Wolf Howling

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

The "There" of Benghazi

At a press conference yesterday, an angry Obama wanted everybody to know that Benghazi is a non-issue - or as he put it, "there's no there there." It's all just Republicans acting for wholly political motives.

Apparently seeking objective truth is purely political to the ideological left, where only "socialist truth" matters. Obama's arrogance, shamelessness and dishonesty are breathtaking.

Just a reminder of what's "there":

1. Our diplomats were put in a situation where they were left unprotected despite repeated requests for more security in an environment of ever increasing threat. We still don't know whether the decisions to deny increased security was the result of a policy decision to "normalize" our security posture, as e-mails have suggested and at least one person has testified, or, as the ARB states, the decisions were simply bad judgement by low level security officials. If it is the former, than this is ipso facto proof that this administration's policy towards radical Islam is dangerously out of touch with reality.

2. Once news of the attack hit Washington, not a single asset beyond a spy drone was activated to respond, thus leading one to speculate that our people were left to die rather than risk a messy situation two months before the election. There has yet to be anything close to an adequate and believable answer that would suggest otherwise. Where were Obama, Clinton and Panetta? Did Generals' Dempsey and Ham really sit on their thumbs and not begin to forward deploy assets? Why did the White House refuse to activate the FEST? Who told the small spec ops contingent in Tripoli not to deploy to Benghazi and why? What was Hillary's role? Why did Johnathan Hick's testify that, in a 2 a.m. phone call during the attack, Hillary told Hicks that no military response would be forthcoming? And if Hillary was in the loop, why did she not testify before the ARB?

3. Obama just engaged in a complete rewrite of history regarding the talking points. Powerline has the definitive post on this, though you can't go wrong with the Fox News panels analysis (and it is now official, Kirsten Powers is my favorite living left of center person):

I could go on, but suffice it to say that there is a hell of a lot of there there. And it matters.

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Sunday, May 12, 2013

Benghazi & The Lack of Military Response

The headline in Wapo yesterday was: "Libya protests prompt U.S. to evacuate diplomats, put troops on alert." In the body of the story, we learn that, in response to potential violence directed at our diplomats, our military has forward deployed several spec ops units. For those of you with no time in the military, let me point out, this is not something special, it is utterly routine. The only thing unusual about this is that it is making the papers.

With that in mind, if we go back to the Benghazi time line, we can see several points that would have led our military to prepare for action. One, it was September 11 - that alone would have led commanders to shorten alert times for quick reaction forces at their disposal. Two, there were huge demonstrations in Cairo that nearly saw our diplomatic post come under attack at least 12 hours before first shots in Benghazi. At that point, QRF forces would have been suited up, locked and loaded, and sitting near an airport tarmac. Aircraft would have been put on alert, loaded with munitions and fuel. Tankers for fuel resupply would have been repositioned if need be. The bottom line, when the Benghazi attack occurred, the military should have been able to respond immediately with a line of assets that would have arrived in Benghazi between two and eight hours after the attack was initiated.

Yet in regards to the terrorist attack at our compound in Benghazi, there is no evidence that a single unit of any sort was triggered. The FEST unit was, inexplicably, put off the table within the first hour of the attack by the White House. The White House wants us to believe that nothing could have been done - no assets were available and that intelligence was insufficient. I am willing to be my last dollar that if you were to ask anyone who has ever served as a combat arms officer, let alone spec ops, if they believed any of that, 99.99% would say no, it is pure bullshit. Moreover, had Obama said to get assets to Benghazi and stop the attack, the military would have moved heaven and earth to make it happen.

The first leg of the Benghazi scandal, the refusal over months to provide increased security in the face of an open and obvious threat, is perhaps the most important leg of the scandal. It shows an administration that completely misunderstands the threat we face from radical Wahhabi Islamists, and indeed, whitewashes Wahabbi Islam to the point of portraying it as benign. That is a major national policy issue. The third leg of the scandal, the cover up, is likewise important because it shows that the administration did not and does not want to have a debate on this existential issue.

Yet the second leg - the refusal to send any military assets to Benghazi - is by far the most damning. Our people were left to die, likely because of domestic political considerations. It is unforgivable. The Chairman of the JCS, Martin Dempsey, testified in February that the military never received a request for help on Sep. 11 or 12, so they never reacted to anything. This claim to utter passivity is just pure bullshit. This is where the House needs to be investigating next. Where they need to start is with General Ham, the former AFRICOM Cdr, as well as reaching out to Gen. Ham's plans officer (J-3), intelligence officer (J-2) and liaisons from the State Dept. and Air Force.

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Saturday, May 11, 2013

Benghazi Matters

Finally, 8 months after the murder of four Americans in Benghazi and six months after the election, the media is grudgingly becoming interested at least one leg of the Benghazi scandal - whether the administration lied to the nation in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack. The Obama administration succeeded in their number one priority, running out the clock on Benghazi prior to the election, and since has taken the dual positions that this is all a "political witch hunt" and, in the case of Hillary, that their potential misdeeds or stunning incompetence do not "matter." Reason's Nick Gillespie does a very good short response listing the reasons why it matters:

That is a good summary, but in at least one respect, it provides nowhere near enough emphasis. The worst thing our government has done, under Bush and now exponentially more so under Obama, is to obfuscate the dangerous problems with Islam, and in particular, the dogma and tenets of Wahhabi Islam - the most radical, xenophobic, triumphalist and retrograde force in the world today. It is not that al Qaeda or the brothers Tsarnaev and their ilk are following a perversion of Islam, it is that they are true believers in all the dogma of Wahhabi Islam. Obama - and indeed, most on the left, want to pretend that radical Islam is a rare outlier rather than the single most dominant form of Islam today. I've pontificated on this til I am blue in the face, but suffice it to say, until the problem is addressed honestly and openly, it will not go away, far more Americans will die, and Wahhabi Islam will continue to metastasize throughout the world.

Within that rubric, the causes of the attack in Benghazi, as well as the criminal refusal to provide security commensurate to the threat, matter very much indeed. It goes to the heart of the national security issue of our time - the threat to our nation and our lives from radical Islamists. If Benghazi was merely a rogue movie review conducted with violence that could not be predicted, then the administration really cannot be faulted. If, however, Benghazi represents a failure to accurately see and gauge the threat, than the Benghazi attack is the canary in the coal mine - the warning that, over a decade on from 9-11, we are still not on the track. And that is the most important reason Benghazi matters.

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Thursday, May 9, 2013

The Proven Science About Carbon Dioxide

Here is what we actually know about CO2:

1. Current CO2 levels in the atmosphere are about 400 parts per million today. They have risen about 30 or 40 ppm over the past sixteen years, during which time there has been no planetary warming.

2. In geological terms, CO2 levels are much lower today than in the past. Some 65 million years ago, CO2 levels were at 3,000 parts per million. Believe it or not, life flourished.

3. During warming and cooling trends on geologic scales, CO2 levels have been a lagging indicator, showing increases after planetary warming. There is no evidence of CO2 levels ever having driven planetary warming. The belief that CO2 increases will drive planetary warming are found only in modern warmie computer models.

4. CO2 is necessary for plant growth. More CO2 means better agricultural yields. And indeed, some scientists have tied our ability to feed an ever expanding population to the industrial revolution and increasing atmospheric CO2.

Nevertheless, the warmies have been sliming CO2 as a dangerous pollutant. Today, in the WSJ, two scientists, former Apollo 17 astronaut, former Sen. and now professor of engineering at the Univ. of Wisconsin, Harrison Schmitt, and Princeton Univ. physics professor William Harper, respond:

Of all of the world's chemical compounds, none has a worse reputation than carbon dioxide. Thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control of energy production, the conventional wisdom about carbon dioxide is that it is a dangerous pollutant. That's simply not the case. Contrary to what some would have us believe, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit the increasing population on the planet by increasing agricultural productivity.

The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA's and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been—and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As many scientists have pointed out, variations in global temperature correlate much better with solar activity and with complicated cycles of the oceans and atmosphere. There isn't the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather.

The current levels of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere, approaching 400 parts per million, are low by the standards of geological and plant evolutionary history. Levels were 3,000 ppm, or more, until the Paleogene period (beginning about 65 million years ago). For most plants, and for the animals and humans that use them, more carbon dioxide, far from being a "pollutant" in need of reduction, would be a benefit. This is already widely recognized by operators of commercial greenhouses, who artificially increase the carbon dioxide levels to 1,000 ppm or more to improve the growth and quality of their plants.

Using energy from sunlight—together with the catalytic action of an ancient enzyme called rubisco, the most abundant protein on earth—plants convert carbon dioxide from the air into carbohydrates and other useful molecules. Rubisco catalyzes the attachment of a carbon-dioxide molecule to another five-carbon molecule to make two three-carbon molecules, which are subsequently converted into carbohydrates. (Since the useful product from the carbon dioxide capture consists of three-carbon molecules, plants that use this simple process are called C3 plants.) C3 plants, such as wheat, rice, soybeans, cotton and many forage crops, evolved when there was much more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than today. So these agricultural staples are actually undernourished in carbon dioxide relative to their original design. , , ,

We know that carbon dioxide has been a much larger fraction of the earth's atmosphere than it is today, and the geological record shows that life flourished on land and in the oceans during those times. The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science.

Do read the whole article.

The Benghazi Hearing - More Questions Than Answers

The three legs of the Benghazi scandal:

1. The criminally reckless refusal to increase security at Benghazi despite full knowledge of the increasing threat.

2. The failure to respond to the terrorist attack in Benghazi with any military assets.

3. The post attack actions of the Obama administration, from lying about the nature of the attacks to stonewalling and witness intimidation.

Today's hearing on Benghazi before the House Committee On Oversight and Government Reform informed on all of these legs, but brought to light more questions than answers.

Hicks Testimony Contradicts The Accountability Review Board

As regards the refusal to increase security at Benghazi, Gregory Hicks, former top deputy to Ambassador Christopher Stevens, said that Ambassador went to Benghazi on Sep. 11 because Sec. of State Clinton was going to convert the Benghazi mission to a permanent constituent post. Yet the Accountability Review Board, in their whitewash of Clinton and the State Dept., justified the failure to increase security in Benghazi on the grounds that it was a "temporary" post whose future was "uncertain." Those assertions are in direct contradiction - one that might have been answered if the Accountability Review Board had actually interviewed Secretary of State Clinton. It raises yet more questions as why increased security was refused. If you will recall, there are indications that it was done in respect to a policy decision referenced in certain e-mails.

Military Assets & FEST Were Denied Permission To Repond

As regards the lack of any military response, Hicks testified that a four man special ops detachment was twice denied clearance to travel from Tripoli to Benghazi to respond to the attack. No justification was given, and Hicks speculated that the stand down order came from AFRICOM.

Mark Thompson, the Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism at the State Department, on duty when the first reports of the terrorist attack reached Washington, testified that he immediately sought White House approval to activate FEST, described by the State Dept. as an:

. . . on-call, short-notice team poised to respond to terrorist incidents worldwide. Led and trained by the Operations Directorate of the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, it assists U.S. missions and host governments in responding quickly and effectively to terrorist attacks. The FEST, which has deployed to over 20 countries since its inception in 1986, leaves for an incident site within four hours of notification, providing the fastest assistance possible.

The FEST provides round-the-clock advice and assistance to Ambassadors and foreign governments facing crisis. The Team is comprised of seasoned experts from the Department of State, FBI, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and the Intelligence Community. Once on the scene, FEST members help Ambassadors assess the emergency, advise on how best to respond, and assist in managing consequent operations. . . .

Thompson testified that the request was denied by the White House with no justification given. Hicks further testified that the defense attache said that jets from Italy could've been there in 2-3 hours, but there were no tankers to refuel them. To add, an F22 has a range of about 1,800 miles. Using back of an envelope calculations, a flight from the air base in Italy to Benghazi would have eaten up about half or more of the fuel, so refueling would be an issue. That said, where were the tankers and what would there response time have been?

The testimony as to FEST is indeed significant, but on the larger issue of a lack of military response, it is little more than walking around the margins. The day of the attack was Sept. 11. Hours earlier there had already been a potential incident at the Embassy in Cairo. I spent too long in the military as an infantry officer, including doing plans and operations in Korea, to believe anything other than that AFRICOM, responsible for military operations in Egypt and Libya, would have had contingency plans operational and soldiers suited up and on alert for just such an attack as occurred in Benghazi. Knowing what I know, anything else is inconceivable. The one person we have yet to hear from is General Ham, the Commander of AFRICOM on Sep. 11, 2012. He has not been heard from since Sept. 11, 2012, but he was relieved of his command early, a little more than a month after the attack. Get him in front of a hearing and we will get full and honest answers to why there was a complete lack of military response, leaving our State Dept. and CIA personnel in Benghazi to fight and die wholly on their own.

On a related note, the Hill is running a story today that Obama's Pentagon is refusing to comply with a request from the House to provide "access to documents on last year’s terrorist attack in Benghazi."

Post Attack Cover-up

Lastly, on the issue of the post attack actions by the White House and Sec. of State, Hicks testified that no one from the State Dept. mission in Libya ever characterized the attack as anything other than a terrorist attack. There was never even a suggestion that it was a movie review gone rogue. This from PJM:

Hicks testified to a pattern of behavior that leads to the reasonable conclusion that many officials within the State Department wanted him to remain silent after the Benghazi attack. He said that on the night of the attack he was personally commended both by Secretary Clinton and President Barack Obama. But he later questioned why Ambassador Rice blamed the YouTube movie, and from that point on his superior, Acting Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Beth Jones, questioned his “management style” and told him directly that no one in State should want him on their team in the field again. He was eventually demoted to a desk job after having been deputy to Ambassador Stevens, and remains in that post. Hick also testified that the Accountability Review Board, convened by Clinton last fall allegedly to determine the facts of the attack, never had stenographers in the room during his tw0-hour interview. Nordstrom concurred. Thompson was not even allowed to testify to the ARB despite having direct knowledge of the attacks due to his position on the U.S. Foreign Emergency Support Team. Thompson testified that the FEST was designed to go from zero to wheels up very quickly but was not deployed at all. He wanted to tell his story to the ARB, but was not allowed to. Hicks also testified that for the first time in his career, the State Department assigned a lawyer/minder to attend witness interviews with the ARB. He also testified that Jones told him not to be personally interviewed by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the Republican House member who was investigating the attack on behalf of the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee. It all adds up to a pattern of witness control and intimidation.

Questions Raised Or Left Unanswered

In sum, as regards the three legs of this scandal, this hearing scratched a bit below the surface, but left more questions than answers on each of the issues. We still don't know anything approaching the full story behind the criminally reckless refusals to increase security, only now we know that the ostensible reason for the refusal given by the Accountability Review Board is likely false.

We now know that some military assets were withheld and we now know that someone in the White House made a decision to sideline the FEST team. Who and why remain unanswered. Further, as to all available military assets, we need to hear directly from Gen. Ham. Lastly, never addressed during the hearing - but still out there - is Obama's role in the non-response. I can guarantee that if he said deploy to Benghazi and deploy now, the military would have had assets on the ground long before the last two Americans died some seven hours after hostilities began.

As to the post attack cover-up, there seems to be no question that we were lied to by the Sec. of State and the President in the days and weeks following the attack. There is a real question as to whether the Accountability Review Board report, issued in Dec., was a whitewash. I will add that it seems obvious that it was.

Likely Scenario

Finally, let me speculate on what I think happened as to the three legs of this scandal. The refusals to provide additional security despite the dangerously increasing threat were the result of a policy approved by or at least known to Clinton, if not Obama. Do remember the e-mails discussing a decision made to "normalize" our security posture in Libya. As to the second leg, when the attack came, Obama did precisely as I forecast he or Clinton would do in such a situation in a post I wrote in 2008 - he made a purely political decision not to deploy assets and risk a major embarrassment prior to the election. Lastly, the charges of a cover up really go beyond speculation at this point. Obama will stonewall this for as long as possible, and every left wing media outlet in the nation has already circled the wagons around Hillary. The reality is that their cover-up may work - or at least it will until the House gets Gen. Ham under oath. Then I will be proven wrong or the dam will break.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Of Anti-Gun Democrats & Circular Firing Squads

While we wait for the testimony on Benghazi, I found the intentional irony of this vignette from James Taranto too good to pass on without posting:

Antigun nuts are taking aim at moderate Democrats, Politico.com reports:

Ads from the [Michael] Bloomberg-funded Mayors Against Illegal Guns are going up soon in Alaska, Arkansas and North Dakota--three states with Democratic senators who broke with the White House on last month's background checks vote. . . .

It's all got Democrats nervous about keeping their hold on the Senate, if they are under attack from not only Republicans but pro-gun control forces as well.

The Dems are most nervous about Pryor. "Radio spots in Arkansas will target the state's African-American community, 'without which Mark Pryor doesn't have a prayer of getting reelected,' said Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns."
Obama and his allies somehow convinced themselves the gun issue would hurt conservatives and Republicans. Instead the left is forming a circular firing squad.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Public Education's War On Children & The Second Amendment

Yet another story is in the news about a child pretending to have a gun getting punished by teachers and school administrators:

A Suffolk school suspended a second grader for pointing a pencil at another student and making gun noises.

Seven-year-old Christopher Marshall says he was playing with another student in class Friday, when the teacher at Driver Elementary asked them to stop pointing pencils at each other.

"When I asked him about it, he said, 'Well I was being a Marine and the other guy was being a bad guy,'" said Paul Marshall, the boy's father. "It's as simple as that."

Christopher's father was a Marine for many years. . . .

So how did the school justify their insanity?

"A pencil is a weapon when it is pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made," said Bethanne Bradshaw, a spokesperson for Suffolk Public Schools.

Ummmmm, no, its not. It is still a pencil. There is no chance whatsoever that a pencil becomes an actual gun. There is no chance of anyone being hurt, nor is there any chance of anyone, teacher or administrator included, being put in even momentary fear that the child is operating an actual gun on school grounds.

So what is really going on? It seems obvious that the teacher and administrators are trying to teach these toddlers that real guns are bad and unacceptable. They are certainly entitled to their opinions, and it is a gray area whether they should share their opinions with children, but that is not at issue. The teachers and administrators engaging in this insanity are going the step further and using their authority under state law to punish children for even pretending to have a gun. That crosses a big red line.

Everyone in this country is born with certain "inalienable rights," one of which is the right to keep and bear arms under the 2nd Amendment. Now no one will argue that the school system has every right to use their state power to demand that children do not bring actual guns to school. And if a child brings in something that a reasonable person could mistake for a weapon, well, the school would be within their rights to discipline the child just to keep good order. But punishing a child for utilizing an imaginary gun - that is punishing a thought crime. More, it is using the power of the state to punish a child for even thinking of bearing a gun - and that is Constitutionally protected territory. Some enterprising lawyer really needs to start suing these school systems for this abuse of their state power.

Monday, May 6, 2013

The Left In Loco Parentis & The Plan B Abortion Pill

. . . The defining issue for me — the one that launched me on a personal trajectory of confrontation with the Left and with my colleagues and friends — was the persistent undermining of the family as an institution. . . .
There were whole communities where committed fathers were almost totally unknown. Children as young as five were becoming highly sexualised from the example of their promiscuous mothers. Family breakdown was dissolving the bonds of society and civilisation itself. . . .
Melanie Phillips, Why The Left Hates Families, Daily Mail, 3 May 2013

In order to remake society, the left wars on the foundations of society, including the family. Since time immemorial, children have learned their values, their work ethic, their religion and their skills at the elbows of their parents. The left, however, wants the state to take over the role of the parents - to act in loco parentis - when it comes to inculcating modern left wing values. Sexualizing our children is perhaps the left's primary focus within this rubric.

The most recent example was the law suit brought by the Center For Reproductive Rights, a far left organization, seeking to make the Plan B abortion pill openly available to children - or as the Center worded this in their law suit, to "women of all ages." Prior to this lawsuit, under the Bush administration, the Plan B abortion pill was available without a prescription only to women age 18 and older. Not surprisingly, the Center was able to find a federal judge willing to impose their corrupt social policy on our nation. This is stomach churning.

Kathleen Parker, writing at the Washington Post, itemizes the litany of problems with this federal decision, rightly concluding that "public policy should be aimed at involving, rather than marginalizing, parents."

To say that this controversy is strictly political is no argument against debate. Politics is the debate about the role of government in our lives. And the debate about Plan B is fundamentally about whether government or parents have ultimate authority over their children’s well-being.

Kathleen Geir, writing in response to Ms. Parker at the far left Washington Monthly, makes it abundantly clear that this case is nothing more or less than the state being used to displace parental influence on their children in matters of sex. It really must be read to be believed. Her arguments can be summed up as that sex at any age should be free of any ethical or moral consideration, free of any physical consequence, and that parents should have no say in their child's sex life. She dismisses contrary argument on the rights of parents as "mere emotionalism":

Oh, I see! We’re just having a high-minded debate about the “proper role of government” here. Except that we aren’t: the conflict here isn’t parents vs. the government, it’s parents vs. the reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy of their daughters. Be that as it may, Parker is trying to make this about “the big bad government” vs. the rights of individual parents — who always, of course, have their daughter’s best interests at heart, and would never, ever physically or emotionally abuse her if she asked her parents’ permission to go on birth control. Forget about the specter of a terrified 12-year old girl who’s faced with the trauma of an unwanted pregnancy, who fears that her life may be ruined, and who then must grapple with the full array of health complications that pregnancy and birth entails.

It’s well worth mentioning here that many young girls become pregnant from sexual relationships that are not exactly what most of us would consider to be consensual. Studies show that teens are far more likely to become pregnant if their sex partner is older. For example, the pregnancy rate for girls age 15 to 17 is 3.7 times greater if their partner is six or more years older than they are, vs. two years older. Many teen pregnancies result from statutory rape, incest, or other abusive relationships. But hey, let’s just compound the trauma by denying these little sluts birth control and forcing them to deal with an unwanted pregnancy!

Another problem with Parker’s argument her blanket refusal to look at the alternative — i.e., what will happen if young girls are denied access to birth control. The debate here is not whether, or at what age, it’s okay for young girls to become sexually active. We’re talking about their right to prevent pregnancy once they do start having sex. Parker blithely assumes that, while young teens are not mature enough to pop a single pill within 72 hours of intercourse, they are mature enough to experience a full-term pregnancy, with all the life-changing, potentially traumatic physical and mental health consequences that entails. Excuse me, but WTF? Even if we restrict ourselves to the woman’s physical health alone, the risks of pregnancy and giving birth are far more serious than any of the very mild risks associated with Plan B.

But Parker’s piece relies on emotionalism rather than science. She resolutely refuses to trouble her beautiful mind with the facts.

5. And speaking of emotionalism: finally, there’s this — Parker pulls out her ace in the hole, and plays the parent card:

Question 2: Do you think that girls as young as 11 or 12 should be able to buy the morning-after pill without any adult supervision? Didn’t think so.

Question 3: If you answered yes to Question 2, are you a parent? Didn’t think so.
Sorry, I call BS on this. First of all, having a pregnant, underaged daughter on their hands is among many parents’ worst nightmares. Many would vastly prefer that their daughter had ready access to birth control, as opposed to the alternatives of supporting her decision to get an abortion, or the decision to carry a pregnancy to term, and (as usually happens in such cases) keep the baby. With birth control, there are far fewer agonizing decisions and is far less pain all around — let alone the fact that much of the responsibility for raising a baby born to a very young girl would inevitably fall on the shoulders of her parents.

Secondly, if parents really would prefer that their daughter be denied birth control, so what? Sorry mates, but it’s not your body and it’s not your decision. Legally mandated forced pregnancy — which is basically what you get when birth control options are shut down — is incompatible with human liberty and respect for the individual. Even children have some basic rights, and the right to refuse the physical and emotional burdens of pregnancy damn well ought to be one of them.

Finally, the other huge problem of playing the parent card is the dubious assumption that mommy and daddy can always see things more clearly and that they inevitably know what’s best for their little darling. But again, this is bogus. For one thing, daddy dearest or some other beloved male relative or stepfather may be the party guilty of raping and knocking up the daughter in the first place.

Beyond that, there’s the problem that many parents have bizarre, antiquated patriarchal notions about their daughters’ sexuality. You’d think that in 2013, parents would be less irrational and hysterically overprotective about these things than they were in the past, but in many ways they’re actually worse. The Christian right, with their chastity balls and virginity pledges, is one version of it; endlessly anxious, over-controlling helicopter parents are the bourgeois secular equivalent.

So no, I don’t think that father — or mother — necessarily knows best. Even if they’re not abusive, mom and dad may still have some pretty deranged notions about their daughter’s sexuality and some pretty serious control issues. . . .

There is no middle ground with the left. The classical liberalism of our forefathers that has brought us freedom, democracy, and material wealth will either triumph over these insane people or be destroyed by them.

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Tuesday, March 12, 2013

The Two Edged Sword - Senate Democrats Craft A Budget

The good news - the Democrat controlled Senate is finally going to publish a budget. The bad news - the Democrat controlled Senate is finally going to publish a budget chock full of all the crap you would expect from the far left - tax more, spend more, and prevaricate about the deficit.

We haven't seen it yet, but Politico tells us that the expected budget will look like. The Senate Democrates would do away with the sequester spending limits, They would add an additional trillion dollars in new taxes based on an overhaul of the tax code, with the new revenue going to spending, not a reduction of the tax rates. And there will be a trillion dollars in spending reductions - mostly based on smoke and mirrors:

[C]ritics are certain to jump on what they believe are gimmicks in the Democratic budget plan. As part of the $975 billion in spending cuts, Democrats will count $240 billion in savings by reduced war spending from drawing down military personnel from overseas. And it counts $242 billion that would be saved in reduced interest payments under the proposal.

For the Democrats to put this out in a budget proposal, at this point, with our economy in trouble and our nation hurdling towards fiscal insolvency, is just criminal. It also highlights another systemic problem in government - our budgeting and accounting processes. Both are full of gimmicks and would land the purveyors in jail if they tried them in the private sector. This is yet another area that we must reform if our nation is to survive in the form envisioned by our founders.

Friday, March 8, 2013

NYC & The Benefits Of A Unionized Public School Education

This from Breitbart:

According to officials from City University of New York, a full 80 percent of high school graduates in New York City can’t read when they graduate. . . . And that’s for the students who graduate. New York City has the lowest graduation rate for black and Hispanic male students in the nation, with only 37 percent graduating. But teachers start off making $45,530 with benefits, and max out at over $100,000.

It’s not just Bloomberg and New York. In the city of Los Angeles, according to The Education Trust-West, just one in every 20 black kindergarteners will graduate from a four-year California college. Overall, a whopping 40 percent of high school students entering public colleges across the country require at least one remedial class in reading, writing or math.

This is the legacy of a teachers union-driven system in our major cities. And it is minorities who pay the highest price.

As IBD pointed out in 2011, spending on public school education in the U.S. increased 375% between 1970 and 2010. For that investment, our nation received a massive increase in unionized teachers, but no increase whatsoever in student performance in math or reading, and a slight decline in student performance in science.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Obama's Lawfare Insanity - The Capture & Planned Civilian Trial Of Suleiman Abu Ghaith

Here we go again. The far left is utterly determined to conflate warfare with criminal law. In this instance, the U.S., with the help of Turkey and Jordan, recently captured Suleiman Abu Ghaith, bin Laden's son in law and a man who took part in al Qaeda's war on the U.S. both before and after 9-11. Further, it is believed that Ghaith may have information about al Qaeda ties to Iran. And yet, Ghaith was taken in by the FBI, not the CIA, with preliminary indications being that the capture occurred in the past week. Eric Holder announced today that Ghaith is already in the U.S., that will be arraigned Friday in a NY District Court - where he will of course lawyer up - and that Ghaith will be tried in that court on federal criminal charges.

Ghaith is not an American citizen, nor was he captured in America. The violent acts in which he took part were not criminal acts, they were acts of war against our nation. He is a very high value target, likely of great intelligence value. We have an entire system set up for such individuals, or at least we used to have one.

Step one would be to take all the time necessary to interrogate this individual over a matter of weeks or months. Intelligence is the life blood of any war, and it is of particular importance to a shadow war against an amorphous enemy spread across numerous countries.

Step two, only to be taken when the individual is of no more intelligence value, would be to plant him in Gitmo and subject him to a military tribunal if and only if the government considers that he deserves punishment beyond holding him until the end of hostilities.

All of the arguments for NOT trying a foreign terrorist for acts of war in our civilian courts apply in full force to this act of treachery from Obama and his DOJ. One, this man should be being interrogated by the CIA for all he is worth, not discussing his case in comfort with his private attorney. Two, our Courts are not set up handle cases involving secret - and possibly top secret - evidence, nor are they set up to receive testimony from individuals whose identity must remain unknown. Three, conflating criminal law with the law of war sets a dangerous precedent. The laws that govern war are set out internationally and are based in part on recognition of the practical realities of war. Federal criminal law places much greater restraints on our government in recognition of our unique Constitutional protections. Ghaith has no claim whatsoever to rights based on our Constitution.

This is just insanity. Thankfully, the budget is coming up shortly. The House should defund the Justice Department until Ghaith is sent to Gitmo and his case transferred to the military tribunals.

Just a final note. The hypocrisy and false moralizing of the Obama regime on virtually everything to do with the war on terror is stomach turning. We can't do enhanced interrogations on terrorists, but Obama claims unilateral authority to assassinate such people. We can't try terrorists through the military tribunal system, even though using the civilian courts would pose dangers to our intelligence gathering. The only thread that ties these policies together is that they are the most politically palatable for Obama, not that they are in any sense what's best for our country.

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Rand Paul's Filibuster - Great But Wrong-Headed Political Theater

Sen. Rand Paul's filibustering of the vote of Charles Brennan for CIA Directer has been great political theater. It is the type of emotion laden act of, in this case, formal outrage, that the right desperately needs to internalize across the entire spectrum of political argument (see the Horowitz essay below).

The basis for Paul's angst - a question he put to the DOJ, whether the President could unilaterally order the murder of an American citizen on U.S. soil with a drone strike. Eric Holder that the President could, assuming a set of circumstances similar to 9-11 or 7 Dec. 1941. Looking strictly at Constitutional rules of due process, Paul is absolutely right that this response is dangerously wrong.

But as Jon Yoo points out, (h/t Powerline), Eric Holder is ultimately right, but for the wrong reasons. Holder is trying to shoehorn war into criminal law standards. It is both a dangerous and ill fit, rightly raising the hackles of Sen. Paul. But under rules of war, Holder's position is right:

Holder’s first mistake is that he thinks that the use of force by drones, no matter where or against whom, is governed by due process. Recall the Justice Department white paper on drones, which asserted that lethal force could not be used against al-Qaeda members unless they could not be captured, harm to the United States was imminent, and due process allows the attack — concepts that govern law-enforcement officers who might need to shoot an attacking criminal, but have never governed the use of force by the military in wartime. Drones don’t change this equation — the same rules should govern snipers, artillery, aerial, and missile attack, which all also attack the enemy from a distance and often by surprise. But since Holder has made the claim that the drone attacks abroad somehow meet law-enforcement standards, it is an easy step for him to say that those same diluted, weakened standards don’t pose much barrier to the use of drones at home.

Instead, what Holder should have said is that the U.S. would only be able to use drones on U.S. soil under the same conditions it might use military force domestically — to stop an invasion by a foreign country or an attack. And it is not because due process somehow allows it, but because the nation is entitled to use military force against foreign attack. So it is not just December 7 or September 11 that uniquely call for military force because the U.S. is responding to an attack on the nation. What about an invasion, as in the War of 1812, or the Civil War, or, on a smaller scale, a situation like the Mumbai terrorist attacks where groups of heavily armed terrorists attacked high-profile, civilian targets not with airliners, but with light arms? If the federal government can use military force, such as troops or helicopters to stop those kinds of attacks, surely it can use drones. But where Holder and this administration are causing fear is because, if they believe the use of drones now, abroad, meet law-enforcement standards, then they believe they could use drones in similar situations domestically to enforce the laws, not to respond to attack. And that is manifestly wrong as a legal matter as well as mistaken as a matter of policy.

The Girls Of Fox News

Austin Cunningham has written a paean to the girls on Fox News, complete with "more cowbell." Heh. My favorite line: "They got your blondes and brunettes, even red heads too, which proves that they're the only ones with fair and balanced news."

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Sunday, March 3, 2013

Republican Election Strategy - Horowitz

Powerline recently posted a long essay from David Horowitz, one that is so spot on that I am shamelessly going to reprint in toto here. Virtually everything Horowitz expounds upon are things that I have been screaming about - in apparently, a sound proof room (actually on my blog, but same thing) - for years. We are in an existential war for our nation with the left. Facts matter, but emotion matters more - and within that context, we are completely and utterly losing this war. If we do not improve how we communicate and if we don't address all demographic groups, we are doomed to failure. This from Mr. Horowitz:

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After voters re-elected an administration that added five trillion dollars to the nation’s debt, left 23 million Americans unemployed, surrendered Iraq to America’s enemy Iran, and enabled the Muslim Brotherhood to gain control of the largest country in the Middle East, the one lesson Republicans should agree on is that elections are driven by emotions, not reason. Moreover, when it comes to mobilizing emotions, Democrats beat Republicans hands down.

Worse, Republicans appear unable to learn from their losses. Year after year, Democrats accuse Republicans of the same imaginary crimes – waging wars on women, not caring about minorities, and inflicting pain on working Americans to benefit the wealthy. And year after year, Republicans have no effective responses to neutralize these attacks. Or to take the battle to the enemy’s camp.

In the 2012 election, Democrats attacked Republicans as defenders of the wealthy who are not paying their “fair share.” Republicans responded by deploring “class warfare rhetoric,” which does not answer the charge that Republicans are defending the wealthy and are uncaring. There are plenty of answers to these libels but Republicans don’t have them.

“Caring” is not one among many issues in an election. It is the central one. Since most policy issues are complicated, voters want to know above everything else just whom they can trust to sort out the complexities and represent them. Before voters cast their ballots for policies or values they want a candidate or party that cares about them.

How crucial is this concern? In the 2012 election, 70% of Asian Americans cast their ballots for Obama, even though Asians share Republican values, are family oriented, entrepreneurial, and traditional. Asian Americans voted for Obama because they were persuaded that he cared for minorities – for them, and Romney didn’t.

The Republican response to the Democrats’ attack (that’s “class warfare rhetoric”) doesn’t work because it’s an abstraction. “Class warfare rhetoric” has no human face; it’s about a political style. Criticizing the wealthy for “not paying their fair share” is a direct attack on an easily identified target, which is why so many wealthy taxpayers – including entertainment figures who are normally Democrats –were outraged by the slander. More importantly, the Democrats’ attack on the rich is an emotional appeal to those who are not rich. It tells them that someone cares about them.

Using the term “class warfare” is a polite way of discussing a problem, a habit Republicans seem unable to break. It avoids finger pointing – naming an adversary and holding him accountable. Elections are adversarial. They are about defeating opponents.

Elections are necessarily about “us” and “them.” Democrats are as adept at framing “them,” as Republicans are not. Democrats know how to incite envy and resentment, distrust and fear, and to direct these volatile emotions towards their Republican opponents. Meanwhile, Republicans are busy complaining about the style of the Democrats’ argument.

Republicans are defending the rich at your expense. Democrats are employing class warfare rhetoric. Which argument is going to grab voters more effectively? Which is going to make voters believe the candidate cares about them.

An exit poll conducted by CNN asked, “What is the most important candidate quality to your vote?” Among the four choices were, “Strong Leader,” “Shares Your Values,” “Has A Vision for the Future,” and “Cares about People.” Romney won the first three by more than 54%. But he lost “Cares About People” by 81-18%. That says it all.

The margin Romney lost by wasn’t insurmountable. He had the advantage of a good election year for Republicans. Every activist on the right thought the fate of the country hung in the balance. By contrast, Democrats went into the campaign having disappointed a signficant segment of their political base. They continued wars they had promised to terminate; and they presided over an economy with high unemployment among key constituencies — women, Hispanics and African Americans. Yet they were able to marshal enough fear and anger towards the Republican rich who were outsourcing jobs and allegedly not paying their fair share to energize their base and produce a win.

Behind the failures of Republican campaigns lies an attitude that is administrative rather than combative. It focuses on policies rather than politics. It is more comfortable with budgets and pie charts than with the flesh and blood victims of their opponents’ policies. When Republicans do mention victims they are frequently small business owners and other “job creators” – people who in the eyes of most Americans are rich.

To counter the Democrat attacks on them as defenders of the comfortable and afflicters of the weak, Republicans really have only one answer: This is a misunderstanding. Look at the facts. We’re not that bad. On the infrequent occasions when they actually take the battle to their accusers, Republicans will say: That’s divisive. It’s class warfare.

Even if voters were able to “look at the facts,” these are not exactly inspiring responses. They are defensive, and they are whiny, and also complicated. Of course elections are divisive – that is their nature. One side gets to win and the other side loses. But even more troublesome is the fact that responses like this require additional information and lengthy explanations to make sense. Appeals to reason are buried in the raucous noise that is electoral politics. Sorting out the truth would be a daunting task, even if voters were left alone to make up their minds.

But voters are not left alone. They are barraged by thousands of TV and electronic media messages, which confront them with contradicting data and malicious distortions. These deceptions are not inadvertent. They are the work of the professionals who run political campaigns and who are hired because they are experts in disinformation and misrepresenting the facts. In the world outside politics this is called lying; in politics it’s called spin, and to one extent or another everybody does it. But Democrats do it far better and far more aggressively than their Republican targets.

Democrats Are Different

There is a reason for this, and it affects everything that goes on in political campaigns. Republicans and Democrats are not similar people who make opposite judgments about common problems and their solutions—spending is good, tax hikes are bad. Republicans and Democrats approach politics with fundamentally different visions of what politics is about. These visions color not only the way each side thinks about questions of policy, but how they enter the arena to face their opponents.

The Democratic Party is no longer the party of John F. Kennedy, whose politics were identical to Ronald Reagan’s (militant anti-Communist, military hawk, for a capital gains tax cut and a balanced budget). It is not even the party of Hubert Humphrey, who supported the Vietnam War – a war that every contemporary Democratic legislator and operative opposes in retrospect, and many, like John Kerry and Bill and Hillary Clinton, opposed at the time. The Democratic Party has been moving steadily to the left since the McGovern campaign of 1972. It is now a party led by socialists and progressives who are convinced that their policies are paving the way to a “better world.”

This vision of moral and social progress has profound consequences for the way Democrats conduct their political battles. Unlike Republicans, Democrats are not in politics just to fix government and solve problems. They are secular missionaries who want to “change society.” Their goal is a new order of society— “social justice.” They think of themselves as social redeemers, people who are going to change the world. It is the belief in a redemptive future that accounts for their passion, and their furious personal assaults on those who stand in their way. When he was president, Bill Clinton once told Dick Morris he had “to understand that Bob Dole” – a moderate Republican – “is evil.” It is the same missionary zeal that allows Democrats to justify a campaign ad accusing a decent man like Mitt Romney of causing the death of a female cancer victim.

Republicans see Democrats as mistaken. Democrats see Republicans — whatever their individual intentions and behaviors—as enemies of the just and the good. Republicans have no parallel belief that drives them and their agendas, and no similar cause to despise and hate their opponents.

If Democrats’ priority was fixing government problems would they have failed to produce a budget for four straight years? If Democrats were pragmatic politicians, when they came to power in the face of a national crisis like the 2008 financial collapse, their first step would have been to seek bipartisan support to fix the most pressing problems: jobs and reviving the economy. This is exactly what Obama promised during the campaign and is one of the reasons why he was elected. But this was just a campaign promise and is not what he did. He spent his first two years in office pushing a massive new entitlement program. If Obama and the Democrats were interested in addressing the immediate economic crisis they would not have used their monopoly of power to pursue a trillion dollar new social program opposed by half the nation and by every Republican in Congress.

The reason the Democrats made Obamacare their priority is because they are social missionaries whose goal is to “fundamentally transform” the United States of America, as Obama warned five days before the 2008 election. Creating a massive new government program that would absorb one-sixth of the economy and make every American dependent on government for his or her health care was the true order of their business. This was a program they saw as a major stepping-stone on the way to the fundamental transformation of American society.

That’s the way progressives think and Republicans had better start understanding just what that means. Progressives are not in politics to tinker with the existing system, although they understand that tinkering and fixing problems along the way gets votes. They are in politics to achieve “social justice” – to transform the system and the way Americans live.

Why do progressives not see that the future they are promoting – with its socialist “solutions” – has already failed elsewhere, and particularly in Europe? Because in their eyes the future is an idea that hasn’t been tried. If socialism has failed in Europe it’s because they weren’t in charge to implement it and there wasn’t enough money to fund it.

It is the very grandeur of the progressive ambition that makes its believers so zealous in pursuing it. Through government programs they are going to make everyone equal and take care of everyone in need. They are going to establish social equality and create social justice. It is an intoxicating view and it explains why and how they are different from conservatives. It doesn’t matter to them that the massive entitlements they have created — Social Security and Medicare — are already bankrupt. That can be taken care of by making more wealthy people pay more of their fair share. In their hearts, progressives believe that if they can secure enough money and accumulate enough power they can create a future where everyone is taken care of and everyone is equal. Everything Democrats do and every campaign they conduct is about mobilizing their political armies to bring about this glorious future, about advancing its agendas one program and one candidate at a time. No Republican in his right mind thinks like this.

The vision of the glorious future puts urgency into their crusades and encourages them to hate their opponents. A Republican like Mitt Romney may be a decent person, but he stands in the way of their impossible dreams. Therefore, he is hateful. The very grandeur of the dream – guaranteed health care for everyone, guaranteed housing for everyone, guaranteed incomes for everyone – is so inspiring it motivates them to seek the promised land by any means necessary. If this requires lying, voter fraud, or demonizing their opponents as racist, selfish and uncaring, so be it. The beautiful ends justify the not-so-beautiful means.

When Democrats demand free contraceptives and claim that their opponents are conducting a war on women, Republicans shake their heads in disbelief. How could any sane person believe that? The Republicans are missing the point. The issue for progressives is never the issue. The issue is always the transformation of society that they are hoping to achieve. As Sandra Fluke herself put it, the issue of providing free contraceptives is not just about contraceptives, it’s about the whole range of changes that will liberate women (the more government provides for them, the freer they become) and that Republicans oppose.

Progressives’ hatred for conservatives is thus not a reaction to a particular issue, or a particular slip of the tongue. It is a hatred for what conservatives are. Conservatives are people who believe in limited government. By its very nature, limited government means the death of progressive dreams. In progressive eyes, conservatives and Republicans actually are anti-woman, anti-minority, and anti-poor. Republicans oppose the very idea that government should function as a social savior.

Republicans are reactionary and hateful because they stand in the way of a society that can and should care for every man, woman and child from cradle to grave. Republicans take a view of politics that is fundamentally different. Republicans do not aspire to change the world. They want to repair systems that are broken. They are not missionaries, and they are not selling a land of dreams. Such practical agendas do not inspire them to despise their opponents or regard them as evil. Republicans think of their opponents as mistaken about how to fix particular problems.

Because Republicans are mindful of the past, they are uncertain about the future, and therefore wary of impossible dreams. They hope for a future better than the present but they are mindful that things could be even worse. Many problems are intractable and will not go away. Because this is their attitude, conservative emotions can never be as inflamed as their progressive opponents’.

Their instinct is to come up with practical plans and explain how specific problems might be solved. That is why they reach for facts and arguments, and spend a lot of time explaining things to voters. But voters have already been told not to trust their arguments because they are the arguments of enemies of women, children, minorities and the middle class.

The only way to confront the emotional campaign that Democrats wage in every election is through an equally emotional campaign that puts the aggressors on the defensive; that attacks them in the same moral language, identifying them as the bad guys, the oppressors of women, children, minorities and the middle class, that takes away from them the moral high ground which they now occupy. You can’t confront an emotionally based moral argument with an intellectual analysis. Yet this is basically and almost exclusively what Republicans do.

A Winning Strategy for Republicans

1. Put the aggressors on the defensive.

2. Put their victims — women, minorities, the poor and working Americans -- in front of every argument and every policy in the same way they do.

3. Start the campaign now (because the Democrats already have).

The Weapons of Politics Are Hope and Fear

The weapons of political campaigns are images and sound bites designed to inspire the emotions of fear and hope. Obama won the presidency in 2008 on a campaign of hope; he won re-election in 2012 on a campaign of fear.

Hope works, but fear is a much stronger and more compelling emotion. In a political campaign, it is directed at one’s political opponent. Democrats exploit this emotion to the hilt; Republicans often seem too polite to even use it.

The other emotion, hope, is not only weaker, it is at odds with conservatives’ basic pessimism, and their skepticism about political solutions. Unlike progressives, conservatives don’t expect cosmic results from political programs – saving the planet, creating a just world. Consequently, for Republicans, hope is less effective as a political appeal.

Republicans seem to think the way to inspire hope is by offering voters practical solutions, such as Paul Ryan’s plan to balance the budget. Paul Ryan is a smart conservative and the Ryan Plan is probably a good one. But with control only of the House, Republicans had no chance of implementing it when they voted on it. Worse, in the real world of political combat, facing an unscrupulous opposition, a plan offered by a party with no means of implementing it is a self-inflicted wound. You can’t put the plan into effect to show that it works, and no one besides policy wonks is going to even begin to understand it. All the plan does is provide the spinners with multiple targets to shoot at – something they will do by distorting the specifics and ignoring the plan itself. For virtually all voters, the plan will be so complicated and its details so obscure that it will remain invisible. Only those who already trust its designers will be persuaded that this is a reason to vote for them.

Hope in politics is an appeal to the heart, not the head; to emotions, not reason. Since it is an appeal to emotion, it is normally based on large quantities of hot air. In the 2008 election, hope was the first black man running for president with a serious prospect of winning. It was Obama making an empty promise: “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is a United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America, a Latino America, an Asian America, there is a United States of America. No blue states or red states but the United States.” All Obama had to do to inspire hope was to be black, speak standard English and make this gesture – dishonest and empty as it turned out to be – that promised to unite Americans and move the country past its racial divisions.

The Campaign Narrative

The two emotions that drive politics — hope and fear — are tied together by a narrative that underlies all American political contests. This narrative is the story of the underdog and his triumph over odds. Both Democrats and Republicans shape the narratives of their election campaigns using this story, but do it in dramatically different ways.

When Republicans use the underdog narrative it is mainly as a story of opportunity, of Americans rising from humble origins. This was a principal theme of the Republican presidential convention in 2012 and of keynote speeches by Ann Romney, Governor Christie, Marco Rubio, Susanna Martinez and Condoleezza Rice. It was an appeal to voters to protect and/or restore the values and the institutions that provide such opportunities.

This is a good story of hope, and was effective in the hands of speakers like Rice. But it is not very strong on promoting fear, or in directing that fear towards political opponents in a way that maximizes its emotional impact. Insofar as there is any negative side to the Republican narrative, it is policies rather than a human actor that stands in the way of opportunity. Higher taxes and too much regulation—too much government — will stifle opportunity for Americans who are on the way up.

Here is how Obama dismissed the Republican argument in his acceptance speech at the Democrats’ convention: “All [Republicans] have to offer is the same prescription they’ve had for the last thirty years: Have a surplus? Try a tax cut. Deficit too high? Try another. Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations, and call us in the morning!”

The Republican narrative is an abstraction. It’s about policies and prescriptions, over which reasonable people can disagree: How much opportunity will a three or four percent higher tax rate — the rate that prevailed in the prosperous Clinton years — stifle opportunity?

The entire argument remains intellectual until Democrats enter it, and then it becomes emotional. Democrats present themselves as champions of the powerless, the American underdogs. Their counterargument is that government is required to provide opportunity for those who lack it – whatever the tax rate. In the Democrats’ narrative the private sector doesn’t provide enough opportunity for those left behind, and government programs are necessary to fill in the gap. Democrats want to help people who need help. That is a powerful emotional appeal to all Americans, even Republicans. The Republican argument looks selfish by contrast: Republicans care for helping themselves (don’t raise taxes on the rich) — or helping people who can help themselves — people who can take advantage of opportunities without government help. Unless you understand how the economic system actually works, that’s a tough position to sympathize with.

When Democrats tell their underdog story it is not an abstraction but a powerful, polarizing, emotionally charged attack on their Republican adversaries. In the Democratic narrative, Republicans are cast as oppressors. They are the enemies of hope, and in particular, the hopes of America’s underdogs for equality, a fair share, and a helping hand when they need it. While Republicans set their narrative in a land of peace, Democrats place it on the frontlines of a nation at war. Here is a dispatch from the Democratic convention, September 2012:

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (Reuters) – Two dozen Democratic women from the U.S. House of Representatives brought the charge that Republicans are waging a “war on women” to the party’s convention stage on Tuesday with sharp denunciations of Republicans on healthcare, equal pay and domestic violence. Led by Nancy Pelosi of California, the only woman to serve as speaker of the U.S. House, the women pressed the party’s argument that the Democrats will protect women’s interests against what they described as Republican attacks.

This staged declaration of war was led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Its purpose was to jump start the campaign’s central narrative: Republicans are waging “war” on women, minorities and the middle class. The Democrats’ narrative centered on how these victim groups were oppressed — or in the case of minorities suppressed — by evil Republicans seeking to turn back the historical clock, denying the powerless and those in need of their shot at the American dream. This is a powerful emotional message.

But there is nothing new about this Democratic strategy. Here is a call to arms from the 1996 Democratic convention: “We need to work as we have never done before between now and November 5th to take the Congress back from … the Republicans, because ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, the Republicans are the real threat. They are the real threat to our women. They are the real threat to our children. They are the real threat to clean water, clean air and the rich landscape of America.”

Republicans are the enemies of women, children and the environment! The speaker of this anathema was New York governor and presidential prospect Mario Cuomo. This declaration of war was made 16 years ago. Republicans have been the target of this kind of attack through at least four presidential elections. Yet they haven’t begun to answer it, and in particular, respond to it in kind.

To this day, no Republican speaks like that about Democrats, and certainly no Republican who is a national figure and party leader. The 2012 Democratic Convention was all about the victims of Republican policies, and about casting Republicans as their victimizers. Democrats had been in power four years, but at the 2012 Republican convention, there was almost no mention of the victims of Democrat policies.

At an election post-mortem, Romney’s deputy campaign manager analyzed the defeat this way: “The bottom line is that the Obama campaign [had] a candidate that was very hard to lay a glove on because [he] was somebody that the American people, by and large, had decided that they just liked.”

This is classic excuse making. That’s what campaigns are supposed to do: make the other candidate unlikeable. The Obama campaign devoted itself to doing just that to the Republican candidate. They defamed a decent, hard-working American as a dishonest, untrustworthy predator. It was the failure of the Romney campaign to lay a glove on Obama that was the reason he was still liked.

Obama’s campaign manager was at the same conference. His team did not have the view that their candidate was so likeable Romney couldn’t lay a glove on him. Quite the opposite. Their view was that “they would lose the election if it was a referendum on the president.” They chose a strategy of diverting attention from their candidate by attacking Romney as a member of the wealthy uncaring class who fired people mercilessly, shipped jobs overseas and was too rich to care about other people.

Taking A Page From the Democrats’ War Plans

Throughout the Republican campaign, there was a lot of talk about “job creators.” There were a lot of defenses of “job creators,” whom Democrats quickly redefined as rich people who don’t pay their fair share. That’s the problem with playing a “prevent defense.” Most Americans see job creators – employers – as rich people. If you’re defending the top dogs, you’re losing. If you’re fighting for the underdogs, you have to go on the attack.

What about job destroyers? What about Democrats who are killing the jobs of ordinary Americans — not just failing to create them—which is an antiseptic, bloodless way of putting it?

Democrats, who understand the psychology of the underdog, accused the Republicans of just that – destroying jobs. They targeted Mitt Romney with a $300 million ad buy as the nation’s number one job destroyer victimizing working Americans.

Job destroyer was a description ill–suited to a man whose business was reviving bankrupt companies. But it was — or should have been — a perfect fit for his Democratic opponent. How many jobs did America lose under Obama’s antibusiness reign?

How many unemployed did Obama create among African Americans, Latinos, women? The official unemployment rate in Detroit after 50 years of Democratic rule and four years of Obama stimulus was 19% but actually 45% were unemployed.

Thirty-five percent of Detroit’s citizens are on food stamps. Democrats destroy jobs and make people poor. Why wasn’t there a $300 million Republican campaign saying this?

Why are Republicans so reluctant to name the victims of Democrat policies, particularly the victims among America’s minority communities and working classes? Why don’t Republicans identify Democrats as a threat to those communities as Cuomo declared Republicans a threat to women? How can you win a war when the other side is using bazookas and your side is using fly swatters?

Defending the victims of job destroyers is morally and emotionally stronger than defending rich “job creators.” It creates sympathy and arouses anger. It inspires concerns about justice. It’s how the Democrats’ recruit and energize their troops. It’s the way — the only way — Republicans can neutralize the Democrats’ attacks on them as defenders of the rich, and return their fire: by framing them as the enemies of working Americans and the middle class.

During Obama’s four years in office, African Americans – middle-class African Americans – lost half their net worth as a result of the collapse of the housing market. That’s one hundred billion dollars in personal assets that disappeared from the pockets of African Americans because of a 25-year Democratic campaign to remove loan requirements for homebuyers. Yet in 2012, Republicans were too polite to mention this!

The fingerprints of Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barney Frank were all over the subprime mortgage crisis. The campaign to remove loan requirements for African American and other minority borrowers started with Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act. It snookered thousands of poor black and Hispanic Americans into buying homes they couldn’t afford, which they then lost. How traumatic is the loss of one’s home?

By securitizing the failed mortgages, Democratic bundlers on Wall Street who had poured $100 million into the 2008 Obama campaign made tens of millions off the misery of those who lost their homes. In other words, with the help of Clinton, Frank and Obama, Wall Street Democrats made massive profits off the backs of poor black and Hispanic Americans. But Republicans were too polite to mention it. Here was a missed opportunity to neutralize Democrat attacks on Republicans as the party of the rich and exploiters of the poor. It was an opportunity to drive a giant wedge through the Democratic base.

The bottom line is this: If Republicans want to persuade minorities they care about them, they have to stand up for them; they have to defend them; and they have to show them that Democrats are playing them for suckers, exploiting them, oppressing them, and profiting from their suffering.

Large populations of the African American and Hispanic poor are concentrated in America’s inner cities – Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Harlem, South Central Los Angeles. In these inner cities the unemployment rates are off the charts, the school systems so corrupt and ineffective that half the children drop out before they graduate and half those who do are functionally illiterate. They will never get a decent job or a shot at the American dream.

In these inner cities, every city council and every school board and every school district are 100% controlled by Democrats and have been for more than 70 years. Everything that is wrong with the inner cities and their schools that policy can affect, Democrats are responsible for. Democrats have their boot heels on the necks of millions of poor African American and Hispanic children and are crushing the life out of them every year. But Republicans are too polite to mention it.

In the middle of the 2012 campaign, a teachers union strike shut down the schools in Chicago, Obama’s home town. The issue was not pay but the union’s refusal to allow teacher rewards to be connected to teacher performance. African American and Hispanic children were the true victims of the determination to protect bad teachers and not to reward good ones. Yet Republicans ignored the strike, and never put a face on its victims.

At the Republican convention, one keynote speaker referred to the teachers unions and the issue of teacher rewards and union obstruction. This was Governor Chris Christie, probably the most aggressive and articulate Republican warrior. But here is how Christie framed the Democrat/union atrocity:

We believe that the majority of teachers in America know our system must be reformed to put students first so that America can compete….We [Republicans] believe that we should honor and reward the good ones while doing what’s best for our nation’s future — demanding accountability, higher standards and the best teacher in every classroom.

They believe the educational establishment will always put themselves ahead of children. That self-interest trumps common sense. They believe in pitting unions against teachers, educators against parents, and lobbyists against children. They believe in teacher’s unions.

And that’s all he said. The issues are there – accountability, standards and rewards for teacher performance. The policy is there. But the moral outrage is missing. The victims are missing and the culprits aren’t named. It’s not the “educational establishment” that’s ruining the lives and blocking the opportunities of African American and Hispanic children. It’s the Democrats – they are the educational establishment in every failing public school district. The Democrat teachers unions and the Democrat Party that supports them are destroying the lives of African American and Hispanic students whose parents are too poor to put them in private schools – the same private schools where Democrat legislators and union leaders send their own children.

Democrats will fight to the death to prevent poor parents from getting vouchers to provide their children with the same education that well-heeled Democratic legislators provide for theirs. This is a moral atrocity. This is an issue to get angry about and mobilize constituencies over. This is an issue that could drive a Gibraltar-size wedge through the Democratic base. But Republicans are too polite to do that.

This is merely the most obvious atrocity that Democrats are committing against America’s impoverished minorities. Subverting family structures through a misconceived welfare system, encouraging food stamp dependency, providing incentives to bring into this world massive numbers of children who have no prospect of a decent life just to earn a welfare dollar. These are the corrupt fruits of Democratic welfare policies which are spiraling out of control. Republicans criticize these programs as “wasteful.” They need to start attacking them as destructive, as attacks on the human beings who are ensnared by them.

The way for Republicans to show they care about minorities is to defend them against their oppressors and exploiters, which in every major inner city in America without exception are Democrats. Democrats run the welfare and public education systems; they have created the policies that ruin the lives of the recipients of their handouts. It’s time that Republicans started to hold Democrats to account; to put them on the defensive and take away the moral high ground, which they now occupy illegitimately. Government welfare is not just wasteful; it is destructive. The public school system in America’s inner cities is not merely ineffective; it is racist and criminal.

Democrats regard politics as a war conducted by other means. Their agenda is not to seek compromise over practical solutions to complex problems. It is to achieve power to dictate the fundamental transformation of American society into a socialist-redistributionist state. Democrats regard Republicans as enemies standing in the way of social justice and social progress. Every issue for them is a means to a greater end, which first of all is power, and beyond that the transformation of American society into a socialist-redistributionist state.

Because Democrats regard politics as war conducted by other means, they seek to demonize and destroy their opponents as the enemies of progress, of social justice and minority rights. Republicans can only counter these attacks by turning the Democrats’ guns around — by exposing them as the enforcers of injustice, particularly to minorities and the poor, the exploiters of society’s vulnerable and the reactionary proponents of policies that have proven bankrupt and destructive all over the world.