Right Wing Nut House

I hate days like this. There are a lot of things I’d like to write about but really don’t have anything to add to the blogospheric cacophony. Not that I’m necessarily above stealing from other bloggers. But do you really want to read your umpteenth post for the day on how Hillary is finished (or not), or Obama is a dangerous liberal cult figure (or not), or McCain is a lying sack of turd blossoms who will destroy the Republican party (or he’s worse than that).

I know I left The Huckster off that list but is anyone writing about him at all?

Then I could have blogged about the FISA fiasco. But it just seems of late I’m suffering from “Outrage Fatigue” (a term I take pride in coining. Well…if not coining the phrase I certainly popularized it. Um…perhaps not popularized, more like “used it to its best effect.”) Try as I might, I found it hard to rant and rail against liberals for their incredibly stupid, delibertately dishonest caterwauling about interrupting the Tom Lantos memorial service with a procedural motion on FISA when it was the Speaker’s admitted fault that the motion was unavoidable under the rules and that a scheduling snafu had occurred to boot.

Did that stop the “Republicans polticize the dead” crowd from throwing a tantrum worthy of any two year old? Of course not. And to make the criticism ascend to the level of sublime irony, it seems our lefty friends forget that Google has gone public and is actually making a little money now. If I typed in the name “Paul Wellstone” and added “Memorial Service” to the search, you would come across a story so profoundly disturbing that you would be forgiven for wretching while reading it.

It seems the Democrats wanted to honor the late great Senator from Minnesota who tragically died in a plane crash a few days before the 2002 election with a “memorial service.” I put the event in quotes because whatever Democrats tried to call it, it became a hot house political rally for the left. Republican friends of Wellstone - and there were many who respected his honesty, integrity, and sincere desire to take others views into account - found themselves the target of political barbs. The White House offered to send the Vice President of the United States - he was disinvited. One speaker went so far as to demand that Norm Coleman exit the race and allow a Democrat to win.

I guess when liberals politicize a memorial service, it’s “speaking truth to power” and is perfectly acceptable. Like when Jimmy Carter alluded to government spying on Martin Luther King at Coretta King’s funeral - a veiled reference to the wiretapping controversies of the day. And Joseph Lowrey, at the same memorial service, excoriated President Bush for the Iraq War.

There have been other examples of the left using dead people like political clubs. Accusing the GOP of doing so when a simple reading of the rules would have given the lie to that meme propelled the left wingosphere beyond contempt and into the stratosphere of malicious mischief.

You can see my dilemma. Unless you can summon the appropriate amount of outrage, simply listing the transgressions of liberals for exactly that which they are taking the right to task becomes an exercise in boredom killing. Everyone knows that lefties are a bunch of hypocritical bastards with the morals of an alley cat and the brains of a marmoset. How many times can you say that and remain interesting?

There were other topics I could have written about today. Pakistan is set to elect a parliament on Monday. Musharraf has been making deals with al-Qaeda and the Taliban so quickly, he’s running out of white flags to run up Pakistani flag poles. Perhaps in spite of this, he is easily the most unpopular man in Pakistan. He envies George Bush’s approval numbers.

And yet, given that he has forbidden much international monitoring of the election, it is probable he will try to monkey with the results. He will almost certainly not try to engineer a victory for his party but rather deny the opposition a 2/3 majority which would result in his immediate and well deserved retirement. The US should condemn this election before it happens just to get a head start on the mayhem that will probably follow.

Kenya has been in the news recently as well. Not only is Obama’s good buddy Raila Odinga of the Luo tribe still winking at the violence being carried out by his supporters against the corrupt, election stealing government of President Kibaki and his Kikuyu tribe, but it now appears that the Germans of all people are offering Kenyans the opportunity to use their own power sharing agreement as the basis for a rapproachment.

I know there’s some really bad international relations joke in there but I can’t find it at the moment.

Other topics I could have written about were Lebanon (tipping toward civil war), Afghanistan (NATO is going to its grave with a whimper), Iraq (things aren’t as good or as bad as people are saying), GOP election prospects (where?), and the horrific tragedy at Northern Illinois University (talk about politicizing dead people…).

Any one of these topics I could have turned into one of my brilliant, penetrating, incisive essays, read by millions, and influencing the movers and shakers in government, bending them to my iron will.

But telling the world what to do gets boring sometimes so I’ll just sit here and shut up for the time being. Maybe tomorrow I’ll find something interesting to write about…

Seven of Bugs Moran’s boys lie riddled with bullets in a Clark Street Garage on Valentines Day, 1929.

All my life, I’ve been asked if I am related to Chicago crime boss George “Bugs” Moran, whose outfit was decimated on Valentines Day in 1929. The answer is no, I don’t think so. Moran was and is a very common name in Chicago, a result of an Irish influx in the 1880’s - the same migration that brought my grandfather’s family here from Ireland to escape another in a series of 19th century famines.

Though not related to him, I, like most Chicagoans feel connected to that bloody past if only because part of the legacy of Capone and the crime organizations that operated with impunity in the city was political. The fact is, the gangsters couldn’t operate as freely as they did without having the political clout to intimidate the police, the courts, and ordinary citizens into tolerating their illegal activities.

And it wasn’t just liquor. Gambling, prostitution, loan sharking, and murder for hire were rampant in the city as Capone’s gang literally ran wild in the streets. They routinely murdered those who stood in their way. They paid off police, judges, prosecutors, and most importantly, they had the Mayor himself in their hip pocket.

William Hale “Big Bill” Thompson was a larger than life character who was extremely popular with white, working class voters due to his bombastic style and pugnacious attitude. His first stint as Mayor (1915-23) was marked by the rise of various crime organizations who battled in the streets for control of the lucrative beer and liquor market. He had it in his mind to run for President so he began to collect $3 a month from city workers in order to build a war chest. It is thought that Al Capone was also giving him payoffs although it was never proven. (After his death, two safe deposit boxes were found in his name stuffed with $1.5 million in cash.)

As colorful as Big Bill Thompson was, he was also a civic liability. Here’s an excerpt from a Chicago Tribune editorial following his defeat in 1931:

For Chicago Thompson has meant filth, corruption, obscenity, idiocy and bankruptcy…. He has given the city an international reputation for moronic buffoonery, barbaric crime, triumphant hoodlumism, unchecked graft, and a dejected citizenship. He nearly ruined the property and completely destroyed the pride of the city. He made Chicago a byword for the collapse of American civilization. In his attempt to continue this he excelled himself as a liar and defamer of character

Capone assisted Thompson in his 1927 run to regain the mayoralty largely through intimidating opponents and their supporters. This was crucial to Capone’s plans to make Chicago a wide open city where a man with sybaritic tendencies could get anything he wanted, anytime of day or night. As Capone himself often pointed out, he was just supplying a service that the people wanted.

What the people didn’t want were the constant street battles between various hoodlum outfits. Beginning in the early 1920’s, Capone systematically destroyed these organizations through murder and muscle until in 1929, only Bugs Moran and his Northside Gang stood in his way. Hence, the attempt to wipe Moran and most of his gang out by staging a fake police raid at a Clark Street garage and gunning down 7 Moran associates. Moran himself escaped when he spotted the police cruiser being used by the assassins and never went into the garage.

Moran and his gang survived and the gangster hung on to his slice of the action on the North Side. But Capone’s days were numbered. The feds led by Frank Wilson, an agent for the Bureau of Internal Revenue, hounded Capone on income tax evasion and with the help of Elliot Ness and his Untouchables, wrapped up an ironclad case against the gangster for not paying taxes from 1925-29. Capone’s 11 year sentence finished him as boss. It did not finish his organization.

To this day, the old mob still has its tenterhooks in the city. Every once and a while, a connection surfaces between a politician or a policeman and various elements of the Chicago organization built by Capone. No one is surprised. No one is shocked. It’s the way that the “City That Works” …works.

It is a legacy that Chicagoans forget at their peril.

The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category is “A Short Hitch” by Done With Mirrors. Finishing second was “The Most Ridiculous Story of 2008? Part 2.” by Cheat Seeking Missiles.

Finishing first in the non-Council category was “Changing the Organizational Culture (Updated)” by Small Wars Journal.

If you’d like to participate in the weekly Watchers Council vote, go here and follow instructions.

It must have been one helluva speech.

In November of 1095, Pope Urban II stood up to speak at a gathering of church leaders who were meeting at the Council of Clermont to discuss the latest entreaty from the Eastern Holy Roman Emperor Alexios I Komnenos, who was begging for help to drive the Muslims out of his kingdom.

It seems that the Byzantine King had been at war with just about everybody in order to restore some of the luster to the empire lost by incursions by both Europeans like the Normans and especially the Seljuk Turks who had been carving up his diminishing kingdom like a beef roast for two hundred years. City after city, province after province in Asia Minor fell to Muslims. This included the Holy Land - a former jewel in the Byzantine Crown due to the enormously profitable tourist/pilgrimage trade. The Muslims, however, had internal problems of their own and in 1095, the Pope decided the time was ripe to strike.

The Pope’s speech at Clermont was apparently a doozy. There are at least 5 versions of it extant. This excerpt is from a recollection from a charmer by the name of Robert the Monk:

Let the deeds of your ancestors move you and incite your minds to manly achievements; the glory and greatness of king Charles the Great, and of his son Louis, and of your other kings, who have destroyed the kingdoms of the pagans, and have extended in these lands the territory of the holy church. Let the holy sepulchre of the Lord our Saviour, which is possessed by unclean nations, especially incite you, and the holy places which are now treated with ignominy and irreverently polluted with their filthiness. Oh, most valiant soldiers and descendants of invincible ancestors, be not degenerate, but recall the valor of your progenitors.

Aided by the skillful propaganda put out by such colorful luminaries as Peter the Hermit, who fostered the notion that Christian pilgrims were badly mistreated by the Muslims, Europeans, both noble and peasant alike, responded enthusiastically. (Peter the Hermit led 100,000 poorly trained and loosely organized “crusaders” in what became known as “The People’s Crusade. Unfortunately, they seemed more adept at murdering Jews in Eastern Europe and sacking towns that refused to give them food than in fighting Muslims. The Turks massacred them.)

The Pope’s speech was read in every pulpit in Christendom. And along with his bloodcurdling threats against the Muslims, Urban promised anyone who died trying to take the Holy Land back would pass Go and take a shortcut to heaven.

Given the miserable conditions of the European peasantry, heaven sounded like a good deal in comparison - as did the chance to rob, pillage, rape, and generally raise a rumpus as armies of the time were wont to do. So an enormous army was raised comprising several segments and sent off to conquer the Holy Land. This task they accomplished with the taking of Jerusalem in 1099 - an event marked by a horrific slaughter of most of the residents including Jews, Muslims and eastern Christians.

But what possessed so many to drop everything they were doing and run off to fight strangers in a faraway land?

Apparently, Pope Urban’s clarion call to serve touched something deep within his flock. Some historians point to a new European consciousness that spread the notion of western superiority and that Muslim domination of the Holy Land was intolerable in that regard. Other historians note that Muslims had been encroaching on European lands for 300 years, taking parts of Italy, Spain, and Eastern Europe which threatened the kingdoms of northern Europe.

Whatever the reason, Urban’s call for a Crusade to take back the Holy Land was really a charge to revive a glorious past and change the balance of power in favor of Europeans. Those who participated really, really believed in the rightness of their cause, that taking the Holy Land for Christians was “God’s will” (Deus lo volt!). In the name of the Pope and his holy decree, they felt justified in committing all sorts of heinous acts of slaughter and mayhem. Caught up in a religious fervor, those few knights who tried to act in a Christian manner and restrain their followers were ignored in favor of a mentality that gave everyone’s actions a patina of legitimacy regardless of the brutality and hardship that resulted.

This is the essence of a crusade; where emotion trumps reason and belief or faith is substituted for rational thought.

There are many of Senator Barack Obama’s opponents who refer to the “cult-like” atmosphere of his campaign or worse, describe his followers as cultists. Others see a kind of religious fervor at work in the Obama camp.

Neither analysis should be taken seriously as Sara at Orcinus points out:

A lot of people may be surrendering their will temporarily. Quite a few are expressing as much anger as hope — perhaps because expressing this much emotion is new for them, perhaps because they were raised in an era of Rush Limbaugh, perhaps because they’re new to politics and wrongly think this is how it’s done. (Their candidate is in a fine position to deliver some etiquette lessons. I hope he does — and soon — because the backlash is forming.) And, no doubt, there will come a time when Obama’s True Believers are crushed to realize that he appeared to promise one thing, and then did another. But, again, these are normal parts of any large-scale social change movement: FDR, for example, inspired at least this much devotion among the desperate and Depression-scarred citizenry of his early years in office; and it was that implacable trust and support that enabled him to lead the country through a time of radical change.

It’s notable to me that I’m hearing these concerns mainly from aging Boomers who are still nursing the deep wounds inflicted by the savaging of their own dreams, and fear that their children’s naive enthusiasm for Obama will lead them into similar disillusionment. And if that’s you, well, then, you’re right: it probably will. But another word for that is “growing up.” If we love our children, the best thing we can do for them on that inevitable day that they see their hero’s clay feet for the first time is not contaminate them with our own bitter cynicism. Somehow, we need to teach them — which means, even if we don’t feel it, modeling for them — that the only right response to disappointment is to step back, think it through, and find another, better way to re-engage the fight. Quitting is not an option. Given the current state of the country and the planet, neither is failure.

This is an amazing passage when you think about it. Basically, the author is saying that young Obama supporters have suspended their rational thought processes - if they ever had any - in favor of placing unquestioning faith in a politician and that to avoid becoming “disillusioned,” they must develop critical thinking skills in order to deal with their inevitable disappointment.

A more damning statement on this current generation’s capacity to think rationally I have never read. Raised and educated as this generation has been in a liberal bubble of multi-culturalism and political correctness while neglecting the development of independent and critical thinking, it may have been inevitable that they would fall head over heels for the kind of candidacy represented by Obama. He’s different. He’s popular. He makes us feel good for supporting him. And most importantly, he is so vague and nebulous in his politics that, like an empty vessel, you can fill him up with just about anything your heart desires.

Ask one of these rabid Obama supporters why they want him to be president and you’d probably get a similar answer if you asked peasant from Pope Urban’s army why he’s walking from France all the way to Jerusalem to fight a war. Neither will be particularly specific and are likely to mumble something about “believing” in the cause.

The author goes on to show the true nature of these “Obamamaniacs” and the hope placed in Obama to fulfill the “unfinished” hard left agenda from the 60’s:

This misguided “cult” talk not only misunderstands how social change occurs; it’s also giving the GOP a weapon it will use to the hilt if Obama is the candidate in the general election. They’re going to demonize those energetic kids as the re-animated zombie ghosts of the dirty f**king hippies of the 60s. And, in a historic sense, they are. They’re our own children, emerging to finish the work that their parents got too tired and too disillusioned to finish. For us old Boomers, they’re our very last shot at the dream.

We have a choice here. We can either bless them for their energy and commitment, hand them our tattered old ball, and see just how far they’ll be able to move it down the field — even as we stand by with the Bandaids and Bactine, shouting encouragement and coaching tips from the bench, just as many of us have done at a thousand soccer games through the years.

Or we can doom their fresh efforts with our own cynicism, withdraw our approval, make fun of them, and tell them they’re going off the deep end by joining up with some crazy mass movement that will never deliver on its promises of change.

Remarkable. In other words, we should encourage them in their irrational exuberance because if we try and inject a little reality, a little rational thought into their “belief” in Obama, we will make them less willing to unquestioningly follow the candidate toward whatever “change” he eventually settles on.

The Obama Crusade is far from being a Children’s Crusade. It is made up of people of all colors, ages, ethnicities, and religions. But what unites most of them is an inability to disassociate the “promise” of what Obama represents with the reality of what he may actually do as president. A fervent belief in this promise without a concomitant skepticism at what can actually be accomplished will doom this Crusade to eventually suffering the disappointment that simply announcing you are for “change” means little when you don’t get specific about what you are going to change as well as tell people how you are going to accomplish your objectives.

No, not a Cult of Obama but clearly, a movement born of hope, faith, and childlike acceptance of the candidate’s “promise” of greatness.

Is this the stuff of revolution? I don’t see it. More likely, this fervor will drift into the background as the interminably long general election campaign gets underway. At that point, I will guarantee you that if Obama fails to define himself, others will do it for him. And as Obama gets more specific and people realize exactly what his idea of “change” actually is, I suspect that the candidate will appear a little less like a man on a white horse and more like a normal Democratic party politician.

Is it really possible that the world has passed the Clinton’s by?

Yesterday’s total immolation of Hillary Clinton by Barack Obama - along with his 5 previous double digit wins since Super Tuesday - reveal as much about how badly the Democratic party truly wants to move on from the Clinton era as it does the wild popularity of Obama. When the electorate rejects you by 3-1 and 4-1 margins, a little voice in your head must begin asking you “How much more of this kind of humiliation can you take?”

The answer in Hillary’s case is thankfully, not too much more. The exit polls from yesterday in Virginia and Maryland show how much her base of supporters have betrayed her. In Maryland, 62% of Democratic voters were women - and Obama got 55% of their vote. Hillary captured the white women 56-38 and that was it. She lost single women by an astonishing 59-38. In New Hampshire, Clinton won a large plurality of the women’s vote while getting 50% of the single women’s vote in a 5 person race.

The tide has turned.

In Virginia, by a more than 2-1 margin, people preferred “change” to “experience.” Obama also destroyed Hillary in every income group - even the under $50,000 voters who had been her bedrock support in previous primaries. In Maryland, she barely edged Obama in the over 60 age group 48-47 - another leg of her base she needs to remain upright.

Clinton handily won white Democrats and Hispanics. But with Obama winning 2/3 of independents and 80-90% of African Americans, it is very difficult to see where Clinton can cobble together the blocs necessary to win a primary. If she has lost the women’s vote (especially single women), the lunch pail crowd, and the nursing home contingent, where does she go for votes?

She was in Texas yesterday appealing to Hispanics. This is a good idea but she will need to find a way to peel support away from Obama if she expects to win. In South Carolina, Bill Clinton successfully brought a majority of white Democrats to her side. But they lost the primary because blacks and independents turned out in record numbers for Obama. Now Hillary apparently can’t win a majority of women, of Democratic men, independents, or of any large bloc of Democratic voters who she or her husband had been able to count on in elections.

Watch Wisconsin next week. If the same gloomy numbers emerge for Clinton, she may as well pack it in. Ohio is a state much like Wisconsin with a large union presence, a smaller percentage of African Americans, and a large white middle class. Indeed, in some polls, she is down by as much as 11 points already - and that was before the blow out last night along the Potomac river.

She has done all the traditional things to get her campaign righted. She has fired people - only to discover that when she fired her Latina campaign manager she angered her most reliable base group; the Hispanics. She is ignoring Obama’s victories (as if putting her hands over her ears and screaming NEENER! NEENER! NEENER! the bad news will just go away and she won’t have to think about it much). And she is plugging away, not slowing down her pace, still fighting - to the end.

This is how the Clinton era in national American politics will end. They came into the national limelight hand in hand, a true ’90’s “power couple” with a frightening amount of ambition and determination, lighting up the sky like exploding fireworks and laying waste to Washington as well as their personal friendships. The number of broken lives they left in their wake is astonishing - even for a politician. Harassed women, aides thrown to the wolves, friends thrown to the prosecutors - a body count extraordinary in its diversity. White, black, Hispanic, Asian, women, men, - a microcosm of the identity politics they played with such relish - and such ruthlessness.

Another loss like Virginia and Maryland in Wisconsin will almost certainly increase calls for her to drop out in the name of party unity. Some of her Super Delegates may even begin to desert her. It will be at that point that she will look at Ohio and Texas and perhaps realize the futility of continuing on. She probably won’t drop out at that point despite the hopelessness of her situation. But her humiliation will be complete. The once vaunted Clinton political machine would have been destroyed by newcomer - a self styled new Democrat who rejected the politics of personal destruction in favor of a kinder, gentler approach.

They will go out humiliated by an electorate that will end up rejecting their brand of “take no prisoners” politics in favor of the empty platitudes of an interloper. How it will gall both of them, in love with the intricacies of policy, to see a candidate eclipse them who eschews specifics in favor of atmospherics and feel-good populism.

There will be no political obituary for Hillary. She has a career and a future in the Senate if she chooses. But she has never seemed to me to be a “settler.” Her every move in the Senate these last 8 years has been a calculation on how it will affect her run for the president. To simply be a senator for the sake of serving the country? I just don’t know.

The Clinton’s will not fade into the background - Bill will see to that. But their influence will be severely weakened. They will probably remain personally popular - as long as they can raise gobs of money for their friends. But the heady days of being on top and riding the tiger are almost certainly over.

My latest Pajamas Media column is on the suddenly narrowing options open to Hillary Clinton’s faltering campaign.

Hillary isn’t just losing these primaries. She is getting slaughtered. But she still has one last card to play; her ability to carry Democratic strongholds:

If Obama has a knock against him during this brilliant run of victories beginning on Super Tuesday when he won 13 states to Clinton’s 8, and continuing on through his last 8 straight wins since then, it is that the Illinois senator has failed to win any of the 10 largest states in the union save his home state of Illinois. This is significant because traditional Democratic general election strategy relies on the huge electoral vote harvest available in those states to be competitive with Republicans on election day.

It is a compelling argument and probably the only one she has left. But Obama will have his own counter-argument. It is he who will have won the large majority of primaries and primary votes. It would be undemocratic, he will say, to choose a candidate who finished second when the people spoke but was handed the nomination by a quirk in party rules.

For the rest, go here.

The Rick Moran Show will go live tonight at the special time of 8:00 PM - 9:00 PM Central Time.

Tonight, I’ll have my trusty sidekick and co-host Rich Baehr, Political Correspondent of The American Thinker with me for the entire hour as we examine the results from Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.

Joining us in the first half hour will be Ed Morrissey of Captainsquartersblog.Com.

For those of us inclined to grit our teeth, hold our nose, and grab our balls when going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for John McCain on election day next November, all I can say is after reading this interview of him in Der Spiegel, there is a very good chance our teeth will be worn down to nothing, our noses will have permanent pinch marks on them, and our balls will feel like lead weights between our legs by the time we vote:

SPIEGEL: America has lost a lot of friends because President George W. Bush angered, indeed outraged, them. He allowed human rights to be violated at Guantanamo Bay, and he dismissed the joint effort to combat global warming. Under a President McCain, could we expect a change of course?

McCain: Yes. I would announce that we are not ever going to torture anyone held in American custody. I would announce that we were closing Guantanamo Bay and moving those prisoners to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and I would announce a commitment to addressing climate change and my dedication to a global agreement — but it has to include India and China.

I’ll bet anyone within 50 miles of Leavenworth is jumping for joy at that news.

Bryan at Hot Air made a game out of this interview, asking readers to identify the speaker and giving Democratic candidates as choices.

I would have picked Obama saying the exact same thing. And it gets worse:

SPIEGEL: Will America attempt to go it alone less frequently in the future?

McCAIN: Well, we all hope that America will be multilateral again in the future. There were times when the United States acted unilaterally, but I think we would all prefer to work in concert with our friends and allies.

SPIEGEL: What role will the United Nations play? Bush always ignored the UN.

McCain: The United Nations always plays an important role. But right now we are having to deal with a Russia that is clearly intent on blocking action. That’s why the UN must act in a league of democracies that share our values and our common principles.

Okay, so…we hold 6 party talks to get North Korea to disarm but we’re going it alone?

We are allowing the Big Three of France, Germany, and Great Britain to negotiate with the Iranians and we’re going it alone?

We get NATO to take over the Afghan mission. They agree. And we’re going it alone?

Prior to the Iraq invasion, we begged and pleaded with many nations to join us. Thirty one nations did. And we’re going it alone?

The leftist narrative brooks no countervailing argument or evidence. There were many other examples of the US not going it alone in international affairs but it doesn’t matter. To Spiegel and the domestic left, facts don’t mean squat. The narrative is the thing.

The same holds true for Spiegel’s question about America “always” ignoring the UN? When? About what?

McCain should have jumped down that interviewer’s throat for making those two ridiculously false statements. Instead, he answered them like any good liberal would.

What a pandering, sycophantic, arrogant popinjay he is.

Then there was this eye opener:

SPIEGEL: So is America coming back to renegotiate the Kyoto Protocol?

McCain: I believe America is going to enter into negotiations to try to reach a global agreement. But, as I said, that agreement must include India and China, two of the emerging economies of the world. We would be foolish not to do so.

If McCain doesn’t realize by now that any “global agreement” on reducing emissions will ask more of the US than any other nation - so much so that only a Democrat like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama would agree to such a disadvantageous treaty - then it really is time to batten down the hatches and zip up your wallet. Any agreement with China and India will necessarily be token and superficial. Both of those countries don’t want to ruin their economies on the altar of global warming any more than we do.

But I don’t trust McCain on this any more than I trust him on judges or taxes. He could easily sell this country out in a climate agreement that placed the burden of reducing emissions on the US while virtually ignoring China and India thus giving those competitors a huge advantage. But as long as it kept him in good standing with the media, I think he’d do it.

Reading that entire interview, there were places that you really weren’t sure if you were listening to a Democrat or a Republican, liberal or conservative. This is McCain’s identity and I guess we better get used to it. It is maddening, worrisome, even frightening at times. But that’s being a “maverick” I suppose.

One thing for certain; we’re going to need the patience of Job to endure an entire campaign season with this guy. Otherwise, I’m going to have a nervous breakdown by the summer.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

I am not much of a policy wonk. Rarely do I don my pointy hat and delve into the mysteries of exactly how government tries to run our lives. Usually it is enough for me to spout generalities while railing against bureaucrats, liberals, and eager beaver do gooders who often act as surrogates for government policy in lieu of direct intervention by agencies.

No, I have eschewed covering policy for the most part. I am not smart enough and fear if I cram my head with too much of that stuff, other more important things will dribble out of my ears. Why take a chance on losing vital information like what Eva Longoria likes to do in bed or the name of Britney Spears’ favorite psychiatrist?

But I’ll take that chance by delving into what promises to be the number one controversy that will hit the blogosphere if a Democrat is elected president next November; mandates and the drive to coerce the American people into buying health insurance.

What is a health insurance mandate? Basically, it is government forcing you to purchase insurance even if you don’t want it or feel you have no need for it. The principle is based on the idea that those who do not have health insurance are getting a “free ride” from the rest of us when they get sick or injured. Since hospitals are forced to treat you even if you have no money, the cost of treating your sorry butt if you are uninsured is born by the rest of us who carry insurnace or, in 85% of cases, by local, state, and federal government. As a result, health care costs skyrocket and premiums become more expensive.

Apparently around 21% of people who don’t purchase health insurance are young, single, healthy workers who can afford individual premiums but refuse to cover themselves. This drives the price of health insurance up even more because it leaves older, less healthy people in the insurance pool who are more likely to need health care.

So the thinking is if we get everyone covered under an insurance program, premiums will come down and we will be able to get health care costs under control.

And we all live happily ever after…

Not exactly. For instance, what do you do with people who despite the gentle entreaties of government, refuse to buy insurance? No Democrat will give a straight answer to this question and for good reason; the only cost effective, efficient way to round up the health insurance deadbeats is to garnish their wages or assess a penalty by using the IRS to enforce the law. The idea is that taxpayers would provide proof of insurance when they file their tax return. Scofflaws would have the premium come out of their refund or the IRS could simply bill them for the amount owed. Failing to get the money that way, wage garnishment would be in the offing.

But there is a huge problem with using the IRS to ensure we’re insured; nearly 18 million low income tax payers aren’t required to file a tax return while another 9 million Americans refuse to do so. That’s 27 million Americans who could potentially fall through the cracks of any enforcement regime. One plan advanced by The New America Foundation would mandate that all Americans file a proof of insurance with the IRS whether they pay taxes or not. But that plan doesn’t allow for people who simply refuse to file. And, after all, some of the uninsured are elderly, homeless, or mentally ill. Others may have changed their address multiple times.

Perhaps looking at compliance rates for other mandates might give us an idea of what we might expect with health insurance strictures. Most of us are mandated to pay for auto liability insurance. Compliance varies but ranges from between 66% - 96% depending on the state. Also, in states where there is a childhood immunization requirement, compliance reaches an average of 77%.

Authors of this paper published in Health Affairs journal found several factors affecting the rate of compliance with mandates:

“Compliance is easy and relatively inexpensive; penalties for non-compliance are stiff but not excessive; and enforcement is routine, appropriately timed, and frequent.”

Using the above criteria, one can see problems immediately. For instance, has government ever made anything “easy and relatively inexpensive?” Even if mandates started out that way, there is every reason to believe that the cost would rise swiftly with more and more rules promulgated and exceptions made.

And those who have dealt with the IRS can attest better than I whether any enforcement done by the agency is “routine” or “appropriately timed.” Congress and others have been trying to change the corporate culture at the IRS for years and have failed utterly. It seems far fetched to expect the agency to change in the matter of collecting for health insurance.

Both Democratic candidates would probably use the IRS to enforce their idea of universal coverage. The difference is that Hillary Clinton’s plan specifically calls for mandates to coerce people and businesses to purchase insurance while Obama’s plan relies on a somewhat more voluntary (and probably less successful) belief that making insurance affordable will automatically cause the vast majority of those who don’t have insurance presently to buy some.

Both plans would call on healthy insureds to subsidize unhealthy insureds by ignoring such supposed trivialities as pre-existing conditions or other actuarial criteria. Instead of those who are more likely to use the health care system paying more in premiums, those less likely to be sick are asked to pay the same amount as those actually using the system. It’s like telling someone with three drunk driving convictions and a history of accidents that he doesn’t have to pay any more in insurance than someone who has never had so much as a speeding ticket.

Both plans would subsidize those who can’t afford health insurance through tax credits or direct federal subsidies. As mentioned previously, most poor people do not pay any taxes at all which would make a tax credit an interesting exercise in government coercion. Those who currently don’t need to file a tax return would be forced to do so in order to claim the tax credit.

Even a direct subsidy as proposed by Obama has problems. One must assume a mechanism to insure that the subsidy is spent on health insurance and not some other less vital household expense like food or cable TV.

Both candidates offer plans that would coerce businesses to give health care benefits to their employees. Which is more draconian? Both would penalize businesses through increased taxes if they failed to cover their employees. Obama would give a break to the very small business by making them exempt. Clinton would offer a tax break to smaller businesses to encourage them to offer insurance. If they don’t, they pay a penalty.

Obama’s plan differs from Clinton’s not only on mandates but also by his proposing a “National Health Insurance Exchange” - nanny statism run wild:

The Obama plan will create a National Health Insurance Exchange to help individuals who wish to purchase a private insurance plan. The Exchange will act as a watchdog group and help reform the private insurance market by creating rules and standards for participating insurance plans to ensure fairness and to make individual coverage more affordable and accessible. Insurers would have to issue every applicant a policy, and charge fair and stable premiums that will not depend upon health status. The Exchange will require that all the plans offered are at least as generous as the new public plan and have the same standards for quality and efficiency. The Exchange would evaluate plans and make the differences among the plans, including cost of services, public.

Why doesn’t the government just take over the health insurance industry? Under this “Exchange,” all market forces would be corrupted because of interference by this quaisi-government board of inquisitors.

Both plans make grandiose claims about bringing down the cost of health care through “preventive” measures. Unfortunately, that idea has limited use both for improving health and bringing down the cost of health care.

Ezra Klein, who has written extensively on the health care issue from a liberal perspective, outlines the problems with preventive care:

First, the impacts of preventive medicine are often overstated. It’s not that cleaning up the air or putting everyone on a gym regimen would greatly improve health — but people don’t follow gym regimens, and business doesn’t let you clean air. Furthermore, not all interventions are created equal. Better parenting might be beneficial, but it’s unlikely to be more effective — either on economic or biological grounds — than the use of statins, or hypertensive drugs, or daily tablets of aspirin. There are a lot of highly effective medical interventions which are very, very cheap. But our system is very poor at incentivizing their use.

Meanwhile, the reason doctors are constantly prescribing statins along with admonitions to exercise and eat better is because using public policy to change diet and exercise habits is really, really, hard, unless you’re prepared to be very heavy-handed (i.e, outlawing trans fats in restaurants, setting portion limits, etc). Indeed, part of the problem with preventive health measures is that, rather often, they don’t work very well. Like with traditional health care, some things really succeed (stripping lead out of gasoline, giving people antibiotics), and lots of things…don’t. And that’s to sidestep the weird reality that what drives health care politics is concern over money which, in fact, is quite rational: Folks don’t want to go bankrupt, and smart politicians don’t want the government to lose all space for spending on other priorities.

All of these measures to bring down the cost of health care and insure more Americans basically come down to this; government coercion on a level rarely seen in America. And it only promises to get worse. Neither the Clinton or Obama plan will cover everyone simply because people - millions of people - will refuse to take part. The Massachusetts plan which mandates people buy insurance is failing to cover those who don’t have insurance simply because half of them refuse to sign up - despite the penalties:

A group of doctors and health policy analysts, including a number of Obama advisers, pointed out in a letter released Thursday that Massachusetts, the only state with an insurance mandate, has thus far failed to enroll nearly half of its uninsured despite imposing a modest first-year tax penalty of $219 (the fine increases significantly this year). Because the Massachusetts program is less than a year old, it is not yet possible to fully judge the effectiveness of its mandate.

Mr. Obama raised the Clinton campaign’s ire late last week by charging in a voter mailing that “Hillary’s health care plan forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can’t afford it… and you pay a penalty if you don’t.”

And that brings us back to questioning the efficacy of health insurance mandates - not as a vehicle to solve the problem of “free riders” or those who can’t afford the cost of health insurance. The rock bottom, basic reality is that in a free society, when government forces people to do something they do not wish to do, liberty is lost and individual rights are trampled upon.

The arguement that “We already have mandates for auto insurance among other things so what’s the big deal?” doesn’t hold water either. Every additional mandate initiated by government cuts into the notion of individual responsibility and substitutes collective will. The Congressional Budget Office put it thusly:

An individual mandate has two features that, in combination, make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would have to be heavily regulated by the federal government.

As this Cato Institute policy analysis points out, mandates are a “slippery slope” to national health care insurance. And the plans offered by both Democratic candidates promise little in the way of relief while virtually guaranteeing that the quality of health care for the average American will go down.

In future years - as with all government run health care plans in the industrialized world - costs will rise, benefits will go down, and some form of rationing health care services will be inevitable.

There are free market solutions to many of our problems with affordable health insurance and rising health care costs. But in the rush to pile the responsibility on the back of government, no one seems willing to even try them. The Democrats have successfully spun the narrative that only government can solve these problems, that the market doesn’t work and that therefore, only mandates and “Exchanges” can save the American family from the health care monster.

If one of them is elected next November, we will probably see the biggest change in the American citizen’s relationship to government since the income tax amendment was ratified. Intrusive, coercive government polcies will become the law of the land. And we will be poorer in liberty and individual freedom because of it.

There are two possible explanations for what happened at the Washington State Caucuses on Saturday night.

1. GOP Washington state officials are a bunch of idiotic boobs who didn’t have a clue what they were doing.

2. A conspiracy was afoot to give the Caucuses to John McCain no matter what the final tally said.

I tend to discount #2 for the simple reason that anyone who reads the explanation of why the party stopped counting with 13% of the vote left and John McCain up by only 200 votes would realize instantly that these guys have the brains of a marmoset and therefore incapable of carrying out any plot more sophisticated than that which could be planned by an 8 year old:

Now, when we were watching this last night and I was trying to examine the tea leaves this morning, I was assuming they’d come forward with some story that there was some hang up with the votes or some mechanical issue. Whether it would be true is another matter. But you’d think they’d at least come up with a good story.

But state party chair Luke Esser said that he just thought it was the right thing to do. According to Esser, sometime overnight Esser did some sort of back of the envelope statistical analysis of the the margin of McCain’s lead (1.8%) and the number votes left uncounted (13%) and decided that Huckabee didn’t have a chance and he’d shut the thing down and declare McCain the winner.

So was that a good idea? Here’s Esser’s rationale …

“Maybe it would have been safer if I hadn’t said anything. But it was an exciting and historic day for the state and I thought if I was confident about what the outcome would be I should share that with the people who had gone out to their caucuses.”

So it was just such a rollicking good time Esser figured he owed the participants a decision as long as he was confident what the outcome would be.

I’m really not sure I’ve ever heard anything that ridiculous.

Neither have I. Until I read how Esser calculated his “back of the envelope statistical analysis” of why Huckabee couldn’t catch up despite being so close and with so many caucus sites uncounted:

Esser said their last county report on Saturday came shortly before 10:15 p.m., at which point they had 87.2 percent of precincts reporting. That’s when they did an analysis, saying: “Let’s take every county where Huckabee is beating McCain, and double the margin of victory,” Esser said. “And then take every county where McCain is winning and cut in half that margin of victory. Even if you assume that, Sen. McCain still holds on.

“That’s when we said we’re confident that Sen. McCain’s lead was going to hold up,” Esser said. “I would have done the same for Gov. Huckabee if he had the same margin and the same underlying dynamics as Sen. McCain.”

Remarkable stupidity. Only someone with no clue about statistics could have come up with such an unscientific “formula” and determine the outcome of such a close race. And only someone oblivious to their own ignorance would have the sheer audacity to announce the “results” and try to pass them off as official.

To make matters even worse, Esser decided to hunker down and try and weather the storm by crawling under the bedcovers and pretending to be asleep - just like any 8 year old caught doing something dumb:

Late Update: It seems that Washington State GOP chair Luke Esser spent most of the day avoiding calls from the Huckabee campaign. And when he finally got back to them he told a lawyer for Huckabee’s campaign that they’d probably count the rest of the votes some time next week. When the lawyer, Lauren Huckabee, the candidate’s daughter-in-law, requested that a Huckabee lawyer be present when the remaining votes were counted, Esser hung up on her. Before the hang up, Huckabee also asked Esser about the DIY statistical analysis he did to conclude that he should call the race (Esser’s expertise in statistics apparently stems from previous work as a state prosecutor and a sports writer). Was there an analysis of what precincts the remaining votes came from? According to Huck campaign manager Ed Rollins, Esser admitted that he didn’t know which precincts the remaining votes came from.

See what I mean about him being too stupid to concoct a conspiracy favoring McCain or anyone else?

Now, what might be plausible is that some McCain operative whispered in his ear on Saturday night and made his case using the faulty analysis Esser relied on to call the race. And now that the crap has hit the fan, he is unwilling to finger the McCain campaign - for obvious reasons. First, it would make him look like a dupe. Second, it could very well severely damage McCain’s candidacy to have it revealed his campaign was trying to monkey with the vote count.

But I think that a long shot at best. Esser probably really thought he was doing us all a favor by announcing the results before everything was tabulated. And it’s that kind of breathtaking stupidity that makes me believe that Esser would probably not have conspired with the McCain camp but simply made his doltish decisions alone.