An egregious gerrymander

Peter V. R. Franchot is the Comptroller of rhe State of Maryland. He is also a very loyal and partisan Democrat. So I was very surprised that he has come out against the weird gerrymander of Maryland's Congressional districts that was proposed by Governor Martin O'Malley, and urges voters to vote against Question 5 on this year's ballot.

The Third District is particularly fantastic, and has been termed the third worst gerrymandered district in the country by a study. But some of the others are still pretty bad, even if not that bad. (My county, Montgomery, is divided among the Sixth and Eighth districts as well as that weird Third. The Sixth District does not look too bad, except that it is a deliberate attempt to end the Congressional career of Republican Rep. Roscoe Bartlett by putting just enough Democrats into the district to make it elect a Democrat. As a result, the Eighth, the district I'm in, runs from the Washington suburbs to the Pennsylvania line, with some narrow threads of land tying it together. The study actually ranked the Sixth as worse than the Eighth, though the Eighth looks a lot worse to my eyes.)

I plan to vote against Question 5. But I'm sure that even if the gerrymander is overturned, Gov. O'Malley will resubmit almost the same plan.

Last night's debate

As I've done in the last two debates, rather than stay up late for last night's debate, I slept, and this morning read the transcript and some of the outside comments. Most people consider it a draw; a CNN poll showed a slight advantage for President Obama, but small enough to be within the statistical margin of error.

It would have been nice to have this debate turn out like the first, with Romney crushing Obama so badly that Obama's supporters, like Andrew Sullivan, said “you know how much I love the guy, … and I can see the logic of some of Obama's meandering, weak, professorial arguments. But this was a disaster for the president for the key people he needs to reach….” But this time the president worked a little harder. And he brought up that phony “47%” business — taken completely out of context — at the last minute so that Gov. Romney had no chance to set the record straight. Obviously, reading the transcript, I thought Romney had the better of it. But I knew the truth — and some people, who may not, might be fooled by such claims as Obama's that he created 5 million jobs — actually, as Romney pointed out, every one of those jobs was balanced out by a job that was lost.

Each candidate had an agenda. Mitt Romney wanted to point out that Obama's record for the past four years was dreadful, and I think he succeeded. Clint Eastwood's empty chair would, of course, have done a better job with the economy than Barack Obama did. So the Obama agenda was to raise fears among the people about what Mitt Romney would do as President — which has been, all along, the tactic of his campaign. With no defensible record, he can only sling mud. And whether he succeeded among those who knew no better, only time will tell. As Stanley Kurtz, one of the few who reported Romney as having the edge in this debate, said, “The core of Obama’s strategy was to distract attention from his record by rendering Romney unacceptable. That strategy has failed. In its absence, all Obama has is the hope of that his base is now large enough to hand him a narrow victory.”

All Presidential elections where an incumbent is seeking re-election are, primarily, a referendum on that incumbent. Barack Obama is trying to avoid this. He can't defend his dismal record, so he is trying to make it a referendum on Mitt Romney, but not the real Mitt Romney — rather, a caricature who doesn't care about 47% of the American people, who outsourced jobs to China, and such. It is to be hoped that on November 6, the American people see through this sham, and send President Obama back to Chicago, where he can ruminate and perhaps write more books about himself, while Mitt Romney goes about fixing this country's problems.

Tonight's "town hall" style debate

I noticed Tom Bowler's “Libertarian Leanings” blog has a prediction about tonight's debate. He predicts that Candy Crowley, as moderator, will do a “fair and balanced” job — with a generous dose of sarcasm in that term. He expects very strong pro-Obama slants to Crowley's questioning of both candidates.

Perhaps. But let's give her a chance. If it is as partisan as Bowler thinks, I think the audience will spot that, and it would immensely help Gov. Romney. I suspect that if in fact, Crowley goes into this with an agenda intended to help Pres. Obama, she'll have to be a lot more subtle than the lines of questioning that Bowler suggests. And perhaps she might not be as partisan as Bowler thinks.

I'll wait until the actual debate, and then comment on that, rather than predict how the participants (including Crowley) will behave.

Arlen J. Specter (1930-2012)

Yesterday, it was reported that former Senator Arlen J. Specter of Pennsylvania passed away. I have rather mixed feelings about Specter: for many years he was one of the politicians I most admired, but three years ago he made, I believe, a serious mistake which lessened my esteem for him.

I first heard of Arlen Specter, probably, many years before most of the readers of this blog. In 1965 I took a new job in Philadelphia, and I heard of this new district attorney who was fighting corruption in the Philadelphia city government. This was Arlen Specter, and I was impressed by him from this point. As it happened, that was the year he left the Democratic Party to join the Republican, and for the next 44 years, Arlen Specter represented the kind of Republicanism that I too tended to favor. In fact, when he sought the Presidency in 1996, I supported him, but he dropped out very early in the race.

Arlen Specter was born in Kansas (not a place with a lot of Jews, but that was where his family settled!) but made his political career in the city of Philadelphia and the state of Pennsylvania. Though I was never a Pennsylvania voter, I often felt that he was “my Senator,” since he tended to vote my way — until near the end of his career. In 2009, he concluded that the Republican Party was coming under the control of far-right conservatives, and, saying that “I have found myself increasingly at odds with the Republican philosophy and more in line with the philosophy of the Democratic Party,” he became a Democrat again. To me, this was his biggest mistake, because although he probably did this under the idea that he could not win a Republican primary in 2010, as events showed subsequently, he was not able to win a Democratic primary either that year. What he did not realize, probably, is that just as right-wing extremists were consolidating their influence in the Republican Party, left-wing extremists were consolidating their influence in the Democratic Party, and he was no more a typical Democrat than a typical Republican. But following this, of course, he moved leftward himself, voting for “Obamacare” and other extremist-inspired Obama administration legislation.

But it is not the 2009-2010 Arlen Specter that I think of when I remember him — rather, the Arlen Specter that served with distinction from 1980 to 2009, the voice of the sort of moderate Republicanism that I too favor. And it is to that Arlen Specter that I say, farewell.

The vice-presidential debate last night

As I stated with reference to last week's first Presidential debate, rather than stay up to watch the debates in real time, my practice this year is to read the transcripts, and people's comments on the debates, the following morning. Apparently Vice-President Biden's greater experience showed, in that unlike President Obama, he prepared properly for this debate, and most people judged this debate a draw — one network called it a win for Paul Ryan, one called it a win for Biden, but in neither case the big blowout that Mitt Romney scored over the President last week.

At least one blogger was worried about unfairness, because the moderator, Martha Raddatz, is a very close friend of the Obamas: Obama actually attended her wedding. (Raddatz' former husband has since divorced her, and each has remarried; he is still close enough to Obama that he was appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission by the President.)

But most people do think she moderated the debate creditably. And she seemed to have a balanced approach, as I read the transcript.

Of course, at one point the Vice-President tried to channel Lloyd Bentsen, with his “Oh, now you’re Jack Kennedy” comment. But that's minor. He did repeat Obama's discredited “$5 trillion” figure, which I guess Obama and Biden will keep trying to foist on the American public.

I have to admit that on one issue (abortion), Vice-President Biden's statement was closer to my position than was Ryan's:

MS. RADDATZ: I want to move on, and I want to return home for these last few questions. This debate is indeed historic. We have two Catholic candidates, first time on a stage such as this, and I would like to ask you both to tell me what role your religion has played in your own personal views on abortion. Please talk about how you came to that decision. Talk about how your religion played a part in that. And please, this is such an emotional issue for so many —

REP. RYAN: Sure.

MS. RADDATZ: — people in this country. Please talk personally about this if you could. Congressman Ryan.

REP. RYAN: I don’t see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith. Our faith informs us in everything we do. My faith informs me about how to take care of the vulnerable, about how to make sure that people have a chance in life.

Now, you want to ask basically why I’m pro-life? It’s not simply because of my Catholic faith. That’s a factor, of course, but it’s also because of reason and science. You know, I think about 10 1/2 years ago, my wife Janna and I went to Mercy Hospital in Janesville where I was born for our seven-week ultrasound for our firstborn child, and we saw that heartbeat. Our little baby was in the shape of a bean, and to this day, we have nicknamed our firstborn child, Liza, “Bean.” (Chuckles.)

Now, I believe that life begins at conception.

That’s why — those are the reasons why I’m pro-life.

Now, I understand this is a difficult issue. And I respect people who don’t agree with me on this. But the policy of a Romney administration will be to oppose abortion with the exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.

What troubles me more is how this administration has handled all of these issues. Look at what they’re doing through “Obamacare” with respect to assaulting the religious liberties of this country. They’re infringing upon our first freedom, the freedom of religion, by infringing on Catholic charities, Catholic churches, Catholic hospitals. Our church should not have to sue our federal government to maintain their religious — religious liberties.

And with respect to abortion, the Democratic Party used to say they want it to be safe, legal and rare. Now they support it without restriction and with taxpayer funding, taxpayer funding in “Obamacare,” taxpayer funding with foreign aid. The vice president himself went to China and said that he sympathized or wouldn’t second- guess their one-child policy of forced abortions and sterilizations. That, to me, is pretty extreme.

MS. RADDATZ: Vice President Biden.

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: My religion defines who I am. And I’ve been a practicing Catholic my whole life. And it has particularly informed my social doctrine. Catholic social doctrine talks about taking care of those who — who can’t take care of themselves, people who need help.

With regard to — with regard to abortion, I accept my church’s position on abortion as a — what we call de fide (doctrine ?). Life begins at conception. That’s the church’s judgment. I accept it in my personal life.

But I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews and — I just refuse to impose that on others, unlike my friend here, the congressman.

I — I do not believe that — that we have a right to tell other people that women, they — they can’t control their body. It’s a decision between them and their doctor, in my view. And the Supreme Court — I’m not going to interfere with that.

(I emphasized one part because I think that this is the place Biden was really right. But then he followed up those words with:

With regard to the assault on the Catholic Church, let me make it absolutely clear. No religious institution, Catholic or otherwise, including Catholic Social Services, Georgetown Hospital, Mercy — any hospital — none has to either refer contraception. None has to pay for contraception. None has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact. That is a fact.

And that is total nonsense. The Obamacare requirement that contraception be provided in any health insurance policy does extend to those religious institutions, except that it is covered up — in theory the institution is not paying for the coverage, but in fact the insurance companies would adjust their premiums, because they certainly are not providing insurance free!

Both sides, clearly, continue to maintain their positions. But I think that Romney/Ryan have an agenda that is better for the country. Obama/Biden have been in power for nearly 4 years, and they have made a mess of the economy. We need to retire them!

Who is the liar?

In last week's debate, Mitt Romney called Barack Obama on his lies. He made the pointed remark: “Mr. President, you're entitled as the president to your own airplane and to your own house, but not to your own facts.” But the President keeps maning the same pathetic charges that Romney called him on in that debate. And his people are charging Romney with lying!

A detailed treatment of a couple of those issues was made by Rich Lowry on the New York Post site:

Credit President Obama’s aides with discernment. Even before the first presidential debate was over, they knew they needed to come up with an excuse, and fast. They settled on one they haven’t stopped repeating: Mitt Romney lied his way to victory.

The president would’ve rebutted Romney’s gross deceptions, except he was too focused on answering questions about the country’s future and too taken aback by Romney’s brazenness to answer in real time. Although once he had a day or two and his witty rejoinders were cued up in a teleprompter, he was absolute hell on Romney.

The case that Romney lied so brazenly that it undid the president rests, first, on the idea that the Republican misrepresented his own tax-reform plan. Obama said that Romney proposes to cut taxes by $5 trillion over 10 years. Romney denied it. The president’s team responded, with its customary civility and nuance: “Liar!”

But this isn’t even a close call. Romney wants to cut income-tax rates 20 percent across the board and make up the revenue by closing loopholes and deductions. This isn’t a tax cut; it’s a wash. It’s been Romney’s plan ever since he proposed it during the primaries. It’s such a simple concept that only willful obtuseness keeps the president or his team from understanding it.

If Romney proposed a 1 percent across-the-board cut on rates and the elimination of all loopholes and deductions, surely Obama would accuse him of wanting to raise taxes, because people would be paying more in taxes despite lower rates.

In fact, this is the approach of the president’s own Simpson-Bowles debt commission: It suggested lower rates and fewer deductions such that the federal government would garner more revenue.

True, Romney hasn’t specified which deductions he’d cut, leaving that for a future negotiation with Congress. The Obama team takes this as license to accuse Romney of proposing to raise taxes on the middle class, a pure fabrication. When Obama made this charge in Denver, Romney proved — pace David Axelrod — that it’s possible to reply to falsehoods one-on-one during a live debate. Romney firmly said he wouldn’t raise taxes on the middle class and patiently explained why not.

Romney’s other whopping deception allegedly was his contention that his health-care plan covers people with pre-existing conditions. On this, too, he was on solid ground. To simplify, he wants to extend the current legal protection that exists in the employer-based insurance market to the individual market, and make it easier for people to buy insurance in that individual market. Again, this is nothing new, but has been an element in his health-care policy from the start.

When Obama aides say that the real Romney didn’t show up in Denver, what they really mean is that he failed to live down to their rank caricature of him, broadcast far and wide by the Obama campaign.

As he showed during an hour and a half of high-pressure TV, Romney is a capable and intelligent man who is ready to be president and has a substantial reform agenda. The Obama campaign’s response to his debate victory basically was, “Don’t believe your lying eyes — believe our super PAC ads.”

Democrats have convinced themselves that all the president needs to do to come roaring back in the next debate is rebut Romney’s dishonesties, which will expose his indefensible agenda and shallow reinvention. The president’s team evidently underestimated Romney once already. If it believes this “lying liar” interpretation of the debate — rather than pushing it in the media for lack of anything else to say — it will underestimate him yet again.

Mitt Romney bested President Obama on the merits in Denver. Anyone insisting otherwise simply can’t handle the truth.

In fact, there are a few points that I think Lowry should have expanded, though I will stay with one. As Lowry said, “Romney hasn’t specified which deductions he’d cut, leaving that for a future negotiation with Congress.” In fact, this kind of leaving things open to negotiation with Congress is something a President should consider important. A President does not always get his own way in total, nor should he. President Obama had the luxury in most of his first two years of a Congress that was willing to “roll over and play dead.” Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi were willing to be his accomplices in ramming through a health care bill that most Americans opposed, as well as other bills that were contrary to the nation's best interests. After the 2010 elections, with a Republican House and a more balanced Senate, the President found himself facing a Congress that was more eager to exercise its Constitutional prerogatives, and Obama wailed about “Republican obstructionism.” It is the President's duty to work with the Congress. Mitt Romney somehow found it possible, as Governor of Massachusetts, to work with an 87% Democratic legislature. Even in the Democrats' most favorable scenario, Congress will not be so dominated by their party. But I am sure that if Mitt Romney is President, he'll find a way to work with them and produce a tax code that Democrats and Republicans both — at least some of them — in Congress will vote for.

The FULL quote, in context, with that 47%

Looking over the net I found a story about Mitt Romney, to which, as a comment, the full exchange involving that 47% quote was posted:

Question: “For the past three years, all everybody’s been told is, “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of you.” How are you going to do it, in two months before the elections to convince everybody, you’ve got to take care of yourself?”

Romney reply: “Uh, well there are 47% of the people who will VOTE for the President no matter what. All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon the government, who believe that, that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will VOTE for this President no matter what. And the, the President starts off with 48, 49, 4--, he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. 47 percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our MESSAGE of low taxes doesn’t connect. He’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that’s what they sell every, every 4 years. And, uh, so my job is not to worry about those few. I’ll never CONVINCE them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is to CONVINCE the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents, that are thoughtful, that look at VOTING one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not…...”

Some comments I will repeat by Dan Maloy, who presented this material on that other blog recently:

FACT #1 - This was at a fundraiser for a Presidential election. To win an election requires votes. In this quote Romney used the words “vote” (twice), “message” (once), “convince” (twice) and “voting” (once). What are the odds that a guy running for President attending a fundraiser to help win that election might talk about votes and what he needs to do during the campaign to win those votes? I know, shocking, right?

LOGICAL DEDUCTION: It’s not that Romney doesn’t “care” about that 47% as human beings, he was talking about the likelihood of winning their votes.

FACT #2 – Despite not putting the 47% comment from Romney in any way, shape or form of the true context, liberals insist that Romney is simply a greedy, uncaring person. So let’s look at the kinds of things Romney has done with his life, shall we? Hard core liberals won’t believe it so you guys might as well just respond with hate right now. Independents and those who are not lemmings will look at this objectively and come to the irrefutable conclusion: Romney cares about people and has proven it through a life time of service to his fellow man.

ROMNEY’S ALTRUISM / CHARITY

- Gave away his inheritance in 1998 to start / help fund the “George W. Romney Institute of Public Management” at BYU (his father, George Romney, died in 1995).

- Donated his entire Olympics salary and severance package ($1.4M) to charity.

- While governor of Massachusetts, at HIS request, served the people of MA at the salary of $1/year (that’s right, ONE DOLLAR).

- Voluntarily served, without pay or re-compensation of funds, as a Mormon missionary for 30 months in his late teens/early twenties (you may not agree with what he taught but the fact is he did it on a volunteer basis with the belief that he was helping to bring people closer to Jesus).

- Volunteer service to community as a church head pastor for 13 years all with ZERO pay (that's right, none); 5 years as a “bishop” and 8 years as a “stake president”.

- Would give ALL his Presidential salary ($1.6 Million total) back to the American taxpayers if elected (yes, he's on record as committing to this).

- Based on a net worth of $200-250M and his constant activity/involvement in his church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the ‘Mormons’), has given at least $20-25 MILLION to his church. (LDS church members pay tithing; one-tenth of what a person earns. The LDS church uses tithing donations to build and maintain churches and temples, print literature about Jesus Christ, etc. Can anyone dispute this is not “charitable” giving?) BTW, that is NOT including other charitable contributions to the LDS church in the form of “fast offerings”. Go look it up.

- He also chose to NOT receive any Social Security payments upon turning 65 because, again, he knows he can take care of himself and therefore should not rely on our tax dollars to help fund his daily living. (BTW, that’s HIS money that he’s leaving in government accounts.)

- Shut down most of his company, Bain Capital, and, at Romney’s expense, moved most of his employees to New York City to help find an employee’s missing daughter; set up a base of operations in a hotel room, posted thousands of flyers, talked to hundreds of shop owners, talked to thousands of people on the street, coordinated efforts with the police, worked with the media to air their search on TV. And…..when they finally did find her, a doctor said she was in such poor condition from a drug overdose she may not have survived another day.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/pressed-for-anecdote-romney-recounts-tale-of-missing-girl/

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/03/19/mitt_romneys_core_113526-2.html (see pg 2)

- Built a neighborhood playground & later did maintenance / upkeep on it for 5 years

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/313631/mitt-nobody-sees-katrina-trinko

- Loaned money for someone to buy a home

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/10/us/politics/in-real-estate-deal-romney-made-his-loss-a-couples-gain.html?pagewanted=all

- Helped write a will for a terminally ill teenager at the teenaged boy’s request

http://orleanscountyrecord.com/main.asp?SectionID=7&SubSectionID=39&ArticleID=28883

- Cares about his fellow man: gave $3,000,000 to charity in 2010 and $4,000,000 to charity in 2011; that’s $7 MILLION in just 2 years. Would you have done that? Romney did.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/romney_the_giver_7nLMOZGuIo2zq1LmrNInjN

FACT #3 – If you need a check from the government to survive from month to month, you ARE dependent upon the government. You might be old, you might be young, you might be smart, you may have been an All-State football player or homecoming queen in high school, but if you need a check from the government to survive, you are indeed dependent upon the government. The O-N-L-Y exception to this is if the check the government gives you is YOUR Social Security check. THAT money came from you and belongs to YOU.

Thanks, Mr. Maloy. I never thought I'd get the full context. I'm glad you found it somewhere and posted it.

Let's look at the facts

There are Democratic-leaning blogs and sites that are claiming that it was Romney that was lying in Wednesday's debate, and specifically about that “$5 trillion tax cut.” President Obama used that figure on four occasions during that debate. As can be seen here, what is really the case is that Romney's plan cuts taxes by about that (actually a bit less, $4.8 trillion) over a 10-year period, but in addition eliminates a number of deductions and loopholes, which would make up for those cuts. And while Romney has failed to be specific about these, the whole point is that a President has to negotiate with Congress. Mitt Romney, I am certain, understands this, and expects to talk to Mitch McConnell, Harry Reid, John Boehner, and Nancy Pelosi about these details, to find out what can pass Congress. He is not Barack Obama, who figures that Congress will accept whatever he proposes.

And even the Obama campaign concedes that this “$5 trillion tax cut” charge is not true. Yet, I've seen a number of blogs that charge Romney with having chutzpah for his comment: “Mr. President, you're entitled as the president to your own airplane and to your own house, but not to your own facts.” But the facts are there, as I've just stated. So who is lying, and who is displaying chutzpah, there?

Blame John Kerry!

A lot of people are dissecting Wednesday night's Romney-Obama debate, and trying to account for how thoroughly (even in the eyes of Democratic loyalists!) Barack Obama was beaten by Mitt Romney. Pres. Obama has said that when he reached the debate stage:

I met this very spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney. But it couldn't have been Mitt Romney,… the real Mitt Romney has been running around the country for the last year promising $5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy. The fellow on stage last night said he didn't know anything about that.

Of course, Mitt Romney has never said what Obama claimed he's been saying for the last year. He has favored tax cuts, yes. But the assessment that he “promis[ed] $5 trillion in tax cuts that favor the wealthy” came from a Democratic think tank, analyzing Romney's proposals in the most unfavorable way.

But what I suspect is that John Kerry, who has been filling in for Romney in Obama's practice debates, has defended the kind of tax proposals that Obama projects as Romney's plan, rather than Romney's actual proposals.

After all, it was John Kerry who said, eight years ago, “I can't believe I'm losing to this idiot.” Kerry considers George W. Bush an “idiot.” The same Bush whose grades at Yale were, if anything, slightly higher than Kerry's. But of course, Kerry is steeped in liberal orthodoxy. Anyone who doesn't see things that way is an “idiot.” It is simply obvious to Kerry that everything liberals say about economic (and other) matters is true, and everything conservatives say about these things is so patently false that only an idiot could believe it! And thus, when Kerry primed Obama for the debate, he gave Obama such a false picture of what Romney believes and how he thinks that Obama was absolutely shocked to face the real Mitt Romney.

Let's just hope Obama never wakes up to the real Mitt Romney before he has turned off so many voters that this election turns out a carbon copy of 1980.

Note added on Oct. 7, 2012: It looks like many people on Obama's team agree!

The best line in the debate?

Many people are giving quotes from Wednesday night's Romney-Obama debate. Some are picking out key quotes. For example, Tom Bowler's blog, “Libertarian Leanings,” picks this one:

But you’ve been — but you’ve been president four years. You’ve been president four years. You said you’d cut the deficit in half. It’s now four years later. We still have trillion-dollar deficits.

Well, that's a good one. But my choice was this one:

Mr. President, you're entitled as the president to your own airplane and to your own house, but not to your own facts.

President Obama has expected us to believe a pack of lies for nearly four years. It's certainly time to retire him.

Last night's debate

I don't have a television in my room. And I really didn't want to stay up till 10:30 anyway (I could watch a stream on my computer) — I'm not a late-night person. So my plan was to get up today, look at a transcript (the New York Times, as is typical, provided one), and also at some of the comments, because I knew that, as a strong Romney supporter, I personally would be more impressed by his ideas than the president's, but it's important to see how others saw the debate. And I'm thrilled.

Romney did what he had to — point out that Obama was continually lying about Romney's plans, and remind the audience that we have not done very well in the nearly 4 years that Barack Obama has been president. He said one thing that I think is one of the major reasons to elect him: in Massachusetts, he faced a legislature 87% controlled by the opposition party, yet he managed to work with them, while Barack Obama forced bills through that not a single Republican could support. And even after the people of Massachusetts (yes, Massachusetts!) elected a new Republican Senator specifically on the basis of his opposition to “Obamacare,” the Obama/Reid/Pelosi machine forced it upon the American people.

But as I said, I wanted to see what others thought. And, for example, Andrew Sullivan (probably as great a cheerleader for Obama as there is at the moment outside the Obama family!) said:

Look: you know how much I love the guy, and you know how much of a high information viewer I am, and I can see the logic of some of Obama's meandering, weak, professorial arguments. But this was a disaster for the president for the key people he needs to reach, and his effete, wonkish lectures may have jolted a lot of independents into giving Romney a second look.

Obama looked tired, even bored; he kept looking down; he had no crisp statements of passion or argument; he wasn't there. He was entirely defensive, which may have been the strategy. But it was the wrong strategy. At the wrong moment.

If Andrew Sullivan, who admits he “love[s] the guy,” thought the debate was “a disaster for the president,” that “Obama looked tired, even bored; he kept looking down; he had no crisp statements of passion or argument; he wasn't there,” the debate was a success in the way I would mean: it showed up the President for what he is, and spotlighted Mitt Romney as what he will be if elected.

I admit I'm a cheerleader for Mitt Romney in this election. So I really needed to see how the debate affected people like Andrew Sullivan. As I said, I'm thrilled!

My endorsements/votes

Tomorrow there will, I expect, be a post commenting on the Romney/Obama debate scheduled for tonight. But until then, I'm going ti use this blog to present my positions on the various candidates and questions that I will be voting on in a month.

Unfortunately, living in Maryland, my vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan whll probably have no effect. Because of the electoral college, my vote will be submerged by a huge Obama-Biden majority. But Romney and Ryan get my vote and my endorsement, and I'm hoping that enough people in the states where it does matter will vote that way.

Likewise, my candidates for both houses of Congress have little chance of winning, and my vote will be largely symbolic. Dan Bongino would be a major improvement over the incumbent, Ben Cardin, and I wish he had a real chance to win the Senate seat. (There is also an independent, Rob Sobhani, who used to be a Republican, and has some merit; unfortunately, since we don't have a system of approval voting, all Sobhani can hope to do is steal a few votes from Bongino and help Cardin win big.) For the House of Representatives, I am still in the 8^th District, and though the recent gerrymandering of the Maryland House Districts has made it less solidly Democratic than it used to — Gov. O'Malley has attempted to force Roscoe Bartlett out of his 6^th District seat by moving some Democratic areas into it from the 8^th — I am certain that Ken Timmerman has no chance to beat Chris Van Hollen — no matter how much I'd love to see Van Hollen kicked out of the House.

There are also elections for school board positions, but as I have said, I don't vote in those, and there will be Nazi-style elections for judicial seats (Back in New York, of course, all the parties would co-endorse the same candidate, so you often had no choice, but in Maryland there aren't even the fictions of elections with an apparent choice for judicial elections.)

Now we get to the ballot questions.There are seven of them that will be voted on statewide, though it is laughable that we get to vote on the first two. Apparently the qualifications for Orphan's Court judges in each county are set in the State Constitution, so when they are to be changed in one county, everyone in the State gets to vote on the question. Question 1 (regarding Prince George's County) and Question 2 (regarding Baltimore County) will be on the ballot this year; I can't see why people in the other twenty-plus counties even get to vote on these questions, and I intend to abstain on both, as I did in a similar case two years ago.

Question 3 is also a State Constitutional amendment, though one that makes more sense than the first two: It apparently responds to a recent case in the county next door where a County Council member convicted of a crime stayed on the council for a while, because Maryland law permitted her to do so until the actual sentence was laid down. Under Question 3, as soon as an official would be found guilty, they would be removed from office. I don't have strong feelings about this, but I will probably vote for Question 3.

Then there are the questions that will really get people's attention. Question 4 is Maryland's version of the DREAM Act, giving illegals in-state rates on tuition at public colleges. As I have said before, I will vote — and urge others to vote — against Question 4. Similarly, I have indicated that my intention is to vote against Question 5, which implements the particularly egregious gerrymander I mentioned a few paragraphs earlier, whose main purpose is to ensure a 7-1 Democratic majority in the Maryland delegation to the House of Representatives. But Question 6, to allow same-sex marriage, is one I support. I will vote — and urge others to vote — for Question 6, and in addition, for Question 7, about which I have said little so far.

Question 7 expands the law to allow an additional casino in Maryland. It is being supported by commercial interests that hope to own such a casino, and opposed by those who already own casinos — or plan to — that would lose traffic to a new one. My own position is that having the State collect a share of gambling money is preferable to raising taxes on everyone — you can avoid this siphoning of money out of your pocket simply by not gambling! Some people point to compulsive gamblers being put at risk, but just because there are alcoholics we do not ban liquor sales! (We tried once — it didn't work!)

In short, my endorsements:

President and Vice-President: Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

United States Senate from Maryland: Dan Bongino.

United States House of Representatives from the 8^th District of Maryland: Ken Timmerman.

Questions 1 and 2: ABSTAIN.

Questions 3, 6, and 7: FOR.

Questions 4 and 5: AGAINST.

Tomorrow's debate

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama will meet each other in debate tomorrow night. And since the polls show Obama with a small lead, the debate will be critical. (There will be three altogether, but it has been this country's experience that the first one sets the tone that the others cannot reverse.)

Jimmy Carter was leading Ronald Reagan by eight points, more than twice Obama's current lead, before their debate in 1980. Yet Reagan pulled it out on the basis of proving, at the debate, that he had what it took to be President. Clearly, this will be an opportunity for Romney, and I will be hoping that he can do to Obama what Reagan did to Carter. This is very similar to 1980 — an incumbent President who seems, to many people, “likeable,” but who has made a serious botch of his nearly four years in the White House, challenged by an opponent who is having trouble winning people to his side. There are differences — nobody doubts Romney's competence as many did Reagan's, and Obama has been the exact opposite of Carter's micro-managing type of executive. And Carter's ”like-ability” seems a lot more justified than Obama's, to the point that I am seriously puzzled as to why people characterize this man — one of the most nasty machine-type politicians in recent history — as likeable. But it is similar enough that I am seriously rooting for Romney to find a way to capture the public's favor.

Some comments about the Catholic Church

When I started this blog, I expected that there would be some posts about religion and others about politics, but the vast majority of them have been political. This post, actually, belongs to both categories, because I'm discussing a political stand that has been taken by a religious organization: namely, the Catholic Church.

Let me first say that one of my friends, about whom I have more to say later on, is a convinced Catholic; in addition, there is another person, one of the few who reads and comments on this blog, whom I consider a friend, though I've never met him in person (our contacts, over many years, have been via online chatting and e-mail), and who is not just a Catholic, but a priest. I hope that neither will take this post personally.

The Hispanic community in the Washington, D. C. area has available to it a number of (I believe all weekly) newspapers, which unlike many of the English language papers, are all free. (We do have some free papers, but the two biggest certainly are not.) One of those papers is El Pregonero, an organ of the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. Now these days, a lot of the people who are supporting Question 4 (the Maryland version of the “DREAM Act”) are also supporting Question 6 (the same-sex marriage proposal). I do not see the connection — what illegal aliens' right to reduced tuition has to do with gay couples' right to sanction legally their living together as a married couple is totally inexplicable to me — and my plan is to vote AGAINST Question 4 and FOR Question 6, and recommend this choice to others. But I noticed that this week's issue of El Pregonero has page 1 devoted to its recommendations on these same two questions — the precise opposite of my own position, as just described.

Now, it is not terribly surprising that El Pregonero is for Question 4. Most illegal aliens who would benefit by the proposal are Hispanics — the demographic to which the paper's readership belongs. However much I believe that illegals do not deserve a privilege that, say, a citizen of Delaware or the District of Columbia who wants to go to a state university college in Maryland does not have, I understand that the illegals — and those who are dependent on them for their patronage — would dearly love such an action by the state. So El Pregonero, and probably every other Spanish-language paper whose circulation includes a significant number of Marylanders — is not surprising in its favoring Question 4.

But to give equal prominence to its opposition to Question 6 is another issue. The Catholic Church is not really affected by Question 6. Just as its priests even now are not forced to marry couples that cannot be married in the Catholic Church's law (such as when one of the partners is a divorced person), no Catholic priest would be forced to officiate at a gay wedding.

And interestingly, many Catholics are gay — including a substantial number of priests. The friend I mentioned earlier — not the priest, but the one regarding whom I said “about whom I have more to say,” is gay. He was not born Catholic, but became a Catholic because one of his first lovers was a priest. In fact, because of the celibacy requirement of the Catholic Church, I would perhaps suspect that the proportion of gay males among the Catholic priesthood is greater than in the male population as a whole. (Perhaps this is the key — the Catholic Church believes that allowing gay males to marry will dry up the supply of potential priests!) Given that no gay couple will be married in the Catholic Church whether or not Question 6 succeeds, the fervency of El Pregonero's (and, I assume, the Archdiocese's) opposition to Question 6 is not, to me, comprehensible. But then, it is a rare occasion that the Catholic Church and I agree on anything.

McCain, Romney, and Obama as candidates

I see a lot of postings on the Net which describe John McCain as a bad candidate in the 2008 election. I don't think he was. If you look at the Real Clear Politics polling data, four years ago, John McCain started off well behind, but in early September pulled ahead of Barack Obama. Then the economy tanked. Nobody could have coped with that. John McCain was not an “economic expert” candidate; he was running his campaign on foreign policy and national defense issues, and the ground shifted. On top of that, McCain was of the same party as the incumbent President, George W. Bush, and bad economic performance hurt him only because voters blamed Bush, and consequently, the Republicans, for the economic problems. McCain, who led by one percentage point, 46.7 to 45.7%, on September 7 and opened up a lead as big as 3 points on one day shortly thereafter, was back down to a tie on the 17th.

No question that Barack Obama is good at campaigning. He knew how to game the rules to beat a clearly front-running Hillary Clinton for the 2008 nomination, but probably won the general election only because of the timing of the economic news. I am certain that if the economy's collapse had taken place two months later, John McCain would be sitting in the White House today, with perhaps Senator Hillary Clinton the Democratic nominee challenging his re-election campaign.

In some ways, Mitt Romney is the polar opposite of Barack Obama. Obama is a great campaigner, but has proven himself an incompetent executive. The worst President since Jimmy Carter, Obama has managed to gain support from, if anything, more voters than Mitt Romney simply because of his campaigning skills. While, by contrast, Mitt Romney is not as skilled at campaigning as at running things: a business, like Bain Capital, a nonprofit, like the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Committee, and a State, as Governor of Massachusetts. He's a kind and generous man (how many people would, if they had Romney's wealth, give $4 million to charity in one year? or close down a business to track down an employee's missing daughter?). Yet he has apparently not gotten this across to the public, which thinks Obama — the nastiest kind of Chicago machine politician — is “more likeable” than Mitt Romney. Somehow, though by all reasonable measures, Mitt Romney ought to be ahead in 49 states, Obama leads — although by a small amount — in most polls. This may be becuse he's an honest man, who says what he thinks, unlike most politicians, so he manages to offend some people. And yet, I'm sure that unlike Obama, if Romney succeeds in getting elected, he will do a much better job of actually governing than he has done in running for the office.

Mitt Romney's taxes

So Mitt Romney's tax return was just made public. And he paid a bit over 14% of his income in Federal tax. This is probably a smaller percentage than Warren Buffett's secretary. But one more thing came out: about 30% of his income was paid out to various charities.

Since money paid to charities goes to some of the same things that Government might otherwise need to support, and certainly is not available to Gov. Romney to help himself personally, it is just as if he'd paid nearly half his income in taxes. Only socialists like President Obama believe that Government is the only way we help each other. As John Podhoretz writes in his column,

Mitt Romney is an extraordinarily, remarkably, astonishingly generous man. A good man. Maybe even a great man.

I agree with Podhoretz's comment.

Facts on the Libya attack

The Boston Herald, unlike the other paper in that city (the Globe, owned by the New York Times) has some interesting columns, and one, by Michael Graham, dated Friday, September 21, 2012 named “How the truth hurts: Hence, White House avoids it,” has a great take on the recent attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya. It says,

In the era of battling fact-checkers, I’ve developed a new standard for testing the truth of claims being made by politicians:

Would I believe what they’re saying if I heard it coming from the mouth of my teenage son?

It works like this:

Four Americans, including local hero Glen Doherty, are killed in an attack on our consulate in Libya. The White House immediately insists that their deaths have — and I’m quoting White House spokesman Jay Carney — “nothing to do with U.S. policy.” It’s all just a reaction to an offensive, anti-Muhammad YouTube video.

So I look Carney in the eye and I think to myself: “Let me see if I’ve got this straight: A group of men armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades just happens to gather outside our consulate for a “spontaneous” protest, they just happen to organize a successful two-wave attack on the compound and, by sheer coincidence, someone inside lets them know where Ambassador Christopher Stevens is hiding. Oh, and all this happened on the anniversary of 9/11 and you’re telling me it wasn’t a planned attack?”

And then I send the White House spokesflak to his room. Or I would have, anyway, if he’d been my son.

This ridiculous story was nonsense on its face. When U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice claimed the Libyan assault “was a spontaneous — not a premeditated — response to what had transpired in Cairo,” she was as credible as my 17-year-old daughter saying, “I don’t know what happened to the car, I swear! Someone must have backed into me in the parking lot!”

Of course the Obama administration’s story was bogus. The Libyans said so, a member of the administration’s own counter-terrorism office said so and, most important, your good sense said so.

Which is why nobody’s surprised to learn that, far from the “movie-review-gone-horribly-wrong” scenario from the White House, we now know there had been warnings of an attack for days, Ambassador Stevens openly worried about his safety and it appears a former Gitmo detainee and al-Qaida member was directly involved.

In fact CBS News reports that witnesses say there was no anti-American protest that day at all. None. Just a coordinated attack against an American target by a terrorist group on 9/11.

So what was the White House’s response when caught red-handed by the facts? Carney promptly announced that they’d been saying the same thing all along: “It’s self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack,” he said with a shrug.

Which is exactly what a teenager will do if you let him. Your job, as a parent and a voter, is to not let him get away with it.

Watching the violence spreading across the Middle East, did you ever buy the “this has nothing to do with Obama administration policy, it’s just a movie” line? Of course not. The White House could send 100 people out to spin, but you’d know the truth.

And that’s the point: you knew. Just like you know when your kid claims he spent the night at his friend’s house, or doesn’t know why there’s a bottle of vodka missing from the liquor cabinet — you knew.

The next 46 days will be filled with claims, counter-claims, statistics and polls. You’ll hear more excuses from the Obama campaign about the current mess they’ve created than from a teenager who blew off a term paper.

This election year, more than any other I’ve ever seen, you need to ignore it all and go with your gut. You’ll make the right call in November.

It is quite amazing that there are still people in this country who believe President Obama. Certainly, in this case, the facts would seem to speak for themselves.

Media bias

We see these days how the media are so thoroughly biased that they cannot be relied upon. A campaign speech by Obama in Roanoke that said "you didn't build that" is apologized for by saying he is being quoted out of context, though the whole speech, posted openly on the White House website, seems, if anything, a worse position, proving that the President is hostile to business. Yet an off-the-cuff remark by Mitt Romney, which was taken out of context (and the whole comment is not even available to check what he really meant!) and is four months old, is made into such a strong gaffe that the media say he's lost the Presidency as a result.

Hopefully, the American people are smarter than Obama's pets in the media give them credit for. Obama has shown, by his conduct in the Presidency, that he is unfit for the job. While Romney's record speaks for itself. He can bring our economy back. Let's all make sure he gets his chance.

A good statement of the situation, which I'm happy to spread

Ben Stein wrote an article for The American Spectator dated September 17, which says a lot worth thinking about. First, he describes the events of recent days:

Let's start with a few facts.

A man made a cheesy movie about the being that Muslims call the Prophet Mohammed. That man has a criminal record and seems to be a marginal character, at best.

But that man is an American. He is operating in America. He has the full protection of the Constitution, including freedom of expression. So he is supposed to be allowed to say whatever he likes barring libel of living persons and exposure of state secrets. The man made the movie some months ago and nothing happened about it.

Now, Muslim radicals have gotten their marching orders from al Qaeda or whomever. They are rioting all over the Muslim world. As we all know, a super well-armed group of them murdered the U.S. Ambassador to Libya a few days ago, using that old movie as an excuse.

So, here we have it in a nutshell: murdering innocent people is a crime as we view it in this country. Making a movie is not a crime. We start with that.

When the rioting and craziness overseas began, Mr. Obama said nothing about it for many hours. He went to fund-raisers with his Hollywood pals and declined an intelligence briefing on the events (so Fox News reports).

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department apologizes for the movie via the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. Many hours later, Mr. Obama says he's sorry the diplomats and security people were murdered. (They "died in attacks," as the NY Times said, as if they had heart attacks instead of being shot.)

At the same time, the tides are moving rapidly towards war in the Middle East, between Israel and Iran. Iran is racing towards getting nuclear weapons. Iran has promised to use these horrific weapons to have a second Holocaust by "...wiping Israel off the map." Naturally, Israel does not want Iran to murder all the Israelis.

Israel is pleading with the USA to help it bomb Iran and slow down Iran's weapons program.

Mr. Obama says he's way too busy to have a meeting with Israeli PM Netanyahu about this. He has to be on TV and at fundraisers.

Then, we have the description of Romney's response, and its reception by the White House and the media:

Then comes word from Mitt Romney that Mr. Obama is not acting Presidential. Mr. Obama should have condemned the killings right away, says Mr. Romney. We should not be apologizing to terrorists, says Mr. Romney. And Mr. Obama should be striving night and day to keep peace and security in the Middle East.

That's it. That flips the "panic" switch in the mainstream media. Now, the terrorists who shot our diplomats and security personnel are no longer the issue. It is all Mr. Romney's incompetence. If only he had the temperament of an Obama — to apologize to terrorists instead of condemning them… Romney is a dangerous man.

The media goes berserk, on the attack against Mr. Romney. This is what they have been waiting for. The dogs of MSM warfare are let slip. Nothing else matters except mission number one: destroy Romney.

But, Stein reminds us, this is not the first time the media have shown a disturbing partiality toward the Left and the Democratic Party:

In a way, it's just what the media did to his father when they went crazy because he said he had been brainwashed in Vietnam — which was completely true. In a way, it's exactly like what the media did to Gerald Ford when he praised the Polish people and said they never would be slaves. It is precisely what they did to Richard Nixon when he did a series of trivial wrongs and they burned him at the stake for it, while the war maker and womanizer, JFK, was elevated to sainthood.

Stein continues:

No candidate can beat the combination of 95 percent of the African-American vote and 99 per cent of the MSM vote. So, Obama's in.

But think of what we have lost: I am writing this on Sunday night, September 16, 2012. The Obama administration is still apologizing to the Muslims worldwide, even in Libya even as the President of Libya says the killings there were not spontaneous but were long premeditated and the nutty movie was only a smokescreen. Our government is still saying, "Sorry," to violent mobs because an American citizen exercised his first Amendment rights. Incredibly, Jay Carney, White House spokesman, is spinning a complete fairy tale that the Islamists really like America and Mr. Obama. The murderers are just upset about a movie trailer that came out months ago. How stupid do they think we Americans are? If Mr. Obama really believes, he belongs in a straitjacket. If not, his spokesman is the biggest fantasist of all time.

Look, maybe sweet talk and apologies have a place somewhere. Maybe this should be said in private, between diplomats. But to apologize publicly to killers and arsonists over free speech in America… this isn't done… and of course the first amendment protects people outside the mainstream. Tom Paine, Samuel Adams, John Adams — these were considered nuts by the British. The whole idea is to protect all speech.

And in Barack Obama's America, the man who made the movie is brought in for law enforcement questioning. This really happened just yesterday.

And Mr. Barack Obama will be President for four more years and then quite possibly Mrs. Clinton, arch apologist for American values, for years afterwards.

When republics fall, it's not always slow. It can be like slamming a door.

It is later than any dare think.

This really summarizes the events of the past few days, and the nature of Obama's (and his supporters') responses, about as well as anyone could. I also like the analysis of the media's treatment of past presidents like Ford, Nixon, and JFK, all of which are more accurately described than anything else I've ever seen about them. So I'm happy to have echoed his posting.

Let us not confuse religion with fanaticism

I defend, and in fact share, Mitt Romney's outrage that the Cairo Embassy's first remarks, after the recent desecration of our embassy and murder of an American diplomat, were an apology for offending Muslims:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.

Some people claim this is not an apology; I cannot read it as anything else.

But there are some other statements that I read on the Web that, I believe, take too harshly an anti-Muslim tone, for example Rick Bayan's remarks:

Most of us would be justifiably angered to see Jesus or Moses portrayed in such a light. But here’s the point: we wouldn’t shed the blood of innocents because of an objectionable movie. It would be nearly impossible to imagine Presbyterians, Methodists or Reform Jews setting mosques ablaze after watching a stupid 14-minute video. That’s the difference between Islam and the two older Abrahamic religions.

To his credit, the next paragraph refers to “[t]he more fanatical followers of Islam,” but Bayan seems to equate Islam in general with fanatical acts like those that have recently taken place in the Middle East.

But I see fanaticism at the root of many acts by followers of different religions: the murder of doctors for performing abortions as a Christian example; Yitzhak Rabin was killed by an adherent of his own (and my) Jewish religion; and Hindus have burned down mosques in India.

No religion has adherents that are uniformly peaceful adherents of “live and let live” — there are fanatics in all religions, absolutely convinced that not only is their religion the only true one, but that any perceived deviation from what their religion tells them is a grave sin, punishable by death.

I do not condemn Islam for the acts that have just taken place — I condemn the fanatical Muslim extremists who carried them out.