"... wait until you see what it costs when it's free"

"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free."

-PJ O'Rourke
The Liberty Manifesto (1993)

Ask not what you can do for yourself ...

Obama to the fictional 'Julia':

"Ask not what you can do for yourself, ask what your country can do for you."

Spiking the Football

This video is powerful.  It highlights one key point of Obama's 'unseemly' bin Laden campaign ad which I haven't seen made elsewhere.  Clinton says during the ad ...

"Suppose the Navy Seals had gone in there and it hadn't been bin Laden ... Suppose they'd been captured or killed.  The downside would have been horrible for him."

Really?  Horrible for Obama?  What about the downside for the aforementioned, hypothetically dead or captured Navy Seals?   This isn't a quote taken out of context.  It's the quote Obama chose to put into his own ad, supposedly demonstrating his 'courage'.  

Obama on Romney

“I assume that people meant what they said when they said it. That’s been at least my practice.”

Apparently then, Obama meant it when he said these things ...

Best News I've Heard All Day

"... a train wreck for the Obama administration"

From Santelli to Santorum, the Rise and Fall of the Tea Party

Three years ago, almost to the day, Rick Santelli, on the floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange, called for a "Chicago Tea Party", in response to continued government bailouts.  His rant captured the mood of the nation, and within weeks, Tea Party protests were occurring nationwide.

In the months that followed, the Tea Party grew in strength, culminating in the 2010 midterm elections.  Tea Party-endorsed candidates defeated dozens of congressional opponents, including democrats as well as establishment republicans who were not friendly to the small-government agenda of the Tea Party.  At the time of those 2010 midterms, conservatives were salivating at the thought of nominating a presidential candidate who would be aligned with the ideals of the Tea Party.

The focus of the movement, at the time, was one of fiscal responsibility, through the promotion of free enterprise, federal deficit reduction, national debt reduction, and a general reduction in the size and scope of the federal government through grounding of the government's role in the U.S. Constitution.

Today, 3 years after Rick Santelli's rant, a poll is released that claims that 42% of Tea Party Republican voters favor Rick Santorum, compared with just 23% who back Romney. 

How did we get here from there?  The Tea Party stands stood for fiscal conservatism.  Social issues are were simply not part of the party platform.   The Tea Party is was opposed to earmarks.  The Tea Party is was for reducing the size of the federal government.

Rick Santorum?  Rick Santorum is exactly the kind of candidate that the Tea Party of 2010 would have fought against.  Hard.  In fact, Santorum said, during the early days of the Tea Party, that he would "vocally and publicly oppose" the Tea Party movement.

Time remains, but if Rick Santorum is the Republican nominee for president in 2012, the Tea Party will have officially died.

Who Can Make the Moral Case for Capitalism?

When challenged by Gingrich and others about his business success, Romney always comes across as apologetic and evasive.  Conservatives today lose this argument over and over, by accepting the anti-free enterprise premise that the capitalism is equivalent to greed and that socialism, by way of government-provided welfare, is somehow a more moral alternative. 

Where's Milton Friedman when you need him?  Milton Friedman's provides an articulate advocacy in favor of capitalism, here:

and here:

What conservative, on today's political stage, can and will make the moral case for capitalism?  Romney doesn't have the backbone to make the argument. Gingrich has disqualified himself from making that argument, based on his criticisms of Romney.  

The answer may be Marco Rubio.  Rubio makes the case for free enterprise that none of the current GOP candidates have the ability and credibility to make.  From his speech at the Reagan Library:

"People are poor and people are left behind because they do not have access to the free enterprise system because something in their lives or in their community has denied them access to the free enterprise system. All over the world this truism is expressing itself every single day. Every nation on the Earth that embraces market economics and the free enterprise system is pulling millions of its people out of poverty. The free enterprise system creates prosperity, not denies it."

In the same speech Rubio makes the case that the growth of government-subidized welfare forced out private and community charity. 

"... For those who met misfortune, that wasn’t our obligation to take care of them, that was the government’s job. And as government crowded out the institutions in our society that did these things traditionally, it weakened our people in a way that undermined our ability to maintain our prosperity."

Friedman makes the same argument here, and elsewhere.

"[The welfare system] has destroyed private charitable arrangements that are far more effective, far more compassionate, far more person-to-person in helping people who are really, for no fault of their own, in a disadvantaged situation.”

None of the Above?

Nate Silver at fivethirtyeight.com suggests that "there is a small but nontrivial chance that the Republican nominee could be someone like Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Tim Pawlenty or Chris Christie."

The theory is that a brokered convention may be necessary to gather support behind a single candidate, allowing for a Republican who is not currently in the race to enter and possibly win the nomination.

"But the odds of a dark-horse candidate or brokered convention will increase to the extent that any of the following conditions hold:

1a. Mr. Gingrich leads the delegate count, but does not have more than about 50 percent of delegates.
1b. Mr. Gingrich holds more than 50 percent of delegates but is involved in a significant gaffe or scandal at some point later in the campaign.
2a. Mr. Romney has performed poorly enough in the early states that he is no longer viable.
2b. Mr. Romney is viable but his unfavorability ratings have considerably increased to the point that he no longer qualifies as a consensus choice.
3. A factional candidate like Ron Paul holds 10 or 15 percent of the delegates.
All of these conditions seem plausible based on what we know right now, which is what leads me to believe that a brokered convention is plausible as well."

#Occupy Denver Elects Leader

Defying the national 'Occupy' movement, Occupy Denver has elected a leader. 

They elected the one among them with the fewest fleas, which seems like as good a criterion as any.

Barney Frank fires back at Newt Gingrich

In a GOP debate last month, Newt Gingrich and other GOP candidates criticized the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law.  Gingrich went as far as to suggest that the authors of the law be held accountable:

"If you want to put people in jail," he said, "you ought to start with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and let's look at the politicians who created the environment, the politicians who profited from the environment, and the politicians who put this country in trouble."

Barney Frank fired back at Gingrich:

 
"Appawently, Newt Gingwich — who considoos himsewf one of the intewectual weaders of the fwee woold — is so embawassed by the fact that he is wunning behind Michewe Bachmann in Wepubwican polls that it has incweased his alweady well-devewoped pwopensity to utter outwandish things."

Occupy Portland: Head and Body Lice Outbreak

I'm sure the irony is lost on this crowd, but the parasites are getting parasites ...

Occupy Wall Street Gaining Support

The Occupy Wall Street movement has garnered another significant endorsement. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, made a speech in Kermanshah on Wednesday that was broadcast live on Iranian TV. In the speech, Khamenei sympathized with the Occupy Wall Street protestors and its anti-capitalism goals, and proclaimed that the movement, “will grow so that it will bring down the capitalist system and the West.” The message of Occupy Wall Street has been embraced by a number of other prominent figures, including:

1. Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei (link)

2. American Nazi Party (link)

3. Barack Obama (link)

4. Socialist Party USA (link)

5. New Black Panther Party (link)

The difference between the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall St. protesters?

According to Ann Coulter:

"I am not the first to note the vast differences between the Wall Street protesters and the tea partiers. To name three: The tea partiers have jobs, showers and a point"

E=mc2? Maybe ... Until Al Gore says 'debate is over'

The scientific method is defined as:

"noun -
a method of research in which a problem is identified, relevant data are gathered, a hypothesis is formulated from these data, and the hypothesis is empirically tested."

This applies to all scientific theories, except one - the theory of anthropogenic global warming.  In this one field, consensus, rather than scientific method, is the primary criterion used to judge the viability of the theory.

In a recent illustration of this double-standard, CERN released findings claiming an exotic particle called a neutrino could possibly move faster than the speed of light.


If true, this contradicts none other than Einstein's theory of special relativity and could upend our understanding of physics.  So -- as happens with the scientific method -- a healthy skepticism has followed the claims.  The findings were published to allow for the physics community to scrutinize the results and to either find flaws with the study or to verify the findings with their own experiments.  That's how science works.

"We wanted to find all possible explanations for this. We wanted to find a mistake, but we didn't," said physicist Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the so-called OPERA experiment, in an interview with the BBC on Thursday.


Because it was such 'a crazy result', the team was releasing its data, based on three years of measurements, so that others in the scientific community could confirm or refute the findings, he added."

So what does this mean?  It means that the physics community is having an open, honest debate about Einstein's theory of special relativity, a theory which has been experimentally verified in a variety of fields for over 100 years.   In other words, even E=mc² can, in good faith, be questioned.   

Returning to the topic of the scientific method, 

"Scientific inquiry is generally intended to be as objective as possible, to reduce biased interpretations of results. Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, giving them the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them ..."

This scientific method of inquiry does not apply when it comes to the debate on global warming.

Those who question this 'consensus theory' of AGW are branded racists, traitors, blasphemers, and as immoral.  AGW believers have called for prosecution, incarceration, and professional decertification of climate change skeptics.

- Data is falsified or suppressed.

- Research is blocked.

- Skeptical scientists are silenced, or targeted for professional excommunication.
- FOIA requests for climate data are blocked or obstructed.

Mr. Gore repeatedly claims that the "debate is over".  Mr. Gore, methinks thou dost protest too much ... If you have to declare that the "debate is over" (over and over and over again), then - well, maybe the debate isn't really over.  

After all, if a group of scientists can question whether or not E=mc², then maybe there is some room for debate left on the topic of anthropogenic global warming.

Bill Whittle sets the record straight

In this 'Firewall' episode, the always eloquent Bill Whittle corrects some of the revisionist history that has taken place regarding Bin Laden and the war on terror.