Why Hillary Won't Be President

There is little doubt that Hillary will win the nomination for presidency but there are a number of reasons that she cannot win the election.

History is one big roadblock. In the last 100 years, a single party has only kept the White House for more than two terms twice. Reagan/Bush held it for 12 years and Roosevelt/Truman for an amazing 20 years, Roosevelt/Truman was a special case with Truman already in office when he ran on his own. Obama is no Reagan, leaving behind so much goodwill as to propel his successor into office in a virtual third term and Hillary is not running as Obama's successor.

The wave elections of 2010 and 2012 imply that the country is reluctant to vote for Democrats unless Obama is at the top of the ticket and the country is suffering from Obama fatigue in general. Obama's executive orders have also cost him (and his successor) support.

There is also the leftward shift of the Democratic party. Obama ran as a blank slate then proved to be much further left than many of his supporters imagined. But the party has moved further left than Obama. This will be a defining election - has the country as a whole moved to the far left or just a portion of the Democratic Party? With all of the candidates running to the left of Obama, we won't know for sure until the general election but my guess is that the more centrist candidate will win. The Republicans have not moved anywhere near as far as the Democrats so they are more likely to nominate a centrist.

All of that is generic.There are some specific reasons that Hillary won't be the next president.

Her age is one of them. She will be as old as Regan when we was elected and his age did come up as an issue. Her health may also become an issue. There are rumors that she has health problems. All of the Republicans come across as young and vital compared to her.

Hillary fatigue is another problem. She's been a public figure since 1992. I doubt if anyone under 30 can remember a time when she wasn't known. It's hard to generate Obama-level excitement for someone who has been around so long.

Then there is Hillary herself. She is not a warm person. Typically, she is most popular when she is away from the public spotlight. The more people see her the less they like her.

She is also insincere. She can't hide the fact that she's taken multiple stands on issues depending on what's most popular. She will have trouble justifying many of her current positions in a general election and fact checkers have already caught her in flips.

And all of that assumes that none of the corruption associated with the Clinton Foundation comes out.

What's Happening in Syria

Back from a long break from blogging. We'll see how often I keep updating but this one is fairly important and I want to go on the record so that I at least have the satisfaction of gloating later.

To many people, President Obama's policy on Syria has been puzzling. He really has no policy except to hope that things turn out better on their own. Part of this is his conviction about "being on the wrong side of history" and is aversion to boots on the ground, especially after he bragged about bringing the troops home.

As I write this, the Russians have entered Syria, promising to aid the fight against ISIS (or ISIL or the Islamic State) but their air strikes seem to be doing more harm to rebels apposing Assad than to ISIS.

So, here in a nutshell is what's been going on:

For most of his presidency, Obama pinned his hopes of a major foreign relations accomplishment on a nuclear proliferation agreement with Iran. He unwisely let Iran know how important this was to him giving them an edge.

Early in the war Obama was advised to help the rebels in order to bring Assad to the bargaining table. He didn't do this because Assad is Iran's client and they threatened to stop the treaty if he moved against Assad.

At the conclusion of the treaty process, Obama stated that he expects Iran to move back into the world as a regional power. Privately, Obama is counting on Iran to fight ISIS for him.

So far Obama's efforts against ISIS have had limited effect. You cannot win a war by limited air strikes alone and Iran has objected to Obama arming any force that might threaten Assad. This left a power vacuum in the Middle East which Putin's Russia has filled.

Obama hoped that Iran didn't mean the daily chants of "Death to America" and that signing a treaty that gives Iran a path to being a nuclear power and releasing billions in cash will make Iran our friend. He is likely mistaken.

Putin is taking advantage of our weakness and providing direct aid to Iran's client. This will help Iran in becoming the regional power that Obama envisioned but it will be a Russian ally not an American one. This has an added benefit because the refugee crisis caused by the civil war in Syria is causing strain on all of Europe. The weaker Europe is, the harder it is for them to oppose Russian expansion.

This should be obvious but Obama has trouble seeing Russia uncritically. He spent years on a reset and he has dismissed their territorial ambitions as being on the wrong side of history. He dismissed Romney's warning about Russia with a one-liner about the 80s wanting their foreign policy back. It never occurred to him that Russia wanted a return to the 80s.

So, my prediction is that when the dust settles, Iran will control Syria and Iraq with Russia's aid and will be threatening the other countries in the region. Europe will be too busy worrying about the refugees from all of this to do anything to stop it and it will probably be too far advanced when a new president is sworn into office for the United States to take any effective action.

And that will be President Obama's real major foreign accomplishment.

Hillary's Launch

Last Friday the Hillary Clinton campaign announced that Hillary would be announcing her candidacy on Sunday with a tween and a video. I'm not quite sure why that wasn't considered the official launch. The fact that she is running is likely to be the smallest surprise in the campaign. We've know that she wants to be President for the last 16 years and this is the second time she has run.

Where other candidates have given speeches, Hillary released a video. It was a very slick video and minimized Hillary's biggest weakness - herself. She didn't appear until after the half-way mark and she said almost nothing except that she is running and that the deck is stacked against the middle class. This was probably a preemptive strike against Elizabeth Warren who uses the exact same words.

While HIllary seems to have the nomination wrapped up months before the first primaries, her chances of actually winning the election are much smaller. In 2008 she was running against an unpopular president and an unpopular war (that was back when Afghanistan was still "the good war" and Iraq was a distraction). She was the heavy favorite to win that election, too, but she made some important mistakes. She assumed that she would have the nomination wrapped up by Super Tuesday and spent her campaign fund accordingly. In contrast, Obama ran a 50 state campaign and was able to come from behind to take the nomination.

This time around, Hillary is from the same party as an unpopular president and is saddled with a foreign policy that has been a disaster on most fronts. Eight years ago McCain was able to run as a maverick because he has opposed his president on some policies. Hillary has never publicly broken with Obama on anything.

Hillary's resume is worse than before. In 2008 she was a prominent senator, if only because of her husband and he expectation that she would run for president. Her stint as Secretary of State was unimpressive and she will have to spend a lot of time defending things that happened during her tenure.

Hillary is trying to put all of that behind her and run as the candidate who will break the glass ceiling. She is a poor role model for that since she only rose to prominence because of her husband. She has not been the first woman to do anything important. Even as Secretary of State, she was the third woman to hold the job.

Hillary running as a champion of the working class is laughable. She is part of the system that stacks the deck. She claims to have been broke when Bill left office but they already had multimillion dollar book deals and speaking tours in their future.

Her past finances are dirty going back to Bill's time as governor. She managed to make a huge sum in the commodities market during her single day of investing. Most people forget that the investigation that led to Bill's impeachment started with a housing project called Whitewater where a number of regulators turned a blind eye to irregularities.

More recently, the Clinton Foundation has accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from questionable governments.

Regardless of all of this, the truism is that Hillary's worse opponent is herself. She is a poor public speaker and a poor decision maker. Time and again, her popularity goes up when she keeps a low profile and drops when people actually see her. That is why she had such a small part in her announcement video and why she is going to small gatherings instead of making speeches before large crowds. Her campaign is trying to sell the idea of Hillary rather than the candidate herself. That may be enough to get her the nomination but it is unlikely to save her from a skilled Republican opponent.

The Republicans are already running anti-Hillary ads. This may be a mistake. If she stumbles at this point then her replacement will have "that new car smell" as President Obama put it and will be harder to beat. 

Social Justice and Free Speech

It is no big revelation that the Social Justice movement thinks very little of free speech. To them, free speech is just an excuse for hate speech.

The social justice movement, known as SJWs (Social Justice Warriors) to dissenters, is an offshoot of feminism. It concentrates on the rights of women, gays, transgender, people of color and Muslims. It also embraces multiculturalism, meaning that all cultures are considered equal. They are convinced that we live in a patriarchy maintained by privilege.

Columns calling for an end to hate speech are nothing new but a recently column by someone named Tanya Cohen takes it to a new level.

Like similar columns, Cohen applauds other countries, insisting that the United States is alone in the world in allowing hate speech. Like other columns, Cohen never quite defines hate speech but she does give enough examples for us to be clear what she means when she uses the term. Also, unlike other columns, Cohen goes beyond suppressing hate speech and actually calls for the imprisonment of anyone engaging in hate speech.

She says this of Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty.

In a civilized country with basic human rights, Phil Robertson would have been taken before a government Human Rights Tribunal or Human Rights Commission and given a fine or prison sentence for the hateful and bigoted comments that he made about LGBT people. In the US, however, he was given no legal punishment, even though his comments easily had the potential to incite acts of violence against LGBT people, who already face widespread violence in the deeply homophobic American society – and his comments probably DID incite acts of violence against LGBT people.

So, Robertson should be fined or imprisoned because he might have incited acts of violence. What Robertson actally said was that he didn't understand the attraction of gay sex and that his religion considers it a sin. He did not incite violence which is the standard definition of hate speech.

She continues:

Countries like the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Australia – to name just a few examples – take a much more sensible approach to freedom of expression.  They allow legitimate freedom of expression while banning bigots, hatemongers, conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, pro-pedophile groups, terrorist sympathizers, harmful media, Holocaust deniers, pick-up artists, climate change deniers, and other forms of expression which damage society and social cohesion.

I'm sure I could make a case for a number of prominent figures being included in that list starting with the 911 Truth movement.

While America has always been far behind the rest of the world when it comes to basic human rights – we still have yet to ban firearms, we still have yet to provide free higher education, and we still have yet to implement free universal healthcare, for example – the need to outlaw hate speech is one of the most basic and fundamental human rights obligations.  Not only is it codified in multiple international human rights conventions, but even countries like Russia, India, Turkey, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Jordan – countries that most Americans consider to be "third-world" – have laws against hate speech.  Why is the so-called "third-world" protecting basic human rights better than America is?

What Cohen fails to understand is that repressing speech is a sign of a repressive government. In the course of her column she includes every opinion that she disagrees with as hate speech. That is outright censorship. Free speech allows speaking truth to power. The privileged always get their message out. Free speech is about protecting the rights of those out of power.

Her column gets even more horrifying when she quotes Australian law at us:

Australia's human rights courts have ruled many times that it doesn't matter whether the comments are "true" or "balanced" or not; if the comments may offend minorities or incite hatred, then they are against the law in Australia, as they should be.  Australia has also proposed legislation (the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill) which declares people automatically guilty of offending, insulting, humiliating, or intimidating minorities unless they can prove their innocence beyond any reasonable doubt.

So people can be arrested for saying true statements and the American presumption of innocence has been turned on it's head. No wonder she feels confident that Phil Robertson would be convicted. How could he ever prove beyond any reasonable doubt that he didn't inspire any violence?

So what it freedom of speech in Cohen's world?

Freedom of speech exists so that people can criticize their government, provided that they do so in a civil, polite, and respectful manner.  Freedom of speech does NOT give you the right to offend, to insult, to disrespect, to oppose human rights, to argue against the common good, to voice approval of totalitarian ideologies, to perpetuate toxic systems of privilege and oppression, to promote ideas which have no place in a modern democratic society, to be provocative or incendiary, or to express opinions which are unacceptable to the majority of people.

 

That last part is telling - free speech can be suppressed if it expresses a minority view.

This next quote shows the contradictions of the SJWs:

Most champions of hate speech are straight, white, Christian males who have never had to experience the devastating consequences of hate speech.  These highly privileged members of society will never understand the harm that hate speech causes to vulnerable minorities.  Hate speech is not "freedom" to the Muslims who face widespread attacks and abuse as a result of hate speech from outlets like Fox News and Bill Maher.

Does she really think that straight, white, Christian males have never had anyone say anything hurtful to them? That qualifies as hate speech to me.

The inclusion of Bill Maher in this list is another contradiction. His "hate speech" is to call for reform of Muslim countries where women are routinely abused and LBGT are regularly executed. Because the SJWs bend over backwards to protect Muslims and because multiculturalism maintains that Muslim countries are equally valid, Cohen wants Maher censored and possibly arrested even though she must be as appalled as he is by things such as judicial rape and female genital mutilation. Here is what she has to say of him:

Likewise, attacks on Muslims always increase when powerful figures like Bill Maher make bigoted statements that incite racial hatred and violence against Muslims (in fact, racist hate speech from Bill Maher recently incited a man in Chapel Hill to shoot three innocent Muslims – in a civilized country, Bill Maher would be held legally accountable for the shooting).

This shows how ignorant Cohen actually is. Police have said that the Chapel Hill shooting was over a parking space, not religion. To specifically attribute this shooting to Bill Maher is an incredible leap, but, under her reasoning, Maher would have to prove that he didn't inspire the killings.

As it turns out, even the countries that Cohen wants us to emulate don't suppress speech as much as she wants. She mentions the rise in racism and antisemitism in Europe on free speech in the US. Somehow, it missed inspiring such sentiments here.

Cohen alone is a crank but her views are all to common among the SJWs. They have no respect for individual rights, only group rights. If you are a member of the wrong group (white, straight, Christian men) then you need to be suppressed. This sort of reasoning is all too common among dictatorships and is anathema to a truly open society.

While free speech means that Cohen is free to spout nonsense like this, it also means that I am free to refute it.

Hillary's Emails

In attempting to justify her use of a private email server for her official emails while Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton claimed that there were no state secrets contained in the emails. The main response was to assume that she was being less than honest about this but what if she was telling the truth?

Consider this, her main qualification for the post of Secretary of State was that she had visited several countries while First Lady. She did not have a background in statecraft nor had she run any organization larger than her failed 2008 presidential campaign. It was widely assumed that she was given that post as a consolation prize for not carrying the election fight to the convention. Most people forget but neither candidate had enough delegates to win the nomination. Obama needed her to release her delegates.

There were rumors during Clinton's tenure that her deputies were actually running the State Department. What if that was true and Clinton's job was mainly to act as a figurehead?

When asked about her achievements in the State Department, the usual one is that she visited a record number of countries. That is consistent with the idea that she was a figurehead. She spent her time in office doing what she had done as First Lady - making good will visits but not engaging in any actual policy.

That squares with her statement that her emails never contained any state secrets and with her consternation at being questioned about the deaths in Libya.

Of course, if this got out it would ruin her chances at the presidency and be a major embarrassment for the Obama administration so we will not get any further clarification on this.

What Net Neutrality Really Means

Forget all the talk about equal service, freedom and little-startups vs. telecoms. Here's what the decision is really about.

Netflicks is the biggest single user in the Internet. It represents at least 20% or all Internet traffic. The Telecoms had to add a lot of capacity to handle all that traffic and they charge Netflicks for preferred treatment. Those costs are passed on to their customers.

The FCC decision means that Netflicks gets to use 1/5 of the Internet free and the costs for the additional infrastructure will be passed on to all Internet users through higher fees. This is a huge windfall for Netflicks.

It also means that the government can regulate other Internet traffic. This was sold as promoting freedom for all but, as Google and others have pointed out, the next step will be government officials deciding what is and what is not in the public interest.

Under Operation Chokehold, the government has tried to cut off access to banks from legal businesses it disapproves of including gunsmiths. Do you trust these people to regulate the Internet?

Bad news for the Democrats

One of the biggest factors the Democrats had for mobilizing the youth vote was Comedy Central. The Daily Show and Colbert Report were ostensibly comedy news shows but the news they showed was typically one-sided.

I stopped watching the Daily Show during the 1990s when I noticed that Jon Stewart's opening monolog always contained points from the White House message of the day.

Stewart's main bit was to take the news and put it into "perspective." If it was bad news for the left then he would contrast it with something worse the right did. If it was good news for the right then he'd manage to put a negative spin on it. If it was good news for the left or bad news for the right then he'd dance a little jig.

Stewart likes to have things two ways. He insists that he can't be held to standards of fairness or accuracy because he's a comedian who "makes things up" but he also likes to lecture the news media on what the are doing wrong. He gets away with this because he says what hi audience wants to hear.

He has a reputation as a soft interviewer. This is partially deserved. He is good at prompting people to get their message out - as long as he agrees with that message. If he doesn't then the person being interviewed can count on it being cut to make him look bad.

The Colbert Report was slightly different and evolved over time. The original premise was that Stephen Colbert was playing a conservative commentator but was actually a liberal. In fact, during the early years, the joke was often on the left. Colbert went for the joke and gained the reputation as a hard interviewer. He typically began interviews with liberals by asking, "George Bush, great president or greatest president?" It got to the point where Democrats refused to come on his show. During a writer's strike Colbert was (officially) working without writers. During that period he was at his most fair and unbiased.

When the strike ended, the show took a sharp turn to the left. This paid off for Colbert. Not only did the Democrats start coming back on his show, he started getting invited to the White House.

Colbert's attacks were always unfair and sometimes verged into outright mean. During the 2012 campaign he devoted two separate segments on telling us how weird it was that Romney's wife practiced dressage (an intricate form of horseback riding sometimes called horse ballet) and how silly it was that Romney had an Olympic entry in dressage. Keep in mind that this is an Olympic sport that takes years of practice for the horse and rider. Colbert distilled this down to wearing a child's cowboy hat and going "giddy up" while slapping his rear.

A number of polls showed that a large chunk of the youth vote got their "news" from the Daily Show and Colbert Report. With these gone, will the Democrats have a voice left to comfort the youth vote in 2016?

Charlie and Obama

On Sunday the French took to the streets in support of the people murdered at Charlie Hebdo. They were joined by the heads of 40 states including Israel and Palestine. Notably missing was anyone from the United States. The lame duck Attorney General was in Paris but sat out the march. The Secretary of State was in a conference in India. The President and Vice-President were home.

The White House has admitted that this was a mistake but it still remains unexplained. A few lame excuses were offered - foreign trips take months of planning and an American president can't expose himself in public like that. Considering that 40 other heads of state were able to overcome these obstacles, these are either half-hearted or they reflect the belief that the President of the United States is more important than any other head of state (in which case, why not send Biden?).

Most of the President's usual defenders have turned on him over this. Even Jon Stewart on the Daily Show complained.

The best that Dana Milbank, on of the President's few defenders, could come up with was accusing the GOP of an inconsistent attitude toward France. Milbank reminds us that just 12 or 13 years ago we were calling the French Surrender Monkeys. While that is true, the context was that the French were against the war on terror. The march in Paris was in support of the newest victims of that war and the victims being supported were not part of the government, they were satirists (and innocent bystanders). The only inconsistency is in equating the two.

Killing people over cartoons, no matter how offensive, strikes at the heart of a free society. By ignoring the march, the Obama administration signaled that it sees this as a French problem instead of an international one.

Protecting Speech

Free speech is under attack from multiple fronts. The most obvious is the terrorist attack against a French newspaper for cartoons mocking Islam (note, they also mock Judaism,  Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular without death threats).

Shocking as this was, the more pernicious attack comes as a call for reasonable limits on hate speech. Here is an example written by a Tanya Cohen. In fact, Cohen casts our First Amendment freedom as a lack of protection.

The year is 2015 and all other countries have laws against hate speech along with laws against other forms of speech which violate basic human rights. As a matter of fact, international human rights law MANDATES laws against hate speech. Protecting vulnerable minorities from hate speech is one of the most basic and fundamental of human rights obligations, and all human rights organizations worldwide have emphasized this.  But the United States refuses to protect even the most basic of human rights, firmly establishing itself as a pariah state that falls far behind the rest of the world in terms of protecting fundamental human rights and democratic freedoms.

She goes on at length but this is her main point. She goes on to say:

Like any sensible person, I am a strong believer in the unalienable right to freedom of speech and I understand that defending freedom of speech is the most important when it's speech that many people do not want to hear (like, for example, pro-LGBT speech in Russia). Freedom of speech is the core of any democratic society, and it's important that freedom of speech be strongly respected and upheld. Censorship in all of its forms is something that must always be fiercely opposed. But we must never confuse hate speech with freedom of speech. Speech that offends, insults, demeans, threatens, disrespects, incites hatred or violence, and/or violates basic human rights and freedoms has absolutely no place in even the freest society.

Here is where we get a real feel for where she is going with this. She is all for protecting speech that she wants to hear (pro-LGBT speech in Russia) but against any speech that insults her.

In starkest terms, freedom of speech is worthless unless people are allowed to say things you don't agree with. Giving the government the power to ban hate speech is giving the people in charge the ability to stifle debate by defining it as hate speech. We already saw this over the last six years where any disagreement with President Obama was ascribed to racism.

One wonders how Cohen would classify the Black Lives Matter protests? At least a couple of related protests have openly called for the death of cops and a recent rise in cops being shot show that these protests are inciting violence. Should they be suppressed? If not then what about the protests in support of the police? Are they hate speech?

Actually we need look no further than Cohen's column to see the dangers of outlawing things as hate speech. The incident that inspired the column was a piece of art installed at the University of Iowa. This shows the outline of a KKK member and is covered in press clippings about Klan violence. The artist says that it is an anti-Klan piece. Presumably the object is to remind us how violent the KKK was at its height. Cohen will have none of that. Her column starts with this statement:

The recent controversy at the University of Iowa – in which an "artist" (supposedly an "anti-racist" one) put up an "art exhibit" which resembles a KKK member covered in newspaper clippings about racial violence – is a perfect example of why we need to implement real legislation against hate speech in the United States.

So, in her view it's not enough to be anti-KKK. Any depiction of the Klan is to be banned and the artist arrested for having the gall to create a piece that makes Cohen uncomfortable. This is not being against hate speech, it is advocating the worst kind of censorship. The scary thing is that a large swath of the left agrees with this.

The New Yorker and Gun Control

The New Yorker ran a column about a Newtown-related lawsuit against the maker of the gun used. The column is big on invective but lacking any solid footing.

The author, Adam Gopnik, boils his argument down to this description:

[...] the gun manufacturer is guilty of having sold a weapon whose only purpose was killing a lot of people in a very short time.

Gopnik likes this description so much that he uses it more than once. But here's the thing, the class of semi-automatic rifles in question, the ak-15, is the most popular long gun in the US. There are hundreds of thousands of these, possibly millions. If it's only purpose is to kill a lot of people in a very short time then you would expect millions of deaths by these guns annually. Instead long guns are responsible for only a tiny number of annual deaths. Instead these guns are used for target shooting and small-game hunting. That's why the assault weapon's ban in the 1990s was ineffective. They were banning weapons that are seldom used offensively.

Gopnik also advances this argument in favor of suing gun makers:

If a carmaker made a car that was known to be wildly unsafe, and then advertised it as unsafe, liabilities would result. The gun lobby is, or believes itself to be, immune.

In fact, cars kill tens of thousands of people per year, more than guns do, even when adding in suicides. Both car makers and gun makers are immune unless the death was due to a manufacturing defect.

Gopnik tosses off this statistic:

The underlying politics of gun control has always been the same: the majority of Americans agree that there should be limits and controls on the manufacture and sale and ownership of weapons intended only to kill en masse, while a small minority feels, with a fanatic passion, that there shouldn't.

This was never true. Right after Newtown a majority supported increased gun control but the opposition was never tiny. The most current polls show that more than 50% of the population is against additional gun laws.

Gopnik makes a moral case comparing gun control to gay marriage and sexual assault on campus. This argument is hit and miss. Gay marriage is becoming accepted but the latest figures on sexual assaults on campus indicate that the problem is overstated.

No honest or scrupulous person can any longer reject the evidence that gun control controls gun violence. It can be rejected only by rage and hysteria and denial and with the Second Amendment invoked, not as a document with a specific and surprising history, but as a semi-theological dogma.

Actually, an honest, scrupulous person would be aware that the cities with the most gun control are the most violent - places like Chicago and Washington DC. In the rest of the country, gun violence has been going down for decades even as the number of guns in circulation is at an all-time high.

All of this amounts to a feel-good column designed to cheer up gun control proponents from the funk that their failures must have them in.

The Progressives Know Better Than You

Writing in the Washington Post, Stephen Stromberg, shows what's wrong with the Progressives. He's fit to be tied because Congress attached a rider that would defund enforcement of electric light efficiency standards, effectively bringing back the incandescent bulb. In Stromberg's view, the incandescent light bulb has no place in modern society because it is not particularly efficient. Americans were too slow to adopt more efficient bulbs so it was up to the government to force us to make the right choices.

Here's the problem, his one-size-fits-all approach doesn't always work,

First, the savings from compact fluorescent bulbs (CFBs) take are minor and have to be figured over months or years. The CFBs have been over-sold on this, I've been using them for decades in some lamps and I don't get anywhere near the life that is promised. Sometimes the bulbs fail faster than a comparable incandescent bulb would have.

Second, they are not suitable for all places. They do not work as well as special-purpose bulbs such as for garage door openers or refrigerators.

They look terrible when replacing a decorative bulb. So do the other replacements available,

CFBs are actually made by hand so all of our energy-efficient bulbs are produced overseas, mainly in China, by underpaid workers.

They contain mercury and other toxic substances which end up in the landfill.

None of this matters to Stromberg. He knows what the correct bulb is and he wants it mandated that we use it for our own good.

This describes the Progressive movement in a nutshell - it's a bunch of elites who want to dictate how everyone else should live.  

Obama and Immigration

There are basically four camps on the immigration debate. Understanding them is core to understanding President executive order on immigration.

The first group is the Hard Core. They rightly point out that illegal immigrants are, in fact, here illegally and they worry that anything short of deportation will reward lawbreaking. They are rabidly against anything that remotely sounds like amnesty. While this is the position of the Tea Party, the faction predates it by years.

The second group is the Realists. They admit that deporting millions of people would be both cruel and harmful to our economy. At they same time, they are very aware that the amnesty offered under Reagan didn't work. They want a balancing act that provides a path to citizenship but does still rewards legal immigrants. They also call for stricter enforcement. This group is mainly made up of moderate Republicans who see immigration as loosing issue for Republicans and want it resolved.

The third group is the Altruists. They want a blanket amnesty regardless of the consequences. They are the reason that we call illegal immigrants "undocumented". They are mainly Democrats who expect that passing an amnesty will guarantee the Hispanic vote for the foreseeable future and they plan on scaring Hispanics with deportation if the Republicans get their way.

The final group is the Cynics. They talk like the Altruists but they have no intention of actually passing immigration reform. They have calculated that the Democrats will do better with the Hispanic vote as long as immigration is still an issue. They are the reason that immigration was never even brought up during the period that Democrats had complete control of Congress.

So, where is President Obama? He talks like an Altruist but consider the long-term effects of his executive order. He strengthened the Hard Core. Now, in addition to their previous arguments, they will also complain that any legislation remotely like Obama's executive order will reward presidential overreach. Further, and Republican Realist who supports any form of immigration reform will be challenged from the right in the primaries.

Obama knew this. He is also the most political president in living memory. He brings political advisers to national security briefings. There is no way he cannot be aware of the political ramifications. Further, his executive order will expire in three years unless the next (Democrat) president renews it. So we must believe that he care more about creating a wedge issue for Democrats to exploit in the coming elections.

Elizabeth Warren's 11 Points of Progressivism

I missed it at the time but last Summer Elizabeth Warren laid out her vision of thecurrent Progressive movement. Here they are with my comments.

We believe that Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we're willing to fight for it.

Too big to fail caused the last crash so let's enshrine it even more.

We believe in science, and that means that we have a responsibility to protect this Earth.

Scientific reviews say that the Keystone XL pipeline with have no discernible effect on the environment but Liz voted against it anyway. I guess she meant, "We believe in science except when we want to posture."

We believe that the Internet shouldn't be rigged to benefit big corporations, and that means real net neutrality.

Netflicks represents a huge chunk of Internet traffic. Right now they have to pay a surcharge to the major Internet providers because of the extra cost needed to provide the bandwidth that Netflicks requires. Network Neutrality means that Netflicks gets a free ride.

We believe that no one should work full-time and still live in poverty, and that means raising the minimum wage.

No mention about where the money for this will come from. Want to take a guess?

We believe that fast-food workers deserve a livable wage, and that means that when they take to the picket line, we are proud to fight alongside them.

This is sort of repeating the last point, isn't it?

We believe that students are entitled to get an education without being crushed by debt.

More money coming from somewhere unspecified. As a former university professor, maybe she'd like to propose reducing professor's pay and increasing their class size.

We believe that after a lifetime of work, people are entitled to retire with dignity, and that means protecting Social Security, Medicare, and pensions.

Even more unspecified money. Does anyone see a pattern here? Has anyone told Liz that preserving Social Security and Medicare will suck up all the money needed for her other promises?

We believe—I can't believe I have to say this in 2014—we believe in equal pay for equal work.

Government studies have shown there there is equal pay for equal work. Liz is really asking for a subsidy for women.

We believe that equal means equal, and that's true in marriage, it's true in the workplace, it's true in all of America.

Another point that sort of duplicates the one above it. This one sounds nice but it's pretty vague. Is she talking about racism? Gay marriage? What?

We believe that immigration has made this country strong and vibrant, and that means reform.

More mush. Reform can mean anything from total amnesty to closing the borders. How about some specifics?

And we believe that corporations are not people, that women have a right to their bodies. We will overturn Hobby Lobby and we will fight for it. We will fight for it!

In Hobby Lobby's case, the corporation consists of a handful of people who object on religious grounds to a couple of birth control methods on a list made up by a bureaucrat. Even before Obamacare they covered most of the list. Is the Progressive movement really reduced to fighting for a bureaucrat's ability to arbitrarily trample religious rights?

And the main tenet of conservatives' philosophy, according to Warren? "I got mine. The rest of you are on your own.

And the main tenet of Liz's philosophy is, "You got yours, now I'm going to take it and give it to someone else."

Evaluation the election

A week after the Republican wave election, I'm not sure that many people on either side really understand what the election was about or the cause of so much voter anger. This can best be understood by contrasting the 2014 election with the 2006 and 2008 Democratic waves.

In 2006, the Democrats retook Congress and won many state elections because of President Bush's perceived incompetence. The war in Iraq and the response to Hurricane Katrina were unpopular. By 2008, the financial meltdown was added to the list. Accordingly, voters turned to Obama who promised an open, nonpartisan administration that would fix the economy, clean up the wars, and pass health care reform without an individual mandate.

Jump forward to the current election and we find that Obama broke all of those promises. His administration is the most opaque, partisan and dictatorial ever. The economy has improved but most of the benefits seem to have gone to the rich. Most of the new job openings are for low-wage jobs Middle class wages have stagnated and millions have left the workforce. Iraq, which seehmed won in 2008, now seems worse than ever and Afghanistan is no linger the "good" war. Obamacare has never been supported by the majority of the population and is currently less popular than ever.

So the voters who, in 2006 and 2008, rejected the Republicans because of incompetence, have now rejected the Democrats for the same reason.

After their wave, the Democrats assumed that the nation had swung to the left and that their policies were now popular. When that proved false, they blamed Republican obstructionism for their failure to pass their agenda. Had they proven to be competent in keeping their promises, the Republicans would be worried about their place as a permanent minority party. Instead they have their chance. They need to provide solid leadership rather than pushing a partisan agenda. If they can do that then it is the Democrats who will worry about being a permanent minority. If they fail as spectacularly as the Democrats did then we will be looking at new swing elections in 2022 and 2024. 

Obama and Ebola

There has been a continuing thread of "science versus politicians" over how to handle the threat from Ebola. The big question is how far can we trust the "scientists".

The debate is over closing the border to people who have traveled in countries where the disease is epidemic and how we should treat people who have been exposed. The experts say that Ebola is very difficult to catch and people who are not exhibiting symptoms are not contagious. They have also said the closing the border would make the problem worse. The preferred response is to identify people who are infected then try to identify everyone they came in contact with while they were communicable.

Closing the border is a huge point of contention. While our scientists say that they know best, other countries such as Great Britain have closed their borders. Are these countries ignoring their scientists? The US policy seems counter-intuitive.

Identifying infections and people who were exposed only works as long as we have a tiny number of cases. There are only 19 beds certified for Ebola in the entire nation.

We are told that Ebola is very difficult to catch but that ignores the fact that it is an epidemic. Medical staff following isolation protocols have been infected.

The insistence that there are no symptoms until the temperature reaches 100.3 is strange. One infected nurse was cleared to travel because her temperature at the time was below that magic threshold. Apparently a victim's temperature does not rise to the magic number instantly.

There are other reasons to be concerned. President Obama values partisan loyalty over competence. That has led to wide-spread failures across his administration,  If top officials didn't know that the web site for Obamacare, the centerpiece of the Obama administration, was inoperative at launch then do they know what is happening in other areas?

Currently the nation has no Surgeon General. That's because Obama's nominee's main qualifications were that he was the head of Physicians for Obama and that he planned on using the office to lobby for anti-gun legislation. His Ebola czar is a lawyer with no medical expertise.

There is also reason to distrust the CDC itself. In 2009, a version of the flu called H1N1 seemed more dangerous than most and there were shortages of vaccines. The CDC advised people to sneeze into their elbow instead of their hand and to use hand cleanser. They also stated that it was more dangerous to younger people and older people seemed to have a natural immunity so seniors could skip vaccines.

The advice about not sneezing into your hand was valid Hand sanitizers are anti-bacterial and have no effect on viruses like H1N1. Worst, the virus had the same mortality rate among seniors as other strains of the flu. The claim that seniors had a natural immunity was a bit of social engineering. The CDC figured that kids in schools were at a greater threat of catching H1N1. With the vaccine in short supply, they told some white lies in order to get the vaccines where they believed it would do the most good.

So, how much of what we are being told includes white lies? There is no way for us to know.  

The Perverse Logic of Indigenous People's Day

The second Monday in October is Columbus Day, celebrating the date that Columbus sighted land and starting the chain of events that led to the modern world. This year Seattle joined Minneapolis, and South Dakota in celebrating Indigenous People's Day (or American Indian Day in South Dakota). These people see Columbus as a conqueror and the indians as a vanquished race.

Keep in mind that all Columbus never touched the mainland in North America and none of these places are proposing any sort of reparations to the Indians, let alone giving the land back. The whole thing is an exercise in political correctness, denouncing previous generation of Americans and patting themselves on their smug backs through a meaningless gesture.

The people who celebrate Columbus Day are celebrating the triumph of American culture. We're here and we're proud of it.

The Obama Doctrine Meets Reality

Officially the current motto of the Obama administration's foreign policy is "Don't do stupid shit."

The real policy, as outlined in the president's West Point speech, is "It doesn't matter what happens in the world as long as it doesn't affect Americans." While this sounds fairly harmless, it has proved to be disastrous.

The Ebola outbreak is an example. The US was slow to react because it was only killing foreigners. The US government didn't step up its reaction until an American aid worker was infected. The problem here is that plagues can't be contained. The best way to stop Ebola in the US is to stop it in Africa. This means putting US personnel at risk, helping to treat African victims but if it continues to spread then it will come here and start killing American civilians.

Syria is another example. When the civil war there started, outsiders urged Obama to get involved by finding non-Islamic rebels and arming them. Obama did virtually nothing at the casualties mounted. Even when Syria crossed his red line and used WMDs, he faltered. It is obvious that he didn't want to get involved as long as the conflict only involved foreigners killing each others. Hundreds of thousands dead and over a million displaced was not enough to sway Obama.

This continued as the war spilled over into Iraq and the gains made under the Bush administration were lost. Obama dismissed the Islamic State as a Junior Varsity team despite intelligence briefings that said they were very dangerous to the US. Reports of mass slaughter of conquered men and enslavement of women was insufficient to convince Obama to do anything against the Islamic State.

Obama didn't change his mind until the IS began beheading Americans. By that point it was too little, too late. Air strikes are not enough and the President is still unwilling to take sides in Syria.

The result of Obama's earlier inaction is that Ebola is spreading with no end in sight and the Islamic State has conquered a third of Iraq with no sign of slowing.

The Misstatements of Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson is famous. He has a TV show. He writes books. He gives speeches on science. The problem, as reported in the Federalist, is that he gets some things wrong. Four specific errors have been noted. So far I have not seen anyone actually analyze these errors and put them into perspective so I'll do it.

Error #1 - the drugs and the coins

According to Tyson, he was on jury duty and had to explain to a judge that what sounded like a large amount of drugs was comparable to the weight of a coin. The amount of the drugs and the comparable coin vary from one telling to another.

This one is harmless.

Error #2 - 50% of students are below average.

Tyson quotes a newspaper headline as saying that 50% of the students are below average.

On the face of it, Tyson has a point. Assuming that the average is close to the mean, then you would expect half the students to be above that point and half to be below it. The problem is that this is a bad assumption when talking about students. "Average" for students usually means ones who earn a C. Below average means students earning a D or F. Any school district where half the students are earning a D or F has a problem.

Unless Tyson can produce the article and show that in the context, "average" means "mean" rather than "C" he should stop using this one.

Error #3 - a Congress member doing a 360 degree turn

Tyson says that a member of Congress said, "I've done a 360 degree turn on this." Since that's a full circle, this was probably a misstatement for a 180 degree turn.

Tyson does not name the member of Congress who said this. Instead he uses the quote to belittle all current and past members of Congress. Given that the quote is years old and Congress has a lot of turn-over, he's tarring hundreds of people with this quote. Worse, the person who said it probably knows the difference and misspoke (as President Obama did when he implied that there are more than 50 states).

This is a cheap shot and Tyson should stop using this one.

Error #4 - The same god who named the stars...

This is the most troubling error. When giving the eulogy for the astronauts who died on the space shuttle Columbia, President Bush said, "The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today."

Tyson wanted to use this as a springboard for talking about the fact that 2/3s of the stars have Arabic names because of the contributions of Arabic astronomers. The problem is that Tyson also wanted to belittle President Bush so he misrepresented the quote. He said that it was given right after 9/11/2001 and meant to divide "us" and "them". He also asserted that the Old Testament god is the same god as Allah, an assertion that would get him executed in many Muslim countries.

The fact is that Bush went to lengths to say the exact opposite. The memorial service that Tyson attributed the quote to was very inclusive. Bush made it clear that we were not at war with Islam, just with a small, violent subset that does not represent the true version.

Tyson brushes this off as a minor issue but it isn't. It is a deliberate misrepresentation of Bush that Tyson gives in order to make himself look smarter. Listen to the clip here. Tyson spends four minutes running down Bush and making himself look smarter.

This is not a simple error. This is a deliberate falsehood and Tyson should apologize for ever using it.

All of these fit a pattern. They are meant to show that Tyson is smarter than anyone else - judges, reporters, members of Congress, or the President and, by extension, people who listen to Tyson are also smarter because he has shared his vast knowledge with them.

The Limits of Executive Authority

The House has authorized a suit against President Obama for exceeding his authority in rewriting the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). The White House calls this frivolous and the President himself claims he is being sued for doing his job. People on the left are insisting that the House should impeach the President or drop things. The far right agrees with this.

If the suit is successful, future Democrats will look back and thank the current Republicans. Just a few years ago they were ready to impeach President Bush for signing statements. Obama's executive orders go much further. Presidents matter. Do they really want to give this much power to President Cruze?

Presidents need wide powers to do their jobs. Bush could not wait for Congress to give him authorization to ground airlines on September 11. Clinton issued multiple orders on bin Lauden alone. Nixon issued a temporary wage-price freeze. These orders were limited in scope or length.

FDR holds the record for most executive orders. His first 100 days are considered a model for new presidents but it should be remembered that the Supreme Court rolled back most of these.

Obama expresses frustration that Republicans will not act on pressing matters such as immigration reform but this has become a vicious cycle. Legislation is a series of compromises. By refusing to enforce the letter of the law, Obama makes Republicans reluctant to pass new legislation for fear of giving Obama further powers to abuse.

The ultimate danger is that Congress will become irrelevant as the President accumulates more power. I'm not suggesting that this will happen during the Obama administration but this is the logical end to a President making up his own legislation.

So why not impeach? There are three valid reasons. The first is that it would be far more frivolous than the lawsuit. Impeachment by itself does nothing but add a footnote to the President's biography. Once impeached, the matter moves to the Senate which voted on removing the President from office. This takes a super-majority. All of the Republicans and half of the Democrats would have to vote in favor in order for this to succeed. This will not happen which is why the left is pushing for an impeachment vote.

The second reason is that it would not force President Biden to reverse Obama's orders.

The third reason is "President Biden" although that is not as strong an argument as it used to be. Biden has a history of being wrong on most things but he still knows how to work with Congress and he might be a better president than Obama. Or he might not. It's best not to find out.

TIme for Hillary?

As Hillary Clinton continues her book tour, the constantly asked question is if she plans on running for president? She has several advantages: name recognition, the ability to raise huge sums of money, experience running a presidential campaign, and a thicker resume than the current resident of the White House.

Hillary can also take advantage of voters who want a female president and aren't picky about who. She can also take advantage of the so-called "war on women" and the outrage against Republicans over it.

But before she gets fitted for her inaugural dress, let's go over her negatives:

Her age and health

Hillary is getting old. Her supporters have tried to defuse this by pointing to President Reagan's age and claiming sexism. The fact is that Reagan's age was an issue in both 1980 and 1984 when he ran for reelection. Age was also a factor for Bob Dole and John McCain.

Hillary's health is also a valid issue. Her husband, Bill, has had major heart problems. She falls a lot. One of those falls was so bad that she had double vision for a month and had to wear corrective glasses. Other health issues may come to light.

Foreign Affairs

Hillary was Secretary of state. Many of today's problems began during her tenure. She was personally involved with the reset with Russia. If things continue to go wrong in the Ukraine, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Afghanistan, or Syria, she will have to spend her time excusing herself instead of running.

Obama Fatigue

President Obama is not very popular right now. As a Democrat and former member of his cabinet, Hillary will be seen as running for an Obama 3rd term. McCain did well running against Bush as well as Obama but he was already known as a maverick and had no direct ties with the Bush administration. Hillary was a member of the Obama administration so it will be much harder for her to run against him. At the same time, a significant portion of Democrats still support Obama and Hillary will need their support to win the nomination. It will be difficult for her to do an about-face in the general election.

Clinton Amnesia

It's been a long time since the Clinton's left office. Hillary's appeal in 2008 was the promise to turn things back to the peace and prosperity of the 1990s, before 9/11 and the Bush wars. Promising to turn the clock back 16+ years will just make Hillary seem old and out of touch.

Younger voters do not have clear memories of the Clinton years. Some voters weren't even born when Bill took office and anyone under 30 will barely remember the Clintons.

Clinton Fatigue

2012 was the first election since 1976 that didn't have a Clinton or Bush running (I"m including Hillary's primary run in this). 2016 may have both a Clinton and (Jeb) Bush running. A lot of people are tired of these political families.

While voters under 30 didn't really know the Clintons, the ones over 30 were sick of them by the time they left office. We don't really want to be reminded of Vince Foster, Whitewater, blue dresses, etc.

Hillary Herself

In 2008, the presidency was Hillary's to lose. She was the clear front-runner with all of the advantages she has today (her resume was a bit thinner) and fewer of the disadvantages. Regardless, she managed to lose. A quick recap is in order.

Hillary began the campaign with a sense of inevitability. Her campaign was built around this. She had a huge campaign fund and she spent it with the idea of wrapping up the nomination by Super Tuesday. She concentrated on delegate-rich states and ignored caucuses in smaller states. She did win the most delegates on Super Tuesday but not enough to give her the nomination.

In contrast, Obama had a 50-state campaign. His supporters were more excited and managed to shout down Hillary supporters in caucuses. Obama won a string of caucuses unopposed after Super Tuesday while Hillary restarted her campaign. The air of inevitability moved from Hillary to Obama. At the end of the primaries, neither candidate had a majority of the delegates but Obama's string of victories assured that he got the nomination.

Hillary probably learned her lesson in 2008 and won't let herself be outmaneuvered like that again. Regardless, 2008 shows flaws in her judgement.

Another lesson from 2008 is that Hillary isn't a very good campaigner. She comes across as shrill and insincere. She does best when she runs as a concept rather than as a candidate. Her popularity suffered a slight drop when she entered the public eye again on her book tour.

Summary

Hillary's biggest asset is her inevitability. That will let her raise huge sums and garner a lot fo votes from  people who have been waiting years to ratify her.

At the same time, she suffers from staleness. It is likely that a Republican governor will be the candidate and will seem young and fresh in contrast. We saw in 2008 how easily Hillary could lose her inevitability.

History says that the Republicans have a very strong chance of taking the White House. It tends to change hands after a 2-term president. The Republicans could still falter and nominate a candidate who makes Hillary look good but, all things being equal, Hillary's chances are slim.