The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claims the finalized “Clean Power Plan” will have climate and health benefits for Americans worth tens of billions of dollars and save thousands of lives per year. Despite the rise in electricity prices that will result from the implementation of this rule, the agency asserts the regulation is a “historic step” toward combating climate change and improving public health.
However, the EPA has been extremely one-sided in its analysis of the costs and benefits of the rule. The rule requires states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent in 2030, though these emission reductions will have essentially no impact on global warming, reducing the rise in global temperatures by just 0.02 degrees Celsius in 2100. Because the climate rule will not affect climate change, the Obama administration relies on health co-benefits that have nothing to do with regulating carbon dioxide. These health co-benefits comprise over two-thirds of the total benefits, including EPA’s claim that the rule prevents thousands of premature deaths. The EPA has also turned to linking climate change to asthma to garner public support for the rule. While EPA claims its carbon rule will save lives, the agency fails to acknowledge how many deaths the plan may cause.
Specifically, EPA ignores the link between health and wealth. By increasing electricity prices and decreasing the disposable income of low-income families,the rule may end up causing far more premature deaths than it prevents, even if we accept the EPA’s numbers at face value. In fact, as explained below, our estimates indicate EPA’s rule could cause—on balance—14,000 more premature deaths by 2030. Vulnerable, low-income families, who spend a of their incomes on energy, will be harmed the most—and could be forced to forgo necessities such as food, medical care, and prescription drugs. By forcing higher energy prices on American families, the rule will end up making the poor poorer and the sick sicker.
The EPA acknowledged this “health-wealth” connection in the past and has used it in economic analyses, stating: “people’s wealth and health status, as measured by mortality, morbidity, and other metrics, are positively correlated. Hence, those who bear a regulation’s compliance costs may also suffer a decline in their health status, and if the costs are large enough, these increased risks might be greater than the direct risk-reduction benefits of the regulation.”
Although the EPA used to appreciate the health-wealth link, EPA now ignores it to promote President Obama’s carbon agenda. Citing Executive Order 13563 in the Regulatory Impact Analysis for the Clean Power Plan, the EPA recounts that, “our regulatory system must protect public health, welfare, safety, and our environment while promoting economic growth, innovation, competitiveness, and job creation.” Unfortunately, in neglecting to accurately assess the public health costs of the carbon rule, the EPA is poised to negatively impact Americans’ health, discourage economic growth, and destroy jobs—all for essentially no effect on climate change. (Read more from “The Poor and the Sick Suffer Under Obama’s Carbon Rule” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-08-13 23:42:142015-08-13 23:42:14The Poor and the Sick Suffer Under Obama’s Carbon Rule
Since presidential debates started in 1960, the journalists who are supposed to “moderate” them have increasingly set the agenda and determined the substance of what the public sees. In the first 2016 presidential debate, Fox News’ “moderators” focused on what might embarrass candidates rather than on their record or proposals. Also, they indulged the Republican Establishment’s animus against its least favorite candidate. Though this made for an exciting show, the biggest loser was the public’s interest in understanding candidates and issues. The public interest would be best served were candidates to question one another. That’s how it was done in Lincoln’s day. We could and should get back to that.
Choosing the president of the United states on the basis of short answers to questions formulated or chosen by journalists was always a bad idea. It has only gotten worse. Limited to two minutes, as in the League Of Women Voters debates (Fox’s limit was one minute answers and 30 second rebuttals) the candidates can only reprise their canned talking points or the cleverish ads that are the foul staples of modern campaigns. Such parodies of debates demean the candidates, and all of us who watch. Along with the candidates, we the people become pawns in a game between the political consultants, the “moderators,” and the commentators who then tell us who played best.
The Myth Of The Moderator
Because no one ever doubted that “moderators” would influence the outcome of presidential debates, much effort went into giving the impression that the persons chosen were such as whom all would consider objective and super partes. Trust in the media’s impartiality, however, had vanished long before “moderator” Candy Crowley helped Barack Obama sustain a lie in 2012’s second presidential debate by instantly and counterfactually “fact checking” Mitt Romney. How, not whether, Mainstream Media “moderators” push the agendas of the Democratic Establishment they represented is the only question. Indeed, by 2012 it was difficult to avoid the sense that the media, Fox News included, was focusing negative coverage on the most conservative candidate who happened to be leading in the polls at any given time.
So, as Megyn Kelly’s team prepared for the first debate of the 2016 cycle, and as trumping Donald Trump’s challenge to the Republican Establishment became that Establishment’s overriding concern, it was clear that Fox’s “moderators” would be the most intrusive ever, and that their push of their employers’ agenda and their “take down” of their least favorite candidate would be explicit. In both regards, the Fox team broke new ground and established precedents that should lead us to scrap the post 1960 format. (Read more from “Megyn Kelly Shows How Low Our Political Discourse Has Sunk” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-08-13 23:41:422015-08-13 23:41:42Megyn Kelly Shows How Low Our Political Discourse Has Sunk
No one can deny the explosive impact of the Planned Parenthood videos painstakingly obtained over three years of undercover reporting by the Center for Medical Progress. A GOP that had shoved the abortion issue to the political back burner has suddenly seen it boiling over, with major Republican candidates (such as Marco Rubio) now speaking loudly about the “barbarism” of “murdering babies.”
As Jason Jones and I wrote here last week, if you tune out the Trump-induced static at the last Republican debate, you will hear one message loud and clear: The Republican party has committed itself to advancing protection for unborn children, to extending legal rights to one class after another of vulnerable unborn Americans as it becomes politically feasible, and slashing the funding of the organ-profiteering eugenics organization Planned Parenthood that targets the urban, black poor for abortions. The only openly pro-choice Republican candidate, George Pataki, barely registers in the polls. Donald Trump has been forced to claim a pro-life “conversion,” though he wants to use cheap accounting tricks to keep on subsidizing inner-city abortions, earning him the sobriquet “Planned Parenthood’s favorite Republican.”
You can read on left-wing sites like The Daily Beast anguished testimonies such as “I Don’t Know if I’m Pro-Choice After Planned Parenthood Videos.” You can see fear begin to edge out the arrogance on the face of pro-abortion candidates such as Hillary Clinton, as they double down on their support for Planned Parenthood, and refuse to watch the videos.
What’s the last thing you’d expect right now? That putative pro-lifers would start condemning all this evidence of moral advancement, claiming that the Center for Medical Progress used evil means to uncover the truth about Planned Parenthood — so evil that Christians should denounce the CMP for employing them, so sinister that these videos themselves will backfire and discredit the pro-life movement. Because, you see, the CMP’s investigators told Planned Parenthood employees things that weren’t true. And that is evil. By this logic, the Planned Parenthood videos are the fruit of a poison tree, and should not even be made public or shared. Like Nazi doctor Josef Mengele’s experimental results, or sins we overheard in someone else’s confession, we should shun them and keep them secret.
Catholic writer Mark Shea is leading the charge against Planned Parenthood’s critics. On July 21, Shea condemned the Center for Medical Progress in an online Catholic radio broadcast, where he also said that families sheltering Jews during the Holocaust would have sinned by deceiving the Nazis who hunted those Jews. At 35:30 he quipped, “The issue is not and never has been figuring out how to lie well; the issue is figuring out how to hide your Jews well.” Then he chortled heartily.
Curiously, Shea has no previous track record of condemning the use of deception by police trapping pedophiles, CIA operatives fighting terrorism, or animal rights activists infiltrating factory farms. But over several years, Shea has spilled tens of thousands of words denouncing pro-life investigative reporters who infiltrated Planned Parenthood, even alleging that these pro-lifers had endangered their immortal souls by “tempting” professional abortionists into sin. You see, the prolife investigators of Live Action, including Lila Rose, showed up at abortion clinics and made fake appointments, trying to see if the clinics were willing to violate relevant laws. According to Shea, Rose was playing the evil temptress by doing that, urging someone to sin … because they intended to give her an abortion, so they sinned as gravely as a murderer who shoots but misses. She “tempted” them to do that, so she is just as guilty. Really?
Clearly Shea doesn’t understand the difference between entrapment and legitimate undercover work. If someone is already in the business of habitual acts of evil, presenting him an opportunity to express that fixed intention in order to stop him is not considered entrapment under law. Nor is it a sin. By Shea’s logic, if a sniper were picking off pedestrians, police who shoved out a mannequin to draw away his fire would be “tempting” him to murder, since he intended to shoot a real person. To say that such policemen were guilty of “incitement to murder” would not just be false; it would be slander.
Such absurdities aside, let’s examine the question that deserves our serious scrutiny, which is echoed by serious thinkers, such as philosopher Christopher Tollefsen: To win the trust of the abortionists and obtain the video evidence of their human organ trafficking, the investigators from the Center for Medical Progress “lied.” And that’s always evil.
Or is it? Not every killing is murder. Is every verbal deception a sinful “lie”? That’s the only real question here, and it’s one that has vexed Christian thinkers since almost the beginning. There isn’t space here to review 2,000 years of theological debate, and in any case we can’t resolve this natural law question that bears on public policy affecting non-Christians as well as Christians by an easy appeal to authority. We must each use our reason to consider this question seriously and come to honest conclusions whose implications we’re willing to live with. An argument that yields ludicrous conclusions has got a flaw in it somewhere, usually way back in its unexamined premises.
Means and Ends
Any principled person will admit that the end does not justify the means. Not if the means is something intrinsically, that is, under every imaginable circumstance and by its very nature, evil. To clarify the point, let’s choose an extreme example. If it would have beaten Hitler sooner and stopped the Holocaust, should the Allies have been willing to recruit French and Belgian children as suicide bombers? No, because using children as weapons of war is evil, the same kind of evil as the Nazis were committing. You can’t use a “little” bit of real evil to fight for the good, a point which lay at the heart of The Lord of the Rings. The One Ring could serve as an allegory of any truly evil means, which corrupts the user. Some argue that Allied bombings of Axis cities from Dresden to Nagasaki was an intrinsically evil means, since it targeted civilians. In fact, I agree.
But the end can reveal an error in the chosen means. Keeping your hands clean and your conscience perfectly shiny is no excuse for letting the real world go to hell, or allowing the vulnerable to suffer at the hands of the utterly ruthless. When Gandhi advised Europe’s Jews (and also the Allies) to resist the Nazis by exclusively non-violent means, he played the role of a callous purist — as George Orwell pointed out.
While an individual choice for non-violence might be noble, universal pacifism is not merely quixotic and self-indulgent. It is actively sinful. It empowers the killers, thugs and rapists of this fallen world by disarming the forces of justice. When only your personal pride or even well-being is at stake, it can be right to turn the other cheek. But when the lives of others are involved, that amounts to reckless cowardice empowered by moralistic preening. So, I will argue, does refusing to fool the guilty in order to save the innocent — a stance I’ll call “verbal pacifism.”
The Bad Effects of Verbal Pacifism
Here are just a few of the implications of verbal pacifism. On that theory, the following activities would be intrinsically evil, just like using child suicide bombers against the Nazis — and it would be better to die, and let millions of others be tortured, raped or killed, rather than engage in them. In fact, doing any one of them would be a sin sufficient to damn one’s soul to hell:
Deceiving the Pharaoh who wished to kill all the newborn male Hebrews — as the midwives did in Exodus 1:15-21. (The Bible tells us that “God dealt well with the midwives.”)
Deceiving priest-hunters by using assumed names, as Jesuit missionaries did when they ministered in Reformation England, and St. Miguel Pro did in Mexico in the 1920s.
Deceiving the Nazis to rescue Jews from the gas chambers, as Oskar Schindler did.
Distributing false baptismal certificates so that Jews could pass as Gentiles and escape extermination, as John XXIII did during World War II.
Using false documents and false statements in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, like the conspirators working with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who were aided by Pope Pius XII (who passed their messages via Vatican couriers).
Deceiving the brutal dictators who hoped to hunt down and torture leftist priests, as Pope Francis did while serving as Archbishop of Buenos Aires.
Posing as a child in online forums in order to catch child porn distributors and pedophiles, as police routinely do — having found it the only effective means of capturing such predators.
Pretending to be an Islamist, in order to infiltrate terrorist organizations like al-Qaida and ISIS, as CIA operatives do.
Misleading criminal suspects about the evidence you have, as police do to obtain truthful confessions without coercion.
Infiltrating an abortion business like Planned Parenthood to see if they are breaking laws about statutory rape and organ trafficking, as Live Action and the Center for Medical Progress did.
Any moral philosophy that claims that all these activities are intrinsically evil has got some explaining to do. By insisting on premises that yield such repugnant conclusions, and claiming that the only alternative is a crass and unprincipled pragmatism, verbal pacifists are cutting off their nose to spite their face.
Where the Great Augustine Went Wrong
Verbal pacifists’ profound confusion can be traced to one of the greatest writers and thinkers in history, St. Augustine, who wrote in De Mendacio that it would be wrong to deceive murderers at your door who asked about their hoped-for victim within. (Augustine found falsehood especially repulsive because it played such a major role in his previous life as a pagan, when he worked as a rhetorician, by his own admission flattering and lying for hire.) Augustine was not a physical pacifist, however, just a verbal one. While he wouldn’t allow you to lie to these would-be killers, if they tried to force their way in, you might be justified in killing them. Thomas Aquinas agreed; he likewise condemned all deception, but allowed for defensive wars, and even the use of torture on Christian “heretics.”
How can we make sense of such a position, which sees physical violence as almost morally neutral — its merits depend on the situation at hand — but verbal falsehood as evil beyond excusing? Moral philosopher Janet Smith has done the heavy lifting here. In a brilliant article for First Things provoked by Mark Shea’s relentless campaign against pro-life activists, she critiqued the fundamental premise of the Augustinian tradition: That human speech was created exclusively for speaking the truth, and we sinfully pervert it by using it deceptively, in however worthy a cause.
As Smith writes, that claim is correct as far as it goes. Just so, human hands were not made to kill or fight with other men, but to till the Garden of Eden. However, given the Fall, God permits us and even commands us to use our bodies in new ways that would have been unnecessary and wrong in an unfallen world: Thus Christian soldiers and policemen can use deadly force when needed in defense of the innocent. Why should our words be held to such a radically different standard than our bodies?
At this point in the argument, someone is bound to start misquoting scripture, pointing to the fact that Christ is called “the Word,” and suggesting that what we say is morally more significant than what we do, since it reflects our inner selves more purely or perfectly or something. That is gnostic balderdash. Christ saved us not by what He said but by what He did. On the cross. With His body.
In the early Church, non-Christians were invited to attend the liturgy long enough to hear the Gospel — but then ushered out before the sacrifice of His sacred body and blood. Even today, we let the unbaptized read the Bible, but not partake in Communion. And so on. It is frankly bizarre to treat words, made by man, as more significant than bodies that took life from God.
Just so, CMP’s words, spoken to professional killers who have no right to expect the truth, were nothing sacred. What was sacred were the lives of those tiny, helpless humans whom Planned Parenthood sells like scrap metal or chicken parts. We must choose our words very carefully in such innocent children’s defense. We will each someday be called to answer for what we did or didn’t do to help “the least” among us. (Re-posted with permission from the author, “The Planned Parenthood Videos: Is It Wrong to ‘Lie’ to Abortionists?”, originally appeared HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-08-13 01:39:102015-08-13 01:39:10The Planned Parenthood Videos: Is It Wrong to ‘Lie’ to Abortionists?
Christians are called by God to stand against evil. Refusing this call is to break the biblical balance of true Christianity – like breaking off a ceiling fan blade. (We did that once when we were kids. You should’ve seen that thing spin out of control!)
Without the proper balance of promoting good and resisting evil in the church, Christians become incapable of “refreshing the room” of culture.
In the last few months, we’ve been contacted by various national and state political leaders wondering why Christians aren’t engaging the moral issues of the day that seem to decay our nation by the minute. And our answer is simple: We’re missing a key element to the Christian faith: resistance to evil.
Trust us, if we lived in a vacuum where evil didn’t exist, we’d be thrilled to leave off this vital component of our faith – but we can’t.
What if a doctor looked at a person bleeding to death and merely declared how he believes in proper blood flow or not using sharp knives without proper training, but refused to help as the guy dies in front of him? But that doctor was committed to being positive! And then the person bled to death. Do what? That’s ridiculous.
Thank God for examples like William Carey, the 19th-century Baptist missionary to India, who not only started the first university offering degrees in India and became the father of modern missions, but also boldly resisted the evils of Indian culture.
Check out some of his missionary work:
He prodded the Indian government to stand against infanticide, which was based on the worship of the Ganges River, where women believed that if they were blessed with two children, one should be “offered to the river.” He also demanded that India cease the practice of Sati – the ritual of burning alive a widow on the funeral pyre of her deceased husband. He didn’t stop there. He continued pressuring the Indian government to eliminate the practice of drowning lepers, and he fought to end slavery. He also spoke loudly against the caste system.
India was forever changed by the powerful influence of a man who not only promoted good but also resisted evil. For those who say, “I’m just concerned with the ‘gospel,’” Mr. Carey showed us what the whole gospel looks like.
And there are more examples of Christians being motivated by the gospel to resist evil:
William Wilberforce exposed and resisted the slave trade in Europe.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer resisted the evil of Nazism and the murder of Jews in Germany.
Martin Luther King Jr. resisted deep-seated racism and segregation in America.
The list goes on. And the common thread in all of these examples was their Christian faith. That was what motivated and empowered them to stand against the evil of their time.
So what about today? What’s missing in Christianity that keeps us on the sidelines while unborn children are being ripped apart limb from limb? What’s preventing us from standing strong for the sacred institution of marriage, which is God’s bedrock for civil society, or simply calling sin a sin?
Is it because Christians just don’t care? We don’t think so. But perhaps we don’t know the Bible like those before us did. Maybe we don’t understand the whole purpose of the gospel and our responsibility as Christians to resist evil.
“Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good” (Romans 12:9).
“Hate evil, love good, maintain justice in the courts …” (Amos 5:15a).
“Let those who love the Lord hate evil …” (Psalm 97:10a).
“You love justice and hate evil. Therefore, O God, your God has anointed you, pouring out the oil of joy on you more than on anyone else” (Hebrews 1:9).
There are countless teachings and stories from Scripture that not only encourage but command believers to resist evil. But we get it – Christians today want people to know what they’re for not what they’re against. That makes sense, in a vacuum.
Here’s the point: To stand for good is to stand against evil. The two go hand in hand.
We’re all for justice in America. So when I (David) was summoned to jury duty, I was surprised to hear the clinching question that separated those who were fit to be jurors and those who weren’t:
“Are you willing to make a judgment of someone’s actions?”
In other words, are you willing to stand against injustice?
I was surprised to see how many people simply couldn’t answer the question. As a result, they were asked to be dismissed. But what was glaringly obvious to me was that if these people were for justice, they had to be willing to stand against evil by placing a proper judgment upon the offender.
America is hurting today, and we believe the church is largely responsible. We’ve refused to stand against the evil of the day because we want to strike a “positive” image by only standing for good. Yet the hypocrisy of it all is that, if we are going to stand for good, we must stand against evil.
Christians, let’s display true love, as Paul taught us in Romans 12:9, by abhorring what is evil and resisting it firmly. Let’s follow the examples of those who have gone before us and be nation changers just like them! (Re-published with permission from the authors, “Benham Brothers: Here’s 1 Element Missing in Christianity Today”, originally appeared HERE)
Once upon a time, Republicans ran for office as moderates or as prototypes of Nelson Rockefeller. Now, every Republican running for Congress or president campaigns as a Reagan conservative…in the primary. Yet, as we have painfully witnessed over this past generation, almost none of them even fight for the few conservative issues Rockefeller believed in, much less Ronald Reagan.
We are living through a political crisis precisely because conservatives have become victim to their own success. As conservatives, our arguments have become so compelling that no GOP political hack has the courage to stand on the veracity of their views during a primary, so they fervently run as unvarnished conservatives. Then, upon assumption of office, they are unwilling to hold the line against Democrats even on the most fundamental issues – ideals for which even Democrats would have supported just one generation ago. Democrats have transformed themselves from the party of just socialism to a cult advocating for illegal immigration, transgenderism, Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, and social coercion in violation of religious liberty. Yet Republicans are unwilling to pursue a righteous fight on any one of these issues.
How have we gotten to this point and why do we lack a political party filled with ranks of those willing to fight such radicalism, even when public opinion is on our side? How have we sunk to the point where few elected officials other than Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX), Mike Lee (R-UT), and a handful of House conservatives are willing to use the power of the purse to stop the most pernicious forms of lawlessness?
It’s because nobody is willing to campaign on their true virtues during the primary, and often, even the general election. It’s because, as Cruz noted in the debate, we have a lot of campaign conservatives and few consistent conservatives who are willing to fight when it actually matters.
Few Republican voters would disagree with this premise. After all, the November elections and the subsequent betrayal by GOP leadership in the face of Obama’s increasingly malignant and lawless policies is a painful reminder of the campaign conservative phenomenon. But as the presidential election commences in earnest, some voters might be lured into various flavors of the month and attracted to performances and theatrics that sound conservative while lapsing into the same mistakes of the past. This is precisely why Conservative Review created the 2016 presidential profiles – a comprehensive dossier chronicling what each candidate has said and done on the important issues of the day when it really mattered, and when the cameras of a Fox News spectacle were not focused upon them.
After watching the debate performances by the candidates, it must be said that most of them sound impressive and refreshing, especially when compared to the banality of House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). That’s why some concerned GOP voters have asked me why our profiles are so tough on the candidates. I’ve especially gotten questions about Carly Fiorina’s mediocre scores in light of her debate performance, which was universally heralded as stellar. However, the reality is that many of these candidates have either been missing in action or downright on the other side of some of the most critical battles of our time before they made the decision to run for the GOP nomination and pander to conservative voters. In 2013, after running a failed senatorial campaign in California as a moderate, Carly Fiorina stood with John Boehner against Ted Cruz in 2013 during the conservative-led effort to defund Obamacare.
You might be wondering, is there no place for converts in the conservative movement? Are there no second chances? Don’t we welcome those who matriculate through the political process to eventually support our way of thinking?
Absolutely yes. But at a time when GOP voters have been appallingly betrayed by phony conservatives and campaign promises, there are several factors that are needed to give conservatives the confidence that the adaptation in political posture is indeed sincere; namely, transparency, specificity, and passion.
For the purpose of this thought exercise, let’s use the issue of immigration as a case study. There is perhaps no issue for which there is a greater dichotomy between campaign rhetoric and implementation of policy than immigration. As someone who has vetted candidates for PACs and worked on the issue of immigration enforcement for many years, I can confidently say that I have never met a candidate who will propagate the liberal talking points on this issue during a GOP primary. Yet, once they are elected, when it comes time to actually fight for immigration enforcement in a meaningful way, there are only a few brave souls willing to fight through the media narrative and the open borders lobbies in both parties.
So through what prism should a campaign conversion be judged?
Transparency
The first step in repenting for previous sins is confessing the errors of your ways and owning up to the mistakes of the past. Governor Scott Walker, for example, has flatly rejected his past position on amnesty and has been transparent about his change of heart on the issue, at least after a few months of vacillation. This alone is certainly not enough to convince voters that this is a sincere conversion (see the next two factors below), but it’s at least a start. Many other candidates seamlessly glide into their new positions when on the debate stage without ever owning up to their previous actions.
Has Carly Fiorina ever vouched for her previous support of the DREAM Act amnesty and opposition to ending unconditional birthright citizenship before she smoothly and articulately inveighs against the “career politicians” for failing us on immigration?
Has Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) ever owned up to the extent of his involvement in not only drafting the main amnesty bill of our time but starring in ads for Mark Zuckerberg, even after every detail was proven to be fictitious? Recently, Rubio has hinted at a change of heart and the need to implement the enforcement first, but during the time of the Gang of 8 bill he emphatically stated that the legislation did exactly that. Without taking full responsibility for such a colossal mistake – one that helped embolden Obama to thwart our laws and encourage a new wave of illegal immigration – it is hard to believe that he will not suffer another relapse of Zuckerberg syndrome the minute the primary is over.
Specificity
A candidate who had previously taken specific stances contrary to important conservative priorities would inspire a lot more confidence in their conversion by reversing course in a specific way rather than resorting to conservative platitudes.
To continue with the case study of Carly Fiorina and immigration, imagine if she were to come out and say she opposes the DREAM Act, birthright citizenship policies, supports repeal of DACA, plans to close the refugee and asylum loopholes, and promote any number of other verifiable enforcement measures? That would inspire confidence that the candidate not only understands the issue but is willing to go out on a limb and stake out specific positions against their previous circle of donors and friends. To merely toss in some throwaway lines about “securing the border” and the failed career politicians without disavowing the previous positions and articulating new specific solutions is a recipe for pandering to conservatives without actually alienating these very political class lobbies and donors.
Even if a candidate doesn’t stake out a specific policy stance but is willing to say something definitive and “controversial” (at least in the eyes of the media), that is also a huge step in obtaining credibility for a conversion. When Governor Bobby Jindal says “immigration without assimilation is an invasion,” he is making all of the open border donors squirm and is forcing himself to defend a position that, while popular with the public, will elicit incoming fire from the ruling class. Remember when Fox News’ Megyn Kelly gave Jindal a hard time for those comments?
Specific policies and definitive statements matter because it costs the candidate support with the establishment in order to stake out those positions. This is not the case with broad conservative platitudes. Coined conservative clichés during a GOP primary cannot and should not countermand specific liberal policy positions of the past in the eyes of primary voters.
Passion
It is sometimes said that the most passionate practitioners of a religious faith are those who converted to the faith later in life. They will look for every opportunity to preach their newfound truth from the rooftops and encourage others to join them.
Applying this truism to political conversions, and specifically as it relates to immigration, that would mean the candidate would make this issue a centerpiece of the campaign and travel the country holding rallies with victims of illegal immigration. They would make sure that every American knows the name of Marylyn Pharis, yet another women who was brutally raped and murdered by an illegal alien because of Obama’s amnesty policies. They would demand that Republicans block all funding for DHS until the Secure Communities policy is reinstated, pursuant to laws duly passed by Congress.
How many of these candidates have been fighting against DACA, demanding a defund of amnesty, and raising awareness about the crisis of criminal aliens resulting from Obama’s policies – other than when prompted to do so by a media interview?
Generally speaking, when a candidate never felt passionate about an issue prior to running in a GOP primary, rest assured they will drop it like a hot potato the minute they win the primary. This is the enduring and painful lesson of the past. And this is why it is so important for all of these candidates to undergo a thorough vetting process. After 8 years of Obama, our nation cannot afford another campaign conservative. (Re-posted with permission from the author, “Political Conversions: Campaign Conservative or Consistent Conservative” HERE)
With all the problems Egypt has, the last thing it needed was the Huffington Post. That’s like throwing rabid weasels on an oil fire and expecting anything good to happen. But you’ve gotta give Arianna Huffington credit. She knows how to shamelessly target her demo in every market. And apparently her demo in the Arabic Huffington Post is Al Qaeda.
But those Al Jazeera people are so nice? Everyone says they’re martyrs to press freedom. (Read more from “Arabic Huffington Post Hates Women, Gays and Jews” HERE)
At what point does the millennial generation wake up and realize that their love affair with the Democratic Party has been one-sided? While the Democrats have benefitted enormously from millennials’ overwhelming support of their brand in national, state and local elections, the affection has gone unrequited. Granted, the Democrats talk a big game about the youth of America, but it’s what they’re actually doing to younger Americans that matters. In nearly every significant policy arena the modern, far-Left Democratic Party is pushing policies that will undoubtedly jeopardize the futures of young Americans working hard to make a better tomorrow.
Conservative activist, former Reagan administration official, and nationally-syndicated radio host Mark Levin’s new book Plunder and Deceit is a thorough examination of the ideological and legislative assault on young Americans. The book uses extensive data points and a second-to-none analysis to make the case that the modern Democratic Party’s allegiance to liberal ideology on the social front, and to tax-and-spend economics on the fiscal front, is selling out young Americans. It is a must-read for young Americans who are looking to escape the Democratic Party’s deceptive, focus group tested talking points and looking to find the truth. Additionally, the book is a must-read for Americans of all ages who want to understand, and be able to explain to open-minded young Americans, the danger we are in if we fail to correct our course.
What is perhaps most disturbing about this disconnect between what the modern Democratic Party says to young Americans, and what it does to them, is that it’s not simply that the Democrats are failing to help the youth in our society, but that they are deliberately harming them. After reading Levin’s book and being reminded of the grave economic future being created by the Obama administration, their congressional allies, and weak-knee’d Republicans too cowardly to fight back, I wonder where young Americans think the money to pay off the growing national debt, which is equal to the value of everything the country produces, is going to come from? There is no significant difference between annual deficits, accumulated government debt, and taxes coming out of your pocket, absent the time preference. And the modern Democratic Party prefers to burden young Americans with the debt and spending they are accumulating right now, rather than to govern responsibly, due to their continued quest for the consolidation of government economic power. This allegiance to the broken economics of unsustainable government debt, is not just failing to provide young Americans with the promised “hope and change,” but it is unquestionably doing significant damage to the potential prosperity of young Americans hoping for a bright economic future.
Facts matter and the facts are not on the side of the modern Democratic Party. The laws of both arithmetic and economics dictate that all debts both public and private must be paid. Those debts are either paid by the debtor, who fulfills his obligation to pay back the debt, or the creditor, who unwillingly pays the debt himself when he fails to receive the money he loaned back from the debtor. There is no third way, these are the only options. With these hard facts in mind, it’s clear there are only a couple of options for young Americans going forward if we do not begin to control the federal government’s profligate spending. The first option for young Americans is a future of confiscatory tax rates so high that they will choke off any chance that they can live economically prosperous lives in an increasingly shrinking private sector future. Our unsustainable and growing national debt, with its entitlement promises and grim discretionary spending outlook, will strangle private sector opportunity in favor of public sector thievery.
The second option is just as disturbing for young Americans. The federal government can simply ignore its accumulated debt obligations and fail to repay its creditors, both foreign and domestic. This disastrous scenario would destroy the economic credibility of the world’s greatest supporter and dramatically increase the cost of debt in the future. Young Americans need to understand that this means that their car loans, their home loans, their credit card interest rates, and any other attempt to finance their lifestyles, or their futures, with debt will be dramatically more expensive than it was for their parents. You can thank the big spenders in elected positions in our government for this disparity between what your parent’s lifestyle was, and what yours is going to be.
Yes young America, you are being screwed, big time. It’s easy to make the faux “tough choices” to pile on government debt today, when cowardly politicians, and their silent opposition, anchor the costs of those “tough choices” to my children and yours, who will pay for them for decades.
For the sake of the country and its future, I am hoping that Levin’s book becomes the centerpiece of a long overdue national discussion about what our real “priorities” are as a nation. I refuse to accept that the greatest country in the history of mankind, when confronted with the hard facts in Levin’s book, will choose the route of a profligate present, and a bankrupt future for their children, rather than a responsible present and a prosperous future. (Re-posted with permission from the author, “Dear Millennials, the Dems Are Screwing You”, originally appeared HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-08-10 02:31:412015-08-10 02:31:41Dear Millennials, the Dems Are Screwing You
By Bob Livingston. Would you buy a car from Donald Trump?
The car he’s currently hawking is all exterior gloss with shiny wheels. It has no motor, no seats, no interior of any kind.
It looks good sitting there. But is there anything more?
Thus far, Trump’s appeal to potential voters is his opposition to illegal immigration and his ability to make a snarky retort to political punditry and the mindless sophistry of the propaganda media. It’s gotten him great poll numbers.
His platform, best I can tell, is to “build a wall and make Mexico pay for it,” “Mexico and China are killing us,” “make America strong” and “support Israel unconditionally.”
Those are platitudes, sales pitches — nothing more. (Read more from “What Exactly Is Trump Selling?” HERE)
By Garth Kant. On Friday, [Rush] Limbaugh began by telling listeners how, on the day of Thursday’s debate, he had learned “that big-time Republican donors had ordered to take out Donald Trump in the debate last night.”
“We all made a mistake,” he explained. “We assumed that the orders went out to the candidates. But the candidates did not make one move toward taking Donald Trump out. The broadcast network did; the candidates didn’t.”
Rush said it was clear that Fox News had it out for Trump when his colleagues refused to pile on, even when given multiple opportunities to bash the front-runner.
“Not one of the remaining nine candidates joined Megyn Kelly in taking the shot at Trump. Not one. Yet we have been told that there were orders from Republican donors to take Trump out.”
If, in addition to targeting Trump, Fox News was indeed looking to get some love and respect from the left and the establishment media with its relentless attacks on Republican candidates in the Thursday night’s debate, it’s mission was accomplished. (Read more from this story HERE)
As the Republican presidential candidates jockey for the White House in 2016, President Obama and the Democrats are vying for your house, your neighborhoods and your dreams – all under the guise of “fairness.” Whether it’s at the ballot box, in your neighborhood, or through amnesty, the left is aiming to create a single-party government.
We must choose our next candidate wisely because Democrats are expanding their reach even while we sleep. No need to fall for rhetoric when most of our candidates have records.
While political junkies like myself were salivating with anticipation for the first GOP debate, President Obama and his minions were celebrating, or should I say “milking,” the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Just this week, a federal appeals panel in Texas of all places ruled that a voter identification law discriminated against minorities. Why? Because it requires that voters bring a “government-issued” photo ID to the polls. I’m sure all of the new illegal-alien voters in 2016 will be thankful to Texans for providing their food stamps, which of course will require ID for them to receive.
The Department of Justice and “civil rights activists” were concerned that measures taken by Texas to curtail early voting and same-day registration (code for cheating!) and voting would disproportionately affect minorities. If the left seizes Texas, America as we know it is over. This decision by the court could invite federal oversight of Texas voting laws. The Democrats are seeking to eliminate an opposition party. With the influx of illegal aliens, financial backing from the likes of George Soros who funds their court battles and a lack of courage from the GOP to build a wall on our borders, eventually they’ll succeed.
The left is never satisfied! While conservatives were rightfully outraged by the Supreme Court’s decision on gay-marriage and Obamacare over a month ago, their ruling on “disparate impact,” which will allow HUD to move poor people into rich communities, went under radar. Here’s the problem with that ruling: You can take the kid out of the ‘hood but you can’t take the ‘hood out of the kid. It’s hard to maintain success you haven’t yet earned. This is why a home being rented is easily spotted in an otherwise manicured neighborhood. Social engineers have many tools at their disposal, but the ability to plant Democrats in Republican areas without having to gerrymander congressional lines may be the most effective, besides importing “new Democrats” from across our southern border. (Read more from “The Ghettofying of America” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-08-10 02:22:022015-08-10 02:22:02The Ghettofying of America
A skilled surgeon needs a scalpel, but killers can get by with cudgels. That is because it’s a whole lot easier to smash a skull than to separate conjoined twins. America’s abortion status quo is corrupt and callous, a regime of highly organized crime which lets abortionists legally kill an unborn child through all nine months of pregnancy for any reason, and be massively subsidized by the government to do it. Taxpayer-funded Planned Parenthood clinics are strategically planted in poor, non-white neighborhoods across the country, still serving Margaret Sanger’s racist mission of getting “more children from the fit, fewer from the unfit.” More than a million American children have been destroyed each year, every year since 1973. And now we know that Planned Parenthood is selling those dead children to labs to boost its “revenue streams.”
The pro-choice movement defends this annual human sacrifice with blunt, heavy-handed weapons, which it uses to keep control. But those weapons are losing their force, as the prime-time Republican debate resoundingly proves. In fact, the only clear winner of that debate was the pro-life movement.
Abortion’s best defenses are ignorance and apathy. When pro-lifers succeed in getting out truthful information that makes people care — like the videos captured by the Center for Medical Progress — the Abortion Syndicate sends out enforcers with lead-weighted truncheons in the form of gag orders, distortions and lies.
The biggest, heaviest lie that these thugs like to swing around is the charge of “extremism.” Most normal people don’t want to think of themselves as isolated zealots. So if someone is speaking a highly inconvenient truth, the best way to squelch it is not to engage his arguments, but to claim that he’s out there alone, then rouse all the sheep to try to drown him out, ala Animal Farm: “Pro-choice good, pro-life b-a-a-a-a-a-d!”
In the primetime Republican debate, Megyn Kelly of FoxNews tried out this sheep bomb on more than one candidate. She went hardest after America’s most effective pro-life governor, Scott Walker of Wisconsin. In the same style she used to confront Donald Trump for his piggish remarks about women, Kelly confronted Walker with his support for a no-exceptions law protecting all unborn life.
She cited a study suggesting that Walker was out of sync with 83% of Americans. Kelly clearly expected him to backpedal, cave, or flinch, but she must have forgotten who Walker is: The governor who month after month faced down the angry mobs recruited by greedy public employee unions. Walker didn’t blink, but calmly reiterated his support for a blanket protection of every unborn child in America. Then he noted that he had defunded Planned Parenthood four years ago, long before its appalling human organ trafficking business was even exposed, and called out Hillary Clinton as the real extremist for standing behind that violent organization. Walker’s answer was a real profile in courage — and a tribute to the strength and dedication of America’s pro-life movement.
Kelly then turned her fire on Marco Rubio, trying to claw out a “gotcha” moment by quoting New York’s Cardinal Dolan, who criticized pro-life politicians that will not protect unborn children conceived in the course of rape or incest. She assumed that Rubio embraced those broad and easily-abused exceptions, and demanded to know how he would answer the cardinal’s attack. Rubio looked puzzled, and quickly corrected Kelly: He had never endorsed abandoning those unborn children either, and wondered where she had gotten that false impression. He went on later to speak of how future generations will look back on us as “barbarians” for “murdering millions of babies.”
The truth about abortion was running free all through the debate, and the Abortion Syndicate’s soldiers were surely shaking in their jackboots. Ted Cruz was characteristically eloquent and forthright in unfolding his pro-life record. Jeb Bush cited his own consistent pro-life lawmaking, but another questioner pressed him hard for having sat on the board of the Bloomberg Foundation that funded Planned Parenthood. He defended himself, in part, by pointing to Florida funding he had provided to pro-life pregnancy centers. I hope that the hard-working, unpaid volunteers who man (but mostly woman) these front-line emergency wards for mothers with crisis pregnancies take heart from this: A leading candidate running for president wants to wrap himself in your flag. Pause for a moment. Be proud of yourselves.
Mike Huckabee was bold enough to speak of using the 5th and 14th Amendments to correct the ignorant decision of Roe v. Wade, which science has rendered hopelessly outdated. The latest technology has shown us clearly and unmistakably the humanity of the unborn, and the law must catch up with the verdict of modern medicine.
No one asked Rand Paul, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, or John Kasich about abortion, but their pro-life positions are not in doubt. In fact, here at the top-card debate of the leading presidential candidates for the Republican nomination, not a single candidate was willing to call himself pro-choice. At the afternoon debate with the darker-horse contenders, only one Republican, the almost forgotten George Pataki, fessed up to that position — and really, what has he got to lose?
Even Donald Trump had to claim that he had a pro-life conversion. No it wasn’t convincing, but he felt constrained to say it — this man who is blunt enough to violate nearly every tenet of political correctness and even common courtesy. He had to say it.
At this debate, foreign aid to Israel, of all things, was up for dispute between Chris Christie and Rand Paul. But abortion wasn’t. No Republican was willing to embrace the extremist position that favors our current status quo of a million dead babies each year. That tells us something: The hearts and minds of Americans are changing. The truth is out. The thugs are on the run. (Re-posted with permission from the author, “Who Won the Republican Debate? The Pro-Life Movement, and the Next Baby It Saves”, originally appeared HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-08-08 02:20:082015-08-08 02:20:08Who Won the Republican Debate? The Pro-Life Movement, and the Next Baby It Saves
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claims the finalized “Clean Power Plan” will have climate and health benefits for Americans worth tens of billions of dollars and save thousands of lives per year. Despite the rise in electricity prices that will result from the implementation of this rule, the agency asserts the regulation is a “historic step” toward combating climate change and improving public health.
