Hoax and Chains

By William L. Garvin

After a flood of negative advertising from the Obama campaign, the Republican convention must now faces the flood of Hurricane Isaac in Tampa.  The silver lining is Vice-President Biden has canceled his party crashing plans.  The incredibly shrinking VP can’t afford to be out in the rain!  Remember when all the talking heads and pundits were talking about how Romney’s pick for veep was so important because it would be his first presidential decision?  Suffice it to say that no one in the media dares scrutinize Senator Obama’s pick of Biden four years ago.  Then again, no one in the media dared scrutinize Senator Obama.

Looking at the lineup of speakers at the two conventions, expect that no one at the Democrat gathering will speak about the $16 trillion debt, one-third of which has accrued during this administration.  No one will be alarmed about four straight years of trillion dollar deficits with $4.4 trillion on tap for the next four years.  No one will complain that we now pay $240 billion dollars per year in interest on that debt.  That’s a quarter trillion dollars per year for which we get absolutely NOTHING!  No one will explain why the Senate voted the President’s 2012 “budget” down 97-0 and his 2013 “budget” 99-0!  He couldn’t get a single Democrat vote in the Senate but we will hear about Republic obstructionism.

We also won’t hear about Guantanamo, border security, Fast and Furious, record fuel and food prices or record numbers of people on food stamps.  We won’t hear about 42 straight months of 8% unemployment.  We won’t hear about last quarter’s dismal GDP growth of 1.5%.  When Reagan brought us out of the Carter recession, his policies raised GDP growth over 7%.  We won’t hear President Obama repeat his claims of 2009 and 2010 about how unwise it is to raise taxes during a weak economy.  We won’t hear about the 21 new taxes under Obamacare or the $716 million they took from Medicare to fund his “revenue neutral” fantasy.  We won’t hear that Obamacare will now cost three times the original projection.  We won’t hear about the net worth of American households declining over forty percent.

We will however hear about the “war on women.”  We’ll hear from Nancy Keenan of the National Abortion Rights Action League.  Then we’ll hear from Cecile Richards of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.  Maybe she’ll explain why they still need taxpayer money when they have over a billion dollars in assets.  Don’t expect Kamala Harris or anyone else to speak up for the 329,445 babies Planned Parenthood aborted in 2010.  Those babies had no choice.  Of course, Ms. Harris opposes the death sentence for convicted criminals even when special circumstances exist.  Naturally, anyone who believes that life begins at conception will be labeled an extreme fundamentalist “bitterly clinging to guns and religion.” 

We will also get to hear Sandra Fluke on why free contraception and free abortions should come from taxpayers.  Why has she been given a speaking slot since her signature achievement to date is being called a name by a famous talk show host!  We’ll hear from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton but it’s doubtful she’ll recall calling the Obama campaign tactics “shameful” back in 2008.  There will be no condemnation of the despicable, gutter tactics that continued in the Obama campaign’s evil character assassination of Sarah Palin.  Of course, we’ll hear from the “Big Dog” in democrat politics, former president Bill Clinton.  It might be interesting to hear from Juanita Broderick, Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Jennifer Flowers as to who they think engages in a war on women.  Don’t expect former President Clinton to remember any of that or calling Governor Romney’s record at Bain “stellar” or emphasizing the need to extend all the Bush tax cuts and avoid all the pending tax increases.

You might hear the economy, unemployment, the fiscal cliff, and Mediscare addressed by prominent Republican women such as Governor Marty Fallin, Governor Nikki Haley, or Governor Susana Martinez at their convention.  Maybe Senator Kelly Ayotte or Florida AG Pam Bondi will touch on the main issues at the top of the list of taxpayer concerns.  Hopefully, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will address the failure of the “leading from behind” foreign policy.  Expect all these conservative women to be labeled as extremists who hate poor people, hate women, want to destroy Medicare, and want dirty air and dirty water.  After all, they are Republicans who believe in American exceptionalism and to liberals, that is extreme.     

Chain of Fools

By William L. Garvin

“Chain, chain, chain, chain, chain, chain
Chain, chain, chain, chain of fools
Five long years I thought you were my man
But I found out I'm just a link in your chain
You got me where you want me
I ain't nothing but your fool
You treated me mean oh you treated me cruel
Chain, chain, chain, chain of fools.”

Aretha Franklin

This is not an obituary for Joe Biden although it’s hard to imagine how one man can make so many foolish mistakes in one sitting.  First of all, Delaware Yankees should never try “to get their Southern on.”  After Al Gore and Hillary Clinton made the patronizing and idiotic mistake of trying affect a southern dialect, Joe should haves known better.  Asking the voters to take back “North Carolina” while he was in Virginia would have required some rather massive voter fraud.  Of course it is hard to keep track of which of the President’s fifty-seven states you are in with perpetual foot in mouth disease.  Then again, everything is confusing when you think you are in “the twentieth century.”  No wonder the President gave him a timeout for the weekend.  And to think Joe Biden is a heartbeat away from the presidency!

Plato said long ago that “The penalty for wise men that refuse to concern themselves with the affairs of Government is to be governed by unwise men.”  Some have opined recently that we are being governed by unwise men who suffer from “total intellectual poverty.”  Fuel is added to that particular fire when even the President uses foolish phrases such as “trickle down fairy dust” or “trickle down snake oil.”  Granted, his metaphors have always been somewhat childish in form and substance but those are downright embarrassing.  Then again, his economic naiveté probably can’t handle anything more rigorous.  In Colorado, he was actually bragging about his Government Motors bailout.  He said, “Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry.”  Goodbye America and free market capitalism.  Maybe he missed the quarterly report from his Treasury Department which upped the taxpayer losses from the GM bailout to $25.1 billion dollars.  Maybe he missed the fact that the taxpayers still own 26% of GM stock which currently trades at $22 per share and has to reach $52 in order for us taxpayers to break even!  Maybe he’s forgotten the dozens of bankruptcies with Solyndra and his other ill fated green investments.  Maybe he’s forgotten that his stimulus wasn’t shovel ready, our $16 TRILLION of debt, his 8.3% unemployment, gasoline up to $4.00 a gallon, Russians running maneuvers off our coast, the mid-East shambles and Hillary doesn’t want to be his vice-president.

Foolishly, he doesn’t have time to meet with his jobs council.  He doesn’t have time to meet with his Labor secretary.  He doesn’t have time for cabinet meetings. He doesn’t have time for press conferences.  He doesn’t have time for reporters unless it’s to handle the really tough questions like whether he likes red or green chilies or which superpower he would like to have.  Okay, red…that’s fine but the ability to speak all languages?  What kind of superpower is that?  And to think they say that Mitt Romney has to overcome a “wimp factor.”  Mr. President, we’ve seen you try to throw a baseball!

He does have time to conduct 205 fundraisers.  He does have time to carp on Romney’s tax returns.  He says that if Romney will release five years of tax returns, he’ll consider that sufficient.  Isn’t that sort of like the schoolyard bully saying “if you just give me your lunch money now, I’ll only give you half a beating”?  He insists that Romney’s refusal means he must be hiding something.  Shouldn’t that also hold true for his refusal to release his academic and passport records and the “Fast and Furious” documents?  By the way, Harry Reid has heard from a reliable source that both Romney and Ryan eat live kittens for breakfast.

Foolishly, there’s the LGBT volunteer who invaded and shot the guard at the Family Research Council.  But the biggest fool of the week was the Senior Fellow at Media Matters who said that Navy Seals “didn’t have guts.”   Nothing like a keyboard coward to knock the Social Security Administration’s purchase of 176,000 hollow point bullets out of the “Fool of the Week” award!  Sadly, it’s a tie for everyone in the chain of fools.      

Where’s the Beef?

By William L. Garvin

One of the iconic commercial characters in the mid-eighties was octogenarian Clara Peller.  In a parody of her competitor’s hamburgers, she searched through an oversized bun and issued the pugnacious challenge:  “Where’s the beef?”  Walter Mondale appropriated the popular catchphrase in his 1984 presidential campaign against Democrat challenger Gary Hart.  While Mondale won the Democrat nomination, he lost the presidential election (in a landslide!) to Ronald Reagan.  Clara’s tagline is equally applicable to today’s political world.

In May of this year, Stephanie Cutter was on a conference call with a man named Joe Soptic, a steelworker.  She is clearly heard thanking him for his tale of woe.  Later that month, Obama for America released a false narrative featuring Joe Soptic blaming Mitt Romney and Bain Capital for the closing of his steel plant. Romney was already running the Salt Lake Winter Olympics at the time but truth is irrelevant in politics.  Now Priorities USA, a Democrat Super-Pac, has released a new commercial featuring the same Joe Soptic (wearing the same sweater no less!) who accuses Romney of causing the death of his wife.  By innuendo, he accuses Romney of murder.

The truth comes out!  Soptic finally admitted that Bain Capital offered him a buyout when he lost his job and his wife actually died in 2006, five years AFTER the plant closed and seven years AFTER Romney left Bain Capital.  Furthermore, Business Insider reports that Mrs. Soptic had health insurance from her own employer.  When she was laid off from her company, then she lost her health insurance.  The entire ad was another lie.  Predictably, the president’s campaign blamed the Super-Pac and said they had no control or knowledge.  Plausible deniability is stretched beyond breaking when you know that the aforementioned Stephanie Cutter is the President’s Deputy Campaign Manager! 


In full fledged damage control, the President sent out Joe Biden to say that Romney and his newly named running mate, Paul Ryan, are “really decent guys.”  Of course, he did not condemn the lies in the ad.  But then, they kept Bill Maher’s money in spite of his misogynistic rants.  Biden then repeated the typical democrat talking points:  Republicans will destroy Social Security, Medicare, throw granny off the cliff, want dirty air and dirty water, and of course hate women.  History shows that none of those things have ever happened under a Republican administration but to presidential surrogates, both the truth and the Constitution are irrelevant.  It‘s a fact that $700 billion is being taken out of Medicare to fund Obamacare.  It is a fact that the “doctor fix” is not included in the costs of Obamacare.  It is a fact that the Congressional Budget Office estimates the new taxes created by Obamacare will be $672 billion for the period 2013-2019 with the ten-year total upped to $1.221 trillion!  It is also a fact that the proposed taxes on “the rich” will run this bloated government for little more than a week!


Then there’s the myth that the “Ryan budget” destroys Social Security and Medicare, being perpetuated by Democrats and their media puppets.  This week, “60 Minutes” conveniently edited out Ryan’s comment pointing out that his mother is on Medicare in Florida.  Of course this and the fact that they are both married to women they love doesn’t mesh with the imaginary “war on women” that this administration has concocted.  Judging by the employment losses by women in this last two years, it’s this administration’s economic policies that are destroying women and their independence, not Paul Ryan’s budget proposal.  As previously noted but seldom discussed in the media, Obamacare takes $700 billion from Medicare.  Also getting scant play is that in the Ryan budget, no one currently on Medicare will be affected.  In fact, no one 55 or over will be affected.  Those younger will have a choice but once again, the pro-choice movement is anti-choice.


What’s more important is the bipartisan recognition that both Medicare and Social Security are going broke.  So where’s the Democrat plan to save Medicare?  Where’s the Democrat plan to save Social Security?  Where’s the Democrat plan to overhaul the tax code?  Which loopholes and exemptions will the Democrats close?  Where are the jobs?  You have four straight years of trillion dollar deficits.  Harry Reid’s Democrat Senate has defied the law and not even produced a budget for over 1200 days.  You’ve been in congressional power since 2007 and held the presidency since 2008.  Clara Peller was right:  “Where’s the beef?!”  

 

Dems Go Desperate: Cows Go Conservative

By William L. Garvin

“I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman.”  Barack H. Obama, August 16, 2008

“Eat Mor Chikn!”  The Cows

In the world of commercial advertising, one of the more entertaining campaigns is being waged by a herd of cattle.  Despite their spelling deficiencies, these ingenious bovines prove to be quite adept at infiltrating businesses and public events to mount a public relations campaign that urges viewers to choose chicken over beef for their meals.  Now outraged liberals worldwide are having a cow because the sponsor of the commercials is Chick-fil-A.

Just what got their tidy whiteys and pastel panties into such an uncomfortable bunch?  It appears that the owner of the enterprise is a Christian who believes that marriage should be between one man and one woman.  (President Obama held this same belief until he “evolved” six months ago.)   He also closes his businesses on Sundays in accordance with his religious beliefs.  There is no record that he has EVER discriminated against anyone he hires or serves.  He also donates a good deal of money to charity and organizations that support his religious beliefs.  Oh, the horror!

For instance, in 2010, his company sponsored the Chick-fil-A football bowl which pushed his charitable giving over the $6 million mark.  WinShape Homes received $1.4 million.  They provide long term care alternatives for children who desperately need a loving home.  That year, they also provided $1.07 million in college scholarships and $370,000 to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.  There was another $300,000 donated to the Georgia Lions Lighthouse Foundation which focuses on the conservation and restoration of sight and hearing with an emphasis on children.  They donated $10,000 to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund which helps in relief efforts for the families of the Virginia Tech shooting.  They also sponsored the Chick-fil-A Charity Championship, an LPGA tour event hosted by Nancy Lopez, which donated $604,000 to WinShare Homes.  They also opened up their restaurants so the first responders at the Aurora theater shooting could have restroom facilities.  They also provided them with free food.  None of this counts with the radical left.  What really got their ultralib-undies into the Gordian knot was Chick-fil-A also supports the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Focus on the Family, and the Family Research Council.  Naturally libs trotted out the Southern Poverty Law Center appellation of “hate groups.”  Every conservative organization appears to be a hate group when viewed through the SPLC lens of liberal, political correctness.

From this synchronized springboard, the lefties quickly dove into their anti-gay labeling.  To the left, if you are pro-traditional family values, you are automatically anti-gay.  By this reasoning, if you are pro-gay, aren’t you automatically anti-straight?  By this reasoning, don’t gays automatically hate heterosexuals?  Isn’t the opposite of pro-life actually pro-death?  Words mean things and silly rhetorical tricks don’t stand up to the light.

You may have noticed that President Obama remained unchallenged by the left on his “traditional marriage” views over the years.  After his road to Damascus moment, he was back in their favor.  You may have also noticed that the left has not challenged any of the black preachers and pastors who disagree with the presidential evolution.  Then again, consistency has never been a hallmark of the left.

There is desperation in the leftist inconsistency.   Apparently, none of Chick-fil-A’s corporate values are consistent with “Chicago values,” or those in Boston, Washington, D.C., or San Francisco.  Rahm Emanuel and his mayoral cohorts have hung out the “Christians need not apply” sign at their city limits.  Not only are they willing to deny freedom of speech, they are also willing to deny freedom of commerce.  They have about as much respect for the Constitution and due process as Harry Reid has for fair play and the rules of evidence.  Leftists tolerate freedom of speech only if it agrees with them.

Strategically, the political thuggery and attempted boycott of Chick-fil-A left a lot to be desired.  The public has overwhelmingly supported Chick-fil-A.  They have reported record sales and business all this week.  They have shown incredible graciousness to the protestors and even provided them with free water, lemonade, and sweet tea.  They ignored the vandalism of their buildings.  They ignored the taunts and hateful speech.  They even largely ignored the “kiss in.”  It is doubtful that many people were converted to the gay rights cause by LGBT couples making out in the restaurant while they were trying to eat their lunch!  High risk with low reward is always the result of desperation.