iPandora

Here’s to my blogging buddies across the ‘sphere…

To Neil from 4Simpsons:

Tax and free trade basics: Taxes affect behavior.  You get less of what you tax.  More tax on investments = less investments.  More tax on businesses = less businesses to tax (and less employees to pay taxes and more people needing welfare).

To Wes at AnimateMatters:

Truth: I saw a bumper-sticker, today, that said:
“If Hillary Clinton is the answer, then it must have been a stupid question.”

Barb from XerraireArt:

Strange Bedfellows – Friends of Obama: “Life is partly what we make it, and partly what is made by the friends whom we choose.” ~ Tehyi Hsieh

Keeping the heat on everybodies (in Illinois) (least) favorite governor: The BloggingOnBlagoBlog:

Admitting you’re wrong is not easy – especially if you are running for Congress: Looks like once again Majority Leader Halvorson was able to slip by without any questioning as to why she personally stalled the previous ethics package for more than a year as Senate Rules Chairman, allowing Rod Blagojevich to continue raising money from state contractors.

More to come tomorrow.

60frames found this footage of a young Hillary Rodham Clinton in her early school years.

From Jay at OldFordRoad, he calls it the funniest political video this season.

I’m inclined to agree but don’t take my word for it:

…that if you can’t say anything nice about someone, you must be talking about Hillary Clinton.
~Jeff Foxworth, Blue Collar Comedy Tour

…that if you can’t say anything substantive about anyone, you must be talking about Barak Hussein Obama.
~matthew, iPandora

In the Cleveland Plain Dealer Blog, V. David Sartin lays out differences in the two Democrat candidates health-care plans.

Can two practical failures, moral evils, and spectacularly bad ideas be compared?

Hillary Clinton and Barak Hussein Obama can claim as many times as she pleases that their plan will only cost X, but when the plan is applied, there is no telling how high the actual cost will go.

A key fact of every other socialized health-care plan across the globe is that the actual costs far exceed the proposed cost.

And is it really going to be cheaper? In my current insurance setup I (a single, healthy person) am paying about $40 from each paycheck of $1200 (or 3.5%) every two weeks. Meanwhile I am paying about 15-20% in taxes from that same paycheck.

The most conservative estimates of the increase in fees due completely to taxes will be about double, with an expected load of 30-40% in taxes alone, most of this going to pay for the increased costs involved in Government shouldering the burden for health insurance.

Government is not efficient, it is really the antithesis of efficiency. If you were to give the government and a private company each a dollar, the private company will accomplish more with their dollar than the government. Much more, even with the corporate salaries and such. A business which does not use it’s dollars well fails.

Government has no such check. It can use it’s dollars as wastefully as it pleases and there is nothing to stop it besides oversight by you and I. And government does not like us watching it, despite it’s own desire to watch us and our business more and more closely.

Even beyond the obvious efficiency issues though, is a constitutional and moral issue: Is it the governments responsibility to provide health-care to each and every one of it’s citizens.

Individually we are each very much for personal freedom: allow us to do as we please, please.

If we surrender control of our health choices to the government, are we not giving an extremely powerful entity control over our lives to an unprecedented extent?

A private health insurance company can ask us to live more healthily, can raise our rates based on our risk factors and history. But it cannot compel us with force of law and punishment besides increased costs and denied service.

The government can.

And as the government seeks always to expand it’s grasp in every way: say as much as you like that it will not abuse it’s power. Government will compel us, with force of law and real punishment, to live according to it’s ideal of health.

Now is that freedom?

Or is having universal, expensive health-care really worth that cost?

Obama and Clinton being children:
There’s a bold line between idealism and fantasy,
neither of them have grown enough to know the difference.

With big thanks to Sweetness & Light.

McCain is the front runner, but he’s not won yet. America’s Mayor has endorsed him after ending his own bid to become America’s President. The Governator is expected to endorse him as early as today. (Politico)

McCain will be a “hold-your-nose-and-vote” nominee because even he will be preferable to any alternative.

It is telling that, following exit polls, we know that liberals and moderates voted for McCain in Florida, while conservatives voted for Romney.

Speaking of Romney, he has some tough choices to make: Will he write the big check?

Huckabee needs to get his personal vendetta against Romney out of his eyes, drop out of the race, and endorse the one man who will support a real conservative agenda who still has a chance of winning.

Liberals Anonymous is looking for new members:

Liberals Anonymous (LibAnon) is a nationwide organization of current, former, and recovering American liberals and Democrats. Its sole mission is to establish and maintain recovery programs designed to help similar individuals overcome the plethora of congenital illnesses inherent in postmodern American liberalism with which they are embittered. Liberals Anonymous accomplishes this worthy goal by making the idiosyncratic elemental disease nature of liberalism self-evident to the afflicted individual.

(From the American Thinker)

Back to Romney, and Hugh Hewitt. Ace of Spades apologizes for not getting it right…

I can’t keep knocking Hewitt for being a bit overly enthusiastic about being, ultimately, right. If some of us had seen the lay of the land as well as Hewitt and supported Romney as the best realistic consensus conservative candidate, we might not be in the position we’re in now.

…and endorses Romney.

Jay, do you truly think the media darling candidate is your candidate? Come on, you’re better than that. I know it.

And Orson Scott Card thinks religion may play a bigger part of this than we realize:

After the Iowa caucuses, an African-American friend of mine from Los Angeles wrote to me, scoffing at the idea that Obama’s victory there meant that a black man could now be elected president.

I thought he was too pessimistic. But then came Hillary’s “comeback” in New Hampshire.

I keep hearing about how the pollsters “got it so wrong” and how Hillary’s victory came from the Democratic regulars getting out the vote for her.

And Mitt Romney’s defeat was also laid at the feet of many causes, none of which sounded particularly solid to me. Yes, McCain is something of a “favorite son” in New Hampshire now. But he also has another “virtue” that Romney and Huckabee both lacked: He’s not openly religious.

I suspect that racial and religious prejudice are both playing more of a role than anyone is willing to admit.

Read Card’s latest WorldWatch.

Riehl ponders:

Has anyone stopped to think that if McCain gets the GOP nod, there will come a time when the party has to draft a platform with an obstinate, if not defiant, McCain – an often angry man with a history of holding conservatives in disdain?

We need speeches like this more often. Bob Corker, Senator from Tennessee, in debate on the tax rebate checks said:

“What I see in this package is nothing but a political stimulus,” said Corker. “It’s a stimulus to make the American people think that we, as a body, are doing something to actually cause the economy to be stronger.”

(From Copious Dissent)

My chief argument against this package is that it is not tied to taxation. Those who pay no taxes will get as much as those who pay taxes. That is wrong.

This will tie economic stimulus and government largess together irrevocably. Government is a burden. A necessary burden, but a burden nonetheless. The way the government to affect the economy meaningfully is to lighten itself, not to quixotically throw money back to us who were compelled to surrender it to them in the first place. That is adding insult to injury.

Back to Romney. American Thinker asks why the other candidates hate Governor Romney. Some of the answers:

• He can win
• He isn’t beholden to special interest groups
• He believes America’s best days are ahead of it

And once more, from the American Thinker: What does that ACU score really mean for McCain?

So where did McCain differ from the ACU?  The big areas were taxes, campaign finance reform, the environment and, most recently, immigration.  There was also a smattering of support for trial lawyers; federal intervention in health, education, safety or voting issues; internationalism; and some social issues.

In the race for the Republican nomination, there’s something for everyone.

There’s a liberal who’s principled and experienced but still liberal.

There’s a populist who tickles ears and yet is Christian, courageous, and popular.

There’s a fiscal conservative with serious experience and a very public track-record who wore a dress (once, on camera), supports homosexual marriage, and is not in favor of criminalizing mothers who have abortions (a slight but significant difference from actually being pro-choice).

There’s some dude with two first names and some good ideas, but with serious inconsistency, and serious stupidity concerning international affairs and national security harking back to pre-WWII Republican isolationism.

There’s a conservative business leader and governor with a funny first name and movie-star looks who’s been consistent, if not amazing.

And there’s a movie star without the looks who’s been amazing, if not consistent. If only he acted like he wanted to win.

There are others, but they are also-ran’s or sometimer’s and not worth consideration at this stage in the game.

I don’t much care for the liberal, the populist, the fiscal, or Mr. Two Names. Though I could stomach the fiscal, were he to, by some stretch of imagination, win the nomination. The others I abhor for various reasons.

The liberal is neither a man of honor nor a man of principle. He has convenient and far-sighted-sounding reasons for his liberal attachments and accomplishments, but his willingness to sell the farm, ideologically speaking, is not the measure of a man. Personally, I admire and honor his courage in his past. But I fear to many years within the beltway, and those who have spent those years with him not recommending him in the droves we’d expect, are very indicative of a lack of character and ability.

The populist is just that. He uses his sincere (and I do not doubt, genuine) Christianity to excuse and/or support and champion decidedly non-Christian policies. God did not institute a welfare state (for individuals or corporations) in Theocratic Israel. Instead He instituted laws and policies which protected individuals from each other’s harm and sin. Claiming that “green” science is correct in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary does not lead me to believe he is either “wise as a serpent” or “harmless as a dove”. In fact, I would submit the populist is the inverse: He is wise as a dove and harmless as a serpent (taken ironically, of course).

Mr. Two Name needs no rebuttal as he is his own best revealing mirror. Dismissed out of hand is the best response to the majority of his supporters.

I’d like the movie star to catch a fire, but his lack of consistency heretofore is troubling, and I believe, more accurately indicative of who he’d be in office that what he’d be if he did catch a fire.

The man I voted for in my last election (for some time at least) in California is the leader. A realization I came to after considering what he does when there’s not supposed to be a camera around.

Here are a few articles from across the web which seem to me to be particularly salient and and appropriate to the candidates in this race.

•  The Trouble With McCain
  Jay Cost, Wall Street Journal

  Thirty-four Republicans have endorsed Mr. Romney, while just 24 have endorsed Mr. McCain. Furthermore, Mr. Romney’s supporters are more in line with conservative opinion. Their average 2006 ACU rating was 84.1, and 26 of them come from states Bush won in 2004. Meanwhile, the average 2006 ACU rating for Mr. McCain’s supporters is 70.7, and just 12 of them come from Bush states. In light of Mr. McCain’s résumé, this is consequential. He should have locked up most members of the Republican caucus, but he has not.

• Hillary And MLK
  John McWhorter, Wall Street Journal

  …[T]here she was on “Meet the Press” Sunday, having to defend herself for simply saying that while King laid the groundwork (which she acknowledged), another part of the civil rights revolution was Lyndon B. Johnson’s masterful stewardship of the relevant legislation through Congress. She was arguing that she is more experienced in getting laws passed in Washington than is Barack Obama — which is true.

• Barak Obama And Israel
  Ed Lasky, American Thinker

  One seemingly consistent them running throughout Barack Obama’s career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are anti-Israel advocates. This ease around Israel animus has taken various forms. As Obama has continued his political ascent, he has moved up the prestige scale in terms of his associates. Early on in his career he chose a church headed by a former Black Muslim who is a harsh anti-Israel advocate and who may be seen as tinged with anti-Semitism.

• Where They Stand
  Pete Du Pont, Wall Street Journal

  …[T]he political ups and downs of the candidates and the electricity of the campaign–”I am promising change!”–matter much less than the substantive policies the next president would implement regarding the five most important challenges facing our country.

Two stories about numbers that aren’t lying. Unfortunately, numbers often don’t have voices capable of counteracting lies made by their misuse.

First, from The People’s Voice blog comes a bit of misinformed and communist rhetoric in support of HR 676 by our old friend Congressman Conyers.

Beginning with with the classic assumption that everybody worthwhile agrees with him, the author, Stephen Crockett, claims that:

It is obvious that none of the major Presidential candidates of either the Democratic or Republican Parties are supporting the right approach to providing universal healthcare. Frankly, all the Republican candidates are going to be major obstacles to achieving this national goal. While the top Democratic candidates (Clinton, Edwards and Obama) do support the concept, they are all offering Band-Aid approaches for a life-threatening economic and health crisis in America.

I’m not sure, Mr. Crockett, but I don’t find it obvious. While I agree that there are several challengers on each side whose policy proposals are so bloated and impossible as to be laughable, the fact that you apparently don’t think they go far enough is proof positive that it is not obvious.

Just a warning: it goes downhill from there.

From Thinking Out Loud: Visions of Universal Healthcare Dance In Their Heads.

Second, in what is becoming an unpleasant task considering the number of good friends who support this guy because he is a Christian while ignoring the obviously un-christian nature of his policies, Mike Huckabee is listed as one of the top ten “most wanted”corrupt politicians of 2007.

Judicial Watch placed Mike as number 6, surrounded by such other luminous paragons of anti-virtue and un-justice as Hillary Clinton (#1), Rudy Guiliani (#5), and Barak Obama (#8):

Governor Huckabee enjoyed a meteoric rise in the polls in December 2007, which prompted a more thorough review of his ethics record. According to The Associated Press: “[Huckabee’s] career has also been colored by 14 ethics complaints and a volley of questions about his integrity, ranging from his management of campaign cash to his use of a nonprofit organization to subsidize his income to his destruction of state computer files on his way out of the governor’s office.” And what was Governor Huckabee’s response to these ethics allegations? Rather than cooperating with investigators, Huckabee sued the state ethics commission twice and attempted to shut the ethics process down.

Aforementioned Congressman John Conyers is#2 on the list. And California’s Senator Feinstein and Representative Pelosi are numbers 4 and 9, respectively.

Dick Morris, long time confidant and advisor to the Clinton’s, says Bill’s bio of Hillary plays fast and loose with the truth. She’s not a white knight-ette so much as an opportunistic communist sympathizer and not-so-closeted Marxist.

Bill says: In law school Hillary worked on legal services for the poor.

The true facts are: Hillary’s main extra-curricular activity in law school was helping the Black Panthers, on trial in Connecticut for torturing and killing a federal agent. She went to court every day as part of a law student monitoring committee trying to spot civil rights violations and develop grounds for appeal.

Hat tip to Doug Ross.

Hillary telling the truth is more dangerous than Honest Abe telling a lie. So Deitrich Bonhoeffer would argue:

“It is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to tell a lie.”

Miguel Guanipa over at American Thinker uses this statement of Bonhoeffer’s to argue that Hillary’s habits of untruth make her moments of truth less than pristine and likely coldly calculated attempts to manipulate based on truth which supports her. Not based on her support of the truth.

A “falling away is worse than a falling down”. In other words, when a person who regularly speaks the truth utters a lie, he is merely suffering from a temporary lapse of judgment. In all likelihood he will be tempted and have recurrent lapses like these throughout his life; but the general direction in which he conducts his life will be one disposed towards honesty; he has merely “fallen down”.

On the other hand, when someone who is a chronic liar speaks the truth, it is not necessarily a sign of improvement, but a calculated attempt — by one who has mastered the art deceit — to manipulate the truth for his or her own purposes,. This act, which on its face may look like a valiant attempt at reformation, denotes instead a singularly pernicious kind of wickedness.

The Liar and the Bulldog apparently clean their YouTube channels of less than positive comments. From Verum Serum.

Hugh Hewitt asks if it would kill Time, or Harry Reid, or Nancy Pelosi, or any on the Left to give a “well done” to the American Military and it’s members.

With thanks to WC:

…And the Velvet Hammer:

*shudder*To think there are people who think this is good.