It’s Wednesday, March 7th, 2012….and before we begin, a brief bit of commentary is in order.

We recently enjoyed an email discussion regarding a looming “what if”; what to do should the SCOTUS uphold ObamaScare’s individual insurance mandate, thereby expanding the powers of the legislative and executive branches of government literally beyond any limit….in effect, overturning the Constitution and Republic established by the Founding Fathers in favor of an illegitimate tyranny.

Our opinion was and is the only thing ultimately standing between us and Progressive totalitarianism are America’s citizen soldiers and the 2nd Amendment. 

This subsequent email from Jim Gleaves confirmed it.  The following two videos tell the tale of The Battle of Athens, an event which, were we ever made aware of it, we’ve been forgotten over time, but which should serve as an inspiration to everyone.  With the disclaimer the cinematic scenes in the first clip undoubtedly takes a certain amount of artistic license, we present the Spirit of ’76, alive and well circa 1946 (though a bit lengthy, it’s WELL worth watching!):

Any question now why Progressives are so keen on removing guns from the hands of law-abiding citizens?

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!”
Benjamin Franklin

“We the People are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts–not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
Abraham Lincoln

“And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the Press, or the rights of Conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; …”
Samuel Adams

“Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence … from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurences and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable … the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference — they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.”
George Washington

It’s worth recalling the exact words Jefferson penned back in 1776:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

We for one don’t believe the Framers wasted a single word or mark of punctuation in the remarkable documents they bequeathed to their descendants.  They wrote what they meant and they meant what they wrote.

But remember, the Founding Father’s risked everything for freedom; and as this scene from Star Trek details….

….when the time comes to stand up and be counted, so will we.  Freedom always comes at great price; all servitude costs is your freedom.

Now, here’s the Gouge!

First up, Marc Thiessen has some advice for the GOP’s nominal front-runner:

Don’t light your hair on fire, Mitt

 

Why won’t Mitt Romney let me like him? Every time I start to make peace with the idea of a Romney nomination, he goes and says something like this: “You know, it’s very easy to excite the base with incendiary comments. We’ve seen throughout the campaign if you’re willing to say really outrageous things… you’re going to jump up in the polls. I’m not willing to light my hair on fire to try and get support.”

So this is what Mitt Romney thinks of conservatives? That we’re excitable masses who want him to “say really outrageous things” and “light his hair on fire”? With all respect, that is precisely how the left views the conservative movement — a bunch of mindless radicals driven not by ideas but by “incendiary” rhetoric. Apparently the GOP frontrunner shares their assessment of his conservative base.

What conservatives want is not for Mitt Romney to light his hair on fire. We want a nominee who will lead us into battle against President Obama this fall under a banner of bold ideas. We want another Ronald Reagan. But the sad reality is there is no new Reagan coming to the rescue. This election will not be a choice between Obama and another Reagan. It will be a choice between a second Obama term and a second Bush term … as in Bush 41.

Electing a transformational conservative president may not be in the cards this November — but stopping a transformational liberal president still is. Consider the consequences if Obama gets a second term: Obamacare will not be repealed. The unprecedented levels of spending in Obama’s first four years will become the new floor, as America sets new records for fiscal profligacy and debt. Job creators will face massive tax increases, and more Americans will come off the tax rolls — resulting in fewer citizens with a stake in keeping taxes low and more with a stake in protecting benefits. Government dependency, already at record levels, will continue to grow. Four lost years in dealing with the entitlement crisis will become eight — digging us into a hole from which we may not be able to emerge. Obama, unworried about the impact of gas and electricity prices on his reelection, will finally wage the regulatory war on fossil fuels the left demands. He will unleash the Environmental Protection Agency to impose crushing new burdens on U.S. business. His administration’s assault on religious freedom will go on and expand to new areas. The Defense Department will be gutted, with cuts so deep that America will no longer be a superpower. Obama could have the opportunity to appoint more liberal Supreme Court justices, ending the Roberts court in all but name for a generation.

Oh, and the oceans will continue to rise.

A second Obama term would impose potentially irrevocable damage on our country. So the question Republicans need to ask is not whether Romney is our ideal conservative candidate, but can he defeat Obama? In South Carolina, it didn’t seem he could. But then Romney took the gloves off. He faced down serious challenges from Gingrich in Florida and then Santorum in Michigan. With those victories it appeared that a candidate was finally emerging who is capable of taking the fight to Obama in the fall. Romney has a chance to solidify that impression with a strong showing on Super Tuesday — especially in the all-important swing state of Ohio.

If Romney secures the nomination, he will be far from the perfect standard bearer. But, to paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, you go to war with the candidates you’ve got. Conservatives are never going to love Mitt Romney — and we don’t have to. But we can form an alliance of convenience with him. To win the support of the base, Romney doesn’t need to light his hair on fire. He just needs to stop insulting conservatives — and show us he has what it takes to make Obama a one-term president.

Come January 2013, I am ready to stop hating the Obama administration … and start hating the Romney administration.

Meanwhile, whatever strain of foot-in-mouth disease Romney carries appears to be catching:

Yeah Ann,….neither do most $200 millionaires!  That blond hair must be natural.

But as the WSJ‘s William McGurn observes, if history’s any indication, there may be hope for Romney yet:

Reagan Was A Sure Loser Too

Conventional wisdom about Republican presidential prospects sounds mighty familiar.

 

Not since Herbert Hoover has a party out of power had such an opportunity to run against everything that troubles the American family—prices, interest rates, unemployment, taxes, or the fear for the future of their old age or the future of their children—than is now presented to the Republican Party.

The Republicans, however, haven’t figured this out. This is their basic problem. They have no strategy for defeating an Obama administration that is highly vulnerable on both domestic and foreign policy.

That’s the conventional wisdom in a nutshell, isn’t it? It will come as no surprise that these words appeared in a Feb. 29 column in the New York Times. They are reproduced here exactly as written, save for one small adjustment.

The president whose failings they describe is Jimmy Carter, not Barack Obama. The lines were written in 1980, not 2012. The author was the then-dean of conventional wisdom, James “Scotty” Reston. The headline was “Jimmy Carter’s Luck,” a reference to Reagan’s victory in the New Hampshire primary three days earlier.

It appears the conventional wisdom hasn’t changed much. Today’s narrative holds that however weak President Obama’s hand, Republicans find themselves in no position to capitalize on it. A glance back to where we were at this exact point in the 1980 primaries suggests otherwise.

Then as now, the Republican primaries opened with a bang, when George H.W. Bush upset Ronald Reagan in the Iowa caucuses. By late February, this loss would lead to Reagan’s firing of his campaign manager, John Sears, in a disagreement over strategy.

Then, as now, Republicans feared that an unhappy contender might bolt the party to mount an independent campaign. In 1980, that was liberal John Anderson, not libertarian Ron Paul. Mr. Anderson did end up running as an independent, whereas Mr. Paul will likely be constrained by the effect a third-party run would have on the future prospects for his Republican son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

Then as now, the chattering classes wondered aloud whether a candidate who could win the Republican nomination could prevail against President Carter in November. On March 1, former President Gerald Ford amplified that view when he told a New York Times reporter, “Every place I go and everything I hear, there is the growing, growing sentiment that Governor Reagan cannot win the election.”

Then as now, some put their hopes on a late entry, in the same way that some now pine for Jeb Bush or Mitch Daniels or Chris Christie to enter the race. In the same interview where Mr. Ford predicted that Reagan’s nomination would mean a repeat of 1964, he also declared himself open to a draft if there were a genuine “urging” by the party.

In retrospect, we forget how seriously the Ford possibility was taken, or how popular it was in the polls, or how lingering its effects would be (at the convention, there would be speculation about a “co-presidency”). A Harris Poll released just about this time in 1980 bolstered the case for Mr. Ford by reporting that, in a head-to-head matchup, Ford (the noncandidate) would trounce President Carter 55% to 44%. The same poll showed Reagan (the front-runner) trailing Carter 58% to 40%.

Nor was candidate Reagan without baggage. As governor, Reagan had pushed through the largest tax hike in California’s history, had signed one of the nation’s most liberal abortion laws, and—as George H.W. Bush pointed out—presided over the doubling of the state budget over his eight-year tenure, to $10.2 billion when he left office from $4.6 billion when he entered.

Along the way in 1980 there were missteps and minor dustups inflated beyond their importance. In Iowa, Reagan lost the caucuses because he sat on a lead and played it cautious. In New Hampshire a month later, he had to apologize for an ethnic joke that made fun of Italians and Poles (to its credit, the New York Times defended him in an editorial).

Later he would face Santorum-like fears about his social message, especially after appearing at a mass gathering of Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals. A minister with whom he’d shared a stage was taped saying “we’re being attacked by satanic forces,” which Times columnist Anthony Lewis declared “the scariest piece of television” he’d seen in some time.

Yes, the parallels to 1980 take you only so far, and Mitt Romney is no Ronald Reagan. Still, at this same point in his campaign for the GOP nomination, neither was Reagan. The President Reagan we rightly admire for bringing down the Berlin Wall, reviving the U.S. economy, and attracting into the GOP millions of disaffected Democrats was still to come.

And he got there by transcending the conventional wisdom rather than allowing himself or his message to be limited by it.

Today’s March 7th; the GOP convention isn’t until late August….which gives Romney roughly six months to get his act together.  We’re betting he can do it….but the margin for success appears, at least for now, razor-thin.

Next up, courtesy of Conn Carroll and the Morning Examiner, we present Jonathan Collegio writing at NRO‘s The Corner, who asks….

Who’s the Biggest ‘Outside Group’ in the 2012 Elections? Big Labor

 

With so much attention paid to super PACs these days, folks can forget that the biggest “outside group” spenders in the 2012 elections aren’t oil and gas companies, Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers, or hedge funds. No, as reported by the Associated Press, the biggest spender in the 2012 elections will likely be Big Labor. According to AP, unions will spend “more than $400 million to help re-elect President Barack Obama and lift Democrats this election year.” (Gee….wonder what that buys them?!?)

Many roll their eyes and ask: How can Big Labor ever spend more than Big Business? The fact is, since the days of President Franklin Roosevelt, unions have consistently dominated the outside-spending wars, acting as the de facto grassroots infrastructure of the Democratic party. The last two election cycles were no exception:

● According to the New York Times, Big Labor spent nearly $450 million in the 2008 elections electing Obama and the Democrats.

● According to the Wall Street Journal, three of the top five spending political groups in the 2010 midterms were labor unions.

● According to the AP, one union alone, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, spent $93 million on the 2010 elections.

This isn’t often reported in the mainstream media — mainly because labor unions don’t disclose much of what they do to the FEC. (No….mainly because the MSM doesn’t want to advertise it.) Opensecrets.org and Politifact, groups often cited by major news organizations on campaign-finance issues, only measure political spending in terms of the TV and radio ads that are reported to the FEC. This totally discounts the bread and butter of union efforts: canvassing, phone banks, and some direct mail. Even AP says, “Not all union expenditures on political action are publicly disclosed, so some numbers are based on self-reporting.”

So how is it possible that Big Labor can spend more in campaigns and elections than Big Business? Let’s analogize in Cold War terms.

Throughout the Cold War, America and the free, capitalist West were far richer than the USSR and Soviet Bloc countries. How, then, did it make sense that the world was split militarily between two superpowers when one was so plainly an economic dwarf?

The reason is that while the West spent a nominal amount of its GDP on militarization, the Commies spent 25 to 40 percent of GDP or more on guns. They were completely militarized. We were not. (President Reagan of course changed this . . . but we’ll save that for a later post.)

It’s the same model with Big Labor and Big Business. The largest American companies today spend incredibly small amounts on advocacy relative to their bottom lines — by some estimates, less than two one-hundredths of 1 percent of profits. And the vast majority of those funds are usually spent on lobbying, not on campaigns and elections. Meanwhile, their union counterparts are completely militarized, spending perhaps 50 percent of their biennial budgets on campaigns and elections.

Additionally, the limited amount Big Business does spend through traditional PACs goes to incumbents of all stripes and is thus split between parties. According to data from Opensecrets.org, in the 2010 elections traditional PACs gave $238,450,722 to Democrats and $181,565,844 to Republicans — a 57 to 43 percent split favoring Democrats.

Unions spent more than any other outside groups in 2008 and 2010, and will likely spend more than any group in 2012. Two unions alone, AFSCME and SEIU, plan to spend at least $185 million electing Obama in 2012. Big Labor is also the single biggest donor to Obama’s super PAC. And while Big Business typically splits its political resources between the two parties, Big Labor exclusively benefits the Democrats. Their efforts may not be as visible on TV, but they are spending big money on behalf of Democrats — most of which is not publicly disclosed. Center-right groups like American Crossroads, Americans for Prosperity, and the American Action Network — often demonized by the media — can only hope to balance out what the Left has been doing through Big Labor for nearly a century.

And, as the future-Senator Blutarski so eloquently stated, “We’re just the guys to do it!”

Then again, if this next item, courtesy of George Lawlor, is any indication, Big Labor’s $400M may not be enough

White House to Congress Dems: Expect no money

 

President Barack Obama has a bleak message for House and Senate Democrats this year when it comes to campaign cash: You’re on your own. Democratic congressional leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, have privately sought as much as $30 million combined from Obama for America and the Democratic National Committee — a replay of the financial help they received from Obama in 2008 and 2010.

But that’s not going to happen, top Obama aides Jim Messina and David Plouffe told Reid and Pelosi in back-to-back meetings on Capitol Hill on Thursday, according to sources familiar with the high-level talks. It was a stark admission from a presidential campaign once expected to rake in as much as $1 billion of just how closely it is watching its own bottom line.

If only Team Tick-Tock paid this much attention to America’s balance sheet!

And in the Environmental Moment, further evidence a number of Republicans STILL don’t get it:

Republicans Blow With the Wind

Another industry wants to keep its taxpayer subsidies.

 

Congress finally ended decades of tax credits for ethanol in December, a small triumph for taxpayers. Now comes another test as the wind-power industry lobbies for a $7 billion renewal of its production tax credit.

The renewable energy tax credit—mostly for wind and solar power—started in 1992 as a “temporary” benefit for an infant industry. Twenty years later, the industry wants another four years on the dole, and Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico has introduced a national renewable-energy mandate so consumers will be required to buy wind and solar power no matter how high the cost.

The truth is that those giant wind turbines from Maine to California won’t turn without burning through billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars. In 2010 the industry received some $5 billon in subsidies for nearly every stage of wind production.

The “1603 grant program” pays up to 30% of the construction costs for renewable energy plants (a subsidy that ended last year but which President Obama calls for reviving in his budget). Billions in Department of Energy grants and loan guarantees also finance the operating costs of these facilities. Wind producers then get the 2.2% tax credit for every kilowatt of electricity generated.

Because wind-powered electricity is so expensive, more than half of the 50 states have passed renewable energy mandates that require utilities to purchase wind and solar power—a de facto tax on utility bills. And don’t forget subsidies to build transmission lines to deliver wind power to the electric grid.

What have taxpayers received for this multibillion-dollar “investment”? The latest Department of Energy figures indicate that wind and solar power accounted for a mere 1.5% of U.S. energy production in 2010. DOE estimates that by 2035 wind will provide a still trivial 3.9% of U.S. electricity.

Even that may be too optimistic because of the natural gas boom that has produced a happy supply shock and cut prices by more than half. Most economic models forecasting that renewable energy will become price competitive are based on predictions of natural gas prices at well above $6 per million cubic feet, more than twice the current cost.

The most dishonest claim is that wind and solar deserve to be wards of the state because the oil and gas industry has also received federal support. That’s the $4 billion a year in tax breaks for oil and gas (which all manufacturers receive), but the oil and gas industry still pays tens of billions in federal taxes every year.

Wind and solar companies are net tax beneficiaries. Taxpayers would save billions of dollars if wind and solar produced no energy at all. A July 2011 Energy Department study found that oil, natural gas and coal received an average of 64 cents of subsidy per megawatt hour in 2010. Wind power received nearly 100 times more, or $56.29 per megawatt hour.

Most Congressional Democrats will back anything with the green label. But Republican support for big wind is a pure corporate welfare play that violates free-market principles. Last week six Republican Senators—John Boozman of Arkansas, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Charles Grassley of Iowa, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Jerry Moran of Kansas and John Thune of South Dakota—signed a letter urging their colleagues to extend the production tax credit.

“It is clear that the wind industry currently requires tax incentives” and that continuing that federal aid can help the industry “move towards a market-based system,” said the letter. What’s the “market-based” timetable—100 years? In the House 18 Republicans have joined the 70-Member wind pork caucus. Someone should remind them that in 2008 and 2010 the wind lobby gave 71% of its PAC money to Democrats.

Here’s a better idea. Kill all energy subsidies—renewable and nonrenewable, starting with the wind tax credit, and use the savings to shave two or three percentage points off America’s corporate income tax. Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo has a bill to do so. This would do more to create jobs than attempting to pick energy winners and losers. Mandating that American families and businesses use expensive electricity doesn’t create jobs. It destroys them.

These Congressional tools blow alright….but it has nothing to do with the wind.

To put it another way, as Matt Ridley, writing at the Global Warming Policy Foundation website does….

To the nearest whole number, the percentage of the world’s energy that comes from wind turbines today is: zero. Despite the regressive subsidy (pushing pensioners into fuel poverty while improving the wine cellars of grand estates), despite tearing rural communities apart, killing jobs, despoiling views, erecting pylons, felling forests, killing bats and eagles, causing industrial accidents, clogging motorways, polluting lakes in Inner Mongolia with the toxic and radioactive tailings from refining neodymium, a ton of which is in the average turbine—despite all this, the total energy generated each day by wind has yet to reach half a per cent worldwide.

If wind power was going to work, it would have done so by now.

On the Lighter Side….

And finally, we’ll call it a day with the Entertainment Section, where….

Fans slam Miley Cyrus over anti-Christian tweet

 

Miley Cyrus came under fire this week for a controversial tweet hat some critics deemed anti-Christian, according to a report from AOL. The pop singer tweeted a photo of theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, along with the word “beautiful.” On the photo is one of his quotes that reads, “You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, all things that matter for evolution) weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in stars. So forget Jesus. Stars died so you can live.”

But Cyrus’ Christian fans were livid that the star would tweet a photo that said the words, “forget Jesus” and slammed the singer….Cyrus, who has come under fire in recent years for her increasingly risqué choices and possible references to drug use, said Tuesday that she had “bad dreams all night.”

“How can people take the love out of science and bring hate into religion so easily,” she wrote. “It makes me sad to think the world is this way. Like Einstein says “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”

As for Miley, she’s just plain dumb….as dirt.

Magoo