Governmental Creep

     While the title of this post might suggest to some that I have certain elected officials in mind, I'm actually using "creep" in the sense of "spreading" - like a fungus or a rash.  The point I am trying to make is that even a good and useful function of government can devolve into a boondoogle if left unchecked, and "unchecked" seems to be the default these days.

    With that premise, consider the following.  When the word "disaster" comes to mind, the photos from the recent Hurricane Sandy certain seem to fit the bill:

Source: http://www.examiner.com/

    More specifically, when we think of a "drought disaster," we might think of this:

    Or this:

    But when the folks at the USDA of the United States federal government think "drought disaster", they see this:

    Nearly 2,200 of the 3,000 or so counties in the United States have "Drought Disaster Incidents" as of 11/7/12.  More than 70% of the United States is a disaster area. Now I am not belittling the seriousness of the dry conditions in some places in our country.  There is doubtless suffering and need.  But is it any wonder we have 47,000,000 on food stamps and over 14,000,000 on social security disability?
Is it any wonder that unless contraceptives are freely available to all (and when I say "freely", I mean "plentifully and at no cost whatsoever",) we have a "health care crisis" on our hands?

    This governmental tendency towards hyperbole results in policies that are costly and intrusive, but in addition it masks the true crises: the national debt, for one. But according to economists like Paul Krugman, the debt is nothing compared to the crisis we'd create by cutting government spending now.  How about the Social Security/Medicare crisis of impending bankruptcy?  No, we must fulfill the social contract lest our politicians (mostly Republican ones) begin shoving aging citizens over cliffs.

    The attraction is that faux crises are so much easier to "solve" than real ones.  Just a little more of someone else's money and we can "help" whoever needs it more.  But unless we can face the hard truth that sometimes someone will fall and the federal government won't necessarily be there to catch him before he hits the ground, we will soon all be on the ground getting tangled up in what is left of the rotting strands of a "safety net" that is no longer catching anyone.

Axelrod: Maybe Super PACs Aren't So Bad After All

    Late on election night, after the race was called for Barack Obama, I tweeted:

    Now The Hill reports that the still-mustachioed David Axelrod concurs:

Obama campaign senior strategist David Axelrod said Thursday that if he were a Republican billionaire who donated to a conservative super-PACs during this election, he would want his money back.
Speaking to reporters on a conference call two days after Obama won reelection, Axelrod said one key takeaway of the presidential race and other congressional races, is the ineffectiveness of the super-PACs.
“If I were one of these billionaires, I'd be wanting to talk to someone and asking where my refund is, because they didn't get much for their money,” Axelrod said. “Just looking at the heartening news is that you can't buy the White House. You can't overwhelm the Congress with these super-PAC dollars.”

    This is quite a change from the tune Axelrod was singing back in June. Politico reported at the time:

Obama campaign senior strategist David Axelrod said Thursday that free-spending super PACs are hurting the fabric of democracy — and that President Barack Obama's administration would move to reform the campaign finance system in a possible second term.
"It's a great concern," Axelrod said in an interview with WJLA ABC 7, a station owned by POLITICO's corporate parent. "People are writing $10 million checks in one fell swoop to these super PACs — in many cases, they're undisclosed."

     Since it now appears the "fabric of democracy" was in no more danger than Axelrod's mustache, it will be interesting to see if the Obama administration follows through on the promised "reforms":

Axelrod said a second term Obama administration would bring about reforms in the campaign finance system.
"I hope that when we win this election, one thing we can do is bring some common sense back to our system," Axelrod said.

    I am more than a little skeptical that these reforms will be pursued with much vigor, especially given what Axelrod left out of his super PAC comments in June:

Left unsaid is the fact that Obama also has a super PAC — Priorities USA Action — run by two former White House staffers. The group has struggled to keep pace with efforts on the GOP side — with many wealthy Obama donors recoiling at what the super PAC represents.

    The ultimate irony would be Axelrod himself jumping into the super PAC arena as his time with the Obama administration and campaign winds down over the next several years.  With Axelrod's background and with a fairly secure future as a political guru for years to come, this scenario seems to me to be almost a certainty.  I am tempted to grow a mustache myself just so I can promise to shave it off if I am wrong.

On Second Thought...

    Wednesday, I posed the following rhetorical question on Twitter:

For all of us who wrote extensively about why Romney would win: why should anyone take seriously our thoughts on why Romney lost?

     In my spectacularly wrong prognosticative postings, I based my Pollyanna predication on the following premise:

Given the popular vote margin of victory for Obama in 2008,  only one in fourteen Obama voters needs to change his/her vote, all other things being equal, to give Romney the presidency.  As I put it in January, I ask you: Is there anything that has happened in the last four years that could lead anyone to credibly argue that less than one in fourteen voters will have changed their minds?

     As it turns out, I was right.  As the numbers currently stand, President Obama received 60,899,400 votes in 2012 (likely to increase some as remaining ballots are tallied, especially in the hurricane ravaged Northeast.)  In 2008, he racked up 69,456,897 votes.  That difference of 8,557,497 means that about one in eight voters didn't pull Obama's lever the second time around.  For simplicity, I am assuming 2008 Obama voters who died would have been offset by newly qualified voters either by reaching age 18 or achieving citizenship, although I'd imagine the latter group outnumbers the former.

     Where my thesis went wrong was assuming those Obama voters would switch to Romney.  But that is where the eggs I was counting never hatched.  In fact, John McCain received 59,934,814 votes in 2008 compared to Romney's 57,960,985, a loss of about 1,973,829.   (Frankly, any drop in GOP voters in this election is enough to make most conservatives consider strapping on a tinfoil hat and shouting "conspiracy!", but we'll just have to wait for the analyses of the final data to see who sat out.  And then those folks will be hunted down and horsewhipped.  But I digress.)  Now as others have pointed out today, votes will continue to be tallied over the coming days and weeks from absentees voters and probably also some delayed returns from the hard-hit areas in the Northeast.  Depending on how many votes, it could substantially affect this analysis.

    But in the meantime, despite a billion dollars, incessant pandering to voter groups, obsessive fund raising, ubiquitous social media, and the fabled "ground game", the Democrats' voter loss from 2008 to 2012 was 434% higher than the GOP's loss.  This does not sound like a nation that is becoming bluer.  Indeed, below are some interesting maps.  The first is from the New York Times and shows the change in voting patterns across the country from 2008 to 2012.

    Here is a similar presentation from the Wall Street Journal.  The first showing where the Republican ticket gained in the percentage of the vote from 2008 to 2012.

    Now here are the gains by the Democrats, the party with the much ballyhooed "ascending demographics":

    One final map.  That 3,000,000 popular vote margin?  See the really big blue circles?  Those are popular vote margins of victory by Obama over Romney by county.

    Just five of those big blue circles, five counties out of more than 3,000 counties in the United States, can account for more than the 3,000,000 vote difference:

    But what about the 100+ electoral vote difference, give or take, depending on which way Florida goes?  That margin is a mile wide and an inch deep (OK, maybe two or three inches.)  A good number of those swing states ended up with 100,000 vote margins or so.  If 50,001 voters had switched from blue to red in several of those states, we'd be talking about how Obama's team blew a race they'd been leading for the entire election cycle and what a brilliant job Romney's team had done.

     Soul-searching after a loss is always appropriate for the side that came up short.  But it will be vital to learn the right lessons if 2016 is to be different.  When the numbers have all been crunched and analyzed, understanding who voted will be interesting, but understanding who didn't vote and why may turn out to be the key to regaining the White House in four years.

Whatever the Outcome, I Was Wrong

    At the time I am writing this, Fox has the electoral college tied at 153.  This race is much closer than I thought it would be, which means this country has drifted further than I thought.  President Obama and the Democrats have run explicitly on what government can do for the people.  Don't borrow money from your parents for college, like Romney suggested... borrow it from your neighbors' parents, courtesy of the federal government.  Healthcare?  Federal government.  Contraceptives?  Free from the federal government.  Jobs?  Today the NAACP released a poll of 1,600 African American voters (via Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner) that contains an astounding finding.  In the words of the NAACP:

95% of all respondents believe the federal government should be engaging in job creation opportunities for all Americans.

    I do not believe for a moment that this attitude is somehow unique to blacks.  Far too many in this country have turned JFK's most famous pronouncement on its head, and liberals have encouraged, promoted, and even campaigned on it.  It's a sad situation.

    I am currently reading Witness by Whittaker Chambers.  It is a fascinating book, and remarkably timely. The fight against communism abroad was tied to the fight against liberalism/socialism at home.  That fight is not over, and is actually getting more intense.  Whittaker Chambers was instrumental in exposing the extent to which Communists had infiltrated the federal government, and while they were largely purged, the liberals never left.  What America needs is a Whittaker Chambers of liberalism, or more than one.  Those who will expose the philosophy for what it is and what it is doing to the country and what it does to the human soul.  Those who used to be on the inside, who were true believers, but are willing to admit they had committed their lives to a ruinous political system.  Are there any such men or women out there?

    Chambers was concerned in the 1940s and 1950s about the United States drifting towards the socialist tendencies of Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries.  Even at the time of his death, Chambers continued to believe communism would eventually triumph.  The fall of the Soviet Union eventually proved him wrong.  But the larger battle rages on.  And on a night like tonight, it's hard not to share Chambers's pessimism.

    Therefore, I must recall what I wrote last night.  God "called" this election long ago.  Even as his life was literally in danger, Chambers himself took comfort in Divine Providence.  How can those of us who are believers do anything less?

Nobody Here But Us Chickens [Updated once again]

    One, two, three, four...

Photo source: http://www.theredheadriter.com/2010/10/equals-30-pounds/

 
    Yes, in case you were wondering: 271 of them.  Hatching today.

UPDATE:  Sixty-three, sixty-four, sixty-five...

UPDATE 2: One-hundred and seventy-six, one-hundred and seventy-seven, one-hundred and seventy-eight...

UPDATE 3: OK, officially scrapping the chicken count.

The Votes are Already Counted

    In my About Me, I have written:

I hope to bring a unique perspective on conservative politics and culture grounded in Biblical truth.  My religious beliefs may not often be overtly expressed in my postings, but hopefully my opinions can be strong and honor Jesus Christ at the same time.  I know I will fail in that attempt as I "speak with authority."  But I recognize all true authority and truth itself has but one source, God, and He will be the ultimate judge of whether I succeed or fail.

    Lest my Counting Our Chickens and One in Fourteen posts come across as completely arrogant and presumptuous (or is it too late already?), I believe this election (and everything else for that matter,) is firmly under God's control.  The outcome is not a surprise to Him (present tense used intentionally, for He already knows.)  Proverbs 16:33 says:

The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.

    Now an election is not quite the same as "casting lots", but when 122,000,000 people or more are casting votes in fifty states with a variety of electoral vote numbers and rules, it may as well be a roll of the dice when it comes to confidently predicting the results.  But in any case, Romans 13:1 reminds us:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

    Politicians like to tell voters, "It's in your hands now" as they head to the polls.  In a sense, in a well functioning democratic republic, that is true.  But in a larger sense, it's in His hands.  Believers across the political spectrum should find comfort in that, whatever tomorrow holds.

The Obama Campaign Blog: Is This "Story of Recovery" Fact or Fiction? - Part 4

    The Obama campaign was roundly ridiculed for its fictional Life of Julia, a composite woman whose life is seemingly dependent upon government, specifically Obama administration policies, for her advancement and well-being throughout her life.  A lesser known story dated March 27, 2012, appears on the Obama campaign's blog in a post entitled Stories of Recovery: Joseph Nicolas.  According to the post, Nicolas also benefited from Obama administration policies.

    However, as I documented in July (here, here, and here,) Nicolas's story is to all appearances equally as fictional as Julia's.  The astounding fact is that, unlike Julia's, Joseph Nicolas's story is supposed to be a true Story of Recovery.  Nicolas is presented as someone whose business benefited from the stimulus, ObamaCare, and other Obama Administration initiatives.  And yet seven months after it appeared and one day before the campaign comes to a close, the story is still being presented as true by the Obama campaign.

    Joseph Nicolas, as I also documented in my July posts, is better known online as Ariel Anatole.  Here are two photos.  The one on the top is "Joseph Nicolas" as pictured in the Obama campaign blog post. The one on the bottom is "Ariel Anatole" from a website called "Real Jock."  The photos are not only the same person, but appear to be from the same photo shoot.

"Joseph Nicolas"

"Ariel Anatole"

    Although Joseph/Ariel has been fairly careful to avoid directly linking his two personas, occasionally the mask slips as in this Tumblr post where a friend named "Bob" addresses Ariel as "Joseph":

    I emailed the Washington State office of the Obama campaign several times about this story, and after one initial reply, they have ignored all other requests for comment.  I have also attempted to contact Joseph/Ariel several times, most recently through his Tumblr account.   Below are the times (just a week ago) where he responded:

    My follow up question:

    The last activity as of this writing on Ariel's Tumblr account is 10/24 and on his Twitter account is 10/30.  Perhaps he has decided to lay low for now with the election so close so as not to attract any further attention.  And while I sympathize with his desire to "lead a more honest life," allowing this false story to continue to appear for seven months on the campaign website of the sitting president of the United States is not a promising start.

    After the election tomorrow, there will be little incentive for anyone to set the record straight.  The Obama campaign will be happy to allow it to fade into the past.  But if Ariel/Joseph is to have a true personal "Story of Recovery," which I pray that he will, he must confront the past.  This story would be a good place to start, and would also help hold accountable the campaign of the man who is seeking a second term to the highest office in the land.