The Zimmerman verdict and America

It was heartening that George Zimmerman was found not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin. As the trial made clear, there was never much question about Zimmerman defending himself at the time of the shooting (although both men made mistakes leading up to the confrontation). The charges were filed for political purposes after reports got out that a white man was able to kill a black boy then get off because of Florida's Stand Your Ground laws.

What is disheartening is the reaction to the verdict. Stand Your Ground was never an issue because Martin surprised him, knocked him to the ground, then began pummeling him. That hasn't stopped a national call for repealing the law. Stevie Wonder announced that he will boycott Florida and any other state with similar laws.

President Obama managed to slip in a mention about stopping gun violence in his reaction speech. Presumably he would be happy if Martin had beaten Zimmerman to death.

Many can't get past their initial impression. Eugene Robinson insists that Martin was no threat to Zimmerman.

And we know that a skinny boy armed only with candy, no matter how big and bad he tries to seem, does not pose a mortal threat to a healthy adult man who outweighs him by 50 pounds and has had martial arts training (even if the lessons were mostly a waste of money). We know that the boy may well have threatened the man's pride but likely not his life. How many murders-by-sidewalk have you heard of recently? Or ever?

While it is true that Zimmerman outweighed Martin, it must be kept in mind that Martin was a shade under 6 feet, ideal weight and a football player. Zimmerman was three inches shorter and overweight. Martin had no trouble breaking Zimmerman's nose and pinning him to the ground. Having your head pounded against the pavement goes beyond having your pride threatened. (And that discounts Zimmerman's testimony that Martin was trying to get his gun.)

The worst reactions are from people who just want an excuse to protest. The Occupy movement manged to include an anti-capitalism message in their protest. Protestors in Oakland robbed stores.

None of these protestors care what happened. They don't even want to know. They want an excuse to protest or simply wreck havoc.

Zimmerman/Martin myths

There are a number of misconceptions about the Zimmerman/Martin case. The case is in the hands of the jury. While we're waiting for the verdict, I'll go over a few:

Zimmerman racially profiled Martin.

Zimmerman thought that Martin looked like he was up to no good but did not say why. An early version of the 911 tape seemed to indicate that he was racially profiling Martin but this turned out to have been altered by NBC. In the full tape, Zimmerman only gave Martin's race when asked by the police dispatcher. There is no reason to think that racial profiling was involved. Zimmerman is mixed race and has many close black friends. The neighborhood is mixed race so a black face would not stand out. On the 911 tape, it was Martin's behavior, not his race, that made Zimmerman specious.

Zimmerman shot an unarmed boy

This is a major sticking point for many people - that Zimmerman had a gun and Martin did not. This is a major oversimplification. According to Zimmerman, witnesses, and forensics evidence, at the time of the shooting Martin was sitting on Zimmerman, hitting him in the face and pounding his head into the cement sidewalk. It doesn't matter that Zimmerman's injuries at that point were minor. What matters is that he had reasonable cause to think that he would be seriously injured or killed if Martin continued beating him. I challenge anyone who thinks that Zimmerman was overreacting to put himself in that position and see if it changes his mind.

The defense summed it up saying that Martin was armed with a cement sidewalk.

Martin's character should not be questioned - it is Zimmerman who is on trial.

A big question in the trial is if Martin was the sort of person who would decide to teach a crazy-ass cracker a lesson by beating him up?

The President's Speeches

Barack Obama was elected on the basis of his speeches but since then his rhetorical skills have failed him. What happened?

I think it is a simple example of expectations. When he was a candidate he could promise anything he wanted. He had no real power. Instead, he was asking for it.

Now he is in office. People don't want to hear promises or excuses. They aren't impressed by blaming others. They expect results.

At the same time, Obama now knows the limits of what he can do and what he must do.

For most of his presidency, Obama's response to problems has been to make a speech. This never succeeds which creates even lesser expectations for his next major speech.

This was not a problem that Reagan had. He was a master at manipulating Congress and when that didn't work, he knew how to make a persuasive case to the American people. Obama has no idea how to work with Congress and tends to lecture rather than persuade.

Reagan is ranked among the greatest presidents. Even his detractors (including Obama) concede this. Obama is proving himself to be one of the lessor presidents, sinking with each speech.

The Zimmerman Trial

The longer the trail of George Zimmerman goes on the weaker the case looks. This isn't surprising. From the beginning it was a show trial of sorts.

The first most people heard of George Zimmerman and Trevon Martin was a distorted version of the actual events. According to this, Zimmerman profiled Martin because of his race and his hoodie, tracked him down, and shot him then got off because of Florida's Stand Your Ground law. To make matters even more extreme, old photos of martin were released showing him as being fairly small while Zimmerman was described as being twice Martin's size.

On top of all that, NBC edited a tape of the 911 call to make it appear that Zimmerman did indeed profile Martin based on race.

Suddenly the incident became a national cause. Opponents of the Stand Your Ground law publicized it while black activists insisted that it was a proxy for all race relations. The authorities who failed to file charges against Zimmerman were fired and a special prosecutor was brought in who files 2nd degree murder charges.

Eventually the real story came out. Zimmerman may sound like a white name but this one is a mixed-race Hispanic (although he is still being referred to as a "white Hispanic). Zimmerman is short and doughy while Martin was tall and in good condition (in one picture taken just before his death he towers over his family).

The Stand Your Ground defense is meaningless here because Zimmerman claimed that Martin knocked him to the ground and sat on him while hitting him and banging his head against the sidewalk.

So far the prosecution has totally failed to prove otherwise. The two most reliable witnesses insisted that Martin had Zimmerman pinned. Another witness assumed that Zimmerman was on top because all of the pictures in the media showed Martin as being smaller. Once she found out that Martin was a good deal taller than Zimmerman she changed her story. The one witness who said that Zimmerman was on top also claimed that he shot Martin three times in the back (he was shot once in the front).

The physical evidence supports Zimmerman. He was cut and bruised while Martin was unharmed except for his knuckles and the shot that killed him.

You would think that all of this would be enough to convince a fair-minded observer that Zimmerman acted in self-defense. Not so. There is still a crowd who clings to minor details - Zimmerman says that they struggled for the gun but there is no evidence that Martin touched it and Zimmerman says that he spread Martin's arms wide but they were together when the police found them.

These people have been watching too many police shows where a tiny inconsistency eventually points to the real killer. That makes for good fiction but poor training for reality.

Unfortunately, if Zimmerman is found innocent then we will probably have nationwide race riots.

About the Rich Getting Richer

Last week the stock market crashed after the Fed said that it will eventually scale back on its efforts to keep interest rates low. The correlation between the two explains why the rich are doing so much better than the rest of the country.

For years the Fed has been pumping money into the economy. Normally this would be inflationary but only a few places in the economy had indicated any sort of bubble. The stock market is the biggest.

What is going on is simple - investors are borrowing money at record-low rates and using it to buy stocks. There are other investments going on at the same time. What is not happening is the money going for traditional investments. Businesses are not using the money to expand.

That keeps the money bottled up at the top. Only a limited number of people are in a position to benefit from this, mainly financial institutions. People involved with those institutions are making a LOT of money but they aren't spending it.

There are contributing factors. The new financial regulations institutionalize Too Big to Fail which encourages risky behavior. The financial institutions know that the tax payers will bail them out if their investments go bad.

But all of this depends on cheap money so any hint that the Fed might allow rates to climb in the future is bad news.

Note that none of this involves tax law or unions. Progressives worry about the concentration of money at the top but their remedies will be ineffective.

An Armed Idiot

Writing in Ms Magazine, Heidi Yewman tells of her month carrying a gun. She claims that she was inspired by the NRA's Wayne LaPierre who said "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

Her rules for carrying the gun are:
Carry it with me at all times, follow the laws of my state, only do what is minimally required for permits, licensing, purchasing and carrying, and finally be prepared to use it for protecting myself at home or in public.

To understand where Heidi is coming from you have to know that she has been an anti-gun activist. She led a shareholder's revolt against Starbuck's open carry policy and has boycotted the chain for two years.

At first this sounds like an honest attempt by an anti-gun activist to understand gun culture. It is not. It is a stunt designed to prove her original point that guns should be banned in public.

The key is her third point - only doing the minimal requirements. While most normal people who buy a gun for self-defense take a gun safety course and become familiar with gun handling, she didn't even ask the dealer how to load it. Instead she brought the gun home, opened the box, and panicked because she convinced herself that it was loaded with the safety off.

After finding a policeman who showed her some basics, she strapped it on and went to a Starbucks. Her conclusion?

In some way, I feel a certain vindication. I was right to protest Starbucks policy. Today, they have a woman with absolutely no firearms training and a Glock on her hip sitting within arm's reach of small children, her hands shaking and adrenaline surging.

This whole is contrived. She faults Tony, the gun dealer, for selling a gun to someone as ignorant as she is. She faults the cop for not confiscating the gun when she told him what an idiot she is. Why didn't she ask Tony for some basic instruction? Probably because he would have spent more time with her than the cop could. He might have even tried to sign her up for a gun safety course which would invalidate her entire premise. Also, some basic gun handling would alleviate her jitters about carrying a gun.

That is the last thing she wants. Her whole article is based on the idea that guns are dangerous instruments that are likely to go off at any second. Her ultimate aim is to establish a guilt-by-association for gun owners. If someone who is willfully ignorant is allowed to carry a gun then all gun owners should be treated as willfully ignorant.

A careful reading of her goals shows that they are contradictory. She says that she will be prepared to use the gun to defend herself but that involves knowing how to aim and fire the thing. She can't remain willfully ignorant and still be prepared to use it.

She is not above stretching the truth a bit, also. She apparently lives in Washington state whch requires two background checks and a waiting period for getting a gun. She fails to mention this. Instead she says that getting a dog license is easier (do they really fingerprint dog-owners in Washington?).

The irony is that she will probably hurt her cause. The article is making the conservative rounds where she is being held as an object of ridicule.

About that Amnesty Bill

I keep getting urgent email alerts warning that the Amnesty Bill is advancing through Congress. I hate them because there is no such bill. True, there is a bill which would overhaul how illegal immigrants are handled but this is no amnesty bill.

Let's talk a little bit about reality. There are something like 11 million people who came to this country illegally. The biggest group came from Mexico but a large number came from China. They came here because our labor market was able to absorb them and portions of our economy need them. There is no way to send them all back, even if our economy could absorb the impact. Attempting it would require turning our country into a total police state where your citizenship was constantly being verified and your home was subject to search in case you were sheltering illegals.

They aren't going away so what do we do with them? Current policy amounts to amnesty. We look the other way and let them stay. Some cities have even adopted a sanctuary policy where the police are barred from turning illegals over to immigration authorities.

They are here and they aren't going to leave so we need to find some way to legally accommodate them. This is a good time to do it. The collapse of housing construction in the US and a rebounding Mexican economy has slowed the illegal immigration rate to a trickle. This would be a great time to close the border.

The objections to immigration reform don't stand up to scrutiny. One objection is that they are being rewarded for breaking the law. Actually the path to citizenship includes fines and a long residency requirement. Also, keep in mind that federal laws are so complex that nearly everyone breaks them regularly.

There is a fear on the right that this will assure a permanent Democrat majority. The thinking is that the Democrats will ram immigration reform through then claim credit for it for decades to come. This is a real possibility which is why Republicans need to be leaders in the fight to pass reform. Being seen as the anti-Hispanic party will hurt the Republicans for decades but stealing this as an issue from the Democrats will help Republicans make inroads with Hispanic voters.

Defending Libertarianism

Michael Lind on Salon thinks that he has the ultimate question that Libertarians can't answer: If your approach is so great, why hasn't any country anywhere in the world ever tried it?

E. J. Dionne picks up that question and tries to use it to discredit Libertairans.

First things first. There are no true, modern libertarian countries just as there are no pure communist or socialist countries. These policies have been implemented in various degrees in many different countries so we can judge their relative merit.

Before I go further I need to define Libertarianism. It means different things to different people but its heart is a government that protects property rights and the rule of law while allowing trade and innovation to happen with minimal regulatory oversight.

Historically there have been many countries that have implemented this. All of the great trade empires have strong libertarian elements. This includes Victorian England, 17th century Holland and Renaissance Venice. These were not democracies but the governments still promoted trade.

The classic example of Libertarian values is pre-20th century United States.

In the modern world we have seen countries like China move from communist poverty to capitalist prosperity by adopting libertarian trade policies.

In the US we can compare Texas with California to see the effect of loose and strict government policies.

Internationally we can see that the US which just significantly expanded the regulatory state is lagging behind most of the developed world in economic expansion.

Dionne brings up the Great Depression as an example of how expanding government power saved the country from the Great Depression. The truth is that it was a world-wide depression and the recovery happened world-wide regardless of local policies.

So, if Libertarian policies are so great then what happened to them? The short answer is Progressives like Dionne. around the beginning of the 20th century they became upset with income inequality and other causes and started lobbying for increased government power to set things right. This was an emotional appeal, not an economic one. Libertarianism didn't exist at the time. It was created by the backlash when socialist and communist policies failed.

Now the Progressives are back. They see income inequality as a major problem that must be addressed by government intervention. It doesn't matter to them that everyone is living a more prosperous life than 50 years ago. They want the expansion of government to proceed and feel threatened by anyone who points out the flaws in this.

The Phone Records Scandal

The fact that the government is collecting records on every call made within the United States is a bit troubling but not as bad as it seems at first. In order to access the data, agents have to first get clearance from a judge.

What is not clear is easily these requests are granted or how wide reaching they are. Given the current administration's overreach on surveillance, we need to know more about the program before we can properly judge it.

One thing that is clear though is that the man in the White House is not the man who people thought they elected. Candidate Obama was against surveillance programs such as this. President Obama has extended them.

It should not go unremarked that many of the people who are defending this program condemned it under President Bush. That implies that the program is needed and that the objections were purely political.

Michelle Bachmann and the Left

Michelle Bachman recently announced that she will not run again. That led several left-leaning columnists to revive all of the misstatements she has made. In doing so, they prove that she is right in stepping down, not because of her own failings but because she can't get fair treatment from the press. This column by Dana Milbank is representative.

Certainly, the media and late-night TV hosts will greatly miss the woman who declared that the American Revolution began in Concord, N.H., instead of Concord, Mass.; that the HPV vaccine causes mental retardation; that certain members of Congress are "anti-America"; that John Wayne came from her birthplace of Waterloo, Iowa (she confused him with serial killer John Wayne Gacy); that God created an earthquake and a hurricane to protest federal spending; that the U.S. government is plotting death panels, re-education camps and an IRS database of Americans' medical records; and that the feds could use census data to put people in internment camps.

Whether she was calling President Obama a socialist, misplacing John Quincy Adams in history as a "Founding Father," or wishing Elvis Presley a "happy birthday" on the anniversary of his death, Bachmann frequently furnished evidence for her claim that God had called her to run for president — if only to provide comic relief.

Certainly Bachmann made errors but this list is misleading. The biggest one is John Quincy Adams. In a speech, Bacjmann referred to him as a fore-bearer meaning someone in the past. She did not call him a founding father but someone substituted that term and proceed to ridicule her for confusing Adams with his father.

While it is true that John Wayne was not from Waterloo, Iowa, his parents were. Confusing John Wayne with his parents is a lot different than confusing him with a serial killer.

It should also be pointed out that President Obama was a Marxist in college and it is unclear when his world-view changed (assuming it did). Public statements by some members of Congress do come off as anti-American and she would know more about their private views than most outsiders. The existence of death panels (panels deciding to withhold medical treatment because of expense) will not be known until Obamacare is fully implemented. The same is true for the IRS and medical records.

The real errors on the list - things like confusing Concord, N.H. with Concord, Mass., confusing an account of the MMR vaccine with the HPV vaccine, and the anniversary of Elvis's death with the anniversary of his birth are the type or error made by every politician. Even Obama was unclear about the number of states. Finally, there are her statements of faith which cause consternation to the left.

The point of this is that the left goes to lengths to paint her as an idiot of some kind. Everything she says is taken as ridiculous, even when it is true.

The Obama Scandals

A score-sheet to the current crop of scandals.

Benghazi - The left keeps presenting this as a made-up scandal. It is not. Regardless of who came up with the talking points, the Obama Administration used them to conceal what happened. To be clear, an al Qaeda affiliate executed a planned assault on a consulate and killed the ambassador. This raises questions about intelligence gaps and the strength of al Qaeda in a country we had been aiding. With an election coming, the administration preferred to push the idea that the attack was spontaneous. If it wasn't planned then there could be no intelligence failure. Even when testifying before Congress, Hillary Clinton's "what difference does it make?" outburst presented it as either spontaneous but inspired by a video or simply spontaneous.

The furor over the talking points hides the fact that the real question is why we didn't anticipate an attack.

The IRS - Obama apologists like to insist that it was perfectly logical to profile Tea Party groups for additional tax scrutiny. Here is an example:

Someone at your office notices that a lot of the applications for 501(c)(4) status are from groups that claim to be part of the burgeoning Tea Party movement. Aha! When you're looking for signs of political activity, wouldn't it make sense to search for criteria related to the largest new political movement of our times?

The problem is that there were lots of political groups being formed but only conservative causes got put on the list. These were not large groups with lots of money, either. This shows every sign of being politically motivated.

The AP - The Obama Justice Department spread a wide net in trying to track down a leak. It is true that some Republicans called for the leak to be investigated but they did not specify the means. They assumed that the Obama Justice Department would follow the guidelines set down in 1980 which call for the narrowest search possible. The leak investigation is not the scandal. The scandal is that the Justice Department totally ignored the guidelines.

Fox News - In a different leak investigation, the Justice Department named a reporter as a co-conspirator because he asked a source for more information. This goes way beyond the AP investigation.

Obama's cluelessness - Last weekend the President's supporters defended him on the basis that he didn't know anything about any of these. Even when the White House had been briefed, the President was kept in the dark. This fits other accounts of President Obama as a hands-off administrator who only puts in minimal effort.

Progressivism Hits the Wall

In the early 20th century a new political idea took root - the idea of an expansive central government managed by dispassionate professionals. To a large extant, that is what we have now and why the IRS and AP scandals are so damaging to the Obama Administration and the Left.

While it is often ignored, Civil Service was a big part of the Progressive movement. The political patronage system was corrupt and a significant barrier to an expanding government. As the government's power expands, so does its ability to be abused.

The solution to this was to create professional bureaucracies. Lawmakers would no longer write the rules. They would write legislation enabling bureaucrats to write the actual rules.

The bureaucracies themselves were supposed to be non-partisan professionals who would administer the law impartially. The office that rules on tax-free status was moved to the regional office in Cincinnati specifically to keep it away from Washington politicians.

So the news that this office was specifically targeting conservative groups received universal condemnation. If the bureaucracy has be used to target one group then it will be used again. It does not matter who gave the order. There were no controls to stop it and the practice was allowed to continue at a high level.

The AP story is similar. There are specific guidelines for discovering a security leak. These were totally ignored. Instead of limiting the data narrowly, the government cast the widest net possible. This is chilling for reporters who depend on inside sources to cover the government.

The progressive idea of dispassionate professionals has run into reality. Civil servants do not live in a vacuum. Some of them have strong political leanings and are willing to act on them.

The Obama Scandals

The hits keep coming on the Obama administration. First it was the Benghazi hearings, then the IRS scandal. The most important things about these two is that conservatives knew all about them but were scoffed at. The big revelation is not that they happened but that everything the conservatives complained about was true. The White House really did rewrite talking point memos to remove references to an organized terrorist attack. Instead it was explained as a spontaneous regional event which was inspired by a video.

Let's be clear that there were such demonstrations but not in Libya and the administration knew it. This was not an attempt to tie local events to regional ones as some apologists have claimed. It was an attempt to rewrite events in order to aid the President's reelection campaign.

The IRS scandal keeps growing. When it was first released, on a Friday in the hopes that it would be buried, it was presented as a small, rouge group working without authorization. Since then it has come out that at least three offices were cooperating and that any group that was identifiably anti-Obama was included. Even Jewish groups were given special, chilling scrutiny. Now that the MSM is paying attention, there is no hiding things. There is a long paper trail that is beyond the control of the administration. All of the affected groups can produce the list of questions they were asked by the IRS.

The third scandal is likely to hit the Obama administration the hardest. The Justice Department was secretly monitoring the AP for two years. This is likely to turn the press against the Obama administration which means that they will receive less cover for their other improprieties.

Barack Obama must be asking himself why he ran so hard for a second term? He already suffered major defeats on gun control and the sequester and now he has to cope with multiple scandals at once. He was too competitive to walk away from the office but he doesn't like it and he is not very good at it.

Judging Bush

Last week's opening of George W. Bush's Presidential Library had many reassessing his presidency. It is really too early to do this. Most of the people writing were still suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome. Regardless, four years and 100 days have given some perspective. We can see how Bush's policies actually played out and which of them the Obama Administration continued. This is important because it removes the "if you only knew what I knew" problem that most critics have.

Bush looks particularly good when compared to his successor in many areas. The first of these is politics. The Bush years were marked by strident political division. The Left outright hated him. Despite this, all of his major achievements were done with bipartisan support. Even after losing both houses of Congress in 2006, he still managed to piece together a working majority. Even when the Republicans controlled the Senate, they never had more than 51 votes. In contrast, President Obama needs 60 Senate votes to pass anything important.

The invasion of Iraq may have been a mistake but it must be taken in context. We had been in open hostilities with Iraq for a decade prior to the invasion. Saddam may not have been making WMDs but he had every intention of doing so as soon as the sanctions were lifted and it was only a matter of time before that happened. Look at our powerlessness to stop North Korea and Iran and you can see where Iraq would have been by now.

You should also look at Syria to see what might have happened in Iraq if we had not invaded. They have tens of thousands of dead, a million refugees, and a rebellion that is increasingly made of Islamic fundamentalists.

Bush is often blamed for the Great Recession. This was a bipartisan problem with roots going back to the Clinton administration. The Bush administration pushed for reforms that would have lessened the impact of the crash but these were blocked by prominent Democrats.

Bush's response to the crash must also be taken into account. Economists agree that he saved the world's economy. Technically, the recession ended before Obama's stimulus went into effect.

It is often said that Bush took a surplus and turned it into a deficit. Actually the Internet Bubble created the surplus and the recession caused by it bursting created the deficit. Bush did have some significant deficits but they peaked with the recession and were declining until the crash in 2007. In contrast, Obama turned the emergency stimulus into the new baseline. His deficits are three times Bush's and that's with a declining military presence in war zones.

Bush received a lot of blame for the response to Hurricane Katrina. This was undeserved. He was even blamed for the levies flooding (because he caused global warming, because money allocated for levee maintenance went to pay for troops, or because he ordered the levees to be dynamited). This must be compared with the response to Hurricane Sandy - a much smaller storm. Bush's response looks fairly good by this measure.

Bush's Medicare Drug Plan was not properly funded but it ended up costing a fraction of what was projected. In contrast, Obamacare was supposed to be funded but new projections show it will be much more costly than projected.

The left could never utter the words "Bush tax cuts" without adding "for the rich" but Obama signed a measure continuing 99% of the cuts. These tax cuts were blamed for the growing divide between the rich and poor but that divide has widened during the Obama years.

In all, Bush looks pretty good compared with his successor.

The FAA and the Sequester

Some people on the left are upset that Congress and the President gave up a major bargaining chip by voting to ease air congestion. These people are politically tone deaf.

The message they wanted to send was that flight delays were all the fault of Republicans refusing to raise taxes. That message did not get out. Even a left-leaning media would not take so partisan a viewpoint. After all, the networks are more affected than the rest of us.

The story that came out was that the cuts and the delays they caused were politically motivated. The FAA had their budget cut. They could have targeted the cuts, taking more money from overstaffed airports and less from understaffed ones. Instead they cut all airports equally, guaranteeing delays.

There was no way for the Democrats to spin this story as an example of Republicans' refusal to raise taxes. If the Democrats had stood firm then the public would have blamed them for their single-minded pursuit of tax hikes.

The President and Congressional Democrats took the only path available to them and voted to alleviate the delays.

Obama and Guns

When he ran in 2008, Barack Obama insisted that he was not anti-gun. Many gun-rights advocates did not trust him on this. They believed that he was deeply anti-gun but hid his true motives in order to get elected. Recent events have justified these fears. After the shootings at Sandy Hook, Obama proposed an anti-gun agenda that could have been written in the 1990s. He then used his bully pulpit to make gun control legislation the centerpiece of his second term.

So, where are we now?

Three states have passed restrictive gun legislation. My prediction is that it will be ignored, especially the New York ban on "high capacity" magazines. The original legislation banned nearly every semi-automatic pistol ever made. The statute was amended to allow magazines that can hold more bullets as long as they are not transported that way.

As far as Congress, it was obvious from the start that actually passing any meaningful measures was going to be difficult if not impossible. The House refused to introduce any legislation until the Senate passed something.

In the Senate it quickly became obvious that bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines did not have enough votes. Mandatory background checks were pushed as the only thing that could pass.

Despite political reality, the President kept pushing his whole package, seemingly oblivious to events.

Some political observers suspected Obama of playing the long game. He would push gun control through the Senate in the hope that it would die in the Republican-controlled House. Then he would use this as a campaign wedge in 2014 to defeat the Republicans and regain control of both houses.

If true, this policy now lies in tatters. The Senate failed to pass anything, even a moderate background check. Most Republicans voted against it but a few were for and a few Democrats voted against. That will make it very difficult for the President to use the vote against the Republicans.

A bigger problem is that the country is not behind the President. While one poll found that 90% of the country supports background checks, only 8% things that gun control is the nation's top priority. And that poll was taken before the events of last week.

There is also a political issue to the vote that goes beyond the NRA. Immigration reform is coming and is likely to be decisive. Some Senators know that they will be voting against the wishes of their constituents. They feel that they can survive one divisive vote but not two. These Senators rightly believe that immigration is the more pressing issue.

The Sandy Hook push was an emotional appeal made possible because of the immediacy of the tragedy. After the Boston Marathon bombing, the fertilizer plant explosion, and the death of one bomber and apprehension of the other one, Sandy Hook seems a lot less urgent.

For now, the President will get nothing on gun-control on the national level. Most politicians would face reality and drop the issue but Obama is particularly stubborn. Expect him to bring the issue up again.

Moving on Already?

I have seen two columns talking about how we have already moved on from the horrific bombings in Boston. Granted the number of dead is fewer than some killed in mass gun-related killings but are we really ready to move on after a day? What's going on?

I suspect that part of it is that the left hasn't been able to make an object lesson of it yet. The Sandy Hook shooting is still being used to advance unrelated gun-control measures. The Giffords shooting was originally used to tarnish Sarah Palin and is currently being used as an additional push for gun-control. Those incidents are being kept alive because they are politically useful.

So far there is nothing in the Boston bombing that can be used to advance an agenda. It can't even be blamed on global warming. So we are moving on.

Shameless in the Senate

Prior to yesterday's Senate vote on advancing a gun-control measure to debate, family members of victims from the Sandy Hook shooting put on a big show. They produced pictures of the victims. They told stories about loss. They pulled out all the stops.

Then the Senate voted advancing on the bill.

At the time of the vote the Senate did not know the contents of the bill. It was not released until later. They did know one important thing about it, though - the bill would not have stopped the Sandy Hook shooting and it is unlikely to stop future mass shootings.

This was shameless exploitation of the dead to advance an anti-gun agenda.

Margaret Thatcher and the Left

The initial reaction to the passing of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was fairly a straightforward acknowledgement of her accomplishments. They were impressive. She took an ailing country that was considered to be in permanent decline and brought it back to life. Along the way she reversed the course of domestic socialism and, along with Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II, stopped the spread in international communism. There is no question that Great Britain was better and stronger when she left office than when she began.

But, her life and accomplishments are a repudiation to today's progressives. Thatcher not only reversed the progressive accomplishments, she proved that her economic theories are correct. So the left had to minimize Thatcher.

The first step was the insistence that today's right has gotten so polarized that they would reject Thatcher. One example given was the VAT (Value Added Tax). Thatcher replaced the high income tax with the VAT. Mitt Romney suggested something similar and was criticized for it. The fact that it was the Republican candidate who suggested it and one of his weak rivals who criticized it shows that a VAT can get mainstream Republican support. The fact that the republican Party is broad enough that you can find someone, somewhere who rejects any single policy does not mean that Thatcher was out of step with today's conservatives. And that's ignoring the fact that she was not an American politician.

Fareed Zakaria makes a strong case for why Thatcherism would not work today. This is an attempt to compartmentalize Thatcher. We can acknowledge her accomplishments but ignore the lessons because she lived in a different time. Zakaria points to some specifics such as the high income tax rates internationally and the number of businesses owned and operated by the British government.

If you look at generalities instead of specifics then you find that Thatcher is still very relevant. The Progressives are obsessed with income inequality and taxing the wealthy. Given a free rein, they would reestablish the tax rates of the 1970s which Zakaria admits were a drag on the economy.

It is true that the days of socialism are past but the real issue was not government ownership of business, it was government intrusion into every facet of daily life. The modern progressives have discovered that it is much easier to dictate how businesses are run than to run them. The regulatory state is on the upswing and becoming worse than it ever was during the Reagan/Thatcher days.

Thatcher and Reagan continue to be relevant to the modern day despite efforts to compartmentalize them.

Second Term Headaches

A president's second term seldom goes as well as his first. He has a shorter honeymoon and has less political capital to work with. Presidents spend their first term pushing their agenda so there is little left to push in a second term. Mistakes from the first term usually catch up with a president in his second term. the second half of the second term is often the worst because senators who came into office on the president's original coattails are up for reelection. Accordingly, the opposition party usually makes gains in Congress.

Even by these standards, President Obama's second term is off to a terrible start.

His first term ended on a high note when he forced his terms on Congress to prevent the Fiscal Cliff. That made him cocky and let him think that he could dictate terms for avoiding the sequester. He couldn't. The sequester has gone badly for him. The immediate cuts looked like political stunts (I wonder why?). The real cuts are emerging slowly and have no sense of urgency to them.

Gun control has emerged as his major policy initiative. Since he never said a word about this in 2012 and denied being against guns in 2008, he has no mandate on this. It is obvious that most of his proposals will never pass the Senate to say nothing of the House and this could come back to haunt him when red-state senators run for reelection.

Obama's victory in the Fiscal Cliff negotiations is coming back to hurt him, too. He continues to insist on additional tax hikes allowing the Republicans to complain about his lack of serious cuts to go with the tax increases he already got.

The economy continues to under-perform. New bubbles are forming such as with the sub-prime car loans. Obama has suggested that the country return to the practices that led to the housing bubble as a way of promoting economic recovery.

But his real failures are overseas. The Arab Spring produced a mess. Egypt has become more repressive and threatens to fall apart. Muslim extremists are gaining power in Libya. Syria is a humanitarian disaster far worse than Iraq and likely to eventually end up with an anti-American extremist government.

Obama's first round of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians was a total failure so he had to backtrack on his preconditions for negotiation.

Iran continues to work on nuclear weapons. North Korea already has them and is threatening to use them on the US.

Worst of all, at the Easter egg roll, a president who is known for his basketball game only got 2 out of 10 tries.

And all of that is just in Obama's first three months.