Economy Stupid

We still have nightmares about 2000 and what happened in that election — it was wrong. Many of us believe that the candidate who got fewer votes was inaugurated president. -- Hillary Clinton, Florida, May 22, 2008

So I want to say to my supporters, when you hear people saying – or think to yourself – “if only” or “what if,” I say, “please don’t go there.” Every moment wasted looking back keeps us from moving forward. Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. -- Hillary Clinton, June 7, 2008

What a difference two weeks makes, huh? Let's hope it is Hillary's last hypocrisy for a while.

So we are down to McCain and Obama. One is a Democrat, always thumbing his nose at our traditions and what we hold as important. Wishing to out-do Bush in the compassionate part without being conservative. And the other guy is Obama. The worst voting record in each of his three years in the Senate.

I'm thinking that it won't take much of a third party effort to disrupt and impact this election. Consider that Ross Perot was chosen by over 19% of the electorate, running solely on economic issues.

Even though Bill was the lucky recipient of the welfare vote, he realized that ending welfare (as we know it) was necessary, because, after all, it was "the economy stupid". The best way to improve the economy was to get more productivity out of the people. Putting them to work did that.

George, on the other hand is putting a lot more people to work, but unfortunately he is doing it on foreign soil, to the benefit of someone else's country. It's not hard to see why the dollar continues to tumble. We're throwing dollars around in Iraq, instead of in ANWR, where they are really needed.

So, George doesn't understand all this. He grew government and shrank the economy. McCain by his own admission doesn't get it. Obama? I doubt it, because he voted for every liberal hobby horse trotted out in front of the senate. Unless he will all of a sudden be his own man, instead of being a Harry Reid puppet; chances are he will only make things worse.

So, the situation is very ripe for someone to come along and mount a reasonable third party campaign. It will fall short, of course, but we might, in the process, accidentally elect someone who learns the lesson like Bill did.

Managing our resources does not mean retiring our military, which was the other part of Clinton's legacy. Our enemies would love us to take our eye off the ball the same way Clinton did. Certainly if we train effective fighting units, we ought to preserve their use for fighting. The rest of us should be doing things that benefit us and our own economy, and not that of a country we are trying to prop up.

Wizer One-Liner #19

As if taking pot-shots at GWB was even necessary, let alone sporting; we have to hear it from a press secretary bad enough to be fired by Bush.

Another Unexpected Choice

Bob Barr announces bid for Libertarian Party nomination.

An Unexpected Choice to Make

Capitalism should not be condemned, since we haven’t had capitalism. A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank. It’s not capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules regarding mergers, acquisitions, and stock sales, along with wage controls, price controls, protectionism, corporate subsidies, international management of trade, complex and punishing corporate taxes, privileged government contracts to the military-industrial complex, and a foreign policy controlled by corporate interests and overseas investments. Add to this centralized federal mismanagement of farming, education, medicine, insurance, banking and welfare. This is not capitalism!
-- Ron Paul, "Has Capitalism Failed?", July 9, 2002

John McCain demonizes Big Pharma — i.e., the private pharmaceutical companies that create, develop and manufacture the drugs that all these socialized health care systems in every corner of the planet are utterly dependent on. He voted for Sarbanes-Oxley, a quintessential Congressional overreaction (to Enron) that buries American companies in wasteful paperwork and hands huge advantages to stock exchanges in London, Hong Kong and elsewhere. But why stop there? McCain is also gung ho for all the most economically disruptive Big Government solutions to "climate change." Apparently, that's the only change these candidates aren't in favor of. When it comes to the climate, McCain and Hillary are agents of non-change. John McCain has an almost Edwardsian contempt for capitalism, for the people whose wit and innovation generate the revenues that pay for your average small-state Senator's Gulf Emir-sized retinue of staffers. -- Mark Steyn

The Wizer was planning on sitting this one out. By reading the newspapers here in Indiana and watching the news, you would think that an important decision was about to be made, and that it involved one of only two candidates. Yet, the simple truth is there's no practical difference between the two that they are talking about. Yet Hoosiers (at least, Hoosier media) seem enthralled with the fact that we are cause célèbre this week.

In fact, there is a more important race, and one which the choices are far more meaningful and dramatic. The media has not mentioned this one (I found out myself by perusing the ballot sample), but hey, Ron Paul is on the Indiana ballot!

I guess there is a choice after all, if only a symbolic one, but at least it means my vote won't be wasted. And yes, you can call this a wizersblog endorsement of Congressman Paul in this election. Can't wait to see how the media will report on the election results of the Republican primary in Indiana.

Charlton Heston, RIP

Political correctness is simply tyranny with manners. -- Charlton Heston

Charlton Heston was always known to me as one of the good guys. So I was taken aback when the news media (and I heard it at least three times) recounted his days as a civil rights messenger. And then they all said something very curious. They said Heston had turned conservative as he got older. I darn near dropped my rifle cleaning kit when I heard that.

You see, civil rights is nothing if not a conservative issue. Conservatives have been trying since day one to preserve a land where all men are created equal.

Like Reagan, Heston knew he would be unpopular with a lot of folks, but conservatives as a whole are a very principled group, and when they say that people ought to have equal rights, they mean it. And so it is with Heston. He continued as a principled conservative, and won the admiration of many because of it.

Meanwhile, the media just doesn't get it. They try to paint conservatives as racists, when it is those of the liberal bent that show their racist stripes. People like Jeremiah Wright; Geraldine Ferraro; Al Sharpton. People who think that religion causes people to live in small towns, and cling to guns.

If I wasn't an anarcho-libertarian, I would want to be a steady conservative in the mold of Charlton Heston. At least I could sleep at night.

Wizer One-Liner #18

Memo to Hillary: It's Bill's party. You knew he was going to put a lampshade on his head sooner or later.

Wizer One-Liner #17

Memo to Barry: It was about race only because your pastor is a racist. Throwing everybody else (including Grandma) under the bus doesn't explain why this man was your pastor for over 20 years.

Measurable differences

"In their yearlong race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama and Clinton have had strikingly similar voting records. Of the 267 measures on which both senators cast votes in 2007, the two differed on only 10," the authors write before going on to quote Richard Lau, a Rutgers University political scientist, as saying, "The policy differences between Clinton and Obama are so slight they are almost nonexistent to the average voter." -- National Journal, quoted in Salon.com


Clinton 17%
Obama 16%
McCain 88% -- 2006 NTU ratings

Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton talked each other to a stalemate last night in what the Clinton campaign had hoped would offer a decisive breakthrough for her ailing campaign.

On issues ranging from the economy to the war to immigration the two demonstrated the closeness of their positions rather than any grand differences of policy. -- Guardian.co.uk

Recently, The Wizer has spent some time looking for measurements and methods that rank school systems. One of the things I've come to learn is that the folks who have to publish test data do their best to downplay the meaning of it. I guess they don't want the people to develop a low opinion of their own school systems, lest there be "unrest", perhaps. The numbers do tend to tell a story though. If the kids do well, the numbers go up. If they don't, the numbers go down. As a parent, I would want to see the indicators that the kids have a shot at doing well. And will accept a direct measurement method, as flawed as it may be.

Accordingly, the scoring system devised by the National Taxpayer's Union might be a reasonable, acceptable comparison of how elected officials perform in their management of the nation's affairs.

SO, we have a means to compare their voting record against a standard, and it's instructive to look at the differences between Obama and Clinton. Believe me, I'm as perceptive as the next guy, and I can't see a difference between them. Turns out, there isn't much difference in how they would lead, who they would appoint, what kinds of things they would talk about if elected.

I had thought there would be a lot of talking, and therefore a lot of scoring in The Wizer's horserace point system; but there's no scoring going on, and nothing remarkable being said by the democrats. Democrat politics used to be about important, even crucial stuff: Now its about where one gets their material for speeches, and whose spouse can keep their mouth shut best.

So we need another system. One that will start to show the true differences among the candidates. I believe the NTU ratings say enough about how they would lead. They are both in favor of spending your money.

McCain isn't differentiating himself much from either of them on the campaign trail; and maybe he is saving that for the general election. It surprised me that he somehow worked up an 88% NTU rating; all the while making backroom deals with all flavors of the enemy. Maybe the rating belies the possibility ...that McCain will stand up at the crucial moments and be counted among the believers.

Last of the Mohicans

“Because I love America, in this time of war, I feel I have to stand aside for our party and our country” -- Mitt Romney at CPAC

Toward the end of his speech, after promising to prevent Iran from possessing, “…the weapons to advance their malevolent ambitions,” McCain promised to remain the maverick he has always been. He said:

“We have had a few disagreements, and none of us will pretend that we won't continue to have a few. But even in disagreement, especially in disagreement, I will seek the counsel of my fellow conservatives. If I am convinced my judgment is in error, I will correct it. And if I stand by my position, even after benefit of your counsel, I hope you will not lose sight of the far more numerous occasions when we are in complete accord.”

This is vintage McCain. He promises to hear, not to listen. He promises to seek counsel, but not to respect it. -- Jed Babbin

"I don't think it's enough to say you were a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution. I think the question is 'what have you been doing for conservatism lately?'" -- Laura Ingraham, delivering a message to John McCain while introducing Romney at CPAC

News item: Washington, D.C. - Following a solid McCain victory in the Super Tuesday primaries, the Libertarian Party has sent Republican headquarters a funeral wreath marking the death of limited-government values within the Republican Party. -- Libertarian Press Release, Feb 6th


I wasn't too sure myself whether Romney was even a conservative; the fact that he looked that way when compared to the others in the race should not be lost on those watching. I'm quite certain he will be back in the race as a Republican in 2012. As for this year, it remains to be see which of the last four (-- maybe we should call two of them them RINOcrats just so the news media can continue to call it an election). The only choice left is for those who make their judgments based on appearances, and not policies.

Wizer One-Liner #16

There is nothing more useless than a big government Republican.