No More Queensberry Rules

But tomorrow’s a dream away, and today has turned to dust

Your silver tongue has turned to clay, and your golden rule to rust

If that’s the way that you want it, well, that’s the way I want it more

And there’ll be one less set of footsteps on your floor in the morning

            —Jim Croce, One Less Set Of Footsteps

Are those of you in the cult of Obama embarrassed yet?  Is there a point at which even you will acknowledge that this President and his campaign proxies have simply gone too far?  Or do you just have so little self-respect or are you so caught up in the cause that it just doesn’t matter to you what they say or do as long as they win?

Forget the substantive politics for a minute.  This isn’t about the fact that this President can’t and won’t run on his record.  Leave aside the hundreds of billions of your dollars he’s thrown away on failed “green energy” startups run largely by his biggest donors.  Ignore his promises that his trillion dollar stimulus package would ensure unemployment never went above 8%, yet it has remained there for almost the entirety of his administration and sits at 8.3% today.  Don’t worry about his utter failure to rein in nuclear-bound Iran, all the while cheerleading the “Arab Spring” that has seen radical Islamists take control in places like Libya and Egypt, and now Al-Qaeda supplementing the ranks of the rebel forces in Syria.  Pay no mind to his cow-towing to Vladimir Putin and his near-total abandonment of Israel.  Overlook his laying waste to the Constitution through his assumption of dictatorial control via executive fiat.  Disregard the fact that, other than the passage of a gigantic piece of unconstitutional legislation through outright bribery and over the objection of a substantial majority of Americans, this President cannot point to a single accomplishment over the last nearly four years.

This isn’t about that.

This is about the shameless, disgusting string of blatant lies coming from the Obama campaign and its surrogates.  First you have Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on the floor of the Senate repeatedly claiming that Mitt Romney hasn’t paid taxes in 10 years, and effectively suggesting that he’s a felon as a result.  Not only is Reid’s alleged source for this claim some unnamed “credible” person or persons, but he’s using the Senate chamber as a campaign pedestal.  In any other context, Reid would be sued for slander, but he knows he’s got immunity as long as he’s speaking from the Floor; so he can—and apparently will—say absolutely anything.  And he takes the preposterous position that he doesn’t have to back up his statements at all, and that simply by virtue of his unsubstantiated allegation the burden is on Romney to disprove it.

That doesn’t bother you on the Left?

Meanwhile, we have Obama-endorsed super-PAC Priorities USA running yet another ad about Bain Capital and the closing of GST Steel.  In this one, former GST employee Joe Soptic laments that when Romney shut down GST he lost his job and his insurance, and that his wife then got cancer and died a short time later.  And the narrative is all conveniently strung together to create a cause-and-effect connection:  Romney fired him, thus leading to his wife’s cancer and ultimate demise.  But even the Washington Post has given this one four Pinocchios on its truth-o-meter, saying “on just every level, this ad stretches the bounds of common sense and decency.”  First, GST was already going under when Bain Capital took it over, and Bain actually kept the firm open longer than it would otherwise have stayed in business.  Second, Romney left Bain two years before GST closed and Soptic lost his job.  Third, Soptic’s wife had her own job and her own insurance.  And fourth, Soptic’s wife was diagnosed and died five years after GST closed down.

But truth be damned, right?

For all his high-horse talk about toning down the political rhetoric, there’s been not a peep out of the Obama administration about either of these campaign stunts other than to deny any connection to them (a denial at least in the case of the PAC ad that has already been demonstrated to be an outright lie).  No denunciation.  No chastisement.  No call for retraction.

This is nothing new for Obama.  As I discussed a couple of weeks ago, Obama won the Democratic nomination for Illinois state Senate in 1996 by getting every one of his opponents kicked off the ballot.  In 2004 he ran for the U.S. Senate, and magically both his Democratic primary challenger and his Republican opponent had their divorce cases unsealed and unsavory details leaked.  Getting your surrogates to publicize leaks and smear the opposition personally is SOP for Team Obama.

These are the rules of the game—there are no rules.  Whining about how unfair it is isn’t going to get you anywhere, because the Left doesn’t care.  They are all-in to win, no matter what it takes or what it costs.  Romney is going to have to drop the gloves and mix it up.  Let me offer a couple of suggestions for starters.

First, I’d like to see Romney file a petition in Illinois state court under Illinois’ Supreme Court Rule 224 allowing for pre-suit discovery to identify proper defendants, and seek to compel Harry Reid to give a deposition under oath and reveal the source for his tax allegations.  Reid may be immune from liability for what he said on the Senate floor, but his unidentified source—maybe Obama campaign advisor David Axelrod?—is not immune from liability for what he or she said to Reid.  If they exist, and assuming what they said was false and they either knew it was false or said it with reckless disregard for whether it was true, that’s slander.  Reid will have to throw someone under the bus, admit he never had a source, or subject himself to contempt of court (I’m pretty sure there is no Senator/informant privilege) if he refuses to answer.

Second, while I understand the reluctance to subject himself to microscopic scrutiny of his tax records, I think Romney needs to call Obama’s bluff and play the “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours” game:  offer his tax returns in exchange for disclosure of Obama’s college records.  That’s not a place Obama wants to go.  But going public with that offer should either silence calls for his tax returns, or reveal there’s nothing to see either way; either result kills the issue and allows the spotlight to return to the substantive issues.  Or—and I think this is unlikely, but we can always hope—the disclosure of the school records could contain some gem like Obama was admitted to Columbia under some foreign exchange student program, as has been suggested by a former classmate.

The best—perhaps only—defense in a campaign like this is a good offense.  Romney must punch back, and hard.  If all he does is whine and try to fend off the baseless smears, he loses.

What You Don’t Know Can Hurt Me

Do you care about all the little things,

Or anything at all?

            —Thriving Ivory, Angels On The Moon

I’ve applied for a number of professional positions over the course of my career.  As to every single one, I had to submit a resume, the details of which were probed in interviews and third-party background checks.  My prospective employers, whether they were private law firms or publicly-held corporations, wanted to know what, exactly, my experience was and how it was relevant to the job.  They wanted to know where I went to school, what I studied, and how I did; for every one I had to provide access to my college and law school transcripts.

But never a tax return.  Not once.

No one would credibly attempt to deny that the office of President of the United States is a professional position.  With respect to the Presidency, long-gone are the days of the gentrified citizen-servant.  Too much is at stake, and frankly the position has evolved—unconstitutionally, in my view, but that’s a subject I’ve covered in any number of other posts—into one that wields far too much power to be left to amateurs.  We, the People, are the employers with respect to that position, which you may not have realized is the onlynationally-elected office in the federal government.  And as the employers hiring someone to fill that position, we have a responsibility to ourselves and our fellow citizens to do our due diligence and ask those questions a rational employer would ask of the applicants presenting themselves for our consideration.

Well, for you on the Left, let me ask you:  What do you really know about the experience, qualifications, and background of candidate Barack Obama?

No, I’m not talking about birth certificates, or years lost in a cloud of pot smoke at Occidental or Columbia (although does it at least strike you as odd that he is the only Presidential candidate in modern history to hide his college records?).  But let me just bring a few items to your attention that you won’t find on CNN or in that dogeared and highlighted copy of Dreams From My Father you keep on your nightstand.

“Brilliant legal scholar” Obama’s name has never appeared on a published an academic work.

Obama is frequently touted as the first black President of the Harvard Law Review (law reviews are periodicals published by law schools containing scholarly articles by academics, practitioners, and students discussing legal trends and issues).  That’s an accomplishment, but what do you make of the fact that he is the only President/Editor-in-Chief of that august publication never to publish a work in his own name?  In fact, despite heading the Harvard Law Review and then spending twelve years on the faculty at the University of Chicago Law School, Obama never published a single scholarly work.  Nothing.  I don’t have a link here, because I can’t demonstrate a negative.  Do your own research—you won’t find one.  Not that published academic work is necessarily a prerequisite for the Presidency, but the complete absence of any is more than strange for a man who was head of the most prestigious law school publication in the world, and who spent a dozen years in the publish-or-perish world of academia.

Obama did virtually no work as a lawyer in private practice.

Following law school, Obama was hired as a junior associate at the Chicago firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland.  Supposedly this grounds him with real world private sector experience, except the striking thing is it shows he essentially didn’t have any.  According to the firm, Obama billed a grand total of 3,723 hours over an eleven year span from 1993 to 2004 (most of that during his first four years).  To put this in perspective, full time for a junior associate is generally considered to be 1,900 to 2,000 hours per year (40 hours/week x 50 weeks = 2,000), and most firms tacitly expect, if not expressly require, something more like 2,100 to 2,200.  2,400 billable hours in a year is common.  3,000 is not unheard of.  What this means is Obama essentially worked about a year and a half over his eleven years in private practice.  Even assuming the entire 3,723 hours was billed during Obama’s first four years, that’s barely 900 billable hours a year; not even half time.  And remember, this is the sum total of his professional experience outside of academia and elected office.

Obama won his Senate seats by kicking his opponents off the ballot or embarrassing them into dropping from the race.

In 1996, Obama launched his political career by running for the Illinois state senate.  He won the Democratic nomination by getting every one of his opponents kicked off the ballot.  In 2004 he ran for the U.S. Senate, and the campaigns of both his Democratic primary challenger and his Republican opponent unraveled when their divorce cases were magically unsealed and unsavory details leaked.   See Ben Wallis Wells, “Obama’s Narrator,” New York Times, April 1, 2007, and Editorial: “Why the Tribune Went to Court,” Chicago Tribune, June 25, 2004.  


Coincidence?

Obama tried to bribe Jeremiah Wright to shut up.

Fast forward to the 2008 campaign, and you’ll recall the uproar over the racist and anti-American comments littered throughout the sermons of Reverend Jeremiah Wright—the man Obama claimed as his inspiration for The Audacity of Hope before he disavowed having ever heard Wright say any of those things despite sitting in Wright’s pews for 20 years.  It has now surfaced—from the mouth of Reverend Wright himself—that Obama twice offered him a $150,000 bribe to stop making public appearances until after the 2008 election.  According to Wright, Obama told him “[y]ou know what your problem is?  You have to tell the truth.”

Problem, indeed.

Those of you who’ve been caught up in the hype—did you know these things?  Now that you do, do you care?

The fact of the matter is this man had done absolutely nothing of substance prior to being elected President.  He had never managed anything.  He had never been accountable for anything.  He had never had to produce a result.  As a lawyer he barely practiced law.  As a professor he barely taught, and generated no scholarship.  He won his elected offices not on his merits but by eliminating his competition, and even then he was more likely to vote “present” than to take a substantive position on meaningful legislation.  His only accomplishment of any note was to publish a book—about himself—and even that has proven to be more of an ideological work of semi-fiction than a factual autobiography.  When real details of his life started to cause him political problems, he tried to bribe his pastor to cover them up. 

It’s little wonder, then, that when placed in charge of the whole enchilada, this man with no real-world expertise at anything has been a disorganized, amateurish flop (his official website says “It’s stillabout hope”—it has to be, because it can’t be about “happening”).  The economy remains in flatline, yet he continues spending money we don’t have and accumulating debt at a pace and levels never before seen in the history of mankind.  Banana republic dictators thumb their nose at him.  He drops his pants in negotiations with the Russians.  He spends billions on unproven startup companies run by his major donors that have become an almost comic series of bankruptcies.  Nothing he does works, and all we get from him are excuses.  Bush.  Europe.  ATMs and banks.  “Wall Street” (whatever that is).  Speculators. Oil companies.  Tsunamis.  Congress (despite his party holding a super-majority in both houses for his first two years).  Warren Buffet’s secretary.  We’re 90% through his term, and still nothing’s his fault, and nothing’s his responsibility.  At what point does he actually become accountable?

I can forgive you for being blinded by the aura once.  But now that you know these things, and now that you’ve seen this man can’t swim in the deep end of the pool, are you really going to throw him back out there with the rest of us chained to him while he sinks?

 

 

Bad Medicine

Lady:              “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic, or a Monarchy?”

Franklin:        “A Republic . . . if you can keep it.”

            —Benjamin Franklin, as quoted in notes taken by Dr. James McHenry following the Constitutional Convention of 1787

 

Some of you may be wondering where I’ve been since Thursday’s announcement of the Supreme Court’s decision upholding Obamacare.  The ethical obligations of my license require me to maintain a certain degree of respect and decorum in my discussion of the courts.  So before I said something rash, I wanted to take some time to calm down.  I wanted to go to the gun range and blow off some steam.  I wanted to open up the bar and have a couple dozen martinis—hey, don’t I now have free publicly-subsidized medical insurance to deal with my inevitable cirrhosis of the liver?  I wanted to let some of the dust settle and reflect (although I’ll confess I still haven’t been able to bring myself to read the opinion itself).

Mostly, I wanted to find the silver lining I knew had to be there.

I have to tell you, friends, I didn’t find it.

I wasn’t all that surprised with the result, although like most of you I was cautiously optimistic that Justice Anthony Kennedy might get this one right and we’d avoid actually falling into the abyss.  What was shocking was that although Justice Kennedy in fact did side with those correctly holding the law unconstitutional, it was Chief Justice John Roberts who crossed over and wrote the opinion upholding the law.  Yes, the same John Roberts whom then-President George W. Bush touted as a solid conservative nominee, just as George H.W. Bush had done years earlier in nominating David Souter.  Congratulations, gentlemen.  Legacy, meet the Honorable Messrs. Bush.

No silver lining there.

I looked for a positive in that Chief Justice Roberts didn’t uphold the law under the Commerce Clause, thus expanding it even further beyond its already unrecognizable post-Wickard v. Filburn interpretation.  But he instead did far worse.  By choosing to uphold the law as a tax, Roberts’ opinion has effectively removed anyremaining limit on the authority of the federal government.  At least prior to Thursday’s ruling, proponents of Big Government action had to tie what they wanted the government to do to the regulation of interstate commerce.  Those ties were often tortured and incoherent, but at least they had to be there.  Now Big Government proponents don’t even have to do that.  And for those of you dancing in the streets over the liberal victory, don’t say I didn’t warn you to be careful what you wish for, because the real danger in this thing isn’t the substance of Obamacare itself—it’s bad substantive policy, but that’s another discussion—but in its broader implications for the limits of federal power.  Under Chief Justice Roberts’ opinion Thursday, a different administration and Congress could just as easily enact a law that compels you to buy a handgun (or a GM electric car, or solar panels, or rubber dog turds, you name it), and imposes a tax on you if you don’t.  There is no longer any limit on what the federal government can make you do, as long as it enforces its edict with a penal tax.

No, there’s no silver lining in the rejection of the Commerce Clause argument.

Some, like Hannity, have been touting the decision as a political plus, the thinking being that it would energize people for November to defeat Obama.  I originally tried to cling to that branch myself.  But we need to be realistic.  The fact is the people who are going to be most upset with Thursday’s decision were already going to vote against Obama.  It’s kind of like the old saying about “bulletin board material” and rivalry games in football: there’s no real risk of creating extra motivation, because if you can’t get up for a game against your arch-rival, you shouldn’t be here.  It’s a nice idea to think that there’s going to be some extra push come election time because of this.

But I don’t think so.

If there’s a silver lining here, it’s on a longer term track, and it’s going to be a very painful ride.  I’ve long complained about the Bush-Rove Republican establishment being little better than Democrat-Lite, and it’s why I don’t identify myself as a Republican and I no longer give money to the RNC.  They’re not interested in truly conservative small-government principles; they basically want what the Democrats want, only with them in control instead.  And so we’ve been handed mealy-mouth things like “compassionate conservatism” (whatever the hell that was), compromise in the form of giving in to virtually anything the Left wants, and Supreme Court nominations like David Souter and John Roberts.  I told friends back in 2008 after we got stuck with John McCain I thought we might need someone like a (then-presumptive nominee) Hillary Clinton to win in order to drive majority sentiment sufficiently back to the Right.  That is, kind of like debriding a burn wound where you have to go through the excruciating process of scraping out the dead and infected tissue in order to bring about healing, we need people to experience the Full Monty of the Left’s agenda in order get us back to real conservatism. 

We have a similar situation now.  The people who need to be motivated to defeat the Left aren’t those on the conservative Right who are justifiably upset by Thursday’s ruling.  It’s the uninformed and naïve moderates who have been snookered by the Left’s false promises of Utopia.  Thursday’s ruling won’t get them motivated, and it won’t happen in time for November.  It’s going to take a very painful period of letting this Statist train go forward so that they can actually see the lies we’ve been warning about come to pass before they’re going to understand.  The question is whether it’s too late to turn this ship around by the time Obamacare has been fully implemented so that everyone can see its results.

Thursday night I sat both my kids down individually and told them I was sorry that I hadn’t been able to do more to stop what happened at the Court.  It’s ultimately going to affect them more than it does me.  The six year old of course doesn’t understand it yet, but the fourteen year old does.

Liberty has taken a devastating blow.

It Only Hurts Me When I Cry

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

            —Queen Gertrude in Hamlet

My, my, my.  Things in the most transparent of all transparent and accountable administrations just got a little more opaque and a little less, well, accountable.

On Wednesday President Obama granted Attorney General Eric Holder’s request to invoke executive privilege to avoid disclosing documents being sought by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee relating to the investigation of Operation Fast & Furious.  As we touched on last last Monday, at issue are some 1,300 documents dating from February 2011 forward that the Committee has been trying to see since last October.  Holder tries to make that and the 7,600 pages already provided sound like a monumental effort.  As a commercial litigator, I can tell you it’s not.  A standard banker’s box (the roughly 16 x 20 inch box commonly used for storing and transporting documents) holds about 2,000 pages.  So the DOJ’s production to date consists of a grand total of less than four boxes; you will find at least that many on the floor in any associate’s office at any decent-sized law firm.  Over my nearly two decades in litigation practice, it was not uncommon to see document productions a couple of orders of magnitude larger.  1,300 documents is nothing.  Yet the Attorney General has delayed, redirected, and outright refused to comply with the subpoena (although in fairness he did sit down with Committee Chair Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) to discuss the documents off the record). 

But Obama’s jumping into the fray with Wednesday’s privilege claim raises interesting questions.

First, where has this claim been for the last 8-9 months?  If these documents are properly covered by executive privilege, why was that privilege only invoked on the eve of Holder facing a possible contempt of Congress charge?  In litigation, a privilege that isn’t timely asserted is waived.  The documents are either privileged, or they’re not.  If the privilege applied, it has applied all along.  And it’s more than passing curious that although as recently as Tuesday night neither Holder nor Obama had said so much as “boo” about asserting any privilege, by Wednesday morning Holder had a detailed eight page, single spaced letter to the President setting out his legal research supporting the claim and asking the President to do it; the President had read it, presumably digested it and maybe even discussed it with the Attorney General or with White House counsel, and made the decision to act on it; and the Department of Justice had a four page, single spaced letter to Representative Issa informing him of Obama’s decision to invoke the privilege and explaining Holder’s version of events.  Of course, I’m just speculating, but having been around a legal opinion letter or fifty in my time, I know they typically don’t come to pass overnight; one suspects Holder and Obama have been holding this in their back pocket for some time.  Why are we only seeing it now?

Second, the executive privilege exists to protect candor in the executive’s deliberative process.  In other words, we want to ensure that the President receives the most candid internal discussion and advice in the course of his decision making, and without the privilege his advisors might be more guarded and less helpful than they might otherwise be.  If that’s so, then how can these documents be covered by the executive privilege if Holder had to write to tell Obama what they were, and affirmatively ask Obama to claim the privilege?  That is, if they were truly part of executive decision-making, shouldn’t the executive already know what those documents are and be seeking on his own to claim the privilege?

Third, to what “deliberative process” do these documents pertain, and more importantly, of what vital national security interest are they such that they need to be protected (a point then-Senator Obama made on national TV in criticizing the Bush administration’s invocation of the privilege)?  Fast & Furious, an operation even Holder has publicly admitted was a “mistake” that “should never have happened,” is over.  It’s not an ongoing project.  Moreover, the documents at issue don’t deal with the operation itself, and thus should have no implications in terms of jeopardizing personnel or current law enforcement activities.

In his letter to the President justifying his request that Obama claim the privilege, Holder throws the phrase “deliberative process” around like so much candy, because he knows it is the touchstone for the legal standard governing whether the privilege applies.  But he uses it with no mooring to any substantive executive branch activity, instead apparently assuming that if he just uses the phrase enough times, it will be accepted as the truth.  The best Holder can do is claim that the documents from February 2011 forward deal with executive branch deliberations over how to respond to the media and to the Congressional inquiry.  In other words, they are documents not about the administration’s policy or the law enforcement project, but on how the administration was going to cover its ass once Fast & Furious became public. 

Given that the Justice Department originally told Congress on February 4, 2011 that there was no Fast & Furious—a representation Holder has since had to admit was “incorrect” (read: an outright lie), the administration’s response IS the issue.  The salient point Representative Issa has been trying to get at for months has been who knew about the operation and when, and why was Congress originally told it didn’t exist (not coincidentally, essentially the same questions asked of the Nixon administration with respect to Watergate; the difference here is we have at least one dead American as a direct result of the activity the administration initially denied even took place).  The documents Holder, and now Obama, are withholding go directly to those questions.

Fourth, and most importantly, why are Holder and Obama going to such lengths to prevent these documents from seeing the light of day?  What’s in those documents that is so vital they not be turned over to Congress?  We are repeatedly told not to worry about it because the DOJ’s Inspector General is investigating, but of course that’s like the wolf telling you not to worry about that incident in the chicken coop because the fox is looking into it.  Oh, OK.  Meanwhile, every time Issa’s committee presses further, Holder’s and the DOJ’s story changes; Wednesday, the DOJ was forced to retract Holder’s recent testimony in which he attempted—erroneously and with no evidence—to claim that the Bush administration was briefed on a similar sting called Operation Wide Receiver.  If there’s nothing nefarious going on, why all the secrecy, and why can’t they keep their tale straight?  Why are they crying unless the questions hurt?

And why do they have to keep trying to blame Bush?

Assuming Obama and Holder are both clean on this, there’s no reason for them to resist turning these things over, and indeed doing so would presumably have demonstrated that very fact, and thus long ago ended any political mileage for Representative Issa to gain by continuing to investigate.  Yet the family of slain Border Agent Brian Terry and the American people remain with no answers as to who in this most transparent of all transparent administrations is to be accountable.

They and we deserve better. 

Brilliant Disguise

Now you play the loving woman

I’ll play the faithful man

But just don’t look too close, baby

Into the palm of my hand

            —Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Brilliant Disguise

In October 2008, then-Senator and Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama campaigned on the premise that “we need to end an era in Washington where accountability’s been absent.”  He followed that up in January 2009, shortly after taking office, by signing an executive order setting ethics guidelines for his administration, promising “a new era of openness,” and that “[t]ransparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

Amazingly, he even said these things with a straight face.

Fast forward to 2012, where Attorney General Eric Holder last week was once again hauled before Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) House Judiciary Committee on Department of Justice Oversight.  Holder claimed that a series of 2010 emails did not in fact pertain to the disastrous Operation Fast & Furious, but instead to the Bush-era Operation Wide Receiver, despite the fact that the emails repeatedly and specifically referred to “Fast & Furious” and “F and F”.

These aren’t the ‘droids you’re looking for.

To reset the issue, in December 2010 U.S. Border Agent Brian Terry was murdered in Arizona.  Guns linked to the killing were traced to Mexican drug cartels, which had acquired the guns from weapons smugglers in the United States.  The Department of Justice had the opportunity to intercept the guns, but under Operation Fast & Furious the guns were allowed to “walk” in an effort to track where the smugglers’ traffic was going.  Representative Issa has been trying for over a year to get to the bottom of who was responsible for this.  Although Holder has admitted that the program was unacceptable and should never have happened, no one has yet been held accountable for it, and the DOJ has given Issa little but the finger in his quest to obtain information.

For all the trumpeting about this administration’s commitment to transparency and accountability, all evidence is they’re much more interested in deflecting blame and covering their asses than in getting to the truth:

February 2011:  DOJ sends a letter responding to an inquiry from Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) of the Senate Judiciary Committee effectively denying the existence of any “gunwalking” operations, and claiming that every effort was being made to prevent the traffic of guns into Mexico. 

Doesn’t exist.  Nothing to see here.  Move along.

May 2011:  When the February letter unraveled and the existence of Fast and Furious became too well-documented to deny, Holder admits that the February letter was “inaccurate,” but testifies before Issa’s committee that he didn’t know anything about it, and had only learned of the existenceof Fast & Furious “for the first time over the last few weeks.” 

OK, maybe it existed, but we only found out about it around April of 2011.     

November 2011: Confronted with yet another set of documents clearly demonstrating earlier knowledge than he previously disclosed, Holder admits that he probably should have said “couple of months” instead of “last few weeks” when he testified in May.  His defense against the documents?  They consisted of reports he couldn’t possibly be expected to have read. 

Um, maybe we actually knew about it in February or March of 2011.

So what about these new emails?  They consist of a string from late October 2010—i.e., before Brian Terry was killed—in which not only is Fast & Furious repeatedly mentioned by name, but the topic of conversation was how much flak the administration was going to catch over “gunwalking” when the operation became public, which was expected to be soon.  More importantly, the emails were between Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein, and James Trusty, at the time the Principal Deputy Chief for Litigation.  These aren’t field personnel in Arizona—these are people with the Justice Department in D.C.  So we have people fairly high up in the DOJ considering the degree to which there needed to be damage control over Fast & Furious becoming public.  They knew the operation’s name and its nature.

Does this mean Attorney General Holder knew about the operation that far back?  Not necessarily.

But it begs the question why he keeps dodging the issue and changing his testimony as to when he did know.  More importantly, why does he keep getting all indignant about being dragged back before Issa’s committee instead of getting to the bottom of who in DOJ did know about it and firing them?  This would have been over months ago had he done that.

But he hasn’t.  And he won’t.

Instead he tries to claim that “Fast & Furious” isn’t talking about Fast & Furious, it’s talking about George Bush.

What?  This man is the Attorney General of the United States, and that’s the best he can come up with?

Once again, we see there is simply no substance to this administration.  From the top down, they are almost without exception completely out of their depth, which is why they are reduced to cheap semantic games and sophomoric political pranks.  You thought it depends on your definition of “is” was bad?  These people think it’s all a big game, that if they just wink and smile  they can say anything and it’ll all be OK.

Smile and wave, boys.  Just smile and wave.

Consider that this President has attended 191 fundraising events through early March of this year.  He’s played 93 rounds of golf—an average of right at one every two weeks.  His bi-monthly vacations—transportation courtesy Air Force One, sometimes with a separate private 747 for the Mrs.—to ritzy playgrounds for the uber-wealthy are well-documented.  Less well-known, although Mark Levin frequently reads from these on his syndicated radio show, Obama’s published schedule almost invariably shows his work day beginning no earlier than 10:00 a.m. and ending by 4:30 p.m. (when he has anything scheduled at all).  Meanwhile, he hasn’t submitted a single serious budget since taking office; his last two budgets have failed to net even a single aye vote, even from the Democrats.  Other than Obamacare—which he’s about to lose in the Supreme Court—he hasn’t managed to enact a single significant initiative, despite having a sympathetic supermajority in both houses of Congress for two years of his presidency.  The President screams bloody murder when members of Congress on both sides of the aisle question where the New York Times keeps getting its steady diet of classified intelligence information, yet doesn’t even say boo when the Russians are shipping materiel to Iran for its nuclear program.

He’s been all about being the President instead of doing the job of the President.  He has plenty of time to make NC-17 jokes about his wife—hello, NOW, anyone home?—but no time to order his attorney general to get to the bottom of who is responsible for an official DOJ program that has been directly linked to the death of a federal border agent.  I guess it’s a matter of priorities.

This was supposed to be the most transparent and accountable administration of all time.  Yet with Fast & Furious, it has stonewalled and dodged an investigation that it should have been leading itself.  Ironically, while it’s been doing everything it can to prevent anyone from looking under the skirt on this, I see it’s been accumulating a terrifyingly detailed cache of information about you, from what you read, to where you shop, who your friends are, and how you vote. 

This administration is transparent, all right.  We may have just misunderstood which direction the two-way mirror runs.

Bain v. Empty Set

“Nice try, kid, but I think you just brought a knife . . . to a gunfight.”

—Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Continuing what is clearly going to be his “us vs. the evil rich people” campaign theme, Obama last week ran ads criticizing Governor Romney’s past work as the CEO of Bain Capital as that of a vampire.  Just another installment of Romney as the out-of-touch 1%-er, a rich bastard who has made millions by looting it from the little people.  But don’t worry, Obama isn’t engaging in class warfare.  He’s the Great Uniter, don’t you know?

I don’t want to debunk the ad here.  The Wall Street Journal ran an excellent piece detailing its errors, notably that the steel company at the center of it didn’t go bankrupt until two years after Romney left Bain, that it was already heading down the drain when Bain bought it, and that it would have gone out of business eight years earlier but for Bain’s investment in it.  I want instead to make the larger point that if this is the arena in which Obama chooses to engage, there’s ground to be gained.  In short, if he wants to play the Bain game, I think Romney should take him up on it.

Let’s start by acknowledging some truths about Romney and Bain.

Mitt Romney is wealthy.  I get it.  No real secret there.  So are/were Bill Clinton (law, real estate—Whitewater, anyone?), both Bushes (business, inheritance), Ronald Reagan (acting, endorsements), Jimmy Carter (inheritance, commercial farming, real estate), Gerald Ford (real estate, books, corporate board service), Richard Nixon (law, real estate), LBJ (real estate, media), John Kennedy (family trust funded by bootlegging), etc.; it takes a lot of money and rich friends these days to run for President.  Romney has made millions running successful businesses like Bain Capital, and this should be a good narrative for him to showcase his management skills and understanding of markets.

Bain Capital was and is a venture capital enterprise, not a pirate ship.  It provides operating funds for startups and other businesses in exchange for a stake in the profits.  Put a different way, it collects money to invest in other enterprises that employ people to create products and provide services.  Yes, in some instances Bain’s investments failed; that’s the nature of business investing, as Obama has reminded us about Solyndra.  At least Bain was risking private money voluntarily contributed for that specific purpose, and managed by businesspeople who actually knew what they were doing (but that’s another post).  Yes, in some instances Bain bought businesses and shut them down to sell the assets.  Any economist this side of Paul Krugman will tell you that when a business’ assets are worth more than the value of the going concern—i.e., the capital is being employed towards a purpose society does not value—the more efficient use of that capital is to pull it out of the failing venture so it can be reallocated to something society values more.  Over time, everyone benefits.

But the point here is that Bain Capital and Mitt Romney didn’t make money by stealing it from others.  They employed people.  They provided capital so that other businesses could operate and employ still more people to provide goods and services still more people wanted to buy.  That’s how the economy works.  Bain Capital made profits by participating as a productive cog in the economy, to the benefit of its shareholders, the businesses in which it invested and their employees, and the consumers of those businesses’ goods and services.  That’show Mitt Romney made his money; it’s a success story in how the American free market system operates, and it’s one Romney should welcome the opportunity to tell.

But there’s a flip side to that story if Obama wants to cross swords on this ground, and it’s one that also works to Romney’s advantage if he’ll take it.  In fact, if he does it right it should be no contest.

Barack Obama is also wealthy.  Maybe he’s not in the same Forbes rank with Romney (or John Kerry, or Nancy Pelosi . . .), but he’s pretty flush.  Current estimates put his net worth upwards of $10 million.  I don’t have $10 million.  Do you?  Chances are overwhelming that you don’t.  That makes Obama also a member of this evil 1% economic super-elite he likes to demonize when he’s not hanging out in their parlors, skiing at their resorts, or tapping their wallets for campaign donations.  So how did he make his millions?

He wrote a book (OK, in fairness, he actually wrote twobooks).

About himself.

That’s it.  He didn’t employ anybody.  He didn’t provide a good or a service.  He didn’t supply capital fuel to the engines of commerce so that someone else could employ people to provide a good or service.  He didn’t otherwise do anything productive.  Obama’s sole economic contribution through which he has generated his considerable wealth was to tell the world he existed.  He did nothing more than engage in an audacious act of narcissism, and some people—for reasons that will forever pass understanding—bought it.  It is no wonder that his Presidency has been all about “look at me”; it is in fact all he knows how to do, because it’s all he’s ever done. 

I don’t care that Obama’s gotten wealthy.  If he can get people to buy an autobiography of a 30 year old with no significant accomplishments to his credit, more power to him.  But if he wants to hold up Bain Capital as a campaign issue, it seems to me it’s the perfect platform to highlight just how shallow and empty Obama is.  Consider the contrast on this issue alone.  With Romney and Bain Capital, we see a candidate who has had to manage people, marshal resources, generate results, and be accountable.  In other words, he’s actually had to do something in real life.  Obama, on the other hand, has done nothing but grab attention, claim credit for the work of others, and deflect blame and responsibility.  Present.

Oh, yeah, and operate Microsoft Word.

You want to talk about Bain Capital and real world experience, Mr. President?

Bring it.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Distractions

“Do not swallow bait offered by the enemy.”

—Sun Tzu, The Art of War

This one’s for all the birthers, anti-gay marriage zealots, and neo-Nazi conspiracy theorists out there:

Stop it.

For the last two weeks there has been much hand-wringing over the whole gay marriage thing.  In fairness, that was more fueled by the Left falling all over itself with joy over Obama’s coming out, er, announcement of his support than it has been from the Right, but I see last Friday even Charles Krauthammer was still perpetuating the narrative.  Meanwhile, Breitbart, RedState, and Drudge are all aflutter over new evidence of Obama and his surrogates spending decades claiming he was actually born in Kenya, and although he claimed he was only pointing out that Obama has lied in the past when it was to his advantage to be thought of as an exotic foreigner, Hannity spent all afternoon Friday on the subject.  It’s also been brought to my attention that there are stories making the rounds on the internet about Obama preparing a Nazi-style Reichstag fire event—supposedly involving a staged assassination attempt that will be blamed on white supremacists and instigate widespread black rioting—that will enable him to institute martial law and postpone the election.

Gay marriage.  Kenya.  Reichstag.  Let’s take a deep breath and get ahold of ourselves. 

Look, I don’t like Obama any more than you do, and we can all agree that getting him out of office is jobs 1, 2, and 3.  But even if you’re right that he’s a gay-loving Kenyan neo-Nazi, this isn’t helping.

In baseball pitchers with a 0 ball, 2 strike count often throw a pitch or two in the dirt.  The idea is he loses nothing by doing so, and he may be able to entice the batter to offer at a pitch he can’t hit, thus gaining a cheap out when the hitter either misses it completely, or taps it weakly to a defender.  In other words, the pitcher is trying to advance his position while avoiding the risk of a direct confrontation in the substantive field of play.

We see the same tactic any number of places.  Magicians use “misdirection” to get you to look at an irrelevant show move and thus miss the key move in the sleight of hand.  Boxers “feint” to get you to defend a false attack in one area, thus exposing yourself to the real one in another.  Mystery writers use “red herring” clues to hide the real ones.  In every instance the idea is the same: to get you to miss what’s important by focusing your attention on what isn’t.  As with the pitch in the dirt, they’re trying to sucker you into going somewhere other than where you should.

That’s what we let Obama do if we go after these issues.  If you’re talking about his birth certificate, or the Reichstag, or gays, he’s got you right where he wants you.  Not that he’s up 0-2 on us, but his home field advantage is in irrelevant non-issues like birth certificates, marriage licenses, and conspiracy theories.  In that way, he avoids substantive scrutiny of his actual record in office.

But here’s what I want you to understand:  even if you’re right about all these things about Obama, we’re not going to get him out of office on these issues.  We’re just not.  

 

Anyone for whom gay marriage is a deciding issue—whether for it or agin it—is already committed to one camp or the other.  If Obama is planning a Reichstag event, there’s no real way to stop it, and once it happens, the groundwork has already been laid to expose it for the BS that it is.  I agree he shows dictator-like tendencies, but it isn’t necessary to equate him with the greatest mass-murderer (or second, depending on how you come down on Stalin’s numbers) in history in order to make the point.  And it doesn’t matter whether Obama was born in Kenya—I don’t buy that anyway—because even if you’re right you’re never going to convince enough people of that for it to make a difference.  Independent voters in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—the people who will actually decide the election—don’t believe Obama was born in Kenya, and they don’t care. 

We’re not going to gain any traction by focusing on these things.  What we are doing is distracting from the real issues that matter and can actually turn the election:

 

1.  It’s the economy, Stupid.  Even the gerrymandered “official” unemployment rate remains above 8%, and the reality is that 22.5 million Americans—14.5%—are out of work, underemployed, or have simply given up.  Net job creation during the Obama administration has been zero.  More than half of all college graduates can’t find work.  Every breath we spend howling at the Kenyan moon is one we could have used to repeat this message.

 

2.  It’s the deficit/debt, Stupid.  Candidate Barack Obama chastised President Bush for being “irresponsible’ and “unpatriotic” to have accumulated $4 trillion in debt during his eight years in office.  Obama exceeded that figure in less than three.  Our total debt is north of $15.5 trillion—more than 100% of GDP—and climbing with no end in sight.  And even still he met over the weekend with European leaders to urge them to forego austerity in favor of continuing to join him in an unending orgy of governments spending money they do not have.  Yet Obama’s last two proposed budgets were so out of control that they failed to garner a single vote in either house.  That’s right, Obama’s last two budget proposals have failed in Congress by a combined 196-0 vote.  Even Democrats get this.  Surely it will resonate with Independents better than gay marriage.

 

3.  It’s national security, Stupid.  Obama can disingenuously claim personal credit for killing Osama bin Laden all he wants.  Everyone but the most die-hard of his sycophants sees through that.  The plain fact is his combination of naivete, anti-American apologism, and global conglomerate worldview is decidedly undermining our security.  His open-mic gaffe with outgoing Russian President Medvedev spoke volumes, as he all but promised to cave in on Russian demands concerning our European missile defense systems.  What else has he promised off-mic to give away in a second term that we just don’t know about yet?  Meanwhile, knowing it will see nothing more than empty finger-wagging from our spineless and impotent commander-in-chief, Iran has plodded doggedly ahead with its nuclear program.  We are likely 18 months or less away from a serious military crisis in the Middle East that could have been avoided with a more decisive peace-through-strength policy; this is far more realistic and dangerous than the prospect of a Reichstag event to cancel elections for the first time in our 223 year history.

 

4.  It’s the Constitution, Stupid.  If Obama is, as he claims, a former constitutional law professor, he has a funny way of showing it.  His administration is about to lose in the Supreme Court in its challenge to Arizona’s border defense law, and apparently lose big.  All indicators are that he’s likely to lose on the constitutionality of Obamacare, his signature achievement.  The administration lost in trying to enforce the Clean Water Act to stop private landowners from building a home on their own land.  The administration lost twice in federal court on its self-declared moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico following the BP Macondo fire.  And his personal record disregard for the boundaries set by the Constitution on the powers of his office is lengthy and well-documented.  This is a bigger deal and an easier sale than birth certificates and conspiracies.

These are the issues—not gays, or Kenya, or Nazi flashbacks—that will make a difference with the voters who will actually decide the election.  Not only is focusing on irrelevancies distracting from the real game-changing matters, it also gives Obama the necessary ammunition to cast the election dynamic as a choice between rational moderate adults on the one hand, and extreme, racist, bigoted, fanatical nutjobs on the other.  If Independents in swing states see this as the choice they face, they’ll vote Obama every day of the week and twice on Sunday (which, coincidentally, is how often Obama’s supporters will vote for him, too).  We have to resist the temptation to take that bait, and keep this election narrative focused on the substantive issues that not only matter, but that will make a difference.

Hall-of-Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry, famous for his use of the illegal spitball (actually his lube of choice was K-Y, but who wants to throw a “K-Y ball”?), says he got a lot more mileage out of people worrying about him throwing spitballs than he ever did out of actually throwing them. 

Let’s try to keep our eye on the ball, people.

The Sobering Reality

Gruber:          Theo, are we on schedule?

Theo:              One more to go, then it’s up to you.  And you’d better be right, because this one’s going to take a miracle.

Gruber:          It’s Christmas, Theo.  It’s the time of miracles!

—Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber, and Clarence Gilyard, Jr. as Theo in Die Hard

OK, kids, take a deep breath and sit down.  While I hate to be the one to have to bring it up, as adults it’s time for us to face the unpleasant facts.

Like many of you, I’ve looked hopefully at the Gallup Polls showing Romney in a virtual dead heat with Obama.  I’ve been optimistic over job approval surveys continuing to show Obama netting below 50%, even as I’ve marveled that as many as 47% of this country still just doesn’t get it.  And last post I even suggested the possibility that Obama’s announcement of his support for gay marriage might decisively tip the scales in swing states where voters have repeatedly and overwhelmingly rejected it.  “Surely,” I’ve thought to myself, “between these things we’ll be in good shape by November to get rid of Obama.”

The problem with all of this is most of it has been premised on voter polling, which examines the nationwide popular vote.  Unfortunately, it’s not the popular vote that matters, but the electoral college count, and—as promised—here’s the sobering reality of the electoral math:

It’s not gonna happen.

Despite the polls and approval rating, I’ve been worried for some time that the GOP had managed to squander away what should have been an un-loseable election.  Working on the last post forced me to focus on the electoral map for the first time, and that only confirmed my fears.  The electoral math simply isn’t going to work.  Let me show you why.

We’ll start with the states that are absolute locks both ways.  I measured this in the very scientific fashion of looking for those states that went Republican or Democrat in each of the last five elections (Clinton vs. Bush41 & Dole in 1992 and 1996, Bush43 vs. Gore & Kerry in 2000 and 2004, and Obama vs. McCain in 2008).  That map looks like this.

This has Romney starting out taking Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, Idaho, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming, for a total of 97 electoral votes.  But it also gives Obama California, Connecticut, Delaware, D.C., Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin, for a total of 242.  That’s only 28 electoral votes shy of the 270 needed to win. 

Notice, this historical view already takes supposed battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (and their 46 electoral votes) off the table.  Although all three states have some history of going Republican if you take it back to the 1970s, those votes consist almost entirely of getting swept up in the Nixon and Reagan landslides.  Recent history says they’re consistently Democrat, and I see little to suggest that they’ll buck that trend this time.  Wisconsin will have a massive union drive as part of the effort to oust Governor Scott Walker, and Michigan is all UAW.  I suppose Obama’s anti-coal stance gives a glimmer of hope in Pennsylvania—but I doubt it.  As for the others, if you have an argument that there is any realistic possibility of Romney taking them, I’d love to hear it.  I couldn’t come up with one.

From that starting point, it’s already clear that Romney has to win just about everything else.  I’ll indulge in the assumption that Obama won’t win any state this year that he lost last time, and that Nebraska won’t split its vote as it did in 2008.  With that assumption—and remember, that’s giving Romney the benefit of a reasonable doubt in states like Missouri and Tennessee—Romney picks up Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Tennessee, and West Virginia, boosting his total to 180.  He still needs 90 to Obama’s 28.

That leaves Colorado (9), Florida (29), Indiana (11), Iowa (6), Nevada (6), New Hampshire (4), New Mexico (4), North Carolina (15), Ohio (18), and Virginia (13), and a total of 116 electoral votes.  Obama could win by taking Florida alone, which is a distinct possibility; he carried the state in 2008, Clinton won it in 1996, and we all remember the debacle of 2000.  But let’s assume he doesn’t (and the absolute necessity of that assumption is a huge reason for Romney to consider putting Senator Marco Rubio or Colonel Allen West on the ticket).  Accepting the verrry shaky assumption that Romney wins Florida raises his electoral total to 209, leaving him still 61 votes short with only 87 left in play.  I don’t see him winning Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, or New Mexico, which puts 25 more electoral votes on Obama’s side of the ledger, yielding this map.

Obama 266, Romney 209, meaning Romney must win allof Indiana, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.  That’s on top of having to win in Florida to even make this scenario possible.  A Romney win in any one of those states is certainly conceivable, and indeed he may well win most of them. 

But the problem is he has to run the table.  And I’m sorry, but we need to prepare ourselves for the fact that he’s not going to do that.  Just as a matter of numbers, too many things have to break his way in too many places.  I think he’s likely to take Indiana and North Carolina, and unlikely to take Iowa.  Ohio and Virginia are tossups, and I’ll call it a split between the two.  Here’s how I see the likely final map.

That’s Obama 290, Romney 248, and we get four more years of hope and change.  Hoo-rah.

Could it break a little differently?  Sure.  Romney could squeeze out a win in New Mexico, Colorado, Iowa, or maybe even all three.  Won’t be enough to make a difference.  Even winning Ohio—which he could do—won’t do it.  No, he needs a shocking big-ticket upset somewhere like Pennsylvania, or in both Wisconsin and Michigan, and even then he still has to win Florida and at least three of four in Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.  That hasn’t happened since Bush won in 1988, and this time around, it’s simply asking too much; Obama isn’t Michael Dukakis (although one could argue that that would be an improvement), and Romney doesn’t have Reagan’s coattails to ride. 

I’m not sure this is really the GOP’s fault, nor do I think there’s much Romney can do about it.  This is just the way the electoral map plays out. 

Let’s just hope Christmas comes early.  

Why Is Obama Bucking Swing States On Gay Marriage?

McInerney:    And you think you’re wrong?

Shepherd:      I don’t think you win elections by telling 59 percent of the people that they are.

—Martin Sheen as Chief of Staff A.J. McInerney, and Michael Douglas as President Andrew Shepherd in The American President

On Tuesday, North Carolina voters approved an amendment to their state constitution prohibiting legal recognition of same sex marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships.  Wednesday, immediately following that result—and under considerable pressure from gay rights groups after Vice President Biden and Education Secretary Arne Duncan came out earlier this week in favor of gay marriage—President Obama announced his thinking on the issue had evolved to the point that he was now publicly, officially, and in every other way in favor of gay marriage.

Thanks for clearing that up, Mr. President.  I was really wondering where you’d come down on that issue.

Now, I have my opinion on the subject, and you can probably guess what that is.  I’ll leave that for another day.  For now, let me say I think we have much bigger fish to fry.  For example, I’m wondering just how Obama has been able to give this matter due consideration given that he swore he was focused like a laser on the jobs issue, and “will not rest” until every American has a job—yet unemployment remains stuck above the 8% mark he swore we’d never hit in the first place.  I’m wondering why I keep seeing CNN and the New York Times report sensitive national security intelligence matters like the CIA having a double agent within al Qaeda providing critical information on current bombing capabilities and planning—guess that lead’s cold now, eh?  I’m wondering whether, despite the growing threat of a nuclear Iran, the Israelis sleep better at night now knowing that Obama is OK with gays being married.

Ultimately, as I’ve posted before, this is a state issue.  If states like California and New York want to recognize gay marriage, fine.  If states like Texas or North Carolina don’t, fine.  Neither is any of the President’s business.  The President’s job is to protect and defend the United States Constitution, and marriage—whether in word or in concept—just isn’t in there.

But what I want to focus on today is what I think is a potentially serious political mistake by the President in coming out with this position in a year when he faces an extremely tight re-election campaign.  Just as an initial point, he didn’t need to do this from a campaign perspective.  The only people he’s really going to get fired up by coming out in support of gay marriage are single-issue gay rights activists, and guess what:  those people were gonna vote for Obama anyway.  I don’t see what Obama perceives as his upside.

More importantly, however, is the electoral math on the gay marriage issue.  The message implicit in the timing of the President’s announcement is unmistakable: 

North Carolina, you’re wrong.

Consider, however, that North Carolina and its 15 electoral votes is a swing state.  Its voters approved the amendment by an overwhelming 61% to 39%—a staggering margin.  That’s a substantial majority of voters to whom the President has effectively just given the bird.

And North Carolina is not alone in either the fact of its opposition to what is now the President’s official position on gay marriage, or in the magnitude of that opposition.  North Carolina is now the 30^th state to enact a ban against legal recognition of gay marriage in one form or another.  Since 1998, this issue has come before voters via referenda on proposals either to establish/expand or prohibit legal recognition of same-sex unions 33 times.  The pro-gay-union side has lost 31 of those contests, including losing twicein ultra-gay-pride California.  The two wins (Arizona in 2006, and Washington in 2009) were by razor-thin margins, and both require an asterisk (Arizona later passed a constitutional amendment banning recognition of gay marriage in 2008, and Washington’s 2009 referendum was only on expanding rights afforded under a civil union structure that already existed). 

Significantly, no state—not even California—has legally recognized gay marriage through a measure voted on by the public.  The six states that recognize same-sex marriages, and twelve that recognize civil unions, have all done so either by judicial decree or by legislative action.  Over that last 15 years, when presented to the electorate, gay marriage has lost 31 of 33 votes by a total of 47,646,382 to 28,976,321, or an overwhelming 62% to 38%–effectively identical to the margin in North Carolina.  In other words, not only has gay marriage been defeated at the polls over and over and over again, but it has been defeated by a nearly 2/3 majority. 

CNN can Gallup Poll this until the cows come home.  This is where the rubber meets the road.

But here’s where it really gets sticky for Obama if he continues to push this as a campaign issue.  Gay marriage has been repeatedly and resoundingly rejected when it’s put to the voters in critical swing states:

Florida (29 electoral votes)                 62% to 38% in 2008

Ohio (18 electoral votes)                     62% to 38% in 2006

North Carolina (15 electoral votes)     61% to 39% in 2012

Virginia (13 electoral votes)                57% to 43% in 2006

Missouri (10 electoral votes)               71% to 29% in 2004    

Even in blue-leaning but potentially in-play states like Michigan (16 electoral votes) and Wisconsin (10 electoral votes), gay marriage was rejected by the voters by a decisive 59% to 41% margin (Michigan in 2004, Wisconsin in 2006).  In Iowa (7 electoral votes), when the state Supreme Court struck down a statute defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman, voters responded by removing all three justices out of office; the first time an Iowa supreme court justice had lost a retention bid since 1962.  Other key battleground states Indiana (11 electoral votes) and Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes) also have statutes defining marriage as the union of a single man and woman, and Virginia (13 electoral votes) did it by constitutional amendment in 2007.

It seems to me the President is really sticking his neck out if he intends to push this issue.  He is staking out a position overwhelmingly rejected in five key swing states representing 85 electoral votes.  If you conclude that Michigan and Wisconsin are in play, that total moves up to 111.  Add in that the President’s position is contrary to statutes or constitutional amendments adopted in Iowa, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, and it’s 162.  In other words, Obama has just come out against a position adopted by decided majorities or by legislative action in 10 swing states comprising well over half the number of electoral votes necessary to win.  I count a likely 181 electoral votes as solidly Republican at this point.  Obama’s stance on the gay marriage issue by itself could potentially pull as many as 78 to 91 more out of these swing states, yielding 259 to 272, and that’s still conceding Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. 

270 wins.

Conversely, I don’t see Obama picking up any of these states by coming out in favor of gay marriage.  I can only assume that Obama’s hope is that Romney will feel compelled to stake out the opposite position, allowing Obama to paint Romney as an intolerant social extremist (as, apparently, are some two-thirds of Americans).  The trick for Romney is to not take that bait, and stick to the real issues.  Let Obama hang himself on this one by pointing out that all Obama is doing is trying to distract from his record by dividing us on a state issue where the vast majority of Americans have reached a position different than what he’s advocating.  Then go right back to the economy, Obamacare, the “green” debacle, Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia.

This is a time for focus.

 

*****************************************

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Coming soon, The Sobering Reality

Top Ten Predictions If Obama Is Re-Elected

 

Professor Trelawney:           Your aura is pulsing!  Are you in the beyond?  I think you are!

Ron:    Sure . . .

Professor Trelawney:           Look at the cup.  Tell me what you see!

—Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley, and Emma Thompson as Professor Trelawney in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to Friedrich Hayek* . . .

The other day I was mulling some random thoughts about just what may be coming if Obama is re-elected.  So for your consideration/discussion, I offer the following predictions (some of which should be obvious, and some of which you’ll think are crazy):

10.       Serious push for reparations.

All you have to do is look at the people Obama has surrounded himself with for much of his life, and you have to guess that the concept of reparations isn’t far from front of mind.  People like  Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who thinks the United States is the Klan.  Professor Derrick Bell, Obama’s law school mentor, and a chief proponent of “critical race theory,” which holds in essence that the United States and its legal system are so inherently and irretrievably racist that judges must interpret the law differently in applying it to blacks.  Professor Charles Ogletree, another Obama mentor and campaign consultant, who has produced at least eight publications and public presentations on reparations over the last ten years, and nearly forty on race issues including critical race theory.  Van Jones, civil rights activist and supporter of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, has described himself as a “disaffected . . . political radical[.]”  And of course there’s the First Lady, who wrote her college thesis on the plight of black students at Princeton, and had never been proud of her country before her husband was nominated for President in 2008.  With no more elections to face, Obama will be able to speak out loud about what one suspects many of these folks believe they are owed for things that happened long before any of us were born.

9.         EPA regulation requiring complete phase-out of gasoline engines within 10 years.

Obama HAAAATES gasoline—as long as we’re not talking about his motorcade/helicopter/airplane.  Under his watch EPA has already proposed to require U.S. automakers to meet a fleet average of 54.5 MPG by 2025, a standard they are likely to meet the same way they met the CAFÉ standards introduced in the 1970s: by making cars even lighter (read:  smaller and less safe).  With a fresh term, Obama will be able to go for the jugular, and require us all to drive golf carts. 

Of course, with no more coal-fired power plants, I have no idea how we’ll get the electricity to charge them.

8.         Open borders and amnesty.

¡Si, se puede!

7.         More “stimulus.”

All this guy knows how to do other than climb on Air Force One to go play golf is spend taxpayer money.  You can bet the farm that with another four years, we’ll be hearing a lot about the need for more stimulus, more “investment” in the “green economy”—note that $3 billion federal loan recipient First Solar laid off yet another 2000 this week, but who’s counting?—and more government programs and initiatives.  I just don’t know where the additional money is going to come from.

 

Maybe we can borrow it from Paul Krugman.

6.         Increases in taxes on capital gains and on income above $200,000.

Obama’s already pushing this.  There is no reason to think he isn’t serious about it.  And if the Democrats take over Congress, you can bet this will be very high on their list of items to ram through.

5.         Elimination of 401K eligibility for higher wage-earners, and confiscation of retirement savings.

It’s only a tiny next step from dictating how much you should make (see 6, above) to dictating how much you should have.  Further, Obama’s going to have to find additional sources of revenue to fund at least part of his continuing orgy of spending.  So he’s going to come after your 401K, your IRA, and other retirement assets.  This might take the form of a retroactive “asset tax” on existing retirement holdings, or the collection of deferred taxes on argument that “we can’t afford for you to not pay your taxes anymore.” 

But don’t worry—you’ll always have Social Security to take care of you.

4.         Re-introduction of Obamacare, with single payer.

This, of course, was the way he wanted to do it all along—nationalize medical insurance.  But he couldn’t sell it.  If the Court does as many predict and strikes the individual mandate, that will give Obama the ammunition to go back and say “look, we tried to do it without the government option, and the Court said we couldn’t do it that way.”

3.         Nuclear Iran, followed by major conflict if not world war in the Middle East.

With the ineffectiveness of the U.N. and the spinelessness of this Administration, all evidence is that Iran continues to push towards the acquisition of nuclear weapons.  It is probably only a matter of time at this point.  But with four more years of Obama, Teheran has to know that it faces no serious threat of real opposition to its program from the U.S., and tacit if not overt support from the Russians and Chinese.  Once that happens, either they will use it against Israel, or Israel will have to choice but to take pre-emptive military action.  Either way, at a minimum, there will be full-scale war between the Israelis and most of the rest of the Islamic world—Iran, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, etc.  If the Russians or Chinese get involved, we will have to as well (although with their heavy and growing Islamic populations, it may be 50/50 or worse that our European “allies” will not join us), and then you’re effectively talking about world war. 

Or, I guess, Obama could keep us out of it and let Israel drown.

2.         Federal ban on handguns. 

Obama and the Left are going to come after your Glock.  And your 1911.  And your Beretta.  And your Smith & Wesson.  They’ll call it “Trayvon’s Law,” and if you oppose it you are a racist.  Of course, the NRA and the Second Amendment may have something to say about this.  But the Constitution has never been an impediment to this Administration.  And even with the serious constitutional barrier, watch out if . . .  

1.         The Supreme Court shifts dramatically to the Left. 

Here’s where the rubber really meets the road, in my opinion.  Four justices (Ginsberg (79), Scalia (76), Kennedy (75), and Breyer (73)) are already over 70.  Not to cast aspersions on their health, but it is unlikely that all of them stay on the Court through another four years.  Obviously, allowing Obama to replace Justice Ginsberg and Breyer doesn’t do much to the ideological balance, but allowing him to replace Scalia and Kennedy would.  At a minimum, you would see a shift from a slightly right-leaning 4-4-1, to a solid 5-4 liberal bent, if not 6-3.  This could be even worse if Obamacare is overturned and Obama reacts in Rooseveltian fashion by seeking to expand the Court. 

Imagine the loss of Scalia, and the addition of five more Elena Kagans.  Yikes.  And with what would then be a relatively young Court, we’d be stuck with it for a VERY long time.  For this reason alone, this may be the most significant election of our lifetime.

 

 

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* With apologies to legendary Texas sports columnist Blackie Sherrod, whose trademark was to begin columns in this fashion, changing the name of the “wondering” subject.