Final Thoughts on the DNC Carnival in Charlotte

Final Thoughts on the DNC Carnival in Charlotte

"Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it." — John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776.

The northeastern town of Borja, Mexico garnered global press attention after residents decried the well-meaning restoration efforts of Cecilia Gimenez, described as being in her 80s, who made a horribly botched attempt to restore a flaking oil painting of Christ wearing the crown of thorns. Gimenez’s restoration did not work out very well, the "restored" painting looks like a pale monkey's face surrounded by fur, with misshapen eyes and nose, and a crooked smudge for a mouth. Some media have called it the worst restoration in history.

Just as she attempted to refurbish the cracked and peeling fresco, however, Democrats at their North Carolina convention tried — and failed just as miserably — to improve the image of their own tarnished and faded messiah.

In a video produced for the opening of the convention, Democrats succinctly summed up their entire philosophy: "Government is the only thing we all belong to. We have different churches, different clubs, but we're together as a part of our city, or our county, or our state, and our nation." Everything separates us but government. Indeed, the rest of the convention paid homage to government as the be all and end all, the Alpha and Omega, the solution to every problem. Because, let's face it, as someone once said, "You didn't build that."

The Obama campaign quickly denied having anything to do with the video, but no one doubts it's Obama's vision. And nothing could be further from what our Founding Fathers established — a republic with limited and enumerated powers in which "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" were the rights and values to be cherished, not the bureaucratic labyrinth at the Department of Health and Human Services.

It was also no small irony that the gavel came down on the convention just as our national debt passed $16,000,000,000,000. Democrats have done more than their "fair share" to help us reach that horrendous number.

With all that in mind, we chose a few of the more egregious quotes from the DNC floor — and believe us, the choosing was hard — with concise rebuttals to the various attacks, distortions and outright lies.

On Thursday, Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) made some bold claims about the GOP’s handling of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — the nation’s largest, most intensely valued — and most controversial — entitlement programs. The congressman said that “Republicans stood on the sidelines” when these programs were created, a notion that PolitiFact found to be false.

“When too many of our senior citizens who were living their golden years in the darkness of economic security, Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt and a Democratic congress created Social Security, lighting a candle, while the Republicans cursed the darkness,” Clyburn said during his DNC speech.

And he wasn’t done there.

“When too many of our elderly found their lives darkened by unaffordable and inaccessible health care, Lyndon Johnson and a Democratic Congress lit the candles of Medicare and Medicaid, while Republicans stood on the sidelines and cursed the darkness,” he then added.

But, here’s what PolitiFact had to say about these claims:

“Although some of the biggest and most vocal opponents of the bills were Republicans, it’s wrong to say that “Republicans stood on the sidelines” when the bills were being considered. On the final vote on Social Security, Republicans overwhelmingly supported the bill. On Medicare and Medicaid, a majority of Republicans voted for the bill in the House, as did a significant minority in the Senate. We rate Clyburn’s claim False.”

This statement came from Clyburn just days after he made the bold — and factually inaccurate claim — that Republicans who happen to be Christians think “there‘s something wrong with feeding people when they’re hungry. I refer to what Frederic Bastiat said 150 years ago (Just substitute progressivism for Socialism):

"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."

Vice President Joe Biden took the stage, too, last night, where he made a statement about Romney and Osama bin Laden that wasn’t factually accurate. Rather than placing the comments in their proper context, Biden claimed that Romney once said “it’s not worth moving heaven and earth” to catch the infamous terrorist.

Under a section called “Biden’s bin Laden Baloney,” FactCheck.org wrote:

“The claim, which Republicans disputed, fails to include the rest of Romney’s quote from an Associated Press story. Romney said the country’s focus should not be on one person, but it should be a “broader strategy to defeat the Islamic jihad movement.”

President Barack Obama, too, had some verbal blunders. Among his misleading statements was a claim that his tax plan would merely restore rates to what they were under President Bill Clinton’s administration. This, though, doesn’t take into account the tax increases that the wealthy will face as a result of Obama care; these additional taxes kick in next year. FactCheck.org writes:

“Obama refers to his wish to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for families with over $250,000 annual income, or for individuals with over $200,000. The top marginal income tax rate would return to 39.6 percent, where it was set by Clinton’s 1993 tax increase, up from 35 percent, where it has been since 2003.

But that’s not the whole story. Obama has signed some ”new” taxes to help finance the Affordable Care Act, increasing the burden on those upper-income taxpayers. Starting Jan. 1 next year, they will pay an additional 0.9 percent of wages for Medicare payroll taxes. And they will also be subject to a 3.8 percent tax on investment income from such things as stocks, bonds and sale of real estate. Those are taxes that didn’t exist when Clinton was president. If Obama succeeds in raising the top income tax rates to Clinton-era levels, total taxes on those making over $250,000 family income are thus likely to be higher than they were under Clinton.”

Obama also repeated the same claim that Clinton was called out for on Wednesday — that the current president has a plan that will cut deficits by $4 trillion. During his speech, Obama said, “Independent analysis shows that my plan would cut our deficits by $4 trillion. Last summer, I worked with Republicans in Congress to cut $1 trillion in spending.”

The Washington Post’s The Fact Checker debunked this claim, once again, writing:

“But, while the numbers seem large, the results are unimpressive. At the end of the 10-year budget window, Obama would have the national debt at a 76.5 percent of gross domestic product. That actually would be an increase over the 74.2 percent of GDP in this year. In contrast, the debt reduction plan envisioned by the Simpson-Bowles commission — cited by the president — would reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio close to 60 percent.

Moreover, independent analysts have criticized the administration for claiming some $800 billion in phantom savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though the administration had long made clear those wars would end. (The Bush administration had started the wars on borrowed funds.) Then, the president proposes to spend a good chunk of the nonexistent money on other spending — as he put it in his speech, “rebuilding roads and bridges; schools and runways.”

The $1 trillion in savings negotiated with Republicans, mentioned by the president, actually accounts for the bulk of his proposed reduction in spending. Indeed, much of the president’s debt reduction would come from tax increases on the wealthy, not spending cuts.”

The final lie comes, again, from Biden. During his speech, he contended that “the experts” claim that Romney has a corporate tax plan that would create hundreds of thousands — 800,000 jobs, to be exact — overseas. In reality, only one expert asserted that this is the case and she was careful to say that it depends on the details.

Even if these jobs do grow in other countries, she said it was possible for that to happen without hampering U.S. employment. FactCheck.org explains:

“She notes in her study that “jobs abroad need not displace jobs at home” — that is, provided that the present economy improves, and U.S. unemployment drops to a low level. So depending on the economic circumstances, creating jobs overseas doesn’t necessarily mean losing jobs in the U.S., as Biden’s listeners might have assumed.

Furthermore, a critique of Clausing’s figure by the Tax Foundation (a group supported in part by corporate donations) says that she based it on current corporate tax rates — not on the lower 25 percent rate that Romney proposes. The lower rate, it is argued, would attract foreign investment and lead to importing jobs.”

I could on with more exposé of the lies and half that were uttered at the Dependency National Convention, but I would need 100 pages to tell all.

Now to some other observations on the convention.

A Godless Party Expels the Creator

“The authors of the Democratic platform have inadvertently revealed to the world the sea change that has taken place in that party we once knew. Pat Buchanan writes in Human Events:

“For the first time — and in the longest Democratic platform in history, 26,000 words — there was not a single mention of God, the Creator, whom Thomas Jefferson himself, father of the party, proclaimed to be the author of our right to life and liberty.

The convention had approved the new platform, but when a firestorm erupted, a panicked Barack Obama hastily ordered “God” reinstated.

But when the amendment was offered to the convention by its chairman, Antonio Villaraigosa, the idea of restoring the name of God to the platform was hooted, jeered and booed by half the delegates on the floor, who three times howled, “No!”

The omission of God is being called an oversight. But the viral reaction to returning God, even when Obama asked that it be done, testifies that this was no accident. God was deleted deliberately.

This process has been under way for a decade. In the 2004 platform, there were seven references to God. In 2008, one.

Like the European Union, whose Christian heritage is being excised from official documents by its secularist elite, the country led by the Democratic Party of Obama is being de-Christianized.

Still, why would Democrats do something so seemingly stupid, something that will inevitably cause a backlash among believers?

Answer: Millions of Democrats are themselves offended when God is included, because for them, the God of the Old and New testaments is an impediment to the progressive march of mankind.”

What would you expect from a party dedicated to killing the unborn, at any stage of their gestation and embracing every deviant form of behavior on the planet?

Thought Police Patrol Convention’s Radio Row

Conservative talk-show hosts who came to Charlotte to interview political figures are furious. For the first time in anyone’s memory, Radio Row — the designated set of booths available to visiting talk-show hosts — has seen restrictions placed on its use by Team Obama. DNC staffers at Radio Row will book leading Democrats for slots on conservative stations but then cancel the appearances an hour or so before broadcast “because you’re not our audience.”

John Fund writes in the National Review Online:

“Roger Hedgecock, a former mayor of San Diego now hosting a nationally syndicated talk show, decided to pack up and leave Charlotte early because “we were blocked from getting any guests that mattered. It was a complete freeze.” Larry O’Connor of Breitbart Radio told me, “It was the most bizarre act of censorship. These shows paid large fees and spent thousands on equipment setup and they couldn’t do their programs because of interference.”

“According to sources at Talk Radio News Service, placing a stringer outside the designated TV area to ask high-level Democrats to stop by radio row has also been banned by the DNC,” Ben Shapiro wrote at Breitbart’s Big Journalism:”

“When I approached liberal activist John Podesta about appearing on KRLA’s “Heidi Harris Show” along with me and my co-hosts Heidi Harris (conservative) and Brian Whitman (liberal), his handler quickly intervened. Later, the handler stopped by to clarify: did the show have two liberals and one conservative, or two conservatives and one liberal? When I stated that it had two conservatives and one liberal, he quickly shook his head and sprinted away.”

So much for the transparency, openness, and tolerance to contrary thought of the Obama era. It should be pointed out that Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Sandra Fluke were busy traversing the floor and giving interviews to MSNBC, MediaMatters, and other left-wing organs at the Republican National Convention without being harassed or evicted.

Steelworker Featured at DNC Didn't Work for Bain.

The Democratic National Convention on Wednesday featured three speakers billed as "former employees of companies controlled by Bain Capital."

They each told compelling stories about jobs lost, allegedly because of the actions of Bain under Romney's leadership.

According to Yahoo News one of these workers did not work for Bain, but was a union official:

“But it turns out one of those employees never actually worked for a company controlled by Bain Capital. David Foster was supposedly one of those former employees on the convention schedule. He told the story about 750 steelworkers who lost their jobs when the Bain-controlled company GST steel filed for bankruptcy in the early 1990s.

"In 2001, with GST bankrupt and Romney still CEO of Bain, I stood in front of hundreds of steelworkers in their 50s and 60s, and retirees in their 70s and 80s, and told them Romney and Bain had broken their promises. Jobs, vacation pay, severance, health insurance and pension benefits that were promised - they were all gone," he said. Read his full speech here.

But Foster, according to a former spokesman for GST Steel, never actually worked for the company. "David Foster was never an employee of GST Steel's Kansas City plant. He was employed by the United Steelworkers of America as their regional union director to represent GST Steel, but was not employed at our facility," according to BC Huselton, who was head of HR at GST. Instead, Foster was a union organizer, who negotiated for workers that did work for the company. Foster explained in his remarks that he was an organizer during his dealings with GST Steel.”

Lack of Support, Not Rain, Chased Obama from 74,000-Seat Stadium.

Republican strategist Bradley A. Blakeman, who organized a number of presidential campaign events in his career, tells Newsmax that he simply isn’t buying the Democrats’ argument that the threat of inclement weather chased President Obama’s acceptance speech from a 74,000-seat outdoor stadium to an indoor arena that will accommodate considerably fewer supporters.

Paul Scicchitano writes in NEWSMAX:

“It’s not going to rain. It’s going to be crystal clear,” Blakeman confidently predicted in an interview on Thursday some six hours before President Obama was set to formally accept his party’s nomination for a second term at the slightly more than 20,000-seat Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, which has hosted all of the major DNC speeches.

“Back in 2008 the Obama supporters would have stood in a torrent of rain for the anointed one,” he explained. “The president was messianic. Does that mean that nobody plays football, nobody plays baseball? Why do we have open-air events? If there’s even a hint of rain we don’t play baseball? We don’t play football? We don’t play soccer?”

Blakeman, who oversaw the convention schedule for Presidents George H.W. and George W. Bush during the ‘88, ‘92 and 2000 campaigns, said it is routine to set up a back-up location along with the main venue for campaign events, but that decisions to make weather-related changes are typically made on the day of an event, not several days before as in the case of Obama’s acceptance speech.

The speech was moved earlier this week from the Bank of America Stadium, which is the home to the NFL's Carolina Panthers.

He said he “never, never” would have moved an outdoor event like Obama’s speech on a weather-related “threat as it existed this week.” Such decisions would have typically been made after consulting the Secret Service, media and campaign earlier in the day.

“I would have had a backup venue like they did, and I would have pulled the plug probably this morning,” he said. “But not just drizzle. It would have to be something substantial.”

He believes that the Obama campaign doesn’t want to say publicly that it couldn’t fill the outdoor venue. “He wasn’t going to fill the arena. I’ve been told college students were not taking tickets, that they were trying to give people tickets in bars,” said Blakeman. “Then they demanded that the unions come. . . The unions said ‘we’re not going to come and save the day. We’re not going to come and pour union workers into a place that wasn’t built with union labor.’”

With the smaller venue, thousands of hardcore Obama supporters, who had been given credentials for the outdoor event, were suddenly left with no chance of hearing the president’s acceptance speech, a highlight in every campaign.”

The Anointed One’s Speech

When you are in a tight race with your political opponent, you should not recycle a Jobs Act speech that failed to even persuade Democrats in Congress to pass your signature re-election initiative.

But that’s what Barack Obama did. A day after Bill Clinton brought the house down, Barack Obama took to the stage and reduced, reused, and recycled old states of the union speeches that have failed him for four years.

It was boring. It was unoriginal. And it was filled with promises when he hasn’t kept his past promises. Clint Eastwood’s empty chair could have given a better speech than what Barack Obama offered up. And to think he wanted to give that in a stadium.

This was a safe speech you give when you have a lead. This was not a speech you give in a tight race. Don’t believe me? Here are excerpts from his past States of the Union and Jobs Act speech. Lots of platitude, lots of rhetoric, little in detail, and a lot of worn out lines that have failed him before.

I’m honestly stunned he did this, particularly after Bill Clinton.

Listen to these lines. This speech was unoriginal. He stacked it with straw men and ignored his own two major initiatives from the first term: ObamaCare and the Stimulus.

This was a failure and you know it was because he failed to even bring up his own major initiatives. On ObamaCare, he mentioned parts of it, but never defended it or referenced the “Affordable Care Act.”

Thursday night in his speech to Obama belittled Republican tax cuts. Instead, he proposed more of the same with his tired policies: still more subsidizing “green” energy production, still more special tax treatment for select manufacturing industries, and still more money towards public schools and the teachers’ unions. But rather than letting individual investors determine where they can get the highest return for their money, Obama wants to pick the winners himself by using tax dollars to help them out.

American investors were smart enough not to invest their own money into ethanol, solar, or wind energy. Only government invests in businesses where costs greatly exceed revenue

Despite Republican attempts to cut taxes, the United States still has by far the highest marginal corporate income tax rate in the world. The US also has the most progressive tax structure, with the richest Americans paying a larger share of total tax revenue. The richest 10% of Americans pay 45% of the taxes. The average for the 34 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries is only 32%.

The top income earners are not the only ones who face penalties from earning more. President Obama has increased the effective penalty even for low- and moderate-income families earning more money. Not only do people lose federal earned income tax credits as well as pay federal and state taxes as their income increases, but they also lose the ever expanding government handouts including housing subsidies, Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program, and food stamps.

The loss of these welfare programs and taxes is so large that when the average person earning between $10,000 and $40,000 makes an additional dollar they lose 82 cents — 53 cents worth of government welfare programs and another 29 cents is lost through reduced tax credits and higher taxes. Who wants to work more when they lose 82 cents of each additional dollar that they earn?

And finally there are the F**k Cardinal Dolan tweets from the tolerant Democrats.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan surprised people on both sides of the aisle last week when he announced that he would be offering the benediction at the Democratic National Convention — an odd occurrence, considering the Catholic Church’s ongoing debate with the Obama administration over the controversial contraceptive mandate.

The Blaze reports:

Following his prayer, detractors went on an anti-Dolan extravaganza — or, as LifeSiteNews puts it, they “tweeted F-bombs” to the Catholic leader. According to the news site, hundreds of angry liberals took to Twitter to deride Dolan. The outlet collected and posted this sampling of tweets. Click here to view some of the vulgar and obscene tweets. (Warning: graphic language)

So with its lineup of Sandra Fluke, Caroline Kennedy, Elizabeth (Pocahontas) Warren, Jennifer Granholm (the Canadian born ex-governor of Michigan), and a host of other misfits the Democratic Convention came to an ignominious end — thank the God the Democrats don’t believe in. Now it’s on to the debates and more spin from the mainstream media.

The Alternate Universe of the DNC Convention

“Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.” Thomas Jefferson in a letter to his nephew Peter Carr, August 10, 1787.

The Democrats gathering in Charlotte this week are united behind President Obama but more than a little nervous about their November prospects. The thrill of 2008 is gone, replaced by an almost grim determination. The party of hope and change has become the party of grind-it-out, slug-it-out, and hope to win.

This isn't the way it was supposed to be. The Obama Presidency was going to usher in a new era of long-term Democratic dominance, and the circumstances to make it happen were on their side. Democrats took power in a recession they could pin on Republicans, knowing they could take credit for the inevitable economic recovery and ride that to re-election. Young people went for them 2 to 1 and might have been loyal for decades. It all might have worked had they made the economy their priority.

But this misjudges the modern Democratic Party. Four years ago in Denver, the country deserved to know that the Democrats who would really be running the country in 2009 would be named Henry Waxman, John Dingell, John Conyers, David Obey, George Miller, Barney Frank and James Oberstar. Those were—and mostly still are—the liberal barons of the House.

They weren't about to let a crisis go to waste, and so they went about using their accidentally large majorities to drive through a generation of pent-up liberal legislation. Mr. Obama famously let them write the stimulus and health-care bills. Republicans were helpless to stop them for two years. Liberals got nearly everything they wanted—which is what may be their ultimate undoing.

Democrats of the Obama era are united by cultural liberalism, but above all else they agree on the goal of expanding the reach of government. The Democratic Leadership Council, the centrist idea shop of the Clinton years, is declining. The vanguard of ideas for the Obama White House is the George Soros’ Center for American Progress, which churns out proposals for government to mediate every sphere of economic life.

In this view, the entire American economy is a giant market failure — except perhaps Silicon Valley. Health-care costs can be controlled by dictating prices and medical practice. The climate can be controlled by putting coal out of business and subsidizing wind, solar and ethanol. Wall Street can be controlled by more rules and hanging the occasional banker in the public square as an example.

Most important, government spending can conjure private growth by "investing" in whatever seems like a good idea. So taxes must rise and rise again to pay for these "investments."

The same priorities prevail, by the way, in the rare states like California where Democrats still dominate. While a wave of GOP Governors elected in 2010 have been reforming government, Democrats in Illinois, Maryland, Connecticut and California are bent on protecting every corner of government they can. The first three have raised taxes enormously, and Jerry Brown is desperate to get voter approval in November so he can raise the top income-tax rate in California to 13.3%.

There are very few Chris Christie Democrats. The closest might be Andrew Cuomo in New York, but his productive first year has given way to status-quo accommodations to unions on school and pension reform and a tax increase. This reflects today's Democratic coalition, which is dominated by affluent cultural liberals, voters who depend on government, and especially public-employee unions.

Here and there in the hinterlands, you can see a glimpse of new Democratic thinking. Gloria Romero in California wants to reduce the power of teachers unions, and Treasurer Gina Raimondo dared to rein in public pension benefits in Rhode Island. Even President Obama sometimes sounds like a reformer on education, until election years when he resorts to proposing more federal spending to hire more teachers.

But those reform voices won't be anywhere in evidence in Charlotte, where the message will be four more years of more of the same. The main theme is to preserve the government that Democrats have expanded. Democrats made a generational bet in 2009-2010 that the country was ready to be yanked sharply to the left, and they know that nearly all of their grand ambitions will be undone if Mr. Obama loses.

Yet the liberal masterminds who dominate the party believe that if Mr. Obama wins, however narrowly, their gamble will have been a great success. They may have lost the House in 2010, and perhaps they'll lose the Senate this year, but those can be won back.

Meanwhile, ObamaCare won't be repealed, its subsidies will start to flow in 2014, and then another huge chunk of the private economy and voting public will be dependent on the government for decades to come. Nancy Pelosi will take her bows as an icon of the entitlement state.

Thus the frowning resolve to grind out a victory by whatever means possible. It's hardly an optimistic vision and it's far from commanding the oceans, but if Democrats win, what you've seen is what you'll get.

After the ugly scene that played out on the floor of the Democratic National Convention Wednesday, during which the Democratic Party amended their platform to reinstate “God” and mention that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, CNN’s Anderson Cooper went to DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz for her reaction to the entire ordeal. But after she spoke, Cooper determined she was living in an “alternate universe.”

CNN’s Brianna Keilar asked Wasserman Schultz on the convention floor how she felt as one of “the most prominent Jewish lawmakers” when she learned that any mention of Jerusalem being the capital of Israel was struck from the Democratic platform.

Wasserman Schultz said a “technical oversight” led to the omission, adding that the platform was amended to reflect President Obama’s personal views and the views of the Democratic party. Conveniently, the DNC chair said a “technical oversight” also led to all references to “God” being left out of the platform.

“The bottom line is we’ve taken steps, we’ve amended it, President Obama felt it was important to reflect his personal view and it’s done. And we’re moving forward and continuing this convention,” she said, adding that she is very proud of the president’s record on supporting Israel.

But that wasn’t what sent Cooper into a tizzy. Even though video of the platform amendment vote shows a chaotic scene, many people booing and hollering in protest, Wasserman Schultz argued that “there wasn’t any discord” during the vote.

After watching the interview from the CNN studio, the always fair Cooper said: “I mean, that’s an alternate universe.”

Cooper reminded his audience that it was Wasserman Schultz who attacked Mitt Romney’s campaign because “it is the candidate who sets the platform, who designs and writes the platform. It wasn’t true when she was saying it two weeks ago — but now isn’t it fair if she claimed that about the Republican platform to claim that about the Democratic platform?”

“From a reality standpoint, you can defend it, as the head of the DNC, but to say flat out there was no discord is just not true,” Cooper added.

Then there is the constant clamor of “Pro Choice” by the Democrats. The official Democratic Party platform “strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay,” Reason TV reminds us.

Anyone who watched day one of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., knows this isn’t just some strongly-worded political talk. The Democrat Party has gone all-in on the whole “pro-choice” thing.

But Reason TV wanted to know more about the party and its platform. Just what do they mean when they say “choice”?

What they found was a little puzzling. What they found were members of a party who strongly support “choice” — unless it involves food, light bulbs, right-to-work legislation or school choice:

If only these morons could see how stupid and hypocritical they look. What about the choice to not have to foot the bill for other people's abortions? Where is the 'choice' if the government forces every citizen to pay at the point of a bayonet?

For a few moments, I thought I was watching a casting call for a Federico Fellini film. After all, who in his right mind could possibly think that putting hundreds of mentally unbalanced people in a room with hundreds of violent, racist and just plain stupid people would ever be a good idea? Indeed, the soft-underbelly types who are normally relegated to episodes of “The Jerry Springer Show” are like members of the classics department at Cambridge University in comparison to the tinfoil-hat brigadiers marching across the screen at the Dependency National Committee’s (DNC’s) convention.

What I was seeing was far more disturbing than any reality TV show episode could ever hope to be. And yet, it was far more real. The quadrennial Democratic National Convention is in full swing in Charlotte, N.C. Even the so-called “Occupy” vermin have escaped their parents’ basements, packed up their bongs and their brass knuckles, and headed for the heart of the Tar Heel State.

Eva Longoria, who was previously important as a cast member on “Desperate Housewives,” is serving as one of Barack Obama’s campaign co-chairs. She isn’t particularly bright, but she’s cute enough to wipe that image of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz out of your mind. Unfortunately, she’s the only eye candy among the usual collection of crooks, criminals and liars who make up the rest of the Democratic elite who are pounding the rostrum in Charlotte.

Among them (presented in no particular order, because they all pretty much share a brain anyway):

Richard Trumka, Mary Kay Henry and Bob King: The top thugs at the violent Democratic “labor unions” — respectively, the AFL-CIO; the Service Employees International Union (SEIU); and International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW). They will presumably offer tips on beating the crap out of non-liberals without leaving noticeable marks. King will present fire safety tips for those poor rental car companies who are stuck with Chevy Volts.

Former President Jimmy Carter: The Bumpkin from Plains appeared via video address. I assume there were too many Jews in the room for the famously anti-Semitic Carter. It’s also possible that he was barred from physical attendance for fear that older voters might focus on the remarkable similarities between Carter and Barry, his successor as “Worst President Ever.”

Massachusetts Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren: That’s right, “Faux-cahontas” herself. I don’t give a damn about this eggheaded cretin. I just like how “Faux-cahontas” looks when I type it. I also like “Lie-awatha,” but it’s not getting as much traction. But, hey, check out her rockin’ cheekbones!

Former Republican Governor of Florida Charlie Crist: He’s actually listed that way on the speakers list. Because nothing says “Beat the Republicans!” like a scrub who got cut from the GOP roster.

The heads of national abortion-pushers NARAL and Planned Parenthood: The bad news is they’ll be pushing the Democratic plan to force taxpayers to fund abortions. The good news is, if they’re in North Carolina, then babies elsewhere are a little safer.

Fake Congressional witness and all-around party girl Sandra Fluke: She once again begged for governmental assistance in covering her condom and abortion costs. If you think about who she is, then paying her not to have kids isn’t really a terrible idea.

Apparently, a couple of first siblings have been tracked down and booked for appearances. One of them is not Obama’s half-brother. I guess a free trip to Charlotte isn’t worth leaving the relative safety of a hut in a Third World hellhole.

Of course, Obama himself will speak. He is the “reason for the season.” His speech will no doubt be the usual rehashing of the tired finger-pointing, excuse-making and general dishonesty that have pretty much defined his term. There’s always the possibility that the teleprompter will malfunction — in which case, hilarity will ensue almost immediately. It would be a welcome respite from the sort of creepy fascism they’re peddling to the minions. One promotional YouTube video even notes “the government is the only thing we all belong to.”

It’s worth noting that all attendees are required to show photo IDs to get in — a terrible crime against those poor illegal aliens who otherwise might have caught a glimpse of their heroic enabler. I’m sure the Democrats will make it up to them with free van rides to the polls in November.

And then there’s Valerie Jarrett tossing out a writer for The American Conservative asking about President Barack Obama’s drone strike policy. Oh, the tolerance and advocates of free speech these Democrats are.

Enough of this freak show already.

Another Night at the DNC Convention

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." — Benjamin Franklin

I am writing this blog while jumping between the DNC’s Vagina Monologues and a more serious program — the Giants/Cowboys football game and the opening of the 2012 NFL season.

Before the game begins and Bill Clinton speaks there are a few things I would like to point out a few things the Democrats will and will not say at their convention.

They will continually focus on their war on women theme, a theme that is losing ground, especially among married women who have to run households. While abortion and free contraceptives may be high on the list of younger, single women but married women have to worry about the price of groceries and gas.

They will continue to trot out progressive women such as the presidents of Planned Parenthood, N.O.W., NARAL, and Sandra Fluke, all in favor of the government paying for the killing of babies.

According to an article in the Weekly Standard the 2012 Democratic party will officially adopt an extreme position on the issue of abortion on Tuesday. According to a copy of the party platform, which was released online just before midnight on Monday, "The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy, including a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay."

“That last part--"regardless of ability to pay"--is an endorsement of taxpayer-funded abortions, a policy that President Obama has personally endorsed. Obama wants Medicaid to pay directly for elective abortions, and ObamaCare will allow beneficiaries to use federal subsidies to purchase health care plans that cover elective abortions. According to a 2009 Quinnipiac poll, 72 percent of voters oppose public funding of abortion and 23 percent support it. In other words, public funding of abortion — a policy President Obama actively supports — is as unpopular as banning abortion in the case of rape, a policy on which the media have focused their attention over the past two weeks despite the fact that neither presidential candidate supports it.”

They will continue to focus on the theme that it’s not Obama fault that we are in the fix we are in. They will blame George Bush, the Tea Party, the weather, and ATMs.

They will continue to hype the 4.5 million jobs Obama created, but they will not get into the weeds of the details in explaining the jobs that were created. According to a CNN fact check the number may be correct but there is much more behind those numbers that are not so favorable to Obama:

“The facts:

The number Castro cites is an accurate description of the growth of private-sector jobs since January 2010, when the long, steep slide in employment finally hit bottom. But while a total of 4.5 million jobs sounds great, it's not the whole picture.

Nonfarm private payrolls hit a post-recession low of 106.8 million that month, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The figure currently stands at 111.3 million as of July.

While that is indeed a gain of 4.5 million, it's only a net gain of 300,000 over the course of the Obama administration to date. The private jobs figure stood at 111 million in January 2009, the month Obama took office.

And total nonfarm payrolls, including government workers, are down from 133.6 million workers at the beginning of 2009 to 133.2 million in July 2012. There's been a net loss of nearly 1 million public-sector jobs since Obama took office, despite a surge in temporary hiring for the 2010 census.

Meanwhile, the jobs that have come back aren't the same ones that were lost.”

….

“The figure of 4.5 million jobs is accurate if you look at the most favorable period and category for the administration. But overall, there are still fewer people working now than when Obama took office at the height of the recession.”

Here are a few things they will not talk about.

1. The National Debt. Now exceeding $16 trillion, the national debt and our debt to GDP ratio has never been worse despite the fact that Obama ran on a platform of debt reduction.

During the 2008 campaign he roundly attacked President Bush for borrowing from China to spend money we didn’t have. Now it seems that as long as Obama is spending the money, the national debt doesn’t matter. Under his policies it is projected that the debt will be 200% of GDP by the 2030’s. Obama has already presided over a more than 25% increase in government spending in just three and a half years. Unlike the RNC convention in Tampa, there surely won’t be a National Debt Clock hanging in the arena in Charlotte.

2. The Real Unemployment Rate. Everyone knows the unemployment rate is hovering over 8% and the president has to deliver his message to a nation that hasn’t seen the employment bounce-back promised from the $1 trillion in stimulus. However, what you won’t hear at the DNC are the real numbers — 23 million people unemployed or underemployed making the real unemployment rate, including those who have stopped looking for work at a staggering 14.9%. Unemployment is also being concealed by the between 3-4 million people who have been added to the Social Security disability insurance program since Obama took office.

3. Gas Prices. Obama hit President Bush hard for rising gas prices in 2008 and promised Americans relief at the pump. When he took office, the national average for a gallon of gas stood at $1.95. Today, on Labor Day, it’s nearly double, and yet he scarcely mentions it. How could he after appointing an Energy Secretary that believes it would somehow be good to have gas prices similar to Europe or after spending $1 billion on a failed so-called green jobs program? Obama’s stonewalling of the Keystone XL pipeline is also further evidence that the president is too focused on making the Chevy Volt viable rather than doing anything to lower gas and energy prices for Americans.

4. More than one third of Americans are on Government Assistance. Obama seems to be all for the culture of dependency, but don’t expect him to trumpet the idea that more than one third of the country is now receiving some form of means-tested government assistance. That number is up from about 24% under Bush. Of course, this welfare state isn’t a creation of the President, but between ObamaCare and his recent gutting of the work requirement for welfare recipients, Obama is well on his way to building his progressive utopia. The Romney camp should emphasize this point. Americans will find it depressing and distasteful.

5. The Federal Jobs Created. For all the talk about the unemployment rate and sluggish private sector growth, Obama has presided over the creation of nearly 150,000 new unionized government jobs during his term. This included thousands of new workers to manage ObamaCare at the IRS and the Department of Health and Human Services. This is a big slap in the face to the unemployed in this country when you consider that the average salary for a federal worker is now in excess of $70,000 plus benefits. Federal workers who benefit from union protection are often doing far better than their private sector counterparts these days. And while GOP governors have been reducing the public payrolls on a state level, Obama has continued to grow the federal bureaucracy.

A majority of voters believe the country is worse off today than it was four years ago and that President Obama does not deserve reelection, according to a new poll for The Hill:

“Fifty-two percent of likely voters say the nation is in “worse condition” now than in September 2008, while 54 percent say Obama does not deserve reelection based solely on his job performance:

Only 31 percent of voters believe the nation is in “better condition,” while 15 percent say it is “about the same,” the poll found. Just 40 percent of voters said Obama deserves reelection.

The results highlight the depth of voter dissatisfaction confronting Obama as he makes his case for a second term at this week’s Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.

They also strongly suggest Democrats need to convince voters the election should be a choice between Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney, rather than a referendum on the president.

Obama’s biggest problem remains voter unhappiness with his handling of the economy.

Fifty percent of voters said they were “very unsatisfied” with Obama’s stewardship of the economy. Another 8 percent said they were somewhat unsatisfied.

More voters in The Hill’s poll think Romney will win the fall election than think Obama will win — despite state-by-state polls that suggest the president would have an edge in a number of swing states if the election were held today.

The poll found 46 percent of voters believe Romney will win the Nov. 6 election, compared to 43 percent who said they expect Obama to win.”

Click here to view the data from the Hill Poll.

There is a great article from across the pond in the Telegraph on why we should tune into the Romney-Ryan show and how the debate in America is beginning as to whether or not democratic socialism with its cradle to grave benefits can continue to be funded by free market capitalism. In the September 1^st article Janet Daley writes:

“Whatever the outcome of the American presidential election, one thing is certain: the fighting of it will be the most significant political event of the decade. Last week’s Republican national convention sharpened what had been until then only a vague, inchoate theme: this campaign is going to consist of the debate that all Western democratic countries should be engaging in, but which only the United States has the nerve to undertake. The question that will demand an answer lies at the heart of the economic crisis from which the West seems unable to recover. It is so profoundly threatening to the governing consensus of Britain and Europe as to be virtually unutterable here, so we shall have to rely on the robustness of the US political class to make the running.

What is being challenged is nothing less than the most basic premise of the politics of the center ground: that you can have free market economics and a democratic socialist welfare system at the same time. The magic formula in which the wealth produced by the market economy is redistributed by the state – from those who produce it to those whom the government believes deserve it – has gone bust. The crash of 2008 exposed a devastating truth that went much deeper than the discovery of a generation of delinquent bankers, or a transitory property bubble. It has become apparent to anyone with a grip on economic reality that free markets simply cannot produce enough wealth to support the sort of universal entitlement programs which the populations of democratic countries have been led to expect. The fantasy may be sustained for a while by the relentless production of phony money to fund benefits and job-creation projects, until the economy is turned into a meaningless internal recycling mechanism in the style of the old Soviet Union.

Or else democratically elected governments can be replaced by puppet austerity regimes which are free to ignore the protests of the populace when they are deprived of their promised entitlements. You can, in other words, decide to debauch the currency which underwrites the market economy, or you can dispense with democracy. Both of these possible solutions are currently being tried in the European Union, whose leaders are reduced to talking sinister gibberish in order to evade the obvious conclusion: the myth of a democratic socialist society funded by capitalism is finished. This is the defining political problem of the early 21st century.

Mitt Romney had been hinting, in an oblique, undeveloped way, at this line of argument as he moved tentatively toward finding a real message. Then he took the startling step of appointing Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, and the earth moved. If Romney was the embodiment of the spirit of a free market, Ryan was its prophet. His speech at the convention was so dangerous to the Obama Democrats, with their aspirations toward European-style democratic socialism, that they unleashed their “fact checkers” to find mistakes (“lies”) in it. (Remember the old Yes Minister joke: “You can always accuse them of errors of detail, sir. There are always some errors of detail”.) When Romney and Ryan offer their arguments to the American people, they are, of course, at an advantage over almost any British or European politician. Contrary to what many know-nothing British observers seem to think, the message coming out of Tampa was not Tea Party extremism. It was just a reassertion of the basic values of American political culture: self-determination, individual aspiration and genuine community, as opposed to belief in the state as the fount of all social virtue. Romney caught this rather nicely in his acceptance speech, with the comment that the US was built on the idea of “a system that is dedicated to creating tomorrow’s prosperity rather than trying to redistribute today’s.” Or as Marco Rubio put it in his speech, Obama is “trying ideas that people came to America to get away from”.

So it would be deeply misleading to imply that this campaign will be a contest between what Britain likes to call “progressive” politics and some atavistic longing for a return to frontier America where everybody made a success of his own life with no help from anybody but his kith and kin. In the midst of the impassioned and often nasty debate about the future of health care, in which Ryan was depicted as a granny-killer, there has been some serious Republican thinking about the universal provision of medical care for pensioners (or “seniors” as they are called in the US). Because, you see, the debate over there has gone way beyond welfare reform: the need to restrict benefit dependency among the underclass is an argument that has been won. What is at issue now is much more politically contentious: universal entitlements such as comprehensive Medicare and social security are known to be unaffordable in their present form. Ryan, the radical economic thinker, suggests a solution for Medicare in the form of a voucher system. Patients could choose from competing health providers, with a ceiling on the cost of procedures and treatments, instead of simply being given blanket no-choice care. Thus, the government would get better value for money, and individuals would have more say in their own treatment. Now why doesn’t anybody here think of applying that mechanism to the NHS? Oh, yes, some people have – but nobody in power will listen to them.”

It takes a Britt to see what is happing in the United States and why this election is boiling down to one simple question — can we afford democratic socialism anymore?

Bubba’s Speech.

As mentioned earlier I did not watch Bill Clinton’s speech while the football game was on, but I did catch the reply later on Fox. I guess I an somewhat of a masochists that after watching the team I had picked in the football pool lose I chose to continue the pain by watch Bill Clinton.

It's a fact of life in Washington that what one party considers a principled stand, the opposition considers pigheadedness. Compromise? That's the other guy's problem.

But when former President Bill Clinton took the stage at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, he portrayed President Barack Obama as a pragmatic compromiser who has been stymied at every turn by Republicans. There was no mention of the role that the president and the Democrats have played in grinding compromise to a halt on some of the most important issues facing the country.

That was among the lines by the former president and others Wednesday that either cherry-picked facts or mischaracterized the opposition. Here is what AP had to say about a few of Clinton’s remarks:

CLINTON: "When times are tough, constant conflict may be good politics but in the real world, but in the real world, cooperation works better. Unfortunately, the faction that now dominates the Republican Party doesn't see it that way. They think government is the enemy and compromise is weakness. One of the main reasons America should re-elect President Obama is that he is still committed to cooperation."

THE FACTS: From Clinton's speech, voters would have no idea that the inflexibility of both parties is to blame for much of the gridlock. Right from the beginning Obama brought in as his first chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, a man known for his getting his way, not for getting along.

One of the more high-profile examples of a deal that fell apart was the outline of a proposed "grand bargain" budget agreement between Obama and House Speaker John Boehner in 2011.

The deal would have required compromise from both sides. It slashed domestic spending more than most Democrats wanted and would have raised some taxes, which most Republicans oppose.

Boehner couldn't sell the plan to tea party factions in the House or to other conservative activists. And Obama found himself accused of going too far by some Democratic leaders. The deal died before it ever even came up for a vote.

In another instance, Obama appointed a bipartisan group, known as the Simpsons-Bowles Commission, to recommend ways to fix major fiscal problems like Social Security and Medicare. The commission issued its recommendations but fell three votes short of formally endorsing them. And Obama mostly walked away from the report. He later incorporated some of the less contentious proposals from the report into legislation he supported.

But that ensured the tough compromises would not get made.

The problem with compromising in Washington is that there are few true moderates left in either party. The notion that Republicans are the only ones standing in the way of compromise is inaccurate.

CLINTON: Clinton suggested that Obama's health care law is keeping health care costs in check.

"For the last two years, health care spending has grown under 4 percent, for the first time in 50 years. So, are we all better off because President Obama fought for it and passed it? You bet we are."

THE FACTS: That's wishful thinking at best. The nation's total health care tab has been growing at historically low rates, but most experts attribute that to continued uncertainty over the economy, not to Obama's health care law.

Two of the main cost-control measures in Obama's law - a powerful board to keep Medicare spending manageable and a tax on high cost health insurance plans - have yet to take effect.

Under the law, Medicare has launched dozens of experiments aimed at providing quality care for lower cost, but most of those are still in their infancy and measurable results have yet to be obtained. Former administration officials say the law deserves at least part of the credit for easing health care inflation, but even they acknowledge that the lackluster economy is playing a major role.

Meanwhile, people insured through the workplace by and large have seen little relief from rising premiums and cost shifts. According to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, the average premium for job-based family coverage rose from $13,375 in 2009 when Obama took office to $15,073 in 2011. During the same period, the average share paid by employees rose from $3,515 to $4,129.

While those premium increases cannot be blamed on the health care law - as Republicans try to do - neither can Democrats claim credit for breaking the back of health care inflation.

CLINTON: "I know many Americans are still angry and frustrated with the economy. I experienced the same thing in 1994 and early 1995. Our policies were working but most people didn't feel it yet. By 1996, the economy was roaring, halfway through the longest peacetime expansion in American history."

THE FACTS: Clinton is counting on voters to recall the 1990s wistfully and to cast a vote for Obama in hopes of replicating those days in a second term. But Clinton leaves out the abrupt downward turn the economy took near the end of his own second term and the role his policies played in the setting the stage for the historic financial meltdown of 2008.

While the economy and markets experienced a record expansion for most of the rest of Clinton's two-term presidency, at the start of 2000, there were troubling signs. Then-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned in February 2000 that "we are entering a period of considerable turbulence in financial markets."

Sure enough, the tech-heavy NASDAQ composite stock index and the Dow Jones industrial average both peaked in March 2000. The bursting of the high-tech bubble dragged down the economy and markets through the rest of the year. From September 2000 to January 2001 when Clinton left office, the NASDAQ dropped 46 percent. Even now, in 2012, the NASDAQ has not returned to its 2000 peak. By March 2001, the economy toppled into recession.

Also, as president, Clinton supported the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, a law dating back to the Great Depression that separated banking from high-risk financial speculation. Robert Rubin, who had been Clinton's first treasury secretary, helped broker the final deal on Capitol Hill that enabled the repeal legislation to pass. Some financial historians say the repeal of the law paved the way for banks to invest in risky investments like mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations that played a role in the 2008 financial meltdown.

CLINTON: "Their campaign pollster said, `We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.' Now that is true. I couldn't have said it better myself - I just hope you remember that every time you see the ad."

THE FACTS: Clinton, who famously finger-wagged a denial on national television about his sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky and was subsequently impeached in the House on a perjury charge, has had his own uncomfortable moments over telling the truth. "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," Clinton told television viewers. Later, after he was forced to testify to a grand jury, Clinton said his statements were "legally accurate" but also allowed that he "misled people, including even his wife."

Of course the Kool-Aid drinkers of the left and some independents will not bother with facts. When Clinton made that remark on facts the audience roared approval and Clinton smirked that little smile of his. But, as John Adams said the trail of the British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre; “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”

Obama has struggled to win over working-class whites since the 2008 primaries, when he prevailed despite losing that voting bloc to Hillary Clinton. He received votes of about 40% of whites without college degrees in the 2008 general election.

An average of recent Quinnipiac and Pew surveys show that he is now closer to 34%. That's close to the danger zone. In 1984, Walter Mondale got 31% of their vote and was clobbered by Ronald Reagan.

Robert Schmuhl, professor of American studies at the University of Notre Dame, says that while Clinton is still wildly popular among Democrats, "whether Obama becomes the beneficiary is an open question."

He notes that Obama seems to be working harder to woo other groups.

"The Obama campaign is niche-oriented, bent on locating and mining votes from specific constituencies," he said. "We've seen it already in cultivating women, Latinos, gays and, of course, African Americans.

Others voice stronger doubts Obama can use Clinton to win over the white working class.

“That's Obama's goal, though I question how much effect a speech by Bill Clinton can have two months ahead of the election," said Larry Sabato, professor of political science at the University of Virginia. "First, a lot of those blue-collar workers will be watching football. Second, those who do watch may like Clinton better, but does that mean they'll vote for Obama? That's quite a leap."

There are other Democratic politicians who could appeal to working-class whites, but if the Obama campaign tried to persuade them to speak at the convention in Charlotte, N.C., they were unsuccessful.

Yesterday in Charlotte the Democratic National Convention began as amateurishly as President Obama’s first term has been. Three times Mayor Villaraigosa of Los Angeles tried to get a majority of Democratic delegates to agree to add God and Jerusalem back into the Democratic Platform. Three times he failed. But on the third time, he declared he heard a two-thirds vote for changing the platform. I would note that I saw a video clip of this and the two-thirds was what was showing on Villaraigosa’s teleprompter. This was a preordained vote.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz lied again saying there was no fight and called it a “technical change”, but the Democratic delegates booed putting God and his holy city back into the Democratic Platform.

The Democrats and most of the mainstream media live in a symbiotic relationship and feedback loop. When Todd Akin says something dumb, the media seizes on it and attacks Todd Akin and the GOP. For the past several weeks the media has fixated on how out of touch the GOP is, its platform is, and its Presidential candidate is.

At the same time, the media has been largely silent on the Democratic Platform except for yesterday’s ridiculousness. Even then, the media mostly failed to point out that the Obama campaign said it had approved the platform removing God and Jerusalem, while going to great lengths to point out Obama intervened to put them back in.

Meanwhile, the Democrats booed God and his holy city the day after claiming we all belong the government as if it is some sort of Rotary Club.

This becomes the fatal problem for the Democrats — the media reinforces that the Democrats are grounded in reality and connected to America when they are not.

The Democrats actually have a very extremist position on abortion. The media that spent so long focused on the GOP’s position has barely dealt with the Democrats. Why? Because most of the mainstream media is in ideological lockstep with the Democrats on this. It’s hard to tell the Democrats they’ve gone too far astray from mainstream America when the mainstream media is over on the left-hand side to begin with.

The Democrats, in other words, overplayed their hand on the War on Women and there is no media voice they listen to saying, “Hold up, you’ve gone too far.” Most of the media is with or to the left of the Democrats on this. For a year now you and I have been hearing about the growing secularization of and atheism in America. I now see that’s no longer a coincidence, but another effort to feed the Democrats’ feedback loop in much the same way polls were being churned out in the press in 2010 showing how popular ObamaCare would be despite all objective polling showing it was not.

Consequently, the Democrats turned Sandra Fluke and Elizabeth Warren into cult heroes on feminism and liberal issues. Barack Obama utters, “you didn’t build that” and the Democrats start their convention telling us we all belong to the government. They get rid of God and Jerusalem, give a podium to two disastrous speeches by Fluke and Warren that I’m willing to bet did more harm than good, hand much of the rest of the convention over to abortion rights activists, see MSNBC hosts wear buttons with uteruses on them, and think that they are connecting with middle America because the media is not raising red flags in the way the media does with the GOP.

The feedback loop between the Democrats and the media has pushed the Democrats well outside the mainstream and I believe there is a silent majority looking at this festival of the bizarre in Charlotte in absolute revulsion. They hear “fair share” and cringe. They hear Bill Clinton ask if people are better off than they were four years ago and are shocked the Democrats yell back “yes.”

The Democrats have made the one always fatal mistake anyone can make in politics — they’ve believed their own press.

By the way the Giants lost to Cowboys 24-17 and I lost the first pick in this year’s football pool.

We Belong To The Government

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” — The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, July 4, 1776.

Last night the Democratic National Convention started 2012 convention with a short video clip on the big screen at the Charlotte Convention Center proclaiming proudly that “We all Belong to the Government.”

In a statement right out of a communist state, the Democrats started their convention with a bit of propaganda declaring we all belong to the government. Seriously. They started their convention with this video:

“We do believe you can use government in a good way. Government is the only thing we all belong to,” the narrator says, with the words “Democratic National Convention” appearing in the bottom left. “We’re different churches, different clubs, but we’re together as a part of our city, or our county, or our state — and our nation,” the narrator adds. But despite the video playing on the convention floor, the two major players at the convention quickly passed blame.

“The video in question was produced and paid for by the host committee of the city of Charlotte. It’s neither an Obama For America (OFA) nor a DNC video, despite what the Romney campaign is claiming,” the Obama campaign told Buzzfeed. “It’s time for them to find a new target for their faux outrage.”

Dan Murrey, executive director of the host committee, fell on his sword:

“The “Welcome to Charlotte” video was solely produced and paid for by the Host Committee’s New American City Fund, which promotes the city of Charlotte and welcomes our guests. The intent of this video was to tell the story of this region and it is completely unaffiliated with the Obama campaign or the Democratic National Committee.”

This is still unreal. The founders, like Madison, Jefferson, Adams, and Washington, must be rolling over in their grave. The constitution starts with “We the People,” not we the government. The government belongs to us, we do not belong to the government. The government is our servant. We do not serve government. We are Americans. We are not all wards or property of the state, despite Barack Obama’s best efforts.

But even though the campaign and the DNC want to distance themselves, the idea of the preeminence of government is alive and well at the convention, meaning the video fits right in with the message and the disavowing is curious. For example, Fox’s Chris Wallace observed after Michelle Obama’s Tuesday night speech:

“I’ve got to say, listening closely to the speech one of the things that struck me was it was all about government,” Wallace said Tuesday night during Fox News’ coverage of the DNC. “When she talked at the beginning about the people who exemplify the best of the American spirit, she talked about teachers”

He continued:

“When she talked about ways to build the middle class, it was all about the auto bailout and student loans and health care reform, once again, all government programs…That was a subtle subtext to the entire speech.”

I think we can say the Democrats are fully embracing Barack Obama’s claim that “you didn’t build that.” It’s clear from this we did not take Barack Obama out of context. The Democrats really do believe government built it all.”

I think we can say the Democrats are fully embracing Barack Obama’s claim that “you didn’t build that.” It’s clear from this we did not take Barack Obama out of context. The Democrats really do believe government built it all.

This is what the Soviets did in their propaganda. They portrayed the people in service to the state. The collective overrode the individuals. The Democrats are finally embracing their inner Marxists. Consistent with this, they’ve ditched God from their platform. This is the paragraph that was in the 2008 platform:

"We need a government that stands up for the hopes, values, and interests of working people, and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given-potential."

Now the words "God-given" have been removed. Religion is, after all, the opiate of the people and is unnecessary when we are all collectively creatures of the state.

By the way, you’ve now heard the Democrats’ audio that “we all belong to the government.” I’ll see you that and raise you Clint Eastwood. Listen to what he had to say on this topic and tell me who is more in touch with America?

American history can be divided into three phases: the American Founding, the crisis of slavery and the Civil War, and Progressivism.

The meaning of the American Founding can best be understood by considering two primary source documents: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Looking to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” as the source of their arguments, the Founders established a constitutional system of limited government, marked by the separation of powers, and based on the consent of the governed through a system of representation. We are now in the throes of the progressivism of the masterminds who would rule us with their vision of a state run utopia where government, not natures God doles out our rights. No matter what the talking heads and spin doctors of the Democrat party will tell you this is what the Democrats really believe.

The idea of a “living constitution” takes concrete political shape in the form of a bureaucratic administrative state. As a result, modern American government to a large degree consists of thousands of unelected masterminds, bureaucrats and numerous unaccountable regulatory agencies. By their very nature, they undermine the Founding principles of limited government, representation, and the separation of powers. Unless the American people—the sovereign rulers of the United States of America—halt the growth of bureaucratic despotism, we risk losing the last vestiges of constitutional government. And the Democrat spin doctors call this a “distraction” from their real issue of providing government sponsored social justice.

Both the pro-slavery proponents in the Civil War and the tenets of Progressivism challenge and offer a critique of the American Founding. They both assume that the principles of the Declaration—natural rights, equality, consent of the governed—are historically and scientifically false. The forward march of science and an ever-improving human nature—progress—have disproved them, which in turn requires that the government instituted by the Founders be discarded and replaced.

For over one hundred years, Progressives have systematically derided the principles of the American Founding as outdated and inapplicable to the complexities of contemporary politics. According to Woodrow Wilson, the Founders’ Constitution is mechanistic and Newtonian, rather than evolutionary and Darwinian. Wilson sought to substitute the notion of a “living constitution” for the Founders’ Constitution. The Newtonian axioms got us to the moon and beyond while the evolutionary theories of Darwin produced Auschwitz.

The idea of a “living constitution” takes concrete political shape in the form of a bureaucratic administrative state. As a result, modern American government to a large degree consists of thousands of unelected masterminds, bureaucrats and numerous unaccountable regulatory agencies. By their very nature, they undermine the Founding principles of limited government, representation, and the separation of powers. Unless the American people—the sovereign rulers of the United States of America—halt the growth of bureaucratic despotism, we risk losing the last vestiges of constitutional government.

Progressive political science was based on the assumption that society could be organized in such a way that social ills would disappear. Frank Goodnow, president of Johns Hopkins University and the first president of the American Political Science Association, helped pioneer the idea that separating politics from administration was the key to progress. In his speech, given at Brown University in 1916, he addresses the need to move beyond the ideas of the Founders when he stated:

“In a word, man is regarded now throughout Europe, contrary to the view expressed by Rousseau, as primarily a member of society and secondarily as an individual. The rights which he possesses are, it is believed, conferred upon him, not by his Creator, but rather by the society to which he belongs. What they are is to be determined by the legislative authority in view of the needs of that society. Social expediency, rather than natural right, is thus to determine the sphere of individual freedom of action.

…..

“As our conditions have changed, as the importance of the social group has been realized, as it has been perceived that social efficiency must be secured if we are to attain and retain our place in the field of national competition which is practically coterminous with the world, the attitude of our courts on the one hand towards private rights and on the other hand towards social duties has gradually been changing. The general theory remains the same. Man is still said to be possessed of inherent natural rights of which he may not be deprived without his consent. The courts still now and then hold unconstitutional acts of legislature which appear to encroach upon those rights. At the same time the sphere of governmental action is continually widening and the actual content of individual private rights is being increasingly narrowed

We no longer believe as we once believed that a good social organization can be secured merely through stressing our rights. The emphasis is being laid more and more on social duties. The efficiency of the social group is taking on in our eyes a greater importance that it once had. We are not, it is true, taking the view that the individual man lives for the state of which he is a member and that state efficiency is in some mysterious way an admirable end in and of itself.”

A few more observations on last night’s Roman Carnival called the Democratic National Convention, or as I like to call it — The Vagina Monologues.

Last week the Democrats trotted out their outrage specialists to lament on televisions everywhere that Mitt Romney did not talk about any of the wars.

Yesterday, the Democratic National Convention started in Charlotte and the Democrats are doing their best to not mention one word: sixteen, i.e. the $16 trillion in national debt the nation faces as of close of business this past Friday. If you have a problem getting your head around the number 16 trillion here are a few breakdowns that may help you:

• $16 trillion translates to $135,000 for every family in the United States
• With 16 trillion you could buy the New York Yankees 8,600 times
• With $16 trillion you could buy Apple 25 times
• $16 trillion is greater than the combined GDP of all of Europe

In fact, the Democrats spent Monday night attacking the GOP for a so called war on women while remembering Ted Kennedy. Mary Jo Kopechne was unavailable for comment.

The entire night seem focused on “reproductive rights” which is just a politically correct euphemism for abortion which is itself a politically correct euphemism for killing kids.

So no talk about debt or entitlements or jobs, but abortion was a fixation. It’s just as galling that the media spent several weeks painting the GOP as out of touch on abortion when, in fact, the Democrats’ abortion on demand position is even more out of touch with both American men and American women.

The most striking thing about the whole convention so far is that, for a President campaigning on the motto “Forward” we saw Kennedys, a celebration of Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, and a whole lot of the past.

As an aside, there is a whole lot of Republican outrage that the Democrats used now deceased Ted Kennedy to attack Mitt Romney from beyond the grave. In their tribute, they used bits of Kenney’s campaign against Mitt Romney for the Massachusetts Senate in 1994.

I’m not upset they used Ted Kennedy to attack Mitt Romney from beyond the grave. I’m upset they accused Mitt Romney of killing a woman and used a man who really did kill a woman to attack Mitt Romney.

I will have a difficult time watching tonight’s coverage of the DNC Convention as the New York Giants will be playing the Dallas Cowboys at Met Life Stadium at the same time — what a shame. The NFL should be more considerate of the DNC as this is night Bill Clinton will speak. So the question is Eli Manning or Bill Clinton. I think I will go with Eli and read Clinton’s speech without the fanatical applause. It is also a shame I will miss the brilliance of the oration of Sandra Fluke who wants the government to pay for transgender operations.

Labor Day

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them." — American writer H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Labor Day began over 100 years. To appreciate it, one needs to know the history preceding it.

At the time the United States was founded, most jobs were agricultural or in trades, such as blacksmiths, cobblers, bakers, upholsterers, etc. Then the Industrial Revolution began with the harnessing of water and steam power, leading to the creation of factories which could mass produce items inexpensively. Most factories were located in the Northern States.

In early United States history, there was no Income Tax, as the Federal Government was funded primarily from:

Excise Taxes on items like salt, tobacco, liquor; and

Tariff Taxes on imports making them more expensive, so people would buy goods produced in American factories.

The problem was that the Tariff Taxes that helped the North, hurt the South, as the South had no factories to protect. At one point, nearly 90% of the Federal Budget was from Tariff Taxes collected at Southern Ports, fueling the animosity which led up to the Civil War.

After the Civil War, the North passed more Tariff Taxes which allowed factories to grow enormous.

Inventions and advances in manufacturing made more and more goods available to the masses of people at cheaper and cheaper prices, resulting in the fastest increase in the standard of living and per capita income for common men and women in world history.

New ways of making stronger steel led to the building of bridges, buildings, steamboats, and mining machinery. Railroads now could take people safely and inexpensively across the entire nation opening up unprecedented mobility and opportunity. Immigrants arriving in America could get jobs working in factories.

George Pullman founded a Pullman Railroad Sleeping Car Company in Illinois just outside of Chicago. He saw that workers needed a place to live, so he built them houses in a safe little village around the factory. Their rent was deducted from their paychecks and they were paid in company script.

There were company owned grocery stores. It was thought to be a utopian workers' community and worked well for over a decade. Then something happened. In 1893, there was a nationwide financial panic and orders for railroad sleeping cars declined.

George Pullman had to lay off hundreds of employees, and make cuts in wages to the rest, though the rent and groceries stayed the same price. Employees walked out, demanding lower rents and higher pay.

Growing discontent provided a seedbed for Karl Marx's theory of class struggle and Communist redistribution of wealth.

A young worker named Eugene V. Debs led a strike of workers, and railroad workers across the nation boycotted trains carrying Pullman cars. There was rioting, pillaging, and burning of railroad cars. It became a national issue when mail trains were interrupted.

Democrat President Grover Cleveland declared the strike a federal crime and deployed 12,000 troops to break the strike. More violence erupted, and two men were killed.

In 1882, Matthew Maguire, a machinist, first proposed the holiday while serving as secretary of the CLU (Central Labor Union) of New York. Others argue that it was first proposed by Peter J. McGuire of the American Federation of Labor in May 1882, after witnessing the annual labor festival held in Toronto, Canada.

Oregon was the first state to make it a holiday in 1887. By the time it became a federal holiday in 1894, thirty states officially celebrated Labor Day. Following the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals during the Pullman Strike, the United States Congress unanimously voted to approve rush legislation that made Labor Day a national holiday; President Grover Cleveland signed it into law a mere six days after the end of the strike. The September date originally chosen by the CLU of New York and observed by many of the nation's trade unions for the past several years was selected rather than the more widespread International Workers' Day because Cleveland was concerned that observance of the latter would be associated with the nascent Communist, Syndicalist and Anarchist movements that, though distinct from one another, had rallied to commemorate the Haymarket Affair in International Workers' Day. All U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and the territories have made it a statutory holiday.

It was an election year, and Grover Cleveland thought it would help his re-election if he appeased the workers, so he pushed through a National Labor Day. He chose the first Monday in September, rather than May 1, as he did not want it to be in coordination with the Communist "International Workers Day.

Eugene Debs went to prison and Cleveland lost the election, but Labor Day remained a national holiday.

Unions successfully advocated the 8 hour day, the 40 hour work week, minimum wages, safer working conditions, and more benefits for workers. With these unprecedented improvements came a consequence: "out-sourcing."

After World War II America helped rebuild Germany and Japan. And a global economy emerged. With newer factories and cheaper labor, foreign countries could produce items for less, whereas in America costs continued to increase with:

• Higher wages;
• Increased taxes;
• Expensive lawsuits;
• Burdensome government regulations;
• Greater environmental restrictions; and
• Crony capitalism, where government favors particular companies which support a political agenda, leaving other companies at a financial disadvantage.

These cost increases resulted in American made goods being more expensive as compared to foreign made goods.

As people bought less American made products, American factories shut down and jobs disappeared.

In 1950, about 50 percent of workers were union members, but today it has shrunk to around 7.6 percent in the private sector. But the power and influence of the public sector and teachers unions has been growing since the 1970’s and today the number of public sector and teacher union members far surpass those of the counterparts in the private sector.

America's increasingly uncertain economic future is weakening its international influence. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who spent 11 years in Communist prisons and labor camps, warned in Washington, D.C., on June 30, 1975:

"I would like to call upon America to be more careful with its trust and prevent those, because of short-sightedness and still others out of self-interest, from falsely using the struggle for peace and for social justice to lead you down a false road. Because they are trying to weaken you; they are trying to disarm your strong and magnificent country in the face of this fearful threat. I call upon you: ordinary working men of America. Do not let yourselves become weak."

To bring jobs back to America, the answer is as simple as making it more profitable for factories to be located here than there.

Today’s labor movement is a far cry from the days of Matthew Maguire and Eugene V. Debs. It is no longer concerned with workers in the private sector. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2011, the union membership rate--the percent of wage and salary workers who were members of a union — was 11.8 percent, essentially unchanged from 11.9 percent in 2010 of wage and salary workers belonging to unions, at 14.8 million, also showed little movement over the year. In 1983, the first year for which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent and there were 17.7 million union workers.

In 2011, 7.6 million employees in the public sector belonged to a union, compared with 7.2 million union workers in the private sector. The union membership rate for public-sector workers (37.0 percent) was substantially higher than the rate for private-sector workers (6.9 percent). Within the public sector, local government workers had the highest union membership rate, 43.2 percent. This group includes workers in heavily unionized occupations, such as teachers, police officers, and firefighters. Private-sector industries with high unionization rates included transportation and utilities (21.1 percent) and construction (14.0 percent), while low unionization rates occurred in agriculture and related industries (1.4 percent) and in financial activities (1.6 percent).

Some of the highlights from the 2011 data are:

• Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (37.0 percent) more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.9 percent). To
• Workers in education, training, and library occupations had the highest unionization rate, at 36.8 percent, while the lowest rate occurred in sales and related occupations (3.0 percent). (See table )
• Black workers were more likely to be union members than were white, Asian, or Hispanic workers. (See table)
• Among states, New York continued to have the highest union membership rate (24.1 percent) and North Carolina again had the lowest rate (2.9 percent). (See table)

In 2011, 7.6 million employees in the public sector belonged to a union, compared with 7.2 million union workers in the private sector. The union membership rate for public-sector workers (37.0 percent) was substantially higher than the rate for private-sector workers (6.9 percent). Within the public sector, local government workers had the highest union membership rate, 43.2 percent. This group includes workers in heavily unionized occupations, such as teachers, police officers, and firefighters. Private-sector industries with high unionization rates included transportation and utilities (21.1 percent) and construction (14.0 percent), while low unionization rates occurred in agriculture and related industries (1.4 percent) and in financial activities (1.6 percent).

Among occupational groups, education, training, and library occupations (36.8 percent) and protective service occupations (34.5 percent) had the highest unionization rates in 2011. Sales and related occupations (3.0 percent) and farming, fishing, and forestry occupations (3.4 percent) had the lowest unionization rates.

When it comes to money collected from public sector union dues the Democrats are the largest recipients by far with the National Education Association ($6,800,167) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees ($4,235,500) leading the pack.

Public employee unions represent workers at every level of government – federal, state and local. Since contract negotiations for these workers are dependent not on private corporations, but on the size of government budgets, this is the one segment of the labor movement that can actually contribute directly to the people with ultimate responsibility for its livelihood. While their giving pattern matches that of other unions (which overwhelmingly support Democrats), public sector unions also concentrate contributions on members of Congress from both parties who sit on committees that deal with federal budgets and agencies. (You can see more statistics on this by clicking here)

Union bosses have made such a big deal about being upset with the DNC’s pick of Charlotte, North Carolina for its convention (even going so far as having an August “shadow convention”) that, while they may be in the state for the Barack Obama nomination celebration, they’re making every effort to make it look like they’re absent. As noted above North Carolina is a “Right to Work State” with the lowest percentage of union membership (2.9 percent) in the nation.

Adding insult to injury, not only is North Carolina the least unionized state in the nation, the stadium where Barack Obama is giving his acceptance speech was built by entirely union-free labor.

The lack of union support (and money) at the convention is likely why the DNC is giving away free tickets to people from neighboring states to go and watch Obama’s acceptance speech on Thursday.

Although about a dozen of the building trade unions, along with Machinists’ union boss Tom Buffenbarger are boycotting (and some plan to protest) the Democrats’ celebration, other union bosses are attending the convention. However, they are taking fewer members and a much lower profile than past conventions. It should also be noted that the unions are upset over Obama’s cancelation of the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a project that would have created 20,000 union jobs.

Eight years ago, when John Kerry tried to defeat the incumbent George W. Bush, he accused Bush of leading a “jobless recovery.” When the economy started creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, Kerry and the Democrats then claimed that Bush was creating mostly “McJobs,” low-wage, non-union positions rather than higher-paying jobs for people with significant skills.

Today, the Obama administration keeps claiming to have added 4.3 million jobs by choosing to start from February 2010 rather than the start of the recovery in June 2009 or the passage of Barack Obama's stimulus package in February 2009. The Obama recovery in full has only added less than 65,000 jobs per month, far below the level needed to keep up with population growth (125K-150K per month), and the civilian population participation rate has fallen to a 30-year low this spring. A new study now shows that even those jobs that have been added are the “McJobs" that Kerry inaccurately accused Bush's recovery of generating. We're not even keeping up with population growth in this recovery. The average jobs added per month since January has been 83,286, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, still a long way from keeping up with population growth. That's not a recovery in jobs at all, which anyone looking at the participation rate (63.7%) would instantly recognize. The data shows that even the paltry job creation of the Obama recovery has done little to advance the economy. Businesses won't invest in job-creating activities that require more expensive labor until they can reliably calculate future costs, which in this regulatory and tax environment, they cannot do. That's why companies are sitting on their capital, and why we won't get anything but McJobs in significant numbers until those policies change.

You can see that there is a split in today’s labor movement. Unlike the 1950s when 50% of American Workers belonged to unions — the vast majority in the private sector, particularly in manufacturing and construction — today’s labor movement is much more focused on the public sector employee. Unlike the private sector unions where the health of the business economy influences the wages and benefits the public sector unions are bankrupting the United States with their wage demands. Pensions, health and welfare costs, and work rules. It is the American Taxpayer that bears the financial burden for their demands.