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ahmbama has stepped in it, and the stink isn’t washing off.  The Deceptive Duo’s attempt to move the Census to the White House so they can play Chicago ward politics with it has sparked more outrage than even Porkasaurus Socialistum, the stimulus spending bill – and none too soon.  The GOP, seemingly on the verge of being reclassified an invertibrate, is finding its spine again.

House Republican leaders said Thursday they’re ready to go to court against President Obama if he doesn’t scuttle his plan to move the census into the purview of the Oval Office, saying it’s an unconstitutional abuse of power. …

Under Obama’s plan, the director of the U.S. Census Bureau, who has yet to be named, would report to White House senior management in addition to the Commerce Department, which oversees the bureau.

A Senate committee has scheduled a hearing next month on the potential change. Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are also pushing for an investigation.

GOP leaders sent Obama a letter to the White House on Wednesday demanding a reversal of the plan.

“If the president doesn’t acquiesce to our letter, then we will seek the courts,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., a ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said at a news conference Thursday. (Fox)

That’s what I want to hear!  Obama promised an open administration and this outrage flies in the face of that promise. He deserves a long, hard, embarassing spotlight on this one, and I am glad to see the GOP is ready to shine it on him, instead of just shining it on.

Michelle Malkin linked to a post by former Census director Bruce Chapman in Discovery Blog:

It would be more expedient for the White House to have a pliable Secretary of Commerce in place if the aim is to “re-evaluate” the conduct of the 2010 Census in order to introduce adjustment of results through sampling and computer modeling. Gregg presumably would not have gone along–and would have been hard to run over.

But the legal issues will remain even if a willing partisan is nominated and confirmed as Commerce Secretary. There is a 1999 Supreme Court ruling that would make sampling-based adjustment difficult in the absence of compelling evidence that the customary hard count would be less credible. And that evidence not only is lacking, but a three year statistical study that was finished in 2003 to respond to this issue concluded just the opposite: adjusting the Census numbers through sampling and computer models could lead to a less credible Census result. A hard count has always been legally defensible. A fuzzy “adjusted” Census–where figures at the Census tract and block level would be demonstrably erroneous in many cases–could invite endless litigation and bad will.

Another problem for the Obama White House if it wants to change the Census approach: planning for the 2010 Census has been underway for years and now is in preparation for testing. The disruptions caused by an Administration decision to change those plans would cause great problems and probably agitate the resistance of career statisticians charged with responsibility for conducting the Census.

So, you see that while the vision was audacious, the execution was naive.  Rahmbama thinks the November vote provides a mandate for crapping on the Constitution and shuttling all promises of openess, but they’re not getting away with this one easily.

And here’s the kicker from Chapman:

Finally, one wonders if the President understands that the Census is a function of government that requires not only integrity in fact but also the appearance of integrity. The reputation of the Census should not be compromised. It is hard enough to get people to cooperate in the conduct of the Census without creating a reputation for politicization.

OBVIOUSLY, the Census must be above politicization, and the fact that Rhambama didn’t think this important enough to be a barrier shows an utter lack of integrity, a commitment to move America as far to the left as possible in the years they have in power.

And they quickness of their moves makes me think they may not be counting on getting a second four years.

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Welcome To The World Of Idiots

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here’s a fire! Quick, grab the fire extinguisher! … No, wait … we’re too stupid to use a fire extinguisher!

At least that’s how the world’s ultimate nanny state, the once-proud global empire of the United Kingdom:

Fire extinguishers could be removed from communal areas in flats throughout the country because they are a safety hazard, it has emerged.

The life-saving devices encourage untrained people to fight a fire rather than leave the building, risk assessors in Bournemouth decided.

Dorset Fire and Rescue defended the move, saying: ‘Obviously, in some cases, an extinguisher could come in useful but, with new building regulations, every escape route should be completely fireproof.’

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents backed their removal because different extinguishers should be used on different types of fire. (Source, via What Bubba Knows)

Yeah, that’s definitely too much for mere citizens like us to understand. Better we burn up than try to fend for ourselves without the help of our state-employed saviors, who are are smart enough to save us.  Bring on the Nannies. Continue Reading »

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y Facebook friend Dan Chmielewki, a Dem with whom I happily can have intelligent conversations, informs me that 17 percent of this year’s electorate were 18-24 year-olds, and they went 68/30 for Obama.

Imagine that – a tiny six-year slice of the electorate, perhaps 10 percent of it or so in terms of demographics, making up 17 percent of the vote. And the other CSM is telling us Obama hasn’t left them at the polls; he’s still wooing them:

The president-elect gives every indication he will continue to solicit input from young voters – though not just from youth. His transition website, www.change.gov, asks visitors to “share ideas.” As president, he plans Internet “fireside chats” with the public and online town halls with the cabinet. From the millions of e-mail addresses that his campaign collected, one can imagine a mass mobilization when important votes come up in Congress.

The same article tells us this gen, unlike some of its predecessors, is actually turned on by government:

Encouragingly, this generation actually wants to interact with government, politics, and public service. That’s a reversal of the “bowling alone” years of 1990s civic apathy among youth. A fall pre-election survey by Harvard’s Institute of Politics shows that almost 60 percent of voters ages 18 to 24 are personally interested in doing some kind of public service.

Nearly half said that could include working for federal, state, or local government. A third of the total said they would consider working for a campaign, and a fifth said they would consider public office.

If nothing else, Obama is exceptionally gifted at understanding demographics, and using that understanding to connect where the connecting is most fruitful. It paid off in this election – he pulled in the poor, the young and the tired-of-it-alls and fired their engines with racing fuel, not regular.

But now comes the real test, particularly with the youth vote. Obama’s “Facebooking” them, inviting dialog, seeking input, heck, probably even posting photos. But this is a generation with a finely tuned phony-meter, and if Obama passes from grassroots to Astroturf roots, they’ll sense it and rebel against it.

Meanwhile, the always quotable (that is not a compliment) Gary Kamiya writes smugly today:

The painful truth for conservatives is that the dogs aren’t eating their dog food — and every national trend indicates that they will never eat it again. Which means the GOP faces a wrenching choice: remain true to its increasingly irrelevant and rejected ideology and fade into political insignificance, or remake itself as essentially a more moderate version of the Democratic Party.

Never say never, Kamiya. Remember, the last time youth turned out in similar numbers, 1984, they went overwhelmingly for Reagan, sending Mondale down to crashing defeat.

The Dems have the youth today, but they also have one of the most exceptional candidates in American history. Not exceptionally qualified, not exceptionally right, but exceptionally appealing. He made that appeal by promising almost everything to almost everyone, a tactic that cannot be delivered upon in the end. Someone’s bound to be disappointed – a whole lot of someones.  As Cliff May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies so nicely put it:

Give Obama his due: It is an exceptional politician who can win the support of Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, and Kenneth Duberstein, former chief of staff to President Reagan; of William Ayers, an unrepentant terrorist, and Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley, founder of modern intellectual conservatism; of Rashid Khalidi, an Israel-hater, and Edgar Bronfman, former head of the World Jewish Congress. Here’s a not-very-bold prediction: A year from now, someone is going to be sorely disappointed.

Combine that cold wake-up call with the risks inherent with trying to be cool and connected to several tens of millions of online friends, and you have a recipe for disappointment. Add to that the fact that in 2016, whether or not Obama wins reelection in 2012, the Dems are almost certain to nominate some old warhorse with “he’s next in line” charisma.

Meanwhile, we’ll get to study Obama from the sidelines, learning what works and doesn’t work without risking immediate consequences, and begin preparing for the return everyone but Kamiya knows is going to happen.

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merican University’s Center for the Study of the American Voter has dispensed with all the rah-rah about this being a huge election.  You know, 10 million new registrants, a high water mark in a New America.  Not so, it found:

Despite lofty predictions by some academics, pundits, and practitioners that voter turnout would reach levels not seen since the turn of the last century, the percentage of eligible citizens casting ballots in the 2008 presidential election stayed at virtually the same relatively high level as it reached in the polarized election of 2004.

… the percentage of Americans who cast ballots for president in this year’s presidential election will reach between 126.5 million and 128.5 million when all votes have been counted by early next month. If this prediction proves accurate, turnout would be at either exactly the same level as in 2004 or, at most, one percentage point higher (or between 60.7 percent and 61.7 percent).

This shows a lot.  Big, phony surges in registration don’t lead to big, real surges in turnout.  Obama’s supporters were confident in his victory.  For many, the urge to vote didn’t overcome the fact that It was cold and lousy and lines were long in many precincts.

Republican voting was down 1.3 percent, a sign either of surety Obama would win, dispondency over the McCain selection or worry over the Palin selection.  Or cold, lousy weather and long lines.

Dem voting was up 2.6 percent, clearly attributable to Obama, especially if you look at states with high black populations, like NC and GA, which had record turn-outs.

But most significant is that the Dems increased their votes cast for the seventh straight election.  For a GOP that needs to throw out everything and start anew, one team should be breaking down Dem registration and voter turn-out strategies.  We don’t want to be – indeed can’t be – a new version of ACORN, but we can do better. 

And we have to come up with a candidate that can move the masses.

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Life In A Liberal Democracy

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h, liberal democracies, where political discord is honored, debate is civil, where respect for opposing views is understood as the foundation of compromise, and where compromise is seen as the glue that binds together the republic.

Someone apparently forgot to teach this to the RNC Welcoming Committee, an anarchist group poised to disrupt this week’s GOP convention. Police raids at several of the groups’ domiciles resulted in the confiscation of:

Materials to create “sleeping dragons” (PVC pipe, chicken wire, duct tape), which is when protesters lock themselves together
Large amounts of urine, including three to five gallon buckets of urine
Wrist rockets (high-powered
slingshots)
A machete, hatchet and several throwing knives
a gas mask and filter
Empty glass bottles
Rags
Flammable liquids
Homemade caltrops (devises used to disable buses in roads)
Metal pipes
Axes
Bolt cutters
Sledge hammers
Repelling equipment
Kryptonite locks
Empty plastic buckets cut and made into shields
Material for protective padding
An Army helmet.

Read more about the raids here.

That’s not the stuff of peaceful protest, so we can thank the investigators at the St. Paul police who uncovered what the RNC Welcoming Committee was up to and pulled off a successful raid. The Left, however, does not share my view:

Members of various protest groups targeted in last night’s raid held a press conference today to express their anger and frustration.

The raid was an effort to “derail RNC protest organizing efforts and to intimidate and terrorize individuals and groups converging in the Twin Cities to exercise what are supposed to be their basic civil rights,” RNC Welcoming Committee member Tony Jones read from a statement.

“We will not be intimidated,” Jones exclaimed.

Yeah, well neither will we, punk. Continue Reading »

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ven though it’s after noon and I still haven’t posted anything on C-SM, I did get up pretty early this morning – 9 a.m. or so – and finding none of the clan ready to get up yet, I downloaded today’s edition of the Wall Street Journal into my Kindle - it took 75 cents and about 45 seconds to complete the transaction – and strolled over to the La Quinta Resort’s restaurant for granola from the breakfast buffet, which I woke up craving.

I used the Kindle’s underlining capability to highlight areas of interest I thought I’d share with my (mostly) non-vacationing (presumably) readers. I’ve linked to the on-line stories, some of which you may need subscriptions to read.

I’ll cover two stories here; the rest may become full posts if vacation time permits.

William McGurn wrote in The NAACP and Black Abortions about the shocking incidence of abortions in the black community and the NAACP’s failure to deal with it. It thought this passage was particularly illustrative; it follows a discussion of Dr. Alveda King, MLK’s neice, now an ardent opponent of abortion in general and black abortion in particular:

What Dr. King is alluding to is that abortion disproportionately affects African-Americans. A fact sheet from the Guttmacher Institute puts it this way: “Black women are 4.8 times as likely as non-Hispanic white women to have an abortion.” The Centers for Disease Control further report what this means: While about one out of every five white pregnancies ends in abortion, it’s nearly one out of every two for African-Americans.

Amazing how terse and unemotional words can be, especially when written by Guttmacher, a primary non-profit supporter of abortion, or a government agency.

Yes, the article does get into the eugenic beliefs that were core to Planned Parenthood’s formation, and the recent expose about Planned Parenthood’s willingness to accept funding from sources posing as racists who wanted the money used to kill black babies.

Now that the frighteningly abortion-radical Barack Obama supposedly represents black America, the chances of this dreadful situation changing any time soon is remote.

The big Page One profile today is of the GOP’s answer to George Soros, Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the money behind Freedom’s Watch, the GOP’s answer to MoveOn.org.

Adelson is an international casino owner with operations in Vegas and China, which means he’s gotten rich of the misery of others, the breakdown of families crushed by gambling debt, and kowtowing to the Beijingoists in order to get rights to build casinos in the People’s Republic.

Am I happy that someone who makes his living in such a dreadful and disgusting manner is bankrolling GOP 521s? Not really. Am I likely to contribute to Freedom’s Watch? Probably. Sometimes in politics you just have to hold your nose, and this is such a case because I’m with Adelson on two out of three of his main beliefs: The threat of Islamofascism and support for Israel. (The third big threat to America in his book is unionization of casinos. Like I say, I’m holding my nose.)

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So busy have we been tracking the Obama/Clinton race that we haven’t really been tracking the GOP returns. It turns out that even though McCain long ago got the delegates he needs, there’s some interesting stuff in those overlooked stats. Andrew Malcolm at Top of the Ticket fills us in:

In Indiana, McCain got 77% of the recent Republican primary vote, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, who’ve each long ago quit and endorsed McCain, still got 10% and 5% respectively, while Paul took 8%.

On the same May 6 in North Carolina, McCain received less than three-quarters of Republican votes (74%), while Huckabee got 12%, Paul 7% and Alan Keyes and No Preference took a total of 7%.

Pennsylvania was even slightly worse for the GOP’s presumptive nominee, who got only 73% to a combined 27% for Paul (16%) and Huckabee (11%).

Either of the Dem candidates would kill for 73% of the vote, but for McCain, his inability to command the Dem vote so long after he won the nomination shows that there could be considerable trouble ahead, first at the convention, then in the General.

Malcolm’s column focuses on a possible convention fight from Ron Paul’s supporters:

The last three months Paul’s forces, who donated $34.5 million to his White House effort and upwards of one million total votes, have, as The Ticket has noted, been fighting a series of guerrilla battles with party establishment officials at county and state conventions from Washington and Missouri to Maine and Mississippi. Their goal: to take control of local committees, boost their delegate totals and influence platform debates. …

They hope to demonstrate their disagreements with McCain vocally at the convention through platform fights and an attempt to get Paul a prominent speaking slot. Paul, who’s running unopposed in his home Texas district for an 11th House term, still has some $5 million in war funds and has instructed his followers that their struggle is not about a single election, but a longterm revolution for control of the Republican Party.

So eager are they to follow their leader’s words, that Paul’s supporters have driven his new book, “The Revolution: A Manifesto,” to the top of several bestseller lists.

Still, all the nastiness the Paulites could possible foist on the convention will pale by comparison to what the Clinton faction could do to Obama. The Paulites are taking the long-term view, determined to hang in there until the GOP becomes fiscally conservative and isolationist. A mixed bag there.

Short term, as in now through 2012, there may be more to worry about from the Huckabee set.

Huckabee has professed never-ending allegiance to McCain (at least for this race), but in a piece I really didn’t like much because of its paranoid and bizarre tone about Christians, Robert Novak spells out a cultish scenario, in which Obama is a biblical curse and Huckabee God’s choice for 2012:

One experienced, credible activist in Christian politics who would not let his name be used told me that Huckabee, in personal conversation with him, had embraced the concept that an Obama presidency might be what the American people deserve. That fits what has largely been a fringe position among evangelicals: that the pain of an Obama presidency is in keeping with the Bible’s prophecy.

According to this activist, at the heart of the let-Obama-win movement is longtime Virginia conservative leader Michael Farris — the nation’s leading home-school advocate, who is now chancellor of Patrick Henry College (in Purcellville, Va.) for home-schooled students. Best known politically as the losing Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Virginia in 1993, Farris is regarded as one of the hardest-edged Christian politicians. He is reported in evangelical circles to promote the biblical justification for an Obama plague-like presidency.

Novak doesn’t report that droves of Christians will vote Obama to bring on the plague; in fact, he reports that Farris has said he would never vote for either Obama or Clinton. But they will be at the convention to push the Christian right agenda.

The media is playing up this story in part because the Dem race as slid into a boring period, like the final rounds of a heavyweight match, with the opponents leaning into each other, landing tired body punches, and in part because any McCain news is news.

But it seems to me that it will play out primarily in the arcane affair of drafting the platform, and that’s not at all a bad thing. McCain’s platform could use a commitment to fiscal conservatives and strict constructionist judges, and little more than that is likely to come out of the battle.

Now what I’d really like to see is a bunch of stories speculating on what the Dem convention is likely to be like.

hat-tip: memeorandum

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In this week’s Watcher’s Council readings, there’s a bright post, Have a Clear Identity, from Hillbilly White Trash on Dems and the GOP that includes this:

With all that division within their ranks why are Democrats so good at keeping their little fleet of ships all sailing in the same direction? It is precisely because the Democrat party is so fractured and fractious that it is so good at keeping order within its own ranks. It is a matter of survival. If they couldn’t keep everyone more or less in line the party would fly apart and they would never win an election.

What unites Democrats is a desire for continued increase in the size, scope and power of government at the expense of the individual.

That’s a good working definition, although I might simplify it to “faith in government’s superiority.” As a Christian, I’m used to challenges to prove my faith, and I can dish as well as receive, so what is the Dems’ justification of their faith in government in light of stories like this:

SACRAMENTO (Sac Bee) — California prison administrators and clerks reviewed the file of Sara Jane Olson multiple times since December, failing to catch the miscalculation that led to the premature release of the former 1970s radical, officials confirmed Thursday.

Olson, 61, was paroled March 17, a year before her sentence was to end. She was re-arrested five days later after the error was caught.

We’ve often heard people jibe the Dems, saying, “Would you trust your health care to the Department of Motor Vehicles?” Let’s add to that, “Would you trust your security to the Department of Corrections?”

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Today, President Bush said he would veto legislation that would limit the CIA to using only the Army Field Manual’s interrogation techniques — no waterboarding, no sensory deprivation.

“The bill would take away one of the most valuable tools on the war on terror, the CIA program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives,” deputy White House press secretary Tony Fratto said Friday. (AP)

Here’s a veto override vote John McCain would just as soon avoid. Since he’s “Senator Straight-Shooter,” he doesn’t have the option of going back on his previous opposition to waterboarding — which is so heartfelt because of his POW experience there’s not going back, anyway. But an override vote would hurt him, since most Republicans and Independents don’t share the Left/Dem/McCain abhorrence over the selected, limited use of these techniques, which impose no physical harm and hardly meet the classic definitions of torture.

And even though it’s a garbled message at best, count on the Dems to accuse him of not really being for the war because he’s on their side on torture.

My guess: McCain will find a very important campaign event he simply must attend on the day the veto comes up for an override vote.

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As the Dems are all too eager to tell us, this election is about change: We’ll either have a black or a woman running from president — and that changes everything for the GOP, setting up what will be the most difficult campaign to message in the GOP’s history.

If Bill Clinton gets charged with using dirty, racial politics for calling an Obama position a “fairy tale,” how in the world will serious questions be raised by McCain, old white guy that he is?

And with Cindy, his cute, blond, prototypical political wife by his side, how will McCain take on She Who Does Not Bake Cookies without being vilified for representing glass ceilings and old boys clubs?

Even if there were a line fine enough to appease the keepers of political correctness in the black, feminist and media communities, and there’s not, the GOP will be charged with crossing it. There is no way the GOP can get to November without being called every “ist” in the book.

Because I make my living off of messaging strategies, I’ve been turning this problem over in my mind for about a month now. This morning, I see from Politico that I’ve not been alone:

Top Republican strategists are working on plans to protect the GOP from charges of racism or sexism in the general election, as they prepare for a presidential campaign against the first ever African-American or female Democratic nominee.

The Republican National Committee has commissioned polling and focus groups to determine the boundaries of attacking a minority or female candidate, according to people involved. The secretive effort underscores the enormous risk senior GOP operatives see for a party often criticized for its insensitivity to minorities in campaigns dating back to the 1960s.

(If you want a glimpse on the Left’s take on the GOP’s dilemma, which is both obscene and predictable, read the comments to this Kos post. hat-tip Jim)

Politico quotes Jack Kemp, who’s always been a pretty on-point message guy, saying:

“You can’t run against Barack Obama the way you could run against Bill Clinton, Al Gore or John Kerry. Being an African American at the top of the ticket, if he makes it, is such a great statement about the country. Obviously you have to be sensitive to issues that affect urban America. …You have to be careful.”

“Urban America?” Ooops! Kemp has been caught placing all blacks in urban settings, turning his back on decades of upward mobility which has seen blacks move to the suburbs in comfortable numbers. See how impossible this is?

The fact of the matter is, the GOP effort cannot be about, as Politico said, protecting the GOP from charges of racism or sexism. Those charges will come no matter what, so while it’s important to prep messaging in order to avoid or reduce charges of racism in the campaign ahead, it’s more important to develop a strategy for responding to those inevitable charges.

This will not be easy, which is why this passage troubled me considerably:

The McCain camp is only beginning to explore this dilemma, aides said.

McCain’s strategic team still lacks survey research on either of their likely opponents in the general election, inhibiting their capacity “to discuss it intelligently,” a top adviser said. The campaign is currently occupied with “getting our act together structurally.”

“But my basic thought on it is that McCain is not much of a negative campaigner anyhow,” the advisor said. “When he does get into debates with people it’s on issues, substance. So I don’t think we are going to have to train our candidate not to insult people.”

How could they not have started working on this? The nomination’s been tied up since Romney stepped out, so they’ve lost several valuable weeks that should have been spent researching and planning.

The excuse that McCain is “not much of a negative campaigner” shows the advisor is minimizing what the GOP will be up against. This will not be about how McCain campaigns; it will be about how he, his running mate and every GOP candidate and spokesperson will be scrutinized by the race- and sex-card players for anything that can be called a gaffe, and how those gaffes, alleged gaffes, false gaffes and made-up gaffes will be used by the Dems.

Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway has a good take on it: You can’t allow the GOP to be “Macaca-ed.” That means two things: First, you can’t use words like “Macaca.” And more important, you can’t let any charges that you’re a racist or a sexist stand.

You also can’t look uncomfortable searching for the correctly PC word, especially if you’re John McCain. When he’s uncomfortable, he really looks uncomfortable, and in this case, that telegraphs that he’s searching for an acceptable way to cover up his true (read: racist/sexist) feelings.

The correct vocabulary has to be memorized and drilled until McCain and those campaigning for him can instantaneously come up with the right word for the moment with a natural ease that reflects molecular-level comfort with the subject.

Race-card playing race-baiters (or sex-card playing fem-baiters) cannot be allowed to enjoy the immunity that’s been extended to Jesse Jackson, the Irreverent Sharpton, or the flock of feminists. Perpetrators of such baiting need to be shut down in language that appeals to GOP and independent voters; forget appeasing the Dems. Here’s a first take on such a message:

“This is a defining moment for [race/women] in America, and we all must stand up to those who are playing the tired and empty [race/feminism] card, trying desperately to cling to an America that simply is no more. I am sick of people who want to shame America and embarrass it globally for the sake of their selfish power. I will not allow them to redirect this campaign to the past when I am looking to the future, and neither should you. Tell them you’re done with the dirty politics of division.”

And if a Macaca-like phrase ever slips a lip, the only credible response is to laugh, say “oops,” and go to message: I am sick of people who want to shame America ….

It’s not going to be easy; in fact, the road ahead would be a challenge even to an eloquent campaigner like Ronald Reagan. I’m not sure if McCain is up to the task. Ironically, Mike Huckabee, whose campaign has turned me off even though we’re spiritual kin, is someone who could handle this message deck with ease.

There may be a place for him on this ticket after all — a thought I had rejected for strictly political reasons until I began this analysis. Bringing evangelicals to the ticket didn’t strike me as enough of a plus on its own, but bringing a good sense of humor and the ability to breeze through difficult messaging is a real plus.

Except that he’s a white guy.

This is going to be tough.

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