Oil prices, Immigration crisis, Hobby Lobby

            Fuel’s going up in price and it will likely continue.  Oklahoma has seen oil production almost double since the low in 2003-05.  It is now .4M barrels a day.  USA uses 19M b/d.  So we are a drop in the bucket.  US production is up, but Iraq, which was 2.5M b/d a few years ago is now 2/3 of that.  It wasn’t so much the loss of that production as it was the fact that we expected Iraqi production to be 6M by 2020.  It’s unlikely to happen.  And around the world many major fields found in the 70’s-90’s are in serious decline. Saudis no longer can flood the market with 10M b/d like they used to.  And the world’s appetite is growing now that the 2007 recession is behind us.  Bottom line.  Higher oil prices are coming.

            I have perhaps mentioned this before as a laugh, but it is actually serious.  The way to do something serious about the border crisis with so many children is easy. (assuming we won’t be able to return many of them to parents down south) 100,000 kids.  Find that many Christian conservatives who would foster.  Turn the kids into fire-breathing conservatives with a paper route or a yard-moving business or a job doing what they can.  As soon as Obama finds out this horror, he will shut the border up so fast it will make your head swim.  And those kids would go on to be leaders and naturalized citizens with both an American Mom and Dad as well as a natural Mom and Dad they could bring up from Honduras.  Or, if the conservatives could not win the deportation battle, the kids go home with a “foreign exchange” burning in their hearts as future leaders back home. It would be a life-changer for every kid who experienced this.

            You think it won’t work?  Or not enough people who would make it work? Consider the early Christians who rescued unwanted children who had been “exposed”(infants left to die in a ditch or the woods) by Roman pagans. Thus began the world’s first orphanages and foster homes.  When 80-year-old Polycarp, the understudy of the apostle John, was martyred in the second century, the authorities found 80 children in his home, all rejected as children.  The kids ran every direction, escaped for the most part and became leaders in the early church.  This is one of the primary methods of growth the church had which went from about 5000 in 33AD to 36 million in 325 AD.

            Our libs would similarly try to destroy a dandelion by kicking the head and scattering the seed.  Liberal women have 1.6 births per person while conservative women average 2.8.  Demographically, libs have been running short of heirs for decades and that is why only about 20% of US population calls themselves liberal. 

            There’s been some recent research into genetics and success/poverty that suggests that some nations are too diverse, some too-little diverse to be greatly successful.  (other things like lack of corruption, free markets are larger considerations, however) If the mix is like Poland, many Muslim countries, or Japan which have extreme homogeneity, they are harmonious but not highly innovative societies.  On the other hand, countries with enormous diversity, like Congo have everybody from 4-foot pygmies to 7-foot Watusis and Hottentots, Bushmen, Benins, etc.,  are distrustful, polarized and often fall into civil wars.  USA is extremely diverse, but interestingly, highly assimilative.  So long as it assimilates successfully, it respects others, and continues to be an economic powerhouse.

            Okay, enough of this serious talk.  I am so saddened that Hobby Lobby won.  Had they lost, I was about to suggest that future Republican Presidents could turn the tables on Barack.  For spiritual healing under Obamacare, we could insist that atheists must be insured for the cost of Bible-of-the-month club.  Muslims could be forced to buy a policy that provides Pork servings for dietary plan.  There could be no end to the onery stuff. Harry Reid would surely repeal and Rangel would sue for impeachment.

Redskins to Liberty

The name, Oklahoma, means “Red People” in a Native American language.  But no one around here is offended because we don’t have the offensive term “Washington” in our label like the Redskins do.  Let me make a suggestion for a new name, mascot and logo for the beleaguered Redskins. 

            Someone jokingly suggested that the team rename themselves the Washington Tea Party with the logo of the Don’t-Tread-On-Me rattlesnake.  Tempting, but "Tea Party" would offend liberals—maybe give them a heart attack.  Besides Boston would gripe about the Tea Party being their own, since it took place there.  For Washington, we need something more local and a name that is not provocative.  I therefore suggest the Washington Liberty, inspired by homeboy Patrick Henry.  Keep the idea of the Don’t-Tread-On-Me rattler logo since that is historic to the cause of the uniting of the States.  Makes a great logo and possesses the same team colors--gold and red-brown—gold helmet and a red-brown rattler.  Mascot could be a Patrick Henry Patriot.

            Henry would be particularly appropriate.  After all, the Revolution hung in the balance not knowing if the southern states would join New England.  Old men of the house of the commonwealth of Virginia sat debating whether to get involved.  Suddenly a young guy up in gallery shouted, “Is Security so sweet or Peace so dear that it must be bought at the price of Chains or even Slavery?  I know not what others may do, but give me Liberty or give me Death.”  One by one the House members began to say that something had to be done and that Virginia would join the fight.  With Virginia, the cause got Washington, Jefferson, the Virginia sharpshooters, and the rest of the South. Patrick Henry’s outburst was the tipping point of our country.

            Washington Liberty. Now I could root for a team like that.  Go RG3!! 

Pitfalls of index scores

            I was sitting next to my State Representative at the Republican Party meeting. He was stewing over his low OK Conservative Index score.  There in front of him was a printout of the index scoring for every lawmaker in the state.  And Charlie Meadows, head of Oklahoma Conservative PAC  was speaking on the program.

            Give me a bunch of statistics and I’m in hog heaven.  So as Steve was puzzling over two votes he had missed and thus gotten a zero, I was was analyzing statistics.  “I just can’t believe I missed those votes,” he shook his head.  “I remember the bills, and helped line up votes for them [Steve is a House Whip],” Well they both took place on May 23, I noted from the survey, and he checked his calendar. “Oh!  That’s the day the session was extended to end Friday.  I cut out an hour early to attend my kid’s graduation. Everyone was leaving. With 10 votes on the index; 2 votes equal 20 points, even if those were bills sure to pass.”  I reached over his arm and circled the vote.  “Looks like a lot of people missed. The vote was 57-11, so there were only 68 in attendance, not 101.”   And then I was racing to look at the dates of each vote.  It turned out that 3 were on May 23 and another was on the 22^nd—4 of 10.  So if Archie the arch-conservative got sick those two days, his score would drop from 100 to 60 and he’d rate as a RINO. 

            That explains why only 22 Representatives got a passing 70 score this year. There are 72 Republicans.  Are 50 of them RINOs?  The Index was corrupted by high school graduations of kids and grandkids.

            But Steve still wasn’t content.  He got a ‘liberal’ from voting to fix the Capitol Building.  “No way was I going to vote for the original bill to sell $160 million in bonds maturing in 30 years.  So I stood up in the House debate, spoke out against the bloated costs, and took about 25 like-minded folks with me.  The bill unexpectedly failed.  The next morning I was called to an emergency conference to work out a new deal.  I showed them how they could save $75 million [Steve’s a financial planner] and had I gotten my way on pay-as-you-go funding, we could have saved even more. Yet because I ultimately voted for the compromise, I got a liberal tag.”  I just chuckled over the irony.  He was going down the column looking at some lifetime scores of those who have now served their full 12 years and are term-limited.  “Gus Blackwell, 60, Dale DeWitt, 56. But those are great conservatives!” he protested. 

            Yes, but as leaders, they were making deals as conservative as they could get, and then lining up votes for the compromise.  The index doesn’t give a good grade for can-do conservatism, accomplishment conservatism.  It just rewards obstinate conservatism that unwaveringly votes nay.  And I pointed to the index of a legislator who is rather infamous for passing nothing, getting zero done, just criticizing everyone else in the House.  Who does he emulate? The President of the United States?

            To me this illustrates the sad irony of indexes for voting records.  Voters always say they want things solved and bills passed.  But the principled conservative who works to do just this, can get negative scores when they do it.  Then again, choice of issues, under-sampling, and pitfall sampling (like eleventh-hour votes missed when folks excused themselves to go to a daughter’s graduation) can give spurious results. Remember the grain of salt, next time you read a voting index.

            “Just stand up and tell Charlie that he and Baressi need to work on the methodology of their tests,” I joked.  “No we are friends and have to stay that way!” Steve choked.   That reminded me that he is the Politician and I am the Opinion Guy/Advisor.  I predict he will get more leadership roles in the coming year—and will never get a lifetime score of 100.

14 points to a good November

If this doesn’t turn out to be a good year nationally for Republicans, there is something wrong with them.  The Scandal-of-the-Week is providing so much material to skewer Dem opponents, it is silly.   Look at  my list of scandals and mismanagements you could find linked to your Dem rival.  They’d have to be slick as an eel to avoid not being part of just one of these.  Then when you think about how a good political line just needs two or three arguments repeated over and over--well, look at this list.

1. Benghazi indicative of foreign policy and Islamic threat blindness.
2. Keystone waiting-for-Godot anti-energy bias.  This costs jobs, energy independence, and makes high-priced gas.  Tie opponent to anti-energy votes or stances.
3. Economic Contraction.  This is due to overregulation, mandates for health insurance, overtaxation and federal government being in cahoots with the big banks. 
4. Fast and Furious as an anti-gun scheme that went bad.  Tie Dems to anti-gun votes--hunter hatred and hampering citizens protecting from crime.
5. IRS scandal indicates a war on political opponents, war on free speech, demand for too much taxation.
6. Obamacare.  High health care and insurance prices, poor choices, death panels to come.
7. Putin problems, Syria and Iraq problems due to lack of conviction and being a pussy rather than an adult.  Leads to threats to our security, high gas prices, and threatens our standing as a world power. Feckless foreign policy and drastic military spending cuts.
8. Bergdahl and a hippie anti-war attitude of appeasement. Closing the WWII memorial just for spite.
9. EPA war on coal and CO2 kills US manufacturing and raises electricity rates.  Get ready.
10. Immigration surge due to negating the law and creating a humanitarian crisis.  So much for Dems being the party of compassion.
11. Debt.  Spent money that was no help to economy.  Debases our currency. Duh.
12. Crony capitalism, green failures that were government funded, sending manufacturing jobs overseas due to regulations. 
13. War on Faith.  Insurance and abortifacient mandates, trying to disallow church choice in their ministers, military chaplains told what to preach. (Say, do we need a Tea Party or Constantine crossing the Rubicon reenactment, or maybe a Dietrich Bonhoeffer moment)
14. VA. A foreshadowing of Obamacare.  Classic bureaucracy gone wild and not doing what they are asked to do. Corruption and cover-up. Obama and Dems don’t give a rat’s ass, just want big government.
    Now you tell me, is there any Democrat alive that hasn’t indulged in things related to these black-hole scandals and mismanagements?  You’d have to be a punk Republican campaigner to miss the tie-ins to these. Even in state races you can skewer a Dem using these follies as “ultimate outcomes” of their philosophy.  In fact, probably the hardest part is planning what to say about solutions and what to do with Obama in the final two years.
15. What'd I forget?  NSA?

Fixing things

Been gone on vacation.  Been outa the loop.  Come back and problems everywhere.  I had one renter who called and asked if it was okay if he called the city and had them bring out another septic tank.  His water wouldn’t drain.  Now wait!  You aren’t on a septic system, Dude! The city has nothing to do with your sewer being stopped up!  Turns out it was him mowing off the top of the back yard cleanout and then a cat fell in, died, and plumber had to fish out the remains.  Problem solved.

In politics, all heck is going on in my absence.  I got solutions, however. This business of Iraq falling to Al Qaeda and the illegal surge can be solved.  And we can do it just like Obama  (the lion who chews on his tail in fear) loves—no ground troops.  Just announce that next week Wednesday at high noon we are going to nuke all of Iraq and you people there better leave because what’s there now is going to soon turn into a parking lot.  Then do it.  Next, round up at least half the illegals in America and send them over to rebuild and run the country as a commonwealth country of USA like Puerto Rico. They get opportunity, but no US citizenship.  However, they can apply like anyone else in a commonwealth does.  I figure the illegals could build houses like crazy, defend their handiwork like the Battle of Puerto, and put up crucifixes all over the landscape.  Start a cerveza business for a few thirsty Muslims who return.  Call the place Andalusia and rename Bagdad, Granada.  Any you Muslims want to take it over, better think long and hard about that name. US gets a couple strategic military bases.  Problem solved.

Now this IRS thing where Lerner lost her emails, here's the fix.  Just tell the IRS we are going to treat you the way you treat us—guilty until proven innocent.  So unless Lerner can produce exculpatory emails in an audit of her endeavors, she’s going to be charged based on the rest of the evidence.  Besides, Sarbanes-Oxley now makes all businesses preserve all emails as a paper trail.  If a company destroys these, they will no longer continue in business.  Therefore, tell IRS if you can’t come up with ‘em, we are replacing you with a Fair Tax.  Problem solved.

Next we now have found that Ansar al Sharia guy from Libya.  You know, the one who Obama couldn’t find for a long time, although he gives interviews to every long-haired, maggot-infested journalist available to write notes and record on tape.  But then they are going to try him here in the states.  Whereupon, if the jury finds him innocent after 14 years of appeals, he can just walk out of the courtroom and set off bombs around town.  I suggest we find an uninhabited, unclaimed  island in the arctic.  Proclaim it as ours.  Give him a swift trial under a tent there. No coffee or free Wifi for his lawyers either.  If he is guilty push him into the sea.  If he is innocent tell him to dive in and swim back to where he came from.  Problem solved.

Then the Washington Redskins lost their franchise name.  The Office of Patents, famed for making loud public decisions, says "Redskins" is 'degratory'.  Okay, so that also probably nixes the scheme to keep the team logo as-is and rename them  the Thinskins.  Limbaugh says they should adopt a potato as mascot.  Potato with a football helmet.  Red-skinned potato.  Naw, I suggest the mascot be a politician with a red face over having been caught in a scandal.  Use that bird from the Shoe comics who plays the part of Senator.  Alternatively, you could have a pol in front of a press conference with a red face.  Take your pick.  John Edwards, Jesse Jackson, Slick Willie, Filmer guy in SD, Anthony Weiner, Ted Kennedy.  Or call the team the Washington Overspenders with these guys as mascots.  Carve them into a Mt. Rushmore in that bluff over Arlington that faces DC.  Problem solved.

Oh, you are concerned that Andalusia II will not survive in the Middle East?  Well then supplement the population with a hefty supply of liberals who think they can talk their way out of terrorism. Who didn’t believe Ike when he said “Freedom isn’t free.”  Once they learn reality, let them return as conservatives.  We could send Hillary Reset and her husband, the Big Kahuna there.  Let Obama be the Senate-unapproved Czar of Big Opinions.  If the fighting gets too heavy for him, have a boat ready to return him to the safety of Kenya.

What’s that you say?  You think the Big Kahuna would be unfairly tortured by only being able to see the eyes of Arab women?  You don’t think the liberals could survive the Spanish Inquisition?  You say you long to see Obama swimming back to Africa with a terrorist under each arm? I thought so.

Walk, Trot and Cantor

I am amazed at how the group-think mentality of New York media pundits cannot explain what happened to Cantor.  Listen to Seib in AP: “The victory by a little-known challenger, David Brat, will give a new lease on life to the tea-party forces who supported him.”  Uh, yeah but the Tea Party organizations and leaders paid little attention to Brat and his race thinking it was not serious.  What the race indicated was how many rank-and-file Republicans are fed up.  R’s took the House in 2010 but leadership shrugged saying they couldn’t do anything.  True, but people who support a party like to hear leaders state and expound their views.  Loyal Opposition.

And the notion that Tea Party is some monolithic force is bizarre.  They are grandma and grandpa who didn’t like the direction of the country, found some like-minded souls and protested Obama in 2010.  Most have gone on to join the R’s as staunch conservatives and are now activists.  Most R’s welcome them.  A few doctrinaire guys of this group went around calling everyone RINOs if they didn’t exactly agree.  We called them aside and explained that things don’t work well that way.  A party is a group of somewhat like-minded folks who agree to promote a cause that just about everyone can buy into.  These conservatives are now re-invigorating the party.  Hubba! Hubba!

            Old buddy Ezra Klein, formerly from NY Slimes, wrote,

The upset also sends a signal to the Republican establishment and its business backers that they haven't quite accomplished their goal for the year: taking back control of the party's nominating process from unpredictable grass-roots conservatives who in recent years have succeeded in gaining nominations for candidates in some key races the party has gone on to lose.

                No grass-roots, no election win.  It is a staunch army of grass-roots that the R’s lacked for so long—forcing them to use heavy spending on advertizing to get the word out about candidates.  Dems have been smarter.  They have community organizers imbedded in many ethnic communities continuously.  But Klein, an ardent Dem, longs for the old days when R’s were just me-too D’s who protested the cost of government—green eye-shade guys.

The Republican base, at least in Cantor's district, isn't in the mood for technocratic solutionism. It's still angry, and it still believes that any accommodation is too much accommodation.

 

The next myth is that R’s must have big crossover and independent support among the all-important moderates.  This is baloney.  Turning out the base is what eluded both McCain and Romney because the rank-and-file shrugged and didn’t show up to vote.  Obama got a million fewer votes in 2012 but Romney still couldn’t win because 4 million fewer registered Republicans voted in 2012.  The base was disaffected.  And Independents?  Partisans vote twice as often as Indies.  Independents come in at least 5 flavors.  Some are positively weird, such as the 20% who have an oddball issue.  So long as the candidate supports, say, “coon hunting free access to all properties”, that independent will support the candidate.  But listen to our sage Ezra again, as he postulates a castrated Republican party he’d love to have,

   

If Republicans hadn't scared Senator Arlen Specter into the Democratic Party and if Democrats hadn't kept Senator Joe Lieberman on their side Obamacare would never have passed. If the Tea Party didn't keep knocking off viable Republicans Mitch McConnell would have been Senate Majority Leader since 2010. If Mitt Romney could have run as the Massachusetts moderate he once was Obama might well have lost in 2012. It's possible Republicans will now lose in Virginia's 7th District. The Tea Party is good at policing purity but they're terrible at winning power.

 

Finally, the libs think this was all about immigration and R’s are all racists, they believe.  But observers in Virginia say that immigration only cropped up late in the contest.  The general ‘fed up’ mood of voters with Cantor was the much larger issue.  Listen to this short synopsis by another writer.

 

Immigration reform is dead and Hillary Clinton's presidential hopes are so, so alive. Mere weeks ago the press was writing the Tea Party's obituary. Tonight, the Tea Party claimed its single biggest scalp. This speaks to the weird way the Tea Party exerts powers.

Can someone explain to me what Hillarious gets out of this?  (What difference does it make!?)   The media leftists dearly want a narrative about how R’s are infighting, that there is a tea party insurgency and establishment guys who hate them.  No, it looks to me like one establishment majority leader didn’t listen (Cochran and others beware) to the folks at home  who were fed up.  If anything needs to characterize this year, it is the Year of Fed Up.  62% of the country thinks we are going in the wrong direction.  That sorta defines it.  

Hearing Humor

She says I need to get my hearing aids checked because I don’t hear everything.  Yeah, but I usually get the story right just by knowing the characters.  Take for instance that story about Bo Bird Dog.  Evidently Obama lost him somewhere over in Afghanistan and traded 5 Taliban guys to get him back.  I knew Obama has a dog named Bo; just never knew Obama hunted.  Or that Bo Bird Dog ran off.  But dogs do that. Anyway, Bo evidently saw some other big hairy animals and wanted to join their pack.  So he ran off.  The Republicans are saying this ain’t right.  They say Obama won’t do anything about Tam or Reesy down in that Mexican jail, but I know why Obama does nothing.  He’s worried that the next Prez will appoint Tam or Reesy in charge of border security and there will be all heck to pay. So he wants to keep ‘em in that Mexican prison as long as possible.  Meanwhile the Democrats say that Bo is being swift-boated.  That seems like a fair charge.  I remember that swift boat controversy very well.  Kerry said he had done all sorts of valiant things and that Nixon had given him a raw deal and that his fellow soldiers were creeps or worse, having massacred all kinds of people in Vietnam.  I found that curious because when it comes to war and the shooting starts, all that political theory just flies out the window.  You protect your buddies and fight to kill those who want to kill you.  Last thing any soldier would say is that his buddies were vile and depraved, like Kerry did.  So then suddenly about 90% of the guys who knew Kerry in Nam were saying he was a sheister and didn’t do any of his braggy stuff.  Congress had already proved that the swift boaters hadn’t done the atrocities Kerry alleged.  And the vets proved their case.  Well that same thing is happening with Bo, so yeah, I guess he is being swift-boated.  All I got to say is that Bo must completely agree in doggy terms with Obama.  Because Obama would never bring anyone home or let them back in his presence unless they were in complete agreement with him.  You can’t just honestly disagree with Obama.  He smears anyone who disagrees. 

Now you tell me, do I not have that story right?

Or you take that other story about that guy who ran the VA, a former war hero--Shinkicky.  He had no success reforming the VA at all.  Which I could have told you would happen.  Kicking shins of bureaucrats doesn’t work.  They wear shin guards under their pants and put stadium seats down the backside so you can’t kick them in the kiester no matter how hard you want to. The only thing that works is to take away their coffee cups and threaten their jobs.  But Shinkicky couldn’t get it done. Bureaucrats are like that bald guy in Dilbert cartoons.  They call in the federal employees union.  So the only thing that will work is to break the union like Reagan did the air traffic controllers, cut their budgets, and move them to someplace where they can’t do any more harm, like the nuclear waste dump in Nevada.  But then when you think it through, Obama agrees more with the bureaucrats than the reform needed, so that’s why Shinkicky didn’t kick any shins.    

Just wait until Michelle gets her hands on Bo’s diet.  He was already in dire health?  Michelle told the school kids, “If you like your school lunch, you can keep your school lunch. Period.”

The CIA's top officer in Kabul was exposed by the White House when his name was inadvertently included on a list provided to news organizations. But don't worry, Obamacare will protect your medical privacy.
              I am told the quality of VA care also varies by region, by state and city. For example, at the Veterans Hospital in Los Angeles if your x-rays show a broken rib, they fix it with Photoshop.  President Obama said he did not know about the VA scandal Monday just as he'd earlier said he didn't know about the IRS, Benghazi and AP spying scandals. There is no limit to what President Obama doesn't know!
             So this week he flies to France to participate in the seventieth anniversary of the D-Day ceremonies on the Normandy beaches. Bill Clinton was in Normandy for the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day but of course he thought D-day was Dolly Parton's birthday.  Nancy Pelosi put five Democrats on the House committee looking into the Benghazi attack. They want to know where Obama and Hillary were that night during the consulate attack. They already asked Joe Biden where he was between nine and twelve, and he replied, “the third grade.”
             Okay, you’ve heard enough about Obama.  Now to the tabloids.  Kate Middleton's bottom was photographed by paparazzi when her skirt blew recently. There’s a way to fix this.  Have the image of Mohammed tattooed thereabouts. That will stop the press from printing pictures.
            One more.  An old, blind D-day Vet Gunnery Sergeant wandered into a feminist bar by mistake. He ordered a shot of Jack Daniels. After sitting there for a while, he yells to the bartender, 'Hey, you wanna hear an Obama joke?’ The bar immediately fell absolutely silent. The tough woman next to him said, “There are 5 female body builders sitting next to you and we all proudly voted for Obama. You still want to tell that joke?”  The old guy gave it second thought and said, “Naw, I don’t want to have to explain it 5 times.”