Scott Spiegel

Last week a concerned reader took issue with my negative comparison of the Occupy Wall Street protests to the Tea Party rallies—in particular my statement that “Tea Party rallies have been amazingly peaceful, with not a single arrest… across hundreds of cities and thousands of events…”  The reader was correct—there were in fact Tea Party arrests I had overlooked.

In March of 2011, Jim Canelos was arrested in Mohave County, Arizona for wearing a flag hat at a county supervisors’ meeting that prohibited wearing hats.

In February of 2010, Mervin Fried was arrested in Kingman, Arizona for bringing a symbolic pitchfork to a protest in a county administration building.  Fried argued that the county already allowed citizens to carry guns—a more dangerous weapon—into government buildings, and was later acquitted.

Most notably, in November of 2009, ten protestors angry over ObamaCare were arrested for engaging in disorderly conduct outside Nancy Pelosi’s office in Washington, D.C.  The ralliers were discovered to have been organized by rabid anti-abortion activist and Democrat Randall Terry of Operation Rescue.

That’s it!  A dozen Tea Party arrests in two-and-a-half years, most tied to anti-abortion protestors.  Given the media’s left-wing slant, you can be sure that every arrest ever made at a Tea Party rally in the tiniest hamlet in the country has been thoroughly documented.

Now that we’ve gotten that straight, let’s examine the arrest record of Occupy Wall Street, which just hit its one-month anniversary:

•    Several weeks ago in New York, over 700 protesters were arrested for marching into the vehicular lanes of the Brooklyn Bridge against police orders and cutting off traffic;

•    Last Tuesday 129 protestors were arrested in Boston and 6 in D.C. for trespassing and disorderly conduct;

•    On Saturday 92 protestors were arrested in New York for occupying a branch of Citibank, knocking down police barriers, and other offenses;

•    Also on Saturday, 53 protestors in Tucson, 24 in Denver, and 19 in Raleigh were arrested for occupying public parks after closing time;

•    On Sunday 175 protestors in Chicago were arrested for setting up a tent city and occupying Congress Plaza near Grant Park;

•    Also on Sunday, 46 protestors were arrested in Phoenix for refusing to evacuate a public park at closing time

This is just a partial list and includes only roundups at the most high-profile rallies in the biggest cities.

Let’s not forget the recent riots abroad, mostly in Western Europe, inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protests.  In Rome on Saturday, police arrested protestors for breaking windows, destroying statues, spraying graffiti on churches, vandalizing bank lobbies and ATM machines, smashing police cruisers, and setting dumpsters, cars, and military depots on fire; attacking police with batons, rocks, bottles, fire extinguishers, and bombs; injuring hundreds of innocents, mostly police officers; and causing millions in damage to public property and untold damage to private property.

(In one delicious footnote, Roman protestors expressed indignation that police hadn’t made more arrests of their most violent compatriots early on, so that the whole group wouldn’t be discredited.  Damned if you enforce the law, damned if you don’t.)

So let’s examine the totals: 12 arrests for the Tea Party rallies, which have been going on for 30 months; and 1200 arrests for the Occupy Wall Street mobs, which have been going on for 30 days.

It’s awfully close, but I’m going to have to suggest that Occupy Wall Street is less law-abiding than the Tea Party.  Yet to hear the mainstream media present it, Occupy Wall Street is every bit as peaceful and legitimate as the Tea Party.

The disparate treatment given to these wildly uneven tallies reflects the double standard set by the left-leaning media: One Tea Partier raising his fist in anger over intrusive government is as alarming as one thousand Occupy Wall Street protestors clashing with police.

Some commentators have noted that Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party both began out of anger over the nation’s largest banks being bailed out.  Though the sources of their grievances overlap, the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street have used vastly different tactics to get across their messages.  Ironically, the Tea Party, which is more suspicious of government, has been following the letter of the law.  Occupy Wall Street, which favors more government regulation, has been trampling all over the law.

This irony is easily explainable: The Tea Party believes the government has legitimate, limited functions, such as the power of the police and courts to protect people from the initiation of force and violation of property rights.  In contrast, Occupy Wall Street believes legitimate functions of government include providing universal healthcare, free college education, and a living wage; naturally, they see its policing functions as rather superfluous and heavy-handed, if not downright militaristic.

Thus, we have the spectacle of defense lawyers representing over 800 defendants in Manhattan’s criminal court system demanding that all charges be dropped for the protestors, and threatening individual trials for the miscreants, thus further clogging the system’s already overstuffed caseload.  (Prepare for agitators to crow that their struggle was victorious and their motives vindicated after overburdened prosecutors inevitably throw in the towel.)

Just before the fall 2008 bank bailout, which most Democrats supported and most Republicans opposed, President Bush infamously observed that he had “abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.”

The members of a protest movement that claims to be concerned with justice have been wildly indiscriminate in their violation of the law.  Occupy Wall Street protestors apparently believe they must abandon our civilized system of government in order to save it.



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The only similarity Tea Party rallies and the Occupy Wall Street protests share is that both involve humans gathered in public spaces.  Other than that they have about as much in common as a Rolling Stones concert does with a public stoning.

The UK Daily Mail featured a story on the unsavory conditions at the OWS protestors’ home base in Manhattan, Zuccotti Park, including photos of one flannel-clad agitator squatting and defecating against a police car.  Hmm, I think the last time that happened at a Tea Party rally was… never.

Having destroyed the park over the past three weeks by filling it with patchouli ashes and feces, the protestors traipsed north on Saturday to turn another great New York gathering space, Washington Square Park, into a public urinal.

The glaring differences between OWS and the Tea Party rallies are obvious to anyone with a functioning pair of eyes (and nostrils).

The Tea Party movement, which began around the start of Barack Obama’s presidency and built momentum during the year-long national healthcare debate, was a grassroots uprising.  Across the country, people who had never been active in politics networked and gathered with concerned, like-minded citizens to demand a curb on the intrusion of federal government into our lives.

In contrast, OWS, which is a fraction of the size of the Tea Party, was instigated by an anti-consumerist Canadian magazine called Adbusters, and has seen its numbers swell via conspicuous throngs of bused-in union members, bored trust fund brats cruising for easy sex, disheveled homeless people looking for free food, and savvy criminals on the lam who understand that a crowd of ragtag bums is the perfect hiding spot for them.

Despite their heated rhetoric, Tea Party rallies have been amazingly peaceful, with hardly any arrests and not a single incidence of violence—except for those committed by union members against the ralliers—across hundreds of cities and thousands of events attended by millions of people over the past two-and-a-half years.

In contrast, OWS has rudely disrupted its host cities, with over 700 arrests in just one day in one city (New York) and tens of millions of dollars in policing costs only a few weeks into the movement.  Commuters and municipal officials have complained about the invaders’ lack of respect for residents just trying to go about their business.

Tea Party rallies have been antiseptically clean, to such a degree that public works employees have gushed about how attendees leave the protest areas cleaner than when they arrived.

In contrast, the OWS occupation has been sickeningly unsanitary, with widespread public urination and defecation, hordes of unwashed louts mating in filthy sleeping bags, mounting piles of rotting trash, and an omnipresent odor of raw sewage.

The Tea Party has been well-organized and influential, having achieved earth-shattering electoral results in special and off-year gubernatorial and senatorial elections, and a historic landslide in the Congressional midterms.

In contrast, OWS has been ineffectual and impotent, with no one—including the protestors—having any idea what they want, let alone how they hope to achieve it by playing hacky sack and painting their bodies like tribesmen.

Most Tea Partiers took time out of their busy days to attend the rallies, which were almost always held in the evenings, after work, or on weekends.

In contrast, most OWS protestors appear to have no jobs, homes, or responsibilities to attend to, and seem to be looking to the rallies to provide them with shelter, food, and a purpose in life.

And those are just the superficial differences!

On a deeper level, the Tea Partiers want government to leave them alone and allow them to be productive citizens and decide how to spend their money.  In contrast, OWS protestors wish to tear down the capitalist system while forcing society to give them free college, universal healthcare, and guaranteed home ownership.

The Tea Party’s heroes have included our nation’s Founding Fathers, and 20^th-century political and philosophical leaders such as Ronald Reagan, Friedrich Hayek, and Ayn Rand.  In contrast, OWS has thrown its support to the likes of cop-killer Troy Davis and al-Qaeda conspirator Tarek Mehanna.

Tea Partiers have been reading and debating the Constitution and the Federalist Papers.  OWS leaders have been teaching protestors how to pick open handcuffs with hairpins.

Tea Party organizers have been handing out miniature flags; OWS leaders have been distributing condoms.

As anyone who’s been watching knows, the Tea Party increased its influence the larger it grew and the more it pervaded our culture.  Given the public revulsion over the Wall Street protests, the longer these embarrassing displays continue, the bigger the anti-Democratic tsunami will be in 2012.

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What the hell are the Wall Street occupiers protesting?  Do they even know?

The “Occupy Wall Street” hoodlums have been occupying Zuccotti Park (formerly Liberty Plaza) near Manhattan’s financial district for almost three weeks, with no signs of leaving.  They have literally been occupying the park—demonstrating without a police permit and setting up living quarters, complete with their own sleeping area, kitchen, and “library.”  They have been clogging neighboring streets and bridges.  They have pledged to occupy the area through the coming winter.

Demonstrators are trying to boost the legitimacy of their operation by passing out hundreds of thousands of copies of their self-published, four-page diatribe, “The Occupied Wall Street Journal.”

The self-described occupiers are, of course, long-haired, hippie-ish, slovenly, litter-strewing, profanity-spewing, Marxism-spouting, law-and-order-despising, ill-informed, inarticulate, slack-jawed, and unfocused—in other words, your typical left-wing mob.

(You knew the mob just had to be leftist before you even heard what it was about.  From what other portion of the political spectrum could activists organize so many thousands of unemployed people to do nothing but sit around in the street and chant all day?  Contrast the Wall Street occupation with Tea Party rallies, which always take place in the evening or on weekends, outside of work hours.)

The highlight of the movement so far came when New York City police arrested 700 thugs who unlawfully marched into the traffic lanes of the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday evening, cutting off traffic for hours.

Not ashamed in the slightest at their disruptive, feral behavior, the picketers have been screaming “police brutality” over their supposedly shocking mistreatment.  Such brutality has included police telling marchers that they would be arrested if they blocked the Brooklyn Bridge, then arresting marchers when they blocked the Brooklyn Bridge.  Dissenters were lined up in neat, orderly rows in plastic handcuffs and then escorted away in vans—or, in protestors’ minds, tortured and abused by sadistic Gestapo officers.

Dreadlocked hooligans have set up tent cities in support of the Wall Street protestors in Boston, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, and Seattle.

On Monday the protestors held a “corporate zombie” march, with participants dressed like zombie bankers stuffing Monopoly money in their mouths.

Celebrity lefties such as Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Russell Simmons, Cornel West, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, and Roseanne “Robespierre” Barr have made guest appearances to support the protestors.

So what exactly are the protestors protesting?

The Associated Press characterizes the activists’ grievances as “corporate greed and other issues.”  That’s about as specific and succinct a description as you’re likely to find anywhere, including in the protestors’ own literature.

The “other issues” protestors have railed against include—and this is far from an exhaustive list: bank bailouts, home foreclosures, high unemployment, global warming, destruction of the ecosystem, poverty, food modification, excessive health care company profits, Islamophobia, Jewish control of the economy, social inequality, the execution of Troy Davis, and the inclusion of American Indian-abuser Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill.

One movement leader narrated a video in which he states that the marchers are protesting the following evils: “corporatism, fascism, crony capitalism, a police state, an American empire, [too many] military bases, dead bodies in Iraq, a ‘welfare warfare’ state, and ‘Republi-crats.’”  The site hosting the video explains that protestors’ strategy “was inspired by recent uprisings in Spain, Greece, Egypt, and Tunisia”—as though the causes of the austerity protests in Western Europe were remotely related to the causes of the democracy protests in the Middle East.

Perhaps this is a clue: The demonstrators have held many of their rallies in front of Federal Reserve buildings around the country.  Does that mean they’re protesting the existence of the Federal Reserve?  Are they opposed to its manipulation of the U.S. currency, including the Obama administration’s quantitative easing programs?  Are they calling for a return to the gold standard?

Why no, actually, those are demands being made by attendees at Tea Party rallies.  In fact, those are thoughtful demands I could actually get behind.

In contrast, the Occupy Wall Street protestors are less focused in their goals.

Thus, in one video, we get such contradictory statements as the following musings, separated by mere minutes:

“It’s about, like, people making things happen, rather than expecting, like, someone else to take care [of you].”

“It’s a process of educating people… that we have to be first and foremost altruistic, and care for the collective before caring for ourselves.”

Whereas the Tea Party’s message is razor sharp and crystal clear—limit the size and scope of the federal government and restore individual liberty—the occupiers’ message is fuzzy and incoherent, a miasma of unfocused, seething rage.

Even the über-liberal The Nation, which recently featured a helpful FAQ section on the movement, groaned, “Ugh—the zillion-dollar question” in response to an honest query on what the demands of the protestors are.  They elaborated: “The General Assembly [Occupy Wall Street’s organizing body] is currently in the midst of determining how it will come to consensus about unifying demands.  It’s a really messy and interesting discussion.  But don’t hold your breath.”

Riot first; self-reflect later.  The motto of the radical left.

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FiveThirtyEight whiz Nate Silver recently asked whether Chris Christie is the anti-Romney or the anti-Perry.

The answer is yes.

Christie is the anti-Romney, because he genuinely and unapologetically embraces and enacts conservative policies, at least on fiscal matters—in particular entitlement reform, the most important policy realm our nation currently faces.

Critics charge that he’s not consistently conservative on issues such as global warming and gun control.  Yet Rick Perry critics complain that he’s not consistently conservative on issues such as immigration and the HPV vaccine, and most people wouldn’t call Perry a liberal.

Christie is the anti-Perry, because he knows how to identify, articulate, and justify his positions, using fiery, uncompromising rhetoric that doesn’t sound rehearsed, and isn’t afraid to say things that tick off hallowed interest groups.

Critics charge that he’s arrogant, has a temper, and insults people.  Yet his style has proven wildly popular with voters who are fed up with politicians who can’t or won’t stand up to bullying public employee unions that are bankrupting the nation’s most populous states.

If Mitt Romney held more consistently conservative positions on the major issues of the day, he’d be able to articulate them to voters.  But he doesn’t.

If Rick Perry were more articulate and had a better understanding of the issues, his positions would be conservative enough for most Republicans.  But he isn’t.

The other candidates still in the running all have their weaknesses, with most embodying one of the fatal flaws represented by frontrunners Romney and Perry.

Ron Paul is blisteringly conservative on economic issues but crazily isolationist on foreign policy, to the extent that he thinks Iran should be allowed to build nuclear weapons to defend themselves against the U.S., and to the degree that he approvingly quotes Osama bin Laden’s reasons for attacking us on 9/11.  Newt Gingrich led the Republican Revolution of 1995 and enacted welfare reform, but is prone to making insane statements such as claiming that repealing ObamaCare involves as much abridgment of people’s liberty as enacting it.

Michele Bachmann is a solid conservative, but is prone to gaffes and sloppy slips of the tongue such as her mindboggling insinuation that the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation.  Herman Cain is a successful former businessman with sensible ideas about the economy but a stunning, blissful ignorance about foreign policy.

Michael Barone correctly notes that just about the only remaining feasible Republican presidential candidates who both are conservative enough and know how to speak without sounding like idiots are Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, and Chris Christie.  Daniels is concerned about his family’s privacy and has decided not to run; Ryan is young, early on in his career, and clearly has no intention of running in 2012.

That leaves Christie, who has certainly denied numerous times that he is running, but whose supporters and staffers seem to be leaking rumors that he may change his mind.  Christie has spent the past few months jetting around the country speaking at high-profile Republican fundraisers, giving speeches at prominent venues such as the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and meeting with potential donors.

Elsewhere I have written at length about why we should encourage Christie in particular to run, including the fact that Republican candidates for governor did well in 2010 in part by emulating his substance and style; that he knows how to take the fight to his opponents; that his popularity among Republican voters is underreported; and that his electability among independents and Democrats is underappreciated.

Christie’s not perfect.  But where is the glaring RomneyCare albatross–whose defense Romney cheekily deleted from the paperback version of his book No Apology—in Christie’s past that will come back to haunt him in the general election, when voters are focused perhaps foremost on repealing ObamaCare?

Christie’s not perfect.  But where are the embarrassing misstatements—like Perry’s lame, botched attack on Romney’s flip-flopping in last week’s debate in Orlando—that lead us to fear Christie will flounder in debates with the supposedly golden-voiced Obama?

Contrast Christie, if you will, with the Republicans’ 2008 nominee, John McCain, who combined the worst aspects of Romney and Perry: liberal policies and inarticulateness.  Republicans should never again have to suffer the ignominy of a nominee who differs only a little bit from the Democratic candidate—or who can’t convincingly explain why he’s to the right of Barack Obama.

The conservative establishment prefers Romney to Perry because they believe him to be more electable.  Some commentators, such as columnist Sandy Rios, believe Republicans will break for Perry over Romney because people “prefer an honest hesitator over a slickster with all the answers.”

But why should Republicans have to choose between a conservative and someone who can talk?

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History has taught us that the farcical “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority breaks down every single time it is forcibly initiated by the West.  The routine disintegrates because it always unpeacefully proceeds in the following manner: Palestinians make demands, and Israel agrees to them; Palestinians smell blood in the water and up the stakes, and Israel necessarily balks; Palestinians attack Israel, and Israel counterattacks; the world condemns Israel for its “disproportionate” response, and Palestinians secretly celebrate Israel’s global denigration without shedding a tear over the deaths of its own civilians; and then the whole sordid cycle starts again.

The Palestinians’ latest gambit for feigning legitimacy in the eyes of free nations is for PA President Mahmoud Abbas to request a platform for better infiltrating, isolating, and attacking Israel—I mean, “statehood”—at the United Nations’ Security Council meeting this Friday.  This entreaty would require fulfilling President Obama’s outrageous demand earlier this year that Israel return to its undefendable, pre-1967 borders and cede east Jerusalem to the Palestinians.  A usefully idiotic coalition of Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, and Lutheran priests in Jerusalem have boosted the PA’s bid.

The PA’s move on Friday will almost certainly be blocked by the United States, which, as a core member of the Security Council, has veto power over any such bid.  If its statehood attempt fails, Abbas has implied that the PA will present its case to the U.N. General Assembly, whose peanut gallery of Third World dictatorships will likely approve an upgrade for the PA from “entity” to non-voting, non-member observer state.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed the PA’s bid for statehood as unhelpful posturing and insisted Palestinians earn concessions by returning to the peace process, not trying to circumvent it and gain statehood so they can strong-arm Israel via the U.N.

Palestinian leaders have threatened that if they don’t succeed at gaining statehood, there may be unpleasant consequences, i.e. more protests, violence, and attacks on Israel.

History has also taught us that—in addition to the peace process always failing—whenever Israel capitulates to the PA, Palestinians’ demands only escalate to unreasonable levels, and mayhem ensues over Israel’s failure to meet their impossible conditions.  In contrast, whenever Israel firmly rejects the PA’s ultimatums and warns that military force will be used against reprisal attacks, Palestinians back down.

In other words, people respond to threats.  Groups, organizations, and nations respond to threats.  Even animals are smart enough to respond to threats.  The Palestinians are no different.  If Israel resolutely rebuffs their ridiculous demands and issues threats against retaliation, the PA will surely back down as well.

Why is the PA’s bid for statehood, and the whole peace process, ridiculous?  Because only good-faith parties respond in a reasonable manner to the give-and-take process of negotiations, in which each party’s ongoing actions build up its reputation as either a credible partner or a backstabber.  The Palestinians always fail to live up to their end of the deal, yet keep getting a free pass to continue as an equal partner in the process.

Two parties cannot negotiate if one refuses to recognize the other’s right to exist, existence being an obvious precondition for negotiation.  How can the PA credibly claim to be negotiating with an entity it refuses to acknowledge as legitimate and has repeatedly stated it wishes to wipe off the map?  How can the PA purport to be acting in good faith when it maintains close ties with anti-Semitic terrorist group Hamas—whose charter calls for the expulsion of all Jews from Palestine—and refuses to denounce this organization’s tactics or even label it a terrorist group?

As Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman noted, Israel has previously “shown great generosity towards the Palestinians, but it did not bring us peace…  It’s been 18 years since the Oslo Accords and we’ve tried everything…  [Ehud] Barak, in Camp David, agreed to all [Palestinian] demands.  What did we get in return?  Another intifada and more bloodshed.”

The U.S. should forcefully reject the PA’s bid, vigorously protest its request for an upgrade to non-member status, and permanently withdraw the half a billion dollars in annual aid it gives to the Palestinians.  The latter measure, in addition to preventing funds from being diverted to a political entity with a history of sponsoring terror, will signal to the PA that it has no business trying to morph into a state of semi-authenticity under the cover of the scores of reprehensible prison states unconscionably given legitimacy at the despicable U.N.



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Recently Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney criticized fellow contender Rick Perry for labeling Social Security a Ponzi scheme.  Romney extolled the virtues of the soon-to-be-bankrupt program and vowed to support its continuance unconditionally if elected.

A Ponzi scheme, so named after white-collar criminal Charles Ponzi, involves a huckster collecting money from numerous investors who are promised a high or reliable return on their investment, with payments being made by future investors lured in by similar promises of financial gain.  The scheme is unsustainable, because dividends received are not actually invested, and are not equaled by the dividends promised to investors.  Earlier investors fare better than later investors, who lose their money once the scheme collapses.

Sound familiar?

Social Security, signed into law by white-collar criminal Franklin Delano Roosevelt, involves the federal government collecting money from all working citizens, who are promised a reliable pension when they retire, with payments being made by subsequent generations who are dragged into the program.  The system is unsustainable because, due to slowing population increases and politicians raiding the Social Security Trust Fund, most payroll taxes received are not actually invested, and are not equaled by the payments promised to retirees.  Earlier generations fare better than later generations, who will not receive benefits once the system collapses.

The history of Social Security’s establishment and implementation reveal that Governor Perry is wrong about the program’s being a Ponzi scheme.  It is much worse.

Social Security is bigger, by many orders of magnitude, than any Ponzi scheme ever enacted in human history.  It is the largest government program in the world, and the biggest component of U.S. federal expenditures.  Social Security is to the average Ponzi scheme what the Great Pyramid of Giza is to a traffic cone.

Social Security is involuntary, whereas Ponzi schemes are at least voluntary.  Though applying for a Social Security number is not technically mandatory to live and work in the U.S., the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies require it, which forces everyone to participate in the program, or makes their lives very difficult if they don’t.

Social Security is better disguised than a Ponzi scheme, and thus more insidious.  Unlike a Ponzi scheme, the true nature of Social Security is hidden in broad daylight, which lulls ordinary citizens into thinking it couldn’t possibly be as fraudulent or unsustainable as it is.

Social Security is longer-lasting than any real-life Ponzi scheme.  Whereas most Ponzi schemes are lucky to survive a few months, Social Security has continued for over 75 years.

Social Security’s insolvency won’t affect young, naïve, retrainable investors, but rather elderly people at the potentially neediest and most vulnerable stage of their lives.

All of the above negative consequences of Social Security are a direct result of its being administered by the federal government.

Government has access to billions of participants, trillions of dollars in capital, and decades of time to continue the ruse.

Government forces all citizens to participate, even if they’d rather keep their money, invest as they choose, and take their chances later in life.

Government gives Social Security its imprimatur—whatever that’s worth these days.  Most members of both major political parties approve of continuing Social Security more or less as is.  The program is referred to as the “third rail” of politics, meaning that if you touch it, you die politically.  It is as though Bernard Madoff were a major donor to both parties, and Congress refused to question his investment strategies because Madoff were considered the “third rail” of politics.

Government designed Social Security to increase its ability to control the populace, by forcing them to pay in when they’re young and healthy and then meting out or scaling back benefits when they’re old and infirm.  (By “government,” of course, I mean Democrats.)  The Supreme Court actually ruled, in Flemming v. Nestor (1960), that the Social Security Administration is not legally required to pay benefits to retirees who have contributed to the system their whole lives, if it finds itself in a pinch: “To engraft upon the Social Security System a concept of ‘accrued property rights’ would deprive it of the flexibility and boldness in adjustment to ever-changing conditions which it demands…”  Would that everyday businesses were afforded the same “flexibility” and “boldness” to decide not to honor their contracts in order to better adjust to “ever-changing conditions.”

Supporters of Social Security only wish it had the air of respectability of a garden-variety Ponzi scheme.  Then we could send the fraudulent originators to jail, cut our losses, and start over.

Instead, we’re saddled for eternity with the mother of all entitlement programs, the granddaddy of confidence games, the oldest relic of the Seven Entitlement Wonders of the Modern World.  Even supposedly conservative presidential candidates—including, sadly, Rick Perry—are now duking it out to show how badly they want to preserve this fraud.



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What have we learned in the 10 years since Islamic terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?  Several lessons spring to mind:

1. There is nothing President George W. Bush could have done to prevent terrorist acts in his first eight months in office, of which his post-9/11 critics would have approved.  Even after 9/11, liberals have loudly disapproved of profiling at airports, surreptitiously monitoring terrorist communications, and fighting al-Qaeda militarily abroad.  Imagine how they would have reacted if Bush had attempted any of these strategies pre-9/11.

2. Poverty does not cause terrorism; it is both unnecessary and insufficient to the task.  Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up Northwest Flight 253, was the son of a wealthy Nigerian banker.  American Taliban John Walker Lindh went to high school at a “California Distinguished School” in SoCal.  In contrast, poor people the world over—rice farmers in China, untouchables in India—do not rise up en masse to wreak havoc in suicide bombings.  Modern-day terrorism is caused by individuals’ adherence to an ideology that encourages terrorist acts against innocent civilians—an ideology that usually happens to be Islamist.  Not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all modern-day terrorists are Muslims.

3. Liberals have amassed a formidable glossary of imprecations they invoke whenever commentators scrutinize the radical nature of Islam: alienating Muslims, being at war with Islam, being Islamophobic, demonizing the other, engaging in inflammatory rhetoric, hijacking a peaceful religion, singling out people because of their religion.  None of these terms is objective enough to mean anything.

4. The criticism that the U.S. shouldn’t be vocal in our support of Israel is specious.  In supporting Israel, our anti-terror stance gains consistency and moral credence to reformists in hostile regimes who are potentially open to our ideas.  Israel is also the U.S.’s front line in the war on terror, and, if supported, may have the guts to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities if we don’t get around to doing it.

5. Announcing that we are at war with Islam does not constitute recruitment propaganda for the enemy.  Minnesota’s Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the U.S. House, declared, “I don’t want [al-Qaeda] to be able to stand up and claim… ‘America is at war with Islam.’  That’s one of their main recruiting arguments.”  Actually, one of al-Qaeda’s main recruiting arguments is, “The infidel is wicked, and his weakness and inability to stand up to us prove that our cause is just.”  An argument that would hurt recruiting would be, “America is at war with Islam, and you are going to get blown to smithereens if you fight for us.”

6. Waterboarding isn’t torture—it’s a resistance training technique routinely carried out on U.S. special operations forces, and leaves no permanent physical or psychological damage.  Waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques have been spectacularly successful in uncovering imminent terrorist plots and killing 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

7. Troop surges are a winning strategy, as demonstrated in Iraq, Afghanistan, and even Libya.  As John McCain noted in his support for the second Afghanistan surge, half-measures in war “lead to failure over time and an erosion of American public support.”  We should never again fail to send an adequate number of troops to get the job done, as soon as they are needed.

8. Bush had to withhold from the public reams of documents about chilling terrorist threats we faced; when newly sworn-in President Obama was briefed on this intelligence, he suddenly did an about-face on almost every campaign promise he had made to reverse his predecessor’s policies.  In just his first 100 days in office, Obama implemented a surge in Afghanistan (followed by a larger surge later that year), asked Congress for $83 billion more for Iraq and Afghanistan without funding benchmarks, stepped up Predator drone attacks in Afghanistan, supported renewal of the Patriot Act, invoked the state secrets doctrine, reversed his opposition to rendition, rejected Democrats’ call for a Truth Commission, filed a brief claiming the U.S. can indefinitely hold anyone who supports Al-Qaeda or the Taliban, supported denial of habeas corpus to Bagram prisoners, revived military tribunals at Gitmo, opposed release of Abu Ghraib photos, and failed to do anything to close Gitmo.  It seems as though Commander-in-Chief Bush knew better than Alinskyite community organizer Obama did after all.

9. War is less expensive than Democrats’ wasteful domestic social programs.  Eight years of the Iraq War—including training and preparation for the 2003 invasion—cost less ($709 billion) than Obama’s useless stimulus bill ($787 billion).  U.S. involvement in the Libyan conflict cost the same ($1 billion) as the first 48 hours of Obama’s failed Cash-for-Clunkers program.  Defense spending constitutes 20% of the federal budget, and foreign aid just 1%, whereas entitlement spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid make up 43%.

10. Liberals have learned absolutely nothing since 9/11, except that Islam is much more peaceful, tolerant, and pro-U.S. than they’d ever dreamed; KSM should be tried in the same court as people who eat trans fats while drinking Four Loko and smoking in bars; and Muslims were the real victims of 9/11.

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No longer content to compare global warming skeptics to mere Holocaust deniers, Al Gore recently implied that climate doubters will someday be seen as this generation’s Klansmen.

In an interview with the Climate Reality Project, Gore declared that the civil rights and climate change movements are similar in that both harbor a profound moral component.  (Honestly, Gore’s new comparison lacks the punch of “Today the evidence of an ecological Kristallnacht is as clear as the sound of glass shattering in Berlin.”)

The bloated old walrus offered his awestruck, rosy-cheeked interviewer a two-pronged strategy that global warming believers should adapt from anti-racism protestors to “win the conversation.”  First, global warming fanatics should persuade non-believers through facts; second, they should confront “inappropriate” statements by expressing loud disapproval just as if they were racial slurs.

I could be wrong, but I think in order to “win the conversation,” you have to actually have a conversation first, at least one in which both sides are allowed to speak.  Yet the Goracle is notoriously reluctant to accept invitations to debate climate change skeptics such as brilliant mathematician and former Margaret Thatcher advisor Christopher Monckton—probably because he knows Monckton has enough logic and facts at his disposal to mop the floor with Gore.

In his Climate Reality Project interview, Gore claims that it is no more difficult for warming adherents to “win the conversation” on global warming than it was for pro-equality Southerners to “win the conversation” on racism.  In other words, put Gore on record as stating that it’s no more accepted fact that people should be judged by the content of their character than it is that the folks who overestimated the impact of Hurricane Irene on New York City by an order of magnitude can tell us how many degrees warmer the planet will be in 100 years.

Gore also chides Texas Governor and presidential candidate Rick Perry for claiming that the world’s scientists are in on a vast conspiracy to profit from preventive actions to halt climate change.  In fact, Perry said no such thing.  What Perry said is that climate change has become a politicized issue—which it has—and that key researchers have been caught shielding data from the public—which they have.  Perry also noted that scientists have been stepping forward en masse to express skepticism about climate change science—which is true.

It is also true that a prevailing orthodoxy has set in regarding climate change, such that skepticism is discouraged, and only research expected to confirm the outlines of preordained alarmist conclusions is deemed fundable by government agencies and even most private foundations.  It’s unlikely that scientists the world over think as objectively about climate change as they would if there were equally large gobs of money for research opposing the notion of manmade global warming.

But back to Gore’s ludicrous race-climate comparison: Since he brought it up, it’s worth noting that most climate change skeptics these days are Republicans.  In contrast, the most recalcitrant racists from the 1950s and 1960s were Southern Democrats—like Gore’s father, Al Gore Sr., who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Bull Connor, whom Gore cites for his brutal act of turning fire hoses on protestors.  So comparing Republicans to civil rights opponents may not be Gore’s best rhetorical move.

Meanwhile, noted climatologist Paul Krugman advances the skeptic-bashing on another front by sneering that Republicans are “anti-science,” “anti-knowledge,” and “anti-intellectualism.”

Let’s see: What does the science tell us about climate change?  For one thing, it tells us that there has been no statistically significant rise in global temperature over the last 16 years, even though CO₂ emissions have increased.  It tells us that there has even been evidence of global cooling over the last 11 years.

The science tells us that 9 out the past 11 winters have delivered above-average snowfall and below-average temperatures to North America, Europe, and Asia.

The science tells us that H₂0, not CO₂, is by far the biggest greenhouse gas—though I don’t recall Democratic politicians’ calling for a ban on sprinklers watering the neatly manicured lawns at their beachfront resorts.

If all of this were really about the science, then climate “scientists” would be aggressively working to falsify accepted hypotheses, challenge conventional knowledge, and test the rigor of their models—not toadying up to politicized government funding agencies that hand out taxpayer-funded research money like candy.

Far from resembling Gore’s smear of narrow-minded segregationists, climate change skeptics have demonstrated abundant open-mindedness and courage in their willingness to confront institutionalized wrongheadedness and public acceptance of falsehoods.  These qualities suggest that, if right, global warming skeptics will someday be seen as this generation’s moral heroes.

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• Rick Perry Picks Up Endorsement of Sen. Jim Inhofe, Climate Change Skeptic – ABC News (news.google.com)
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Liberal hack and annoying twerp Ezra Klein recently posted a lament for the president’s waning popularity titled “What could Obama have done?”

Klein’s query is just an updated iteration of an eternal, intractable, metaphysical question for the left: How can Democrats govern like liberals for any extended period of time and generate good results so they can maintain their favorable ratings?

To conservatives (and Bill Clinton), the answer is obvious: You can’t.  Liberal policies don’t work.  Any goodwill remaining toward you from your base for remaining a stubborn ideologue in the face of contrary evidence is overshadowed by widespread revulsion toward the disastrous consequences of your policies.

In other words: Conservatives are never going to like you, a few crazy liberals always will, but a large number of independents, moderates, and center-left voters will abandon you if you don’t give up on your leftist policies after the public realizes you are not a magician.

Since Klein asked, here’s what Obama could have done to enjoy a successful presidency and retain the sky-high favorability ratings he held in those blissful few minutes after he was sworn in before the trouble began.

Let’s start with the good news—things Obama did and should have done (hurry back from the fridge, right-wingers; this won’t take long!):

He didn’t get in the way of the Navy SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden.  He voiced support for the protestors in Egypt’s Tahrir Square calling for the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak.  He joined a coalition of nations in materially aiding the Libyan rebels who took down Gaddafi.  He signed the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  He extended the Bush tax cuts and argued for their utility during a recession.

Also, a few things Obama shouldn’t have done and didn’t:

He gave up on closing the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay.  He reversed his pledge to hold a civilian trial for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.  He supported renewing the Patriot Act, thus abandoning his campaign promise to end warrantless wiretaps of those with terrorist connections.  He never pushed through global warming legislation imposing caps on carbon dioxide emissions.

Much longer is the list of things Obama did and shouldn’t have done:

He shouldn’t have signed the $1 trillion stimulus bill, which had a trivial impact on job growth, did nothing to stop the rise of unemployment, and exploded the national deficit.

He shouldn’t have signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which infringes on individual liberties, raises the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars, and implements none of the free-market reforms House Republicans proposed.

He shouldn’t have signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which gave two of the architects of the subprime lending-induced financial crisis the power to impose massive, vague, disruptive regulations on the banking industry, without even revoking the much-hated principle “too big to fail.”

He shouldn’t have signed Congress’s August 2011 bill raising the debt ceiling, which was both unnecessary and insufficient to prevent an S&P downgrade, and whose spending cuts are miniscule in the short-term, dependent on the caprice of a bipartisan “supercommittee” in the medium-term, and likely to be overturned by future Congresses in the long-term.

He shouldn’t have authorized rounds one and two of quantitative easing, which have led to rising inflation.

He shouldn’t have created a botched fund to prevent home foreclosures, one of many examples of his administration’s propensity to reward failure.

He shouldn’t have supported the National Labor Relations Board’s decision to prevent Boeing from relocating part of its operations from a unionized state (Washington) to a right-to-work state (South Carolina).

He shouldn’t have taken over the nation’s largest car companies and signed into law the wasteful Cash for Clunkers program.

He shouldn’t have showily banned waterboarding as an enhanced interrogation technique, insisted that Israel return to its pre-1967 borders, demanded premature troop withdrawal in Afghanistan independent of the advice of generals running the war, or bowed to the British Queen, the Saudi king, and every other world leader he could.

Finally, he shouldn’t have blamed George W. Bush, the Republican minority in Congress, the Tea Party, the BP oil spill, the Arab Spring, the Japanese tsunami, ATMs, corporate jet owners, Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, a butterfly flapping its wings in Tobago—anything but his own policies—for the country’s economic woes.

And here are the things Obama didn’t do but should have:

He should have demanded that Congress pass budgets for fiscal years 2011 and 2012.

He should have made the Bush tax cuts permanent.

He should have supported free-market health care reforms, such as allowing the sale of insurance across state lines, expanding health savings accounts, and enacting malpractice tort reform.

He should have voiced greater support for Iran’s and Syria’s pro-reform protestors.

Happy you asked, Ezra?

And one more thing Obama didn’t do but should have.



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Maybe Michele Bachmann is reluctant to elaborate on her views on homosexuality with reporters because—gasp!—she doesn’t care.

On Sunday’s Meet the Press, host Dick Gregory badgered Bachmann about comments she had made seven years ago on her interpretation of the Bible’s statements on homosexuality.

Since 2004, the country has radically evolved in its understanding and acceptance of homosexuality, including its approval of same-sex couples getting married and adopting.  Gay marriage is legal in six states plus D.C. and available to 11% of the country’s population.  Gay marriage was used as a wedge issue in many states in the 2004 Congressional elections, but in 2008 it was used as such primarily in the context of California’s Proposition 8.  Prominent Republicans who now support same-sex marriage include Dick Cheney, Laura and Barbara Bush, Cindy and Meghan McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, S. E. Cupp, Margaret Hoover, Ted Olsen, and Vaughn Walker.  Countless other prominent Republicans favor gay civil unions; most didn’t back in 2004.  Even Ann Coulter was recently appointed Honorary Chair of the Advisory Council for gay conservative group GOProud.

Bachmann’s views on gay issues have also presumably evolved since 2004, or else she would have racked up a lot more anti-gay statements since then.  All of the Bachmann homosexuality quotes the media have been broadcasting appear to have emanated from just two sources: a two-part March 2004 interview she gave on the local Minnesota radio program “Prophetic Views Behind The News” and a November 2004 address she delivered at the EdWatch National Education Conference.  That’s it.  If Bachmann had truly been waging an anti-gay jihad for the past seven years, liberals wouldn’t have had to dig up archives of obscure evangelical talk shows and one-off education conferences from George W. Bush’s first term to find recordings of self-incriminating statements.

Bachmann’s position on gay marriage roughly mirrors President Obama’s.  Like Republicans Rick Perry and Herman Cain, she prefers allowing states to implement gay marriage if they choose—a position even Obama has barely uttered his support for.  She favors a constitutional amendment defining marriage as opposite-sex, which Obama opposes—though she well knows that such an amendment has little chance of becoming law.

If Bachmann weren’t too polite to share it, her response to repeated questions on her views on homosexuality would be, “Oh, God… not again.  Really?”

Bachmann clearly cares first and foremost about federal spending and national defense.  She became a conservative rock star two years ago as the most prominent elected official to spearhead the nascent Tea Party movement, with its primary goal of stopping ObamaCare and runaway government spending.  She has voiced vociferous, well-informed support of Israel and our military missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran to stop the threat of Islamic terrorism to the U.S.  These are the things that keep her awake at night—not whether Ellen DeGeneres gets a marriage license instead of a domestic partnership.

On Meet the Press, Bachmann addressed Gregory’s questions on homosexuality by insisting that she is not one to “judge” anyone.  She affirmed that she would not use sexual orientation as a criterion in hiring for positions in her administration or for judgeships.  Why wasn’t that a good enough answer for Gregory, who continued to hound her on her theory of human sexuality?  What was she supposed to do—declare herself a True Blood fan and invite Gregory out for cosmos?  Why don’t reporters grill Obama about his opposition to gay marriage, bludgeoning him with the same boring questions and refusing to accept his self-protective platitudes on his eternally “evolving” stance?

Liberals call Bachmann a hypocrite and claim they object to her “double-talk” and dodging questions.  They declare that they would have more respect for her if she simply endorsed her past statements point-blank.  What if she doesn’t quite believe them anymore?  What if the issue isn’t as important to her, or wouldn’t be a legislative priority for her if she became president?  Bachmann repeatedly responded to Gregory’s questions by reminding him that she is running for the presidency of the United States.  If she believes gay marriage should be dealt with by the states, then why would a President Bachmann staring down a $14 trillion deficit and a hostile Middle East worry about Neil Patrick Harris’s love life?

Liberals aren’t upset about a Bachmann presidency because they fear she would roll back gay rights or slow the national tide of increasing acceptance of homosexuality and gay marriage.  As with Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell, and Sharron Angle, the left are using a few nutty, outdated statements to stop a genuine reformer and charismatic populist, whose views on social issues are probably evolving like everyone else’s, from getting into office.  Liberals can’t stand the fact that Bachmann might effect real change on causes that are anathema to them, such as slashing unsustainable entitlement spending and stopping the worldwide spread of Sharia.



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