate running against one of their own, no matter how unqualified he was or how terribly he has handled the Presidency. Obama got 95% of the African-American vote in 2008, and 93% this year. If Obama had simply gotten the normal proportion of the African-American vote that Democrats get — and that is still an overwhelming majority! — Mitt Romney would be getting ready to move into the White House.

And that is perhaps the best hope for 2016. Without an African-American at the top of the ticket, the African-American vote will break Democratic by more like its usual proportion, and a Republican can win then. The problem is that Barack Obama will have had his shot at ruining this country's economy already, and that may be irreversible.

2016 choice?

I just noticed a post by Sophie Quinton on the National Journal site. It was dated November 6, 2012 and entitled “Top 10 Republican Presidential Contenders for 2016.” and #1 on the list is New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

If he wants to run, I'm for him. No questions. I've already said a lot about why I like him.

The next two years (at least)

For the next two years, I see the most gridlocked government one could imagine in Washington. A Barack Obama just given four more years in the White House will submit bill after bill of legislation inspired by Karl Marx, and while Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will dutifully attempt to get the bills through the House of Representatives, she will not have the votes. In most cases, they will receive a total of zero votes from the GOP side, since Obama has no intention of compromising in a meaningful way. His idea of a compromise, as shown in the last four years, is "you adopt my program." Since the Republicans will still control the House, none of Obama's bills will pass, but the bills the House passes, if they get through the Senate at all, will be vetoed by President Obama. And since the Republicans do not have a 2/3 majority in the House, and do not even control the Senate, there will not be enough votes to override a veto. The only legislation that will go through will be relatively uncontroversial stuff like naming a post officde after a deceased congressman.

If any new developments occur at all, they will come out of the Supreme Court. It will rule on some gay rights cases, and very likely on other cases that nobody can foresee at present. It may even kill some parts of Obamacare, though the program itself has been ruled constitutional. But the future of the Court's decisions will also be affected by Court retirements. And President Obama may be able to put another Elena Kagan on the Court, since the Senate will be Democratic and the House has no role in ratifying appointments.

It is going to be two more years of skirmishing between a far-left President Obama and a Tea Party-influenced GOP controlled House of Representatives. And our system has survived (see the last two years of Harry Truman's first term). So it will survive again. But I can't expect anything great to come out of the next two years.

It's over -- and it doesn't look good

Last night, I went to bed when it became clear that we were going to have to wait a while before the results from Ohio came in. And it didn't look good: Barack Obama had already won Michigan and Pennsylvania, two states that had looked within reach for Mitt Romney. I woke this morning to see Obama with 303 votes, Romney 206, and Florida's 29 too close to call. Two states that Obama won in 2008, Indiana and North Carolina, went to Romney, but otherwise every state (except that we can't be sure about Florida) went the same way as four years ago. The result, of course, is four more years of one of the worst presidents ever. But the American people have spoken. I don't like what they said, but so be it.

The Senate will be Democratic — even more so than it is now; three seats appear to have been added to the Democrats' majority. The House will remain heavily Republican, so John Boehner will remain Speaker. Given that President Obama seems unable to forge consensus-building ideas for legislation, this sets the stage for renewed gridlock in the government. But “Obamacare” will take full effect, killing hope of an improvement of the employment picture, though the recession will gradually end (as it would no matter who was president).

Mitt Romney's name will be added to the list of people I wish had been elected President, along with Bob Dole and John McCain. I can only congratulate him for a good fight.

The only shining light in this election is that Maryland became the first state to put in same-sex marriage with voter approval — although not all the results are in. And even there, a question that was also on the ballot — in-state tuition for illegal aliens — did better. why people who have no legal right to be in the country should get such privileges is beyond me — but it is clear that the Hispanics got their vote out.

President Obama can do something right.

When Barack Obama was elected President, I promised that when he did something right, I would acknowledge it. And I have to admit that regarding Hurricane Sandy, if even Governor Chris Christie says Obama is doing something right, he must be. We know that Gov. Christie is a strong supporter of Mitt Romney's election, and this is, therefore, not a political thing.

Of course, if the President does one or two things right (I'll grant that getting rid of Osama Bin Laden was another) and dozens of things wrong (from Solyndra to the stimulus that didn't stimulate) this doesn't mean he deserves re-election. But at least the people of the stricken area can take comfort that in this case, the President is doing his job the way it is supposed to be done.

The left still doesn't get it!

Michael Tomasky writes for The Daily Beast, and his egregiously pro-Obama point of view is about as extreme as they come. And a column he wrote dated Monday entitled “Get It Done, Mr. President!” (also appearing in Newsweek really shows how deceived the pro-Obama left really is. They formed an image of Mitt Romney that they just can't shake, despite the fact that the American people have seen that the image they have been trying to put over on us is simply wrong. For example, in speaking of the Denver debate that Obama blew so gloriously, Tomasky refers to Romney as “reversing many key positions without Obama ever calling him on it.” But in fact, Romney was not reversing his key positions — what was the case is that Obama had tried to make us believe Romney had taken certain positions, against the truth. This business of the “$5 trillion tax cut,” for example, just was never a Romney proposal, but in fact a Democratic think tank's take on Romney's proposed tax policy, assuming a part of it went through but not the whole. So when Obama tried to make the claim that Romney had proposed such a plan, Romney truly and accurately said he never had done so, yet Obama repeated this claim three more times after Romney corrected him the first time — and Romney had to correct him again and again! So the one time that Obama tried to “call him on” a supposed “reversal,” he failed because it was not really a reversal at all! So much for “reversing many key positions without Obama ever calling him on it.”

The thing that amazes me is that these people actually believe that Romney has called for the things they accuse him of calling for. If they ever read what Romney has said, rather than their own interpretations of what he said, perhaps they might figure out the truth.

But then, I want them to fall for their own self-deceptions. That way, they will not be able to make a believable case to the American people, who ever since that Denver debate have come to see Romney as what he is: an honest and honorable man, far more of both than the President is, and more worthy of the Presidency than the man who has that position now. And when Barack Obama skulks back home to Chicago on January 20th, the country will be in the hands, for the first time in years, of a capable man in the White House.

Probably the best reason to support Romney

Much of the reason I've been supporting Mitt Romney for the Presidency is a negative one — that the alternative is Barack Obama, who is one of the worst presidents this country has seen. Only Jimmy Carter, of those presidents whose terms of office have been within my lifetime, has been worse, I believe. But the best reason to support Romney is a positive one. He can unite people of both parties to forge a consensus.

George W. Bush said he was “a uniter, not a divider,” but as Governor of Texas, the Democrats he had worked with were conservative enough that he was unprepared to find, when he came to Washington, that the Democrats there were of such a different stripe that he was not able to find common ground with them. President Obama used different words, but in his 2004 keynote at the Democratic convention, when he said “I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America,” he seemed to offer to many the promise of uniting us. However, as President he has not governed in a way consistent with this rhetoric. He has pushed through a healthcare bill with no support from a single Republican Senator, and only one Republican vote in the House of Representatives. He has made “recess appointments” when the Senate has just broken for a weekend, so he would not get them rejected in the Senate. He has done exactly the opposite of what a unifying, consensus-building President would be expected to do.

By contrast, we have the record of Mitt Romney as Governor of Massachusetts — a state which, unlike George W. Bush's Texas, has Democrats who are as liberal as any in the country, and yet where, facing an 87% Democratic legislature, he managed to get substantial parts of his program enacted. The Des Moines Register, which has endorsed Democrats in most recent elections (in fact, has endorsed only one Republican from 1964 to 2008) and endorsed Obama in 2008, endorsed Mitt Romney, saying: “Romney succeeded as governor in Massachusetts where he faced Democratic majorities in the legislature. If elected, he would have an opportunity to renew the effort.” As Emily Miller of The Washington Times points out,

President Obama has burned bridges by ramming through legislation like the stimulus and Obamacare without bothering to consult Republicans. That’s not how Mr. Romney would operate. “I know there are good Democrats who love America just like we do,” he told supporters in Celina, Ohio, Sunday. “I want to reach across the aisle to them, work together, put the interests of the people ahead of the politicians.”

He noted that as a GOP governor of a deep blue state, he worked with a legislature that was 87 percent Democrat. He still managed to decrease spending and cut taxes 19 times. “We were able to balance our budget. The $3 billion budget gap in our first year became a $2 billion rainy day fund,” Mr. Romney explained to cheering crowds. “We did that together, Republicans and Democrats. And we’ve got to do that in Washington.”

The Obama campaign is trying its best to deny this bipartisan record. “The American people can’t trust a word Mitt Romney says, especially when he claims he’d work across the aisle as president,” said campaign spokesman Danny Kanner. “As governor, he refused to work with Democrats in the legislature.”

Not so, according to the Bay State’s former Democratic House majority leader. “The governor did work with the legislature,” James Vallee told The Washington Times in an interview Monday. “There were issues of difference, but I had a very productive relationship with the Romney administration. They reached out to legislatures and did an effective job working with us.”

Mr. Vallee, who left the legislature in June and is now a lawyer at Nixon, Peabody, believes Mr. Romney would be most effective with a bipartisan cabinet and team. “If he says he’s going to reach across the aisle, I think he will,” he said.

That's the best reason to support Mitt Romney for the Presidency this year.

"You can't have your own facts"

In the first of the three debates between Governor Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama, Romney said at one point, “Mr. President, you're entitled as the president to your own airplane and to your own house, but not to your own facts.” A good riposte to some of Obama's fabrications, yet there were, as I mentioned in a posting dated October 7, other blogs and comments that seemed to characterize Romney as creating his own facts! It really perplexes me, because to me the facts are clear, Mitt Romney is only telling the unvarnished truth, and whenever Barack Obama and he differ, Obama is clearly at variance with the facts. For example, there is that business about the “$5 trillion tax cut.” It was never what Romney proposed, yet Obama repeats it incessantly. And there is that “47%” quote. Somehow, a statement that Gov. Romney made to say that he cannot expect to get the votes of people who have a stake in the present policies is turned into a lack of compassion — in a man whose charitable giving is one of the greatest in this country!

And the left-leaning bloggers and columnists still accuse Romney of being the one who is lying, and support Obama's claims! Somehow, they “have their own facts.” And they can't, as Romney said. It's gotten to be that anything the Obama campaign team says has to be considered about as reliable as a story in the National Enquirer, and read with the same number of grains of salt!

What happened to President Obama once he had to debate Mitt Romney?

Yesterday, I saw a column by Peggy Noonan, on the Wall Street Journal's site, entitled: “When Americans Saw the Real Obama.” It's a really interesting column, and while I had a lot of suspicions that some of what it said were true, I was interested to see those suspicions confirmed. Dropping a few paragraphs at the beginning, it first got to the meat with the following:

Why was the first debate so toxic for the president? Because the one thing he couldn't do if he was going to win the election is let all the pent-up resentment toward him erupt. Americans had gotten used to him as The President. Whatever his policy choices, whatever general direction he seemed to put in place he was The President, a man who had gotten there through natural gifts and what all politicians need, good fortune.

What he couldn't do was present himself, when everyone was looking, as smaller than you thought. Petulant, put upon, above it all, full of himself. He couldn't afford to make himself look less impressive than the challenger in terms of command, grasp of facts, size.

But that's what he did.

And in some utterly new way the president was revealed, exposed. All the people whose job it is to surround and explain him, to act as his buffers and protectors — they weren't there. It was him on the stage, alone with a competitor. He didn't have a teleprompter, and so his failure seemed to underscore the cliché that the prompter is a kind of umbilical cord for him, something that provides nourishment, the thing he needs to sound good. He is not by any means a stupid man but he has become a boring one; he drones, he is predictable, it's never new. The teleprompter adds substance, or at least safety.

One might wonder why President Obama let himself in for such a fall, given his past success as a campaigner. And Noonan wonders too:

A great and assumed question, the one that's still floating out there, is what exactly happened when Mr. Obama did himself in? What led to it?

Was it the catastrophic execution of an arguably sound strategy? Perhaps the idea was to show the president was so unimpressed by his challenger that he could coolly keep him at bay by not engaging. Maybe Mr. Obama's handlers advised: "The American people aren't impressed by this flip-flopping, outsourcing plutocrat, and you will deepen your bond with the American people, Mr. President, by expressing in your bearing, through your manner and language, how unimpressed you are, too." So he sat back and let Mr. Romney come forward. Mr. But Romney was poised, knowledgable, presidential. It was a mistake to let that come forward!

Was it the catastrophic execution of a truly bad strategy? Maybe they assumed the election was already pretty much in the bag, don't sweat it, just be your glitteringly brilliant self and let Duncan the Wonder Horse go out there and turn people off. But nothing was in the bag. The sheer number of people who watched—a historic 70 million—suggests a lot of voters were still making up their minds.

Maybe the president himself didn't think he could possibly be beaten because he's so beloved. Presidents are always given good news, to keep their spirits up. The poll numbers he'd been seeing, the get-out-the-vote reports, the extraordinary Internet effort to connect with every lonely person in America, which is a lot of persons—maybe everything he was hearing left him thinking his position was impregnable.

After throwing out those questions, however, Noonan changes her tune, and here is where the picture of Obama resembles my suspicions — especially after I read excerpts of Bob Woodward's recent book, “The Price of Politics,” to which Noonan refers:

But maybe these questions are all off. Maybe what happened isn't a mystery at all.

That, anyway, is the view expressed this week by a member of the U.S. Senate who served there with Mr. Obama and has met with him in the White House. People back home, he said, sometimes wonder what happened with the president in the debate. The senator said, I paraphrase: I sort of have to tell them that it wasn't a miscalculation or a weird moment. I tell them: I know him, and that was him. That guy on the stage, that's the real Obama.

Which gets us to Bob Woodward's “The Price of Politics,” published last month. The portrait it contains of Mr. Obama — of a president who is at once over his head, out of his depth and wholly unaware of the fact — hasn't received the attention it deserves. Throughout the book, which is a journalistic history of the president's key economic negotiations with Capitol Hill, Mr. Obama is portrayed as having the appearance and presentation of an academic or intellectual while being strangely clueless in his reading of political situations and dynamics. He is bad at negotiating — in fact doesn't know how. His confidence is consistently greater than his acumen, his arrogance greater than his grasp.

He misread his Republican opponents from day one. If he had been large-spirited and conciliatory he would have effectively undercut them, and kept them from uniting. (If he'd been large-spirited with Mr. Romney, he would have undercut him, too.) Instead he was toughly partisan, he shut them out, and positions hardened. In time Republicans came to think he doesn't really listen, doesn't really hear. So did some Democrats. Business leaders and mighty CEOs felt patronized: After inviting them to meet with him, the president read from a teleprompter and included the press. They felt like “window dressing.” One spoke of Obama's surface polish and essential remoteness. In negotiation he did not cajole, seduce, muscle or win sympathy. He instructed. He claimed deep understanding of his adversaries and their motives but was often incorrect. He told staffers that John Boehner, one of 11 children of a small-town bar owner, was a “country club Republican.” He was often patronizing, which in the old and accomplished is irritating but in the young and inexperienced is infuriating. “Boehner said he hated going down to the White House to listen to what amounted to presidential lectures,” Mr. Woodward writes.

Mr. Obama's was a White House that had — and showed — no respect for Republicans trying to negotiate with Republicans. Through it all he was confident — “Eric, don't call my bluff” — because he believed, as did his staff, that his talents would save the day.

They saved nothing. Washington became immobilized.

And Woodward is, apparently not the first to call attention to Obama's weaknesses:

Mr. Woodward's portrait of the president is not precisely new — it has been drawn in other ways in other accounts, and has been a staple of D.C. gossip for three years now — but it is vivid and believable. And there's probably a direct line between that portrait and the Obama seen in the first debate. Maybe that's what made it so indelible, and such an arc-changer.

People saw for the first time an Obama they may have heard about on radio or in a newspaper but had never seen.

They didn't see some odd version of the president. They saw the president.

And they didn't like what they saw, and that would linger.

I liked this column. And that is why I repeat it here.

Jay Leno on Obama's economy

Most of the media is firmly in Barack Obama's corner. I was not aware that Jay Leno was of a different stripe. But here is a quote that deserves spreading about.

One of President Obama's winning points last night was about how sanctions against Iran are crippling their economy. And believe me, if anyone knows how to cripple an economy it's President Obama.

Unintended consequences?

There is an old saying, “Be careful what you wish for; you might get it.” The point of this saying is that there are often unintended consequences, which nullify the desirability of something. And perhaps this is the best characterization of “Obamacare.” The goal was to get everyone to have health insurance. (At least, that was the goal of those who enacted it; I think a better goal would have been to get everyone who wanted it to have health insurance.) And, I assume to be certain that the insurance people got was real, it provided for the setting of minimum standards. This seemed reasonable, as you don't want people to be tricked into buying insurance that didn't meet their needs.

The problem is: These minimum standards were not set by determining what would meet the minimum needs of people; they were set up by bureaucrats who simply decided what they would consider adequate. This has had a number of results.

For one, it has led to the contraception impasse. Between people who feel that contraception is so important that it must be available to all and Catholics (and perhaps some others) who consider it immoral, there is no middle ground. Pres. Obama has put through a “compromise” that is no compromise in fact. In theory, insurance companies will provide the contraception coverage free, separately from what employers are paying for. In fact, the insurance companies are not charities; they are profit-making businesses, so the premiums will be adjusted to account for the added costs, so those employers will in fact be paying for it, if one compares the premium with what it would have been without the contraception mandate.

But “Obamacare” has other unintended consequences, too. For example, the mandated coverage is such that many present policies would not qualify. Pres. Obama's promise prior to his election that “if you like your present coverage, you can keep it” is simply not true; people will not be able to keep their present coverage because insurance companies will not be able to offer those plans that fall short of what the bureaucrats have decided to consider minimal. And the costs of insurance will go up because more has to be covered.

The third consequence I want to mention is that the mandate that all full-time workers be covered means that employers are encouraged not to hire full-time workers. If they can hire a lot of part-timers, the cost of training more people will be balanced by the savings in insurance they do not have to provide. And if they can get away with fewer employees in total (not even hiring part-timers) it may be a better deal. This is being anticipated by prospective employers. While the mandate has not yet affected them, they see it in the future, and this is why unemployment, and underemployment, are so high.

These are among the reasons “Obamacare” needs to be replaced by a better plan, and why Mitt Romney needs to be elected Present.

Two more egregious lies out of Barack Obama's mouth

President Barack Obama knows he cannot make a case for re-election on his record — which marks him as the worst President, except for Jimmy Carter, since the early part of the Twentieth Century. He is forced to do two things: engage in mudslinging and lie.

In the debate Monday night, he said:

First of all, the sequester is not something that I proposed. It’s something that Congress has proposed. It will not happen. The budget that we’re talking about is not reducing our military spending. It’s maintaining it.

Well, this is directly contradicted by Bob Woodward, in his recent book “The Price of Politics,” which says:

At 2:30 p.m. [White House Office of Management Director Jack] Lew and [White House Director of legislative affairs Rob] Nabors went to the Senate to meet with [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid and his chief of staff, David Krone.

“We have an idea for the trigger,” Lew said.

“What’s the idea?” Reid asked skeptically.

“Sequestration.”

Reid bent down and put his head between his knees, almost as if he were going to throw up or was having a heart attack. he sat back up and looked at the ceiling. “A couple of weeks ago,” he said, “my staff said to me that there is one more possible” enforcement mechanism: sequestration. He said he told them, “get the hell out of here. That’s insane. The White House surely will come up with a plan that will save the day. And you come to me with sequestration?”

Well it could work, Lew and Nabors explained.

What would the impact be?

They would design it so that half the threatened cuts would be from the Defense Department.…

Lew, Nabors, [White House National Economic Council Director Gene] Sperling, and Bruce Reed, Biden’s chief of staff, had finally decided to propose using language from the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit reduction law as the model for the trigger. It seemed tough enough to apply to the current situation. It would require a sequester with half the cuts from Defense, and the other half from domestic programs. There would be no chance the Republicans would want to pull the trigger and allow the sequester to force massive cuts to Defense.

This is clearly in contradiction to Obama's “the sequester is not something that I proposed. It’s something that Congress has proposed.” So we have him in lie #1. Another lie from the debate came in the very next paragraph, from Obama's cutesy attempt to paint Romney as ignorant about military matters, or perhaps about modern technology:

But I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You — you mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets — (laughter) — because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.

But of course, while “horses” may be obsolete, “bayonets” are still quite useful to the modern military, so perhaps it is President Obama who “maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works.” To quote A. W. R. Hawkins on Breitbart.com:

While the Army discontinued traditional bayonet training in 2010, the USMC still trains Marines with bayonets and issues them as standard equipment. The Army has also begun training soldiers in a different style of bayonet use — not affixed to the end of a rifle but as a secondary melee weapon.

To make bayonet training relevant again, the Army got rid of the bayonet assault course, in which soldiers fixed a bayonet to the end of a rifle, ran towards a target while yelling and then rammed the bayonet into the target center. Instead, soldiers learn in combatives training how to use a knife or bayonet if someone grabs their primary weapon.

Some users on Twitter have claimed that, by virtue of the USMC still using bayonets, there actually are more bayonets in use than 1916, when the army had between 100,000 and 140,000 enlisted members. As of 2010, the Corps boasted 203,000 active duty members and 40,000 reserve marines.

That's two lies in two paragraphs — even more than Obama's usual!

Last night's debate

Last night, in Boca Raton, Florida, President Obama and Governor Romney had the last of the series of three debates. And while a CNN poll seems to have given the edge to the President in the debate, it was close, 48-40 (and in fact, on the question “Who did the debate make you more likely to vote for?” it favored Romney, 25-24, with half the people saying “neither”), and looking at such commentators as Charles Krauthammer and Erick Erickson, it would seem that who won depends on who you support; most people seem to have given the edge to whoever they wanted to win in the first place. There were also commentators like Toby Harnden of the British newspaper, The Daily Mail, who said that “Obama may have won the Boca debate battle but he knows he is losing the election war to Romney.”

Indeed, all of the pro-Romney commentators remarked that Romney looked more like a president and Obama like a challenger. Erickson wrote:

The whole time during the last Presidential debate, Mitt Romney looked like the incumbent and Barack Obama looked like a challenger trying to keep it together. More specifically, Barack Obama, when he made eye contact, looked like he was seeing and invisible hand writing “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin” on the wall behind Bob Schieffer. This was a man who knows the gig is almost up.

Throughout the debate, Mitt Romney smiled, agreed, and avoided fights. Barack Obama did everything he could to get into fights. That’s not what incumbents in a comfortable lead do.

And Harnden wrote:

If you had been on an extended vacation for the past four years, you would have been forgiven for watching this debate and thinking you were viewing a President Mitt Romney being challenged by a pretender called Barack Obama.

I looked at the transcript, and sometimes President Obama looked absolutely silly. He said things like:

You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.

Gee. As if Governor Romney never heard of aircraft carriers and nuclear subs. But he said this in response to a statement by Romney:

[O]ur Navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917. The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission. We’re now at under 285. We’re headed down to the low 200s if we go through a sequestration. That’s unacceptable to me.

I'm sure that the admirals who “said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission” allowed for the existence of aircraft carriers and nuclear subs — and so President Obama's comments are pretty laughable.

When Bob Schieffer asked about Iran, President Obama responded:

[A]s long as I’m president of the United States Iran will not get a nuclear weapon. I made that clear when I came into office.…[A] nuclear Iran is a threat to our national security, and it is a threat to Israel’s national security. We cannot afford to have a nuclear arms race in the most volatile region of the world.

Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. And for them to be able to provide nuclear technology to non-state actors, that’s unacceptable. And they have said that they want to see Israel wiped off the map.

Brave words, for someone who has done so little to deter Iran. It has gotten so bad that Prime Minister Netanyahu had pleaded at the UN for help in dealing with the Iranian threat to his country's existence, and yet the President refused even to meet with him when the two were both in New York. Obama says what we want to hear, but his actions show he is unwilling to take any steps to defuse the Iranian threat.

And Romney's point was well taken when he said:

You look at the record of the last four years and say is Iran closer to a bomb? Yes. Is the Middle East in tumult? Yes. Is — is Al Qaeda on the run, on its heels? No. Is — are Israel and the Palestinians closer to reaching a peace agreement?

No, they haven’t had talks in two years. We have not seen the progress we need to have, and I’m convinced that with strong leadership and an effort to build a strategy based upon helping these nations reject extremism, we can see the kind of peace and prosperity the world demands.

Because the record of the past nearly 4 years is the real issue in this election. As I said, it looks to me that who won depends on who you were supporting in the first place. To me, Romney had the stronger case. But all along, to me, Romney seems to be making sense, and Obama nonsense. So I admit I'm very far from being impartial in judging this debate.

More on "Likable" President Obama

I have long wondered why people considered Barack Obama as “more likable” than Mitt Romney. Obama's past includes the nasty business with Alice Palmer, as well as about every sort of nastiness one can imagine a Chicago machine politician to be capable of. Romney, by contrast, is a generous man who would close down his business to help an employee search for his daughter. So why anyone would consider Obama as the more likable of the two puzzled me. But this likability differential seems to be going away. Earlier today I read a post, dated Friday, by Matthew Continetti on a site called The Washington Free Beacon, entitled “The Jerk Store Called — Column: They’re running out of Obama-Biden.” It begins:

Remember when President Barack Obama was likable? Once upon a time the public viewed the incumbent more favorably than his challenger by large margins. These days Obama’s favorable and unfavorable ratings are similar to Mitt Romney’s. The televised debates have unveiled the current administration as alternately listless, manic, angry, soporific, rude, bullying, aloof, and thin-skinned. Americans who have just begun to tune into the election are seeing the president unmediated. They no longer are looking at him through the scrim of fawning press, majestic settings, and roaring crowds. And they are discovering that Obama is not so likable at all. He is actually something of a jerk.

Those who read coverage of the Obama administration closely will have known this for a long time: The president is cold, abstract, prickly, and insular. His brand of cerebral partisanship is better suited for liberal blogging than for leading the free world. He doesn’t enjoy interacting with strangers or even with associates outside his immediate clique. He has few close friends. He relies on about half a dozen senior advisers. His impromptu speech is given to cutting, sarcastic remarks.

Put him in front of an adoring and obsequious audience and he will be charming and suave. But the real Obama is revealed the second you remove the klieg lights. This isn’t a guy who will spend his post-presidency more or less running the Democratic Party, a la President Bill Clinton. Obama will spend his retirement as a solitary member of the irritable left, receiving honorary degrees, appearing on MSNBC, and scribbling for Salon.

After this overview, Continetti gets down to some specifics, writing:

The president’s unsociability is one of those obvious facts that are conveniently overlooked. Earlier this week Neera Tanden, the president of the liberal Center for American Progress, caused a mini-controversy when New York magazine quoted her saying, “Obama doesn’t call anyone, and he’s not close to almost anyone. It’s stunning that he’s in politics, because he really doesn’t like people.” Tanden, who has worked for Obama, later “clarified” her remarks. What she meant to say, she tweeted, was that Obama “is a private person.” Note, however, that one can be a private person and still not “like people.” Tanden did not really take back her words. Nor should she. Her initial comments were factual and honest.

In some of his quotes, the source is only described, not named:

A “Democrat deeply familiar” with the Clinton-Obama relationship said pretty much the same thing to Ryan Lizza a few months ago: “Obama doesn’t really like very many people.” A Chicago Democratic donor told Jane Mayer this summer, “He’s not the kind of guy I would go out and have a beer with.” “One United States diplomat” told Helene Cooper of the New York Times in September that Obama is “not good with personal relationships; that’s not what interests him.”

And speaking of the New York Times,

That paper’s story on Valerie Jarrett, the president’s closest aide, describes Obama as “introverted” and his social circle as “small.” Michael Lewis’s profile of Obama shows a loner who broods over his decisions, spends time reading and writing and playing basketball with a tightly knit group, and says his biggest difficulty as president is “faking emotion.” His media puppets admit that the president is an emotionless “Spock.”

As a result, Continetti continues:

This combination of arrogance and detachment has been a political problem. Obama has paid a price whenever his unlikable personality has emerged in unscripted moments. There was his promise to meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea in the first year of his presidency. There was the time when he told Hillary Clinton that she was “likable enough.” There was his stubborn insistence to raise taxes on capital gains and dividends even though it would raise less revenue. There was his explanation that the white working class didn’t like him because “they cling to their guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”

There was his remark that the Cambridge police acted “stupidly” when they arrested a Harvard professor. There was his attack on Scott Brown for driving a pickup truck; his snide retort to John McCain that “the election’s over”; and his jibe that “shovel ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected” (which provoked laughter from his “jobs council”). This year we’ve heard Obama say “the private sector is doing fine,” that he’s “always struck by people who think, it must be because I was just so smart” that they’ve been successful, and that the attacks on our embassies across the Great Middle East were “bumps in the road” to Arab democracy. When Obama says what’s on his mind, his political team runs for the hills.

But it's only recently that Obama and Romney have had to get on a stage together in debate. And these debates seem to have finally called the people's attention to Obama's nasty streak, and even turned over some of his supporters:

The debates have made the president’s dilemma worse. Obama has not masked his prideful contempt for Romney. He “told friends that he respected Mr. Romney’s intellect,” the Times reported, “but had come to view his rival as a less formidable adversary as he learned more about him from reading research books and watching his campaign.” He went into the first debate in Denver thinking he would end the race on October 3.

But a huge audience watched as Romney dissected the last four years and Obama responded with a mix of condescension and apathy. The president seemed always to be smirking and looking down at his notes. He barely could mount a defense of his record. He returned again and again to his vision of a fair America. But this was not enough even for his most slavish supporters. Andrew Sullivan called him “effete.” Michael Tomasky asked, “Does Obama even want to win the election?”

Continetti continues, noting that not only Obama but Vice-President Biden is displaying that nasty streak:

The first debate inaugurated a shift in the race toward Romney that hasn’t abated. And the left drew exactly the wrong lesson from it. The left believed Obama had failed because he was insufficiently rude, and the Obama campaign seems to have agreed with them. But that meant Obama was trapped. He had to be more combative, but he also had to retain his likability. Doing both was not an option. Obama chose combat, in keeping with his long-run campaign strategy of maximizing turnout among Democratic Party client groups.

So we got a Joe Biden who spoke under his breath, interrupted Paul Ryan at every turn, raised his voice, gesticulated grandly, cackled during discussions of the Iranian nuclear program, and grinned so wildly that he looked like he was channeling Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of the Joker. We got an Obama who was more engaged but also came across as angry and heated and ready to challenge Romney to a duel. We got a Democratic ticket that, per Chris Matthews’s suggestion, looks like it is auditioning to replace the Cycle on MSNBC.

And Continetti concludes, as a result the election will turn on this loss of likability by the President:

Obama’s anti-Romney spirit may make for a more disagreeable and somewhat more interesting debate. Television ratings benefit. But how does it solve the weak economic recovery? How does it reassure voters looking for solutions on jobs, health care, the deficit, and energy? How does it improve the president’s image, or restore his poll numbers?

The cliché is that the more likable candidate usually wins the election. Morris Fiorina, one of my favorite political scientists, says that isn’t actually the case. Maybe. What we know for sure is what Washington has known all along: Obama doesn’t like people.

And increasingly, people don’t like him.

None of these characterizations of President Obama surprise me; it's just that it's taking so long for people to realize that Obama is what he clearly showed he was many years ago.

At least one media outlet has left Obama

The New York Observer endorsed Barack Obama in 2008. Their endorsement that year is still to be found online. So it is big news to read the editorial that just came out, where this paper strongly endorsed Mitt Romney. In part, it says:

The crisis of leadership in American government is easily explained: thanks to a flawed presidential primary system that rewards strident rhetoric and hyper-partisanship, candidates tailor their messages to fringe elements in small, unrepresentative states. The result? A nasty, shallow and expensive process that rewards sound bites rather than solutions and gamesmanship instead of ideas. This year, however, we have witnessed a rare phenomenon in American politics. A candidate has emerged from the rough and tumble of the primaries with his dignity intact. The system has produced not a demagogue but a manager, a candidate whose experience is rooted in the pragmatism of the business world rather than the ideology of partisan politics.

That candidate is Mitt Romney.

Gov. Romney won the Republican Party’s nomination precisely because he is not an ideologue—and that is no small achievement. He persuaded enough Republican primary voters that the time has come to put aside dogma and inflexibility in favor of real-world solutions to the array of problems America faces at home and abroad.

Over the last few weeks, Mr. Romney has shown that he is a moderate to his core—he is a manager, and a listener, who believes he can restore the balance between the private and public sectors that has been a hallmark of the American economy.

The Observer endorses Mr. Romney’s candidacy and urges readers to support him.

The paper acknowledges its support of Obama four years ago, and says:

Four years ago, Barack Obama captured the imagination of many Americans with his thrilling message of change. Given the challenges confronting the president—two raging wars and an unprecedented global economic collapse—the desire for a quick fix was unrealistic.

America supported that candidate (as did this newspaper), but his presidency, so filled with promise and potential, has failed to deliver the change America needs.

I will not repeat the rest of ths editorial; you can follow this link to read it. But it is nice to see that some of Obama's erstwhile supporters have left his camp, even among the media.