Except that said student, John Lauber, wasn’t openly gay.  When interviewed by the non-partisan Auto Weekly before the haircut story surfaced in the mainstream media, key witness Phillip Maxwell never even mentioned the supposedly traumatizing incident.

Maxwell, a Democrat, did offer that Romney was disciplined, focused, and smart, and would probably make a great president—points that somehow didn’t make it into the trim 5,500-word Post piece, no doubt due to space restrictions.  One tipoff that the Post may have been proffering a biased report was its admission that most of the five witnesses it interviewed were Democrats.

The Post originally reported that another classmate, Stu White, had “long been bothered” by the incident—then had to publish a correction stating that White never knew about the incident until an unnamed source relayed it to him several weeks ago.

Lauber’s three sisters issued statements expressing their disavowal of the Post’s portrayal of their deceased brother and their distress over his use as a political prop.

Other details of the report claim that Romney teased another closeted gay student at Cranbrook School, though the Post confesses that other students and even teachers used language similar to Romney’s.

Liberal commentators have studiously ignored the 95% of the Post report that focused on Romney’s leadership in dozens of school organizations, extensive community service, robust work ethic, and all-around popularity and joviality, even as cited by many of the “victims” of his pranks.

The Post notes that Cranbrook was especially strict, and that it frequently expelled students for tiny infractions.  If Romney was breaking rules and causing mayhem left and right, he sure was discreet about it.

What do we know about Romney’s character later in life?  We know that, much more recently than high school, he risked his life to save a family of six and their dog from drowning in a boating accident in 2003.  Have you heard about that in the Post recently?  Do you think you would have heard about it had Barack Obama done the same thing?

We also know that in 1996 Romney shut down Bain Capital for a week and sent his 30-person staff to New York City to scour the streets looking for a partner’s missing daughter, who had traveled there for a rave and been abducted while on ecstasy.  In a campaign commercial for Romney’s gubernatorial run, the partner tearfully credited Romney with saving his daughter’s life.

Such stories belie the mainstream media’s portrayal of Romney as lacking in humanity and prone to “targeting the vulnerable,” as New York Times columnist Charles Blow put it.  Targeting the vulnerable?  Targeting the vulnerable for being in need of his life-saving assistance, perhaps.

How many lives has Obama saved with his bare hands or his personal financial resources?

Meanwhile, since we’re talking about high school and character, we know from Obama’s autobiography that he “enthusiastically” used marijuana and cocaine and abused alcohol to such an extent that he spent his last two high school years in a “daze.”  We don’t know what bad behavior Obama might have been up to in his twenties, but we do know that he steadfastly refuses to release his college or law school transcripts.

More importantly, we know that while his political career was ascendant, the young Obama sleazily knocked his three respected opponents for the Illinois State Senate off the ballot in 1996, by challenging their candidacy petition signatures based on technicalities.  He also eliminated another opponent for Senate in 2004 by forcing open his challenger’s sealed divorce records.

We know that Obama hobnobbed with unrepentant terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, launched his political career in their home, attended for 20 years the church of racist anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright, possibly tried to bribe Wright into silence before the November 2008 election, and marched with the New Black Panthers five short years ago.

Paul Begala argues the Romney bullying stories show that the candidate is a “serial abuser of power.”  Begala claims that one can “draw a straight line” from the man who orchestrated the alleged hippie-shearing to the one who laid off hundreds of employees while at Bain and “slashed education” while governor of Massachusetts.

Serial abuser of power?  How about applying that label to the president who exploded the number of czars in the federal government, regularly plots to embolden left-wing federal agency heads to act unilaterally if Congress won’t immediately implement his plans, and brags about putting his boots on people’s necks, kicking their asses, and punishing his enemies?  How about the president who threatens the Supreme Court that they had better not engage in judicial review of his signature legislation?  How about the president who forms an enemies list of private citizens who contribute to his competitor’s campaign?

One commenter breaks down the Begala piece: “It is tough when you have to deconstruct a monogamous, nondrinking, nonsmoking, honest Mormon who pays millions in taxes and gives millions to charities.  You have to resort to high school pranks to turn a good man into a bully.”

A friend and I once debated which is more pathetic: a twenty-something or fifty-something left-wing radical.  My friend argued the former, because the fifty-something has the strength of his convictions to hold them till adulthood.  I argued the latter, since we often grow out of youthful indiscretions and poorly thought-out ideologies through experience and wisdom.

Romney may have been a bit of a bully 50 years ago, which he regrets and apologizes for.  Obama flirted with radicalism in his youth, a dalliance that has since blossomed into a full-blown, committed relationship.

We all did things at 15 we’re not proud of.  I’m more horrified by what Obama is still doing at 50.

Call it The Rape of The Lock vs. the rape of the Treasury.

Previously published in modified form at Red Alert Politics



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Last week while researching a column on Obama’s pandering to various interest groups, I noticed that his campaign website featured a page, grouped with pages for various demographic categories, devoted to Nurses.  What was that about, I wondered?  Was Obama shoring up support for Obamacare with a key segment of the medical profession?

I’d like to suggest another reason: Nurses are the new Teachers, the apocryphally underpaid, overburdened sirens of the service industry who make heroic sacrifices to nurture their tender underlings.

Not at the hospital I spent last week at, they didn’t.

After suffering a spontaneous pneumothorax (collapsed lung), I entered the emergency room of a midtown Manhattan hospital for surgery that involved suctioning excess air out of the space between my left lung and chest and allowing the lung to reinflate.  When the lung collapsed again two days later, doctors performed a more advanced surgery.  Two days with tubes in my chest, a day of observation, and I was home.

Throughout the week, all of the doctors I encountered—pulmonologists, cardiologists, generalists, specialists, attending surgeons, resident physicians—were top-notch, and eagerly took all the time needed to answer my most detailed and speculative questions.  They made my long, difficult stay more bearable.

Not so the scores of nurses who crossed my path, virtually all of whom made my stay far more uncomfortable and demoralizing than it needed to be.

All week there were precisely three nurses I encountered who could be described as better than terrible.  The first was a perky twenty-something who fed me rapid-fire advice and reassured me with her calm competence.  The second was a fifty-something Latino man who always welcomed me profusely, whistled while he worked, and asked if there were anything I needed before he left the room.  The third was a thirty-something Filipino woman who was quick, thorough, cheerful, and brimming with information.

The rest of them can go to hell.

The question smoldering at the edge of my consciousness all week was, What do these people get paid to actually do?

Most of the nurses’ duties seemed to be implemented for them by an army of nurses’ assistants, assistant nurses, nurse practitioners, social workers, Candy Stripers, and housekeepers, all of whom were regularly corralled into service to handle the supposed overflow.

The nurses performed no food-related services.  A separate contractor rushed in three meals a day to each patient, retrieved replacement items, and cleared everything away.  Requests to nurses for a measly cup of coffee were usually met with rolled eyes, mumbled complaints, and vague promises that rarely amounted to any follow-up.

The nurses performed no recreational services.  A contractor visited every day to collect payment for the cable TV.  Elderly volunteers strolled by offering magazines, newspapers, and paperbacks.

The nurses performed no therapeutic or cheering-up services.  A physical therapist met me twice a day to teach me exercises that would help me transition back to normal life.  Volunteers popped in throughout the week to see if I needed someone to talk to.  One day two ladies offered me “pet therapy”: a sociable Shi-Tzu named Rockie who played with me on my bed while we all chatted.

What did the nurses do?  I’ll tell you what they did—they took blood pressure.  Oh! how nurses love to take blood pressure.  They love to roll in their clunky, ominous, coat-stand-shaped contraption every couple of hours, wrap that cuff around your arm, and crush you like a boa constrictor.  They love taking your blood pressure, over and over again, whether it’s needed or not, whether it overlaps with other nurses’ readings, whether you’re dead asleep in the dark getting much-needed rest and must be rudely awoken to bright lights to take it.  They love taking blood pressure with a cat, they love it in a hat, they love it in a house, they love it with a mouse.

I have no history of high blood pressure, and mine never veered out of excellent territory.  Yet nurses leapt at me with their cuffs every chance they got like lions on wildebeests.  My upper arms had rashes by the time I escaped.

Maybe constantly taking blood pressure made these nurses feel useful.  I would say that they were trying to be sadistic, but Nurse Ratched had energy and focus.  These people were mostly just extraordinarily lazy.

That brings me to the other thing they did, which was shuffle around with sour looks on their faces as though they hated their jobs and were happy to take it out on their patients.  One nurse sloppily inserted four consecutive IVs in my arm over an hour—each of which popped out, because my arm was sweaty and she wasn’t taping them securely enough—and then, instead of investigating the situation and adjusting her methods, yelled at me and told me it was my fault.

These women are in the wrong profession.  They should be toll-takers or parking-meter attendants, where their callousness is less consequential or maybe expected.

The language issue is also not to be overlooked.  When you’re not fluent in English, and your patients speak only English, the results aren’t funny, George Lopez-style misunderstandings, they often cause your breathless, nauseated, aching patients great frustration and discomfort.  I asked one nurse to ratchet down my meal tray, which was a foot too high.  She said “Down?” and proceeded to lower my bed a foot, then turned and left before I could summon the lungpower to protest.

Maybe my experience at this hospital doesn’t generalize to the rest of the country.  This was a large, well-known, respected hospital, and I had a sample size of scores of nurses over seven days.  My observations seem relevant to what goes on in at least some major urban hospitals.  In private consultations with me, doctors and other hospital employees quietly confirmed my dismal evaluation of the nursing staff in a way that implied it wasn’t limited to that particular hospital.

What has happened in recent generations to practitioners of this once-noble profession?  I don’t know.  But I do know that if Obamacare isn’t repealed, Democrats and nurses’ unions are going to do their best to corrupt the occupation even further, teachers-union-style, by shielding professional misconduct, decoupling performance from compensation and advancement, and generally doing everything they can to lower the quality of nursing nationwide to a rock-bottom lowest-common-denominator.



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The Obama 2012 website includes separate pages targeting:

• Blacks (“African Americans for Obama”)
• Hispanics (“Latinos for Obama”)
• Spanish-speakers (“BarackObama.com en Español”)
• Asians (“Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders for Obama”)
• Females (“Women for Obama”)
• Religious people (“People of Faith for Obama”)
• Jews (“Jewish Americans for Obama”)
• Gays (“ObamaPride”)
• Millennials (“Young Americans for Obama”)
• Greens (“Environmentalists for Obama”)
• Vets (“Veterans & Military Families for Obama”)
• Nurses (“Nurses for Obama”)

This outreach meshes with Obama’s ongoing efforts to court these groups via his phony “War on Women” theme, his exhortation to Latinos to “punish our enemies,” and his pandering to college students.

Obama is also scrambling to shore up support from other key constituencies, such as Muslims, union members, white-collar voters, high-income voters, Wall Street bankers, teachers unions, government workers, administrative assistants, and urbanites, not to mention cool cats.

One can imagine Obama campaign operatives poring over spreadsheets trying to determine whether, say, a black, Spanish-speaking businessman is more or less likely to support Obama than a white, Evangelical PETA member.  Really, they should call themselves the Demographic Party.

In contrast, the Romney 2012 website offers no such sections targeting specific voting blocs.  The groups Romney targets are: people who want limited government, lower taxes, and a vigorous pro-American foreign policy.  That’s it.  (Also maybe people with good posture and an affinity for Cadillacs.)

When was the last time a Republican presidential candidate implemented an explicit campaign strategy of wooing European Americans, men, pastors, people with GEDs, married couples, construction workers, and squares?

Democrats obsess over demographic groups: which ones they have in the bag, which ones they’re losing, which ones the other side is courting, which ones are up for grabs.  If enduring principles of governance and political philosophy wander into the mix, it’s a complete accident.

The left dwells on demographics, because they are constantly, desperately scheming how to cobble together a hodgepodge of disparate interest groups to push their candidate over the 50% threshold.

Thus, Obama 2012 frets because the young’uns that came out for him four years ago are disappointed by his failure to deliver, even though ironically they have more time to vote for him now due to their mass unemployment.

Thus, a roundtable of pundits including left-wingers Rachel Maddow and Hilary Rosen recently pontificated on how best to frame women’s issues in 2012, while conservatives on the panel tried in vain to steer the conversation toward issues that affect the general electorate.

Thus, Eleanor Clift crows that demographic trends predict an Obama rout in November, even though professional pollster Sean Trende dampens her enthusiasm by arguing that trends are volatile and actually moving back in Republicans’ favor.

The left also frames principled disagreement with policies designed to help minority groups as prejudice or mean-spiritedness.  If you’re a conservative, for example, you’re not allowed to oppose the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, even if you cite evidence that the claims bolstering its rationale unravel after controlling for relevant demographic variables such as number of hours worked, maternity leave, and choice of occupation.  You’re not allowed to disdain a federal takeover of the student loan industry, lest you be accused of wanting to stamp out the next generation’s future.  You’re not allowed to protest the premature lynching of a half-white defendant in a case involving shooting an African-American teenager, lest you be accused of being anti-black.

With all the outreach Democrats do to so many constituencies, and all the emotion-laden tall tales they tell about conservatives’ hatred of such groups, it’s amazing liberals don’t win landslide elections year after year.  Is their strategy self-defeating, such that these groups don’t feel so special once they realize they’re just one of dozens of groups being pandered to?  Or is there perhaps something more enduring and valuable voters would rather be offered than most-favored-minority-group status?

Voting for a Republican won’t make you feel special.  It won’t make you feel as though your candidate is looking out for your unique interests as a [insert minority group label here].  If voting for a candidate who merely swears to uphold your constitutional rights as a generic American isn’t enticing enough for you, then vote Democratic.

Perhaps the reason Obama promises so much to so many groups is that he has so little to offer people who identify first and foremost as Americans.

Previously published in modified form at Red Alert Politics

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Here is a partial list of the wild, reckless, irresponsible claims the left-leaning media have made in the Martin-Zimmerman case, every one of which has been rendered highly suspect or outright false:

Zimmerman is a white racist who killed Martin because he was black.

Multiple acquaintances of Zimmerman’s, including black friends, testified to reporters that Zimmerman—who is half-Hispanic—isn’t racist.  Zimmerman comes from a multiracial family and, during the period when the shooting took place, was tutoring a black neighbor’s two young children and helping raise money for her all-black church.

Maybe Zimmerman wasn’t racist, but he racially profiled Martin and told a 911 dispatcher Martin looked suspicious because of his race.  Zimmerman also uttered a racial slur.

In an egregious act of journalistic malpractice, an NBC producer chopped up the 911 audiotape to make it seem as though Zimmerman had found Martin suspicious because he was black, when in fact Zimmerman was merely responding to the dispatcher’s request to identify Martin’s race.  As for the slur, forensic experts enhanced the sound quality of the tape to isolate Zimmerman’s voice and concluded, not that he had used the archaic term coon, but that he was lamenting the cold.

OK, Zimmerman may not have racially profiled Martin, but he was a trigger-happy vigilante who shot Martin because of the cover provided by Florida’s barbaric Stand Your Ground law.

As Walter Olson and others have explained, Florida’s Stand Your Ground law is utterly irrelevant in the Zimmerman case.  If Zimmerman stalked Martin and shot him in cold blood, then obviously he didn’t act in self-defense.  If Martin set upon Zimmerman, knocked him to the ground, and started pummeling him, as Zimmerman claims, then Zimmerman couldn’t have safely retreated, which is what Stand Your Ground opponents would have potential victims do instead of fighting back.  Either way, Stand Your Ground has no bearing on the propriety of Zimmerman’s actions.

Well, Martin wouldn’t have started a fight with Zimmerman—he was a sweet, innocent kid.

The night he was shot, Martin was serving a suspension for carrying a plastic baggie with traces of marijuana.  Previously he had been suspended for tardiness, truancy, and spray painting graffiti on school property.  Martin had been reprimanded for possessing an assortment of stolen women’s jewelry and a lock-breaking device.  His Twitter account revealed an affinity for gangsta culture, a flood of misogynistic tweets describing graphic sexual fantasies, and the suggestion that he had assaulted a school bus driver.  Photos of Martin displayed a menacing figure grimacing at the camera with a grill over his lower teeth.

Martin’s school suspensions are irrelevant.  He may have gotten into a bit of trouble now and then, but clearly Zimmerman was lying about Martin bashing his head into the concrete.

Police on the scene confirmed Zimmerman’s injuries and the presence of grass stains on his clothes.  When ABC News released a grainy surveillance video taken in the Sanford Police Station that didn’t show obvious wounds on the back of Zimmerman’s head, the media jumped all over him and called him a liar.  When ABC later released an enhanced video that showed clearer evidence of two gashes on the back of Zimmerman’s head, liberals claimed the evidence was inconclusive and that conservatives were playing Columbo.  When multiple witnesses attested that Zimmerman had bandages on his head and nose the day after the shooting, skeptics questioned the witnesses’ credibility.  Finally, last week ABC released a graphic photograph taken just after the incident showing thick rivulets of blood streaming down the back of Zimmerman’s head.  Liberals have been silent while trying to figure out how to squirm out of the latest corner they’ve painted themselves into.

Confronted with evidence disproving their claims of discrimination, race-baiters always shift the standard of proof to make their case just one step harder to discredit, so that they get a clean slate from their previous raft of false accusations and must meet only their current, self-determined burden of proof.  When that standard is refuted, they cry, “Yes, but…” and move on to the next unmet standard, claiming that all of the previous standards are irrelevant to their case.  The logical endpoint of this burning platform approach to argumentation is for the left to claim that, okay, the facts don’t support their case this time around, but the problem they are decrying is nonetheless legion.

If the sheer volume of circumstantial evidence exonerating Zimmerman accumulates to such a degree that a majority of the population comes around to his side of the story, the left won’t ever admit that they were wrong.  They won’t take responsibility for the multiple retaliatory beatings across the country incited by their inflammatory race-baiting.  Just as they did with false rape allegations against the Duke lacrosse players, the flurry of phony noose-hanging and anti-black vandalism incidents on college campuses, the apocryphal rash of black church burnings, the Tawana Brawley case, and a million other made-up incidents, liberals will simply claim that the charges against Zimmerman were fake but accurate, because they drew national attention to a problem that in fact exists only in their heads.

Previously published in modified form at Red Alert Politics

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Eleven Secret Service staff members were sent home from tony beach resort city Cartagena and put on administrative leave, ahead of President Obama’s arrival Saturday for the 6^th Summit of the Americas, for the indiscretion of having invited a squadron of prostitutes to their hotel rooms.  One of the hookers brought to the posh Hotel Caribe was upset over a lousy $47 an agent had failed to pay her.  She went to complain to the police, who forwarded her case to the State Department.

Several hotel waiters reported that the week before the scandal, agents had been drinking heavily and carousing at the Caribe.  The prostitution scandal broke the day before Obama was scheduled to arrive in South America, and took place just a few blocks from his hotel.

Ten or more military members serving the Southern Command, at least one from each service branch, were also caught up in the scandal, but were allowed to stay in Cartagena over the weekend due to their needed expertise.  The military staff were confined to their living quarters, ordered not to communicate with anyone, and prohibited from ordering anything stronger than virgin piña coladas.

Ronald Kessler, author of the exposé In the President’s Service, calls Colombiagate “the biggest scandal in Secret Service history.”

He names, among other factors responsible for the Secret Service’s laxity in recent years, its failure to keep abreast of the latest advances in firearms—a deficit I’m sure the rabidly pro-Second Amendment Obama administration is quickly working to correct.

Kessler cites as evidence of the Secret Service’s shoddy standards Tareq and Michaele Salahi’s ability to crash the 2009 White House State Dinner, a security breach that became a national embarrassment and stoked fears of future lapses that might endanger the president and his staff.  He also references the recent intruder who managed to scale the fence surrounding the White House and start crawling across the lawn before the Secret Service captured him.

Obama has inexplicably allowed Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan to hold his post despite these screw-ups.

Kessler argues that the president is particularly unsafe now, because replacement agents who were hurried in to replace the Cartagena 11 haven’t had time to acclimate to their new environment.  Secret Service management’s failure to change its attitude has also set the stage for future indiscretions.

New York Representative Peter King and California Representative Darrell Issa, who have proven their national security credentials via their investigation of homegrown Islamic terrorism and the Fast and Furious gunrunning scheme, respectively, have pledged to look into the scandal.

Meanwhile, the toadying media is proclaiming that Obama still has confidence in the Secret Service—without asking whether he should have confidence, or whether the American people have confidence.  Rather than apologizing and accepting responsibility for the incident, Obama and his cronies have chided the media for their “flashy” coverage of a story they label a “distraction.”

(Obama also noted that he would ‘wait until the full investigation is completed until I pass judgment.’  Had the unpaid Cartageno hooker been black, he would have already claimed that the Secret Service “acted stupidly,” and that “If I had a daughter who was a prostitute, she’d look like María.”)

The Cartagena incident is a perfect example of the broader pattern of the Obama administration’s incompetence, abuse of power, sense of entitlement, waste of taxpayers’ money, tin-eared response to scandal, and indifference toward fulfilling government’s legitimate, limited functions.  (Also Democrats’ lax morals and seedy sexual proclivities.)

These sleazy secret service recipients, most of whom are married, may not have cared that they were cheating on their wives.  But their irresponsible actions exposed them to potential blackmail, which could put the president’s life in danger.

As for the sex angle, I know Obama wasn’t directly involved in the affair, but when’s the last time a Republican presidential administration’s reputation was marred by a major sex scandal?  Say what you will about the vastly overblown Tailhook incident under George H. W. Bush: at least its instigators weren’t putting national security at risk.

The Secret Service horndogs also made the administration’s trade and security goals for the Americas Summit more difficult, given that distracted and titillated attendees—including 33 heads of state—spent the weekend winking and elbowing each other over the behavior of the boobs who were supposed to be protecting the president.  The scandal jeopardized Obama’s ability to stand up against Latin America’s overwhelming pressure to end sanctions against communist Cuba and include her in future summits held by the Organization of American States.  (As for other administration goals, such as convincing Brazil and fellow developing nations of the value of reckless U.S. monetary expansionism, I’m happy to have these efforts hampered.)

Before Obama was inaugurated, liberals used to gasp that a black president would be uniquely susceptible to assassination.  It turns out that the greatest facilitator of such a scenario is the bumbling security outfit our incompetent commander-in-chief has retained to protect him.

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In “7 Questions for Mitt About Mormonism,” religion columnist Jeffrey Weiss declares, “[I]t is past time for Mitt Romney to address relevant questions about his religion.”  Weiss casts a suspicious eye on such un-American Latter-day Saint doctrines as “[E]ach individual is accountable for his choices and actions…  If we have been frugal and saved for a rainy day, then we can more easily weather the financial storm.  If we have lived beyond our means, then we pay the consequences of our own actions when the bills come.”  Social Darwinism alert!

Weiss notes that until 34 years ago, blacks couldn’t be ordained as Mormon priests, and the religion frowned on interracial marriage.  This is in contrast to President Obama’s former church Trinity United, where whites are unlikely to be ordained as ministers today, and interracial marriage is still probably frowned upon.

Weiss frets that LDS’s discouragement of “ethically or legally questionable” medical treatments might—get this—lead Romney to trim funding for the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.  I happen to think there’s a good case for eliminate funding for this agency, and many others like it, and my reasons have nothing to do with Mormonism.

Mormon-basher Tricia Erickson laments the onslaught of “A Mormon One-World-Theocracy Brought To You By Mitt Romney.”  She labels the faith “an unconstitutional religion” and argues that President Romney would harm U.S. interests if so directed by “the Mormon infallible Prophet.”

David Brody worries that Romney’s religion may be a problem, because the candidate hasn’t spent enough time pandering to Evangelicals.  Lawrence O’Donnell trashes Mormonism as a “made-up” religion.  Bill Maher calls the faith “so ridiculous even Tom Cruise wouldn’t join it.”

Since the media are suddenly so obsessed with investigating candidates’ religious associations, I wonder how the doctrine Obama absorbed for 20 years at Trinity United—Black Liberation Theology—might inform his approach to governing.  How might BLT and its canonization of “redistributive justice” and “racial reparations” affect Obama’s ruling philosophy?  Did anyone in the media think to ask that?

Isn’t this a question the media should have asked four years ago?

Coincidentally, Obama mentor and racial reconciliator Jeremiah Wright, who retired in 2008 from Trinity United after ABC News aired a string of his horrific utterances, delivered three sermons last week at the Metropolitan Baptist Church in West Virginia to enraptured audiences.

When he wasn’t crotch-grabbing, miming marijuana puffs, and spitting out tracks by Lil Wayne and Ludacris, Reverend Wright did the following:

•    Disparaged the U.S. military and stated that “fighting for peace is like raping for virginity

•    Claimed that “white supremacy” drives “world policy,” and called whites “ignorant” and “arrogant”

•    Announced that Pontius Pilate’s European army was guilty of “occupying Palestinian territory”

•    Declared that Clarence Thomas is “worshipping some other God”—the “god of racists,” the “god of white supremacy,” and the “god who said that black folk are inferior”

•    Called Thomas Jefferson “a pedophile”

And that was just in the introduction!

It’s true that both parties’ candidates adhere to faiths that are slightly out of alignment with mainstream Protestant thought.  So perhaps a comparative analysis is in order:

•    Mormonism is a branch of the Latter-day Saint movement, an outgrowth of Protestantism that started in the 1820s.

-    Trinity United Church of Christ, Barack Obama’s place of worship for two decades, is affiliated with Black Liberation Theology, and UCC is an outgrowth of Protestantism established in 1957.

•    LDS has exploded to 14 million members, despite a history of religious persecution, libel, geographic expulsion, a “Mormon Extermination Order” issued by Missouri in 1838, and the murder of its founder by the Illinois militia in 1844.  LDS is now the fourth-largest religious organization in the United States.

-    UCC’s numbers have dwindled from 2 million at its founding to 1 million today, with most of the decline coming from mid-sized congregations rather than megachurches such as Trinity.

•    Mormonism relies on the Bible and supplementary texts such as The Book of Mormon and The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church, authored by movement founder Joseph Smith.

-    Black Liberation Theology relies on the Bible and supplementary texts such as Black Theology and Black Power and The Communist Manifesto, authored by leftist nut jobs James Cone and Karl Marx.

•    Mainstream Mormonism long ago abandoned the fundamentalist practice of polygamy.

-    Mainstream Black Liberation Theology-influenced churches still enjoy inflammatory practices such as demonizing America and race-baiting.

•    Romney proudly adheres to his faith, despite the bigotry much of the public displays against it.

-    Obama pragmatically chose his church because of its progressive credentials and endorsement of redistributive justice.  UCC has been labeled the most left-wing Protestant denomination in the country; similarly, Obama has been called the most left-wing president in U.S. history.  Obama speedily disowned his church and reverend when they became politically problematic.

•    Mormonism is roughly politically synchronous with most Protestant denominations.

-    The United Church of Christ leans far, far left.  Its Justice and Witness Ministries maintain an office on Capitol Hill, where they lobby Congress on Economic Justice; Public Life and Social Policy; Racial Justice; and Human Rights and Justice for Women.  The Ministries have endorsed the following thoroughly mainstream positions: socialized medicine; a national living wage; global warming regulations; unfettered public unions; elimination of all nuclear weapons; opposition to Israel’s right to defend itself against Palestinian radicals; divestment from Israel; and support for Puerto Rican national independence terrorists.

There is no convincing evidence that Obama disagrees with the tenets of Black Liberation Theology or any of the above UCC positions.

Yet we’re supposed to faint in horror over the prospect of a preppy, clean-cut, limited-government businessman and presidential candidate who wears magic underwear.

Previously published in modified form at Red Alert Politics

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Does President Obama believe in the separation of powers?  You wouldn’t know it from his intemperate comments Monday on the legal challenge to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which the Supreme Court is now deliberating.  Just days after skeptical justices had subjected administration lawyers and their opponents to a historic six hours of questioning, and just as the judges were retreating to contemplate the competing claims in private, Obama stood up in the Rose Garden and loudly warned the nine “unelected” rubes that they’d better get this one right.

Obama declared that overturning his health care law would be “unprecedented” and “extraordinary”—which is funny, because that’s what a lot of people have been saying about his health care law.

What with his haranguing of the justices over their Citizens United decision and his veiled threats over Obamacare, we haven’t had a president interfere this much with the Supreme Court since FDR.  (Apparently Obama’s intimidation tactics still aren’t strong enough for Representative James Clyburn, who wants the president to campaign against the Supreme Court this fall.)

Can anyone recall an instance of one faction of the Supreme Court instructing a sitting president which laws to veto?  How about a Congressional caucus telling the Chief Justice which cases to turn down?

One federal appeals court is so rattled by Obama’s posturing that it is requiring his Justice Department to submit a brief by Thursday noon outlining whether and when it believes the Supreme Court has the authority to overturn federal legislation.

In his address Monday, Obama blithely threw around the term “judicial activism,” suggesting that the Supreme Court justices would be guilty of practicing it if they overturned Obamacare.  But judicial activism doesn’t mean “making decisions the other side doesn’t like.”

The justices’ sworn oath is to uphold the Constitution.  Conservative complaints of judicial activism refer to cases in which justices override the Constitution while upholding or striking down laws that suit their political preferences.

Conservatives have focused obsessively on the constitutionality of the law since Day 1, in particular the propriety of requiring people to enter commercial contracts against their will by purchasing health insurance in the private market.

Judicial activists, including Obamacare supporters, ignore the constitutionality of laws, unless they are forced by their opponents to concoct phony, sophistic defenses invoking the Constitution, in which they typically claim that whatever it is they’re proposing—banning guns, preventing violence against women—is covered by the Interstate Commerce Clause.

When was the last time you heard a Republican legislator respond, when asked about the constitutionality of a law he had proposed, “Are you serious?” as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi did when queried about Obamacare?  How about a Republican announcing, as Illinois Democrat and former Congressman Phil Hare did at an Obamacare townhall meeting, “I don’t worry about the Constitution”?

(The left needs to get its story straight on whether the Supreme Court may ever consider the constitutionality of legislation.  Liberal Dahlia Lithwick, for example, claims that Congress can pass anything it wants, whether constitutional or not, because the Supreme Court will assess its constitutionality and strike it down if need be.  This was two years ago, back when blinkered Democrats didn’t think there was any chance the Supreme Court would hear the case against Obamacare, much less overrule it.  On the other hand, fellow Slate writer Jamal Greene recently argued that the Supreme Court should eschew its constitutional function and let Obamacare stand, because two branches of government have already weighed in.)

In case the “unprecedented” and “judicial activist” arguments weren’t convincing, Obama also crowed that the law had been passed by “a strong majority” of Congress—by which he meant a sputtering, cobbled-together Frankenstein’s monster of reluctant coalitions that had to be bribed, deceived, and coerced into compliance.  (The 2010 Republican midterm election landslide, though—that was nothing special!)

Meanwhile we’ve learned that the American public is solidly on the conservative justices’ side, with 72% endorsing the notion that the individual mandate is unconstitutional.  This includes over 50% of Republicans, Independents, Democrats, voters who oppose the law, and voters who support the law.  How’s that for “a strong majority”?

Obama’s chance to offer input on his namesake legislation has long since passed.  It’s time for him to accept the court’s—and the public’s—verdict on the disastrous legislation he recklessly set in motion.



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Several weeks ago, 28-year-old George Zimmerman spotted 17-year-old Martin ambling around the Retreat at Twins Lake gated community in Sanford, Florida and called 911 to report suspicious behavior on Martin’s part.  Zimmerman followed Martin throughout the complex by vehicle and on foot, against the 911 operator’s recommendation.  At some point, Martin and Zimmerman scuffled, and Zimmerman shot Martin.

Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee told reporters there wasn’t enough evidence to arrest the shooter: “In this case, Mr. Zimmerman has made the statement of self-defense.  Until we can establish probable cause to dispute that, we don’t have the grounds to arrest him.”

Never mind—the left wants him arrested, charged, and prosecuted anyway.  They’ve jumped to the conclusion that the attack was unprovoked and racially motivated.  Civil rights groups insist the Sanford Police Department and Seminole County State Attorney’s Office are racist.

Zimmerman had served as captain of the neighborhood watch patrol and had been instrumental in eradicating a recent rash of crime.  The Retreat had endured dozens of burglaries and a shooting in the past year, with residents having called the police hundreds of times to report suspicious activity.

Homeowner association secretary Cynthia Wibker testified on Zimmerman’s behalf: “He once caught a thief and an arrest was made.  He helped solve a lot of crimes.”  Resident Frank Taaffe believes Zimmerman’s motives were benevolent: “I just know he’s a good person and really cares for the neighborhood.”

Police records support Zimmerman’s account of the shooting.  Their report notes that officers “found Zimmerman bleeding from the nose and back of his head.  The back of his shirt was wet and had grass clippings on it, as if he’d been on his back on the ground.”  Zimmerman’s bloody nose and the testimony of one resident who witnessed the scuffle suggest that the 6-foot, 3-inch Trayvon Martin was punching Zimmerman.

The witness told reporters, “The guy on the bottom [Zimmerman], who had a red sweater on, was yelling to me, ‘Help!  Help!’ and I told him to stop, and I was calling 911.  When I got upstairs and looked down, the guy who was on the top [Martin] beating up the other guy, was the one laying in the grass, and I believe he was dead at that point.”

Early reports suggested that two gunshots bracketed a male’s cries for help.  Later reports clarified that there was only one gunshot. The number of shots and their timing is critical.  The earlier, disconfirmed view suggested that Zimmerman shot Martin, Martin cried for help, and Zimmerman shot Martin to shut him up.  The newer view suggests Martin was pummeling Zimmerman, Zimmerman screamed for help, and Zimmerman shot Martin in self-defense.  Supporting this interpretation, Martin’s father, upon hearing the 911 call, confirmed that the cries were not those of his son.

Two female witnesses, roommates Mary Cutcher and Selma Mora Lamilla, initially buttressed Zimmerman’s account, but Cutcher went to police days later and changed her story, claiming officers on the scene hadn’t been interested in everything she had to say.

Sergeant Dave Morgenstern disputes Cutcher’s account of the investigation, calling it “inconsistent with [Cutcher’s] sworn testimony to police.  Actually, officers who were canvassing the neighborhood looking for potential witnesses the evening of the shooting contacted her, and she said she did not want to get involved.”

The latest version of Cutcher’s story is that “there was no punching, no hitting going on at the time, no wrestling.”  Cutcher conceded that whatever fighting took place was over before Zimmerman and Martin had reached her backyard.  She admits it was possible that Martin had subdued and was attacking Zimmerman.

Cutcher hasn’t provided any evidence that what she told police the night of the incident was incorrect.  She merely claims she may have read too much into what she saw.  Her admission doesn’t invalidate other witnesses’ reports or Zimmerman’s grass stains and wounds.

Additional testimony from Cutcher and Lamilla revealed that Zimmerman’s behavior after the shooting was not that of a man who knew he’d committed an unprovoked murder against an innocent bystander, let alone a vicious hate crime.

On Tuesday, Anderson Cooper interviewed Cutcher and Lamilla, the latter of whom stated, “By that time [of witnessing the scene], you hear like a shot—like some other noise.  I run away from my backyard and I look at the person [Zimmerman] on his knees on top of a body [Martin].”

Cutcher added that Zimmerman was “straddling him.  One [leg] on each side, on his knees, with his hands on his back.  I immediately thought, Okay, obviously if it’s the shooter, he would have ran.  I thought, He’s holding the wound, helping the guy, taking a pulse, making sure he’s okay.”

So Cutcher implied that if Zimmerman had killed Martin unjustifiably, he would have run away.  Instead, he stayed at the scene, tenderly holding Martin’s wound, taking his pulse, and remaining with him until police arrived.

The national rush to judgment, the left’s abandonment of presumption of innocence, and the death threats that have forced Zimmerman to leave his home, abandon his job, and flee to an undisclosed location are all belied by the flimsiness of the case against him as a hate crime felon.

Once again, as with their smears against the Tea Party as racist, their campaign against Sergeant James Crowley in the Henry Louis Gates phony racial profiling case, and their uncritical acceptance of a black stripper’s disproven claims she was raped by white Duke fraternity brothers, liberals’ interest is never in justice.  Their interest is in using tragic cases like Trayvon Martin’s to perpetuate a society tormented by specious racial grievances and a permanently victimized minority underclass.

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Obama sure doesn’t seem to want to run on his record, since the economy is still in terrible shape after three years of his leadership.  Instead, it appears he’s going to campaign on the conceit that Bush left him with a much worse economy than anyone—he, economists, Nostradamus—could have predicted.  Obama now would have us believe that his policies prevented an economic slide the likes of which would have made 2010 look like boom times.

That’s a very interesting campaign platform, because even a cursory look at the trajectory of unemployment rates and economic growth in the months following the country’s recessions of the past 50 years shows that the downturn that started in December 2007 is singularly deep, protracted, and devastating.  If Obama’s right, and our economy would have been much worse had he not enacted his resuscitating policies, then our country narrowly dodged a plunge to a standard of living on par with that of the 1960s.

Take a look at the following chart, which I generated using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (hat tip: Robert Tracinski).  It shows the percent change in total U.S. employment for all post-World War II recessions averaged together (the red line), and for 2007 by itself (the blue line), for each month after the start of the recession:

For the average recession, monthly change in employment decreased until hitting rock bottom at -2%, a year after the start of the recession; then headed up to 0% two years out; and finally continued up to 7% five years out.

In contrast, the 2007 recession looks radically different.  One year after it began—around the time Obama was elected—monthly change in employment was at the historical average of -2%.  But change in employment continued to plummet, down to 6% per month two years out, when by historical trends it should have been back to 0%.  Three years out it was still sunk at -5% rather than up at the 3% average.  Four years out it had “improved” to -4% rather than the 5% average.

If the average of all other post-war recessions resembles the Little Dipper, the 2007 recession is the Big Dipper.

Think the non-2007 average is hiding wide variation in recovery rates for previous recessions that dwarfs the apparent outlier of 2007?  In fact, the chart below shows employment trajectories for each recession alongside the 2007 trend (light blue line at the bottom).  The 2007 path was comparable to that of the worst recessions for 15 months; then, three months into Obama’s presidency, it plummeted into uncharted negative territory and has stayed there ever since.

When liberals blithely claim that Obama has kept things from being worse than they could have been, what they fail to realize is that things are already atrocious by historical standards.  Compared to the rapid growth and recovery we’ve always seen after economic recessions in modern times, the 2007 recession is not on par with those recessions, it’s not a little worse, it’s not moderately worse—it’s much, much worse.  In fact, it’s not even comparable—it’s in its own separate category.

The seasonally-adjusted percent change in real GDP per quarter is equally sickening:

Note that for our current recession, quarterly changes are barely above 0%, when historically they should be at 12.5%.

Here’s the graph showing GDP for each recession separately:

The only post-recession period that came close to 2007′s for change in GDP was 1980′s—and that’s because 1980 began a double-dip recession, the second half of which followed shortly after in 1981, and looked just like the other recessions.  Other than that, 2007 stands alone.

Here’s the cumulative monthly increase in number of jobs:

The average for all non-2007 recessions never even dipped below 0%, whereas for the 2007 recession it went negative for more than 18 months, and after four years has still only recovered to where other recessions were at 9 months.

Finally, here’s the cumulative increase in GDP per quarter:

The cumulative GDP trajectory for other post-WWII recessions is 1% per quarter.  For the 2007 recession, it’s half that.

Here is a point that can’t be emphasized enough during the general election season: The recession Obama inherited, and more importantly, presided over and extended, is the worst this country has seen since the Great Depression.

I’ll repeat: The recession that technically ended in 2009, but whose fallout we are still enduring three years later, and 75% of which Obama presided over, is uniquely cavernous, prolonged, and dreadful among all U.S. recessions of the past half-century.  Obama is nonetheless campaigning on the platform that, were it not for his $1 trillion stimulus bill, auto company bailout, health care bill, $1- and $2-trillion deficits, record federal spending, and onerous regulations (four times as many in three years as Bush in eight), the United States would be suffering an apocalypse of famine, chaos, and desperation.  Does anyone really believe things would have been that much worse if Obama hadn’t gotten his way?

For those unsure about the hypothetical impact of heavy federal government spending vs. fiscal austerity, or confused by competing Democratic vs. Republican claims about the sources of economic growth, stop and think: Isn’t the notion that recovery from the recession would have looked more like recoveries from all other post-war recessions if Obama hadn’t enacted unprecedented, unparalleled spending at least as likely as Obama’s scenario?  Isn’t the fact that Obama carried out actions unmatched in scope in U.S. history possibly capable of explaining a sluggish recovery unmatched in modern history?

Obama’s supporters in the media are right about one aspect of his presidency.  It certainly has been historic: historically ruinous for the economy.

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Actually, what isn’t mathematical about the delegate accrual process?

Presidential primary nomination season is rife with mathematical calculations.  Each state boasts its own complicated apportionment formula, ranging from mostly proportional to quasi-proportional to winner-take-all.  Savvy campaign managers earn big bucks planning winning strategies for accumulating the requisite number of delegates.  Campaign tacticians create sophisticated statistical models to predict state, district, and citywide outcomes and to plot contingency routes for reaching a majority of delegates.  Campaign finance staff forecast revenue from donations, estimate advertising costs, and manage a budget equivalent to that of a midsized company.

What does Santorum think is going to happen after his failure to clinch the nomination: that God will intervene and change the laws of mathematics for him?

What’s “pathetic,” to use Santorum’s term, is entering a process that requires careful strategizing, precise calculation, and detailed attention to trends on the ground—and then waving it all away, expecting one’s good intentions to carry the day.  How else can one explain the Santorum campaign’s idiotic failure to get on the ballot in multiple Ohio and Illinois districts, and its absence from the Virginia ballot?

Politics demands shrewdness, some crassness, a focus on the bottom line.  If that’s not your cup of tea, fine—there are many other noble professions to pursue that don’t involve calculating how the public will react to your every move and utterance.  But don’t get into politics and expect to be able to brush off pesky annoyances like arithmetic.

But back to the math: To win the GOP nomination, Romney must earn 47% of the remaining delegates; his average to date is 55%.  Santorum must earn 64% of the remaining delegates; his average is 26%.  That means that Santorum must more than double the share of delegates he’s taken in, from now until the last primary on June 26 in Utah.  And he must start now, at the very point in his campaign when he’s losing momentum like a car that’s run over a bear trap.

Santorum supporters claim the race is about to shift decisively in his favor, after upcoming primaries in conservative Southern states Mississippi and Alabama.  Yet Santorum is in third place in both states, trailing badly behind Romney and Gingrich.  How’s that Southern strategy working out for you, Rick?

Santorum isn’t even really pretending he can win 1,144 delegates anymore.  He’s mostly trying to keep Romney from doing so, hoping for a brokered convention in which he can twist enough arms to hand him the nomination against the wishes of a plurality of GOP primary voters.

Santorum is offended by the slow, plodding, methodical work needed to build widespread support and legitimacy among a broad base of the electorate.  He’s resting his hopes on swaying huge masses of emotional, uncommitted delegates at the GOP convention in August.  Blindly grasping at possibilities, he’s praying for uncertainty, chaos, a wrench in the system.  Even then, he hasn’t logically determined how he can win a brokered convention.

Santorum’s nomination strategy is about a step up in sophistication from Al Gore’s 2000 post-election day gamble.

Even when Santorum’s campaign flirts with math, it invokes, not a priori calculation and strategy, but post hoc rationalization and selective interpretation.  See, for example, this embarrassingly rosy-cheeked recent campaign memo.

When comparing himself to Romney, Santorum attacks the very concept of math, as if it offends him, just as his recent “snob” comment denigrated the idea of college.  The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin observed, “When you campaign against math and logic and tout your lack of money as a reason for voters to flock to you, you should take a breather and reflect on what you are doing.”

For the record, nobody ever said the nomination was all about math.  Despite the dastardly competence of his campaign staff, Romney wouldn’t have secured a solid footing in the GOP nomination process if his views had been repugnant and destructive.  (Securing the Democratic nomination with repugnant and destructive views—now that’s another story.)  When Romney says it’s all about math, he means the current stage of the nomination process, not the early stage when voters are forming their views of the candidates.

Romney isn’t arguing that he should be nominated because of math—he’s arguing that he will be nominated, because he engaged in the preparatory work to establish a winning candidacy, and has appealed to enough voters in strategically sound locations to establish a path to victory.  If Santorum doesn’t like that, then he should have gotten his ground game together a lot earlier, not waited and then complained about sour grapes.

Rejecting math won’t help Santorum, and if it keeps forcing Romney to spend money in an extended primary season, it may hurt Republicans.  As one recent Romney campaign memo put it, “As the other candidates attempt to ignore the basic principles of math, the only person’s odds of winning they are increasing are Barack Obama’s.”



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• Memo: Rick Santorum campaign seeks contested convention, says Mitt Romney delegate edge overstated (dailykos.com)
• The Technocrat and the Moralist Square Off (thedailybeast.com)
• Santorum Apes Paul? (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
• Santorum’s Delegate Math Looks Different From Romney’s (thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Romney adds up delegate math as Santorum envisions brokered convention – Fox News (foxnews.com)