Only in America...

A good friend sent me this top ten list of "Only in America" which I publish below:

1. Only in America could politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a $40,000 a plate campaign fund raising event.

2. Only in America could people claim that the government still discriminates against black Americans when we have a black president, a black Attorney General and roughly 18% of the federal workforce is black while only 12% of the population is black.

3. Only in America could we have had the two people most responsible for our tax code, Tim Geithner, Treasury Secretary, and Charlie Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.

4. Only in America can we have terrorists kill people in the name of Allah and have the media react by fretting that Muslims might be harmed by the backlash.

5. Only in America would we make people who want to legally become American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of thousands of dollars for this privilege while we discuss letting anyone who sneaks into the country illegally simply become American citizens.

6. Only in America could the people who believe in balancing the budget and adhering to the country's Constitution be thought of as "extremists."

7. Only in America must you need a driver's license to cash a check or purchase alcohol, but not to vote.

8. Only in America can people demand the government investigate whether oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas increases when the return on equity invested in many oil companies is less than half of Nike, a company making running shoes.

9. Only in America can the government collect more tax dollars from the people than any nation in recorded history, still spend a trillion dollars more than it has per year and complain that it does not have nearly enough money.

10. Only in America can rich people who pay 86% of all income taxes be accused of not paying their "fair share" by people who pay no income tax whatsoever.

Beantown Breakdown

Could it be worse in Boston?  Imagine if John Kerry was tossed out of his mansion by Theresa Heinz for philandering.  Imagine if MIT was purchased by California Institute of Technology, if Harvard lost a football game to Yale, if New England clam chowder was suddenly tomato based.  Unimaginable you say?  Sure.  But the surrender by the Red Sox to the Bombers after leading 9-0 in the 7th inning is about as unthinkable as any serious attempt to justify a second term for boy president Obama.  This, following an embarrassing loss, again to the heroic Yankees, on the 100th anniversary of Fenway Park the day before.  Boston is remembering the folly of last September again in the merry month of May.  Oh my!

Of course the other side of the baseball coin is the sheer joy in The Bronx when the Bombers came back from that 9-0 deficit to a risible 15-9 success nearly reaching the joy of Bucky Dent's 1978 HR to beat the Sox in a playoff.

Baseball has a very long season; this year may be painfully and particularly long for Boston.

For today at least, there is joy in the metaphoric Mudville of the Yankees' NYC.

The Unemployment Understatement

Nobody wants to see unemployment percentages rise but this Obama government is doing its very best to manipulate the numbers to its advantage. A letter to the editor by a William T. McCormick, Jr. of Florida in the WSJ dated 4/13/12 illustrates how the logic of numbers masks the seriousness of unemployment under the Obama regime and why there is a tension in the workforce considerably greater than the 8.2% reflects.

Quote: Your April 7 editorial "A Jobs Slowdown" correctly notes that the slightly lower March unemployment rate of 8.2% is due mainly to the reduction in the labor force participation rate. It is noteworthy that, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the participation rate was very stable for the five years preceding the Obama administration, averaging 66.0% and staying between 65.8% and 66.2% over the 60 months from December 2003 through December 2008. The current participation rate of 63.8% is 2.2% lower than the pre-Obama period which, based on a current civilian labor force of 242.6 million, means that 5.3 million people have dropped out of the labor force over the past 3 1/2 years. If the BLS were to count these 5.3 million people as unemployed, the real unemployment rate would be 11.6%, not the 8.2% reported.

Because of this precipitous drop in the labor participation rate, we should all be questioning the methodology that counts unemployed versus dropouts from the labor force, since it has such a dramatic effect on the headline unemployment percent report. In any event, these people aren't unemployed, which explains why the BLS statistics show that the total number employed in March 2012 is 142.0 million, lower than the 142.2 million employed in January 2009, even though the civilian labor force has grown by 7.9 million people since January 2009, the month Mr. Obama took office. End quote.

So remember these calculations as we move inexorably toward November 6 and don't permit the Democrat partisans to mask the truth of Obama's frequent failures and follies.

Baseball Begins

Finally we have the sound of balls on bats and slapping gloves. Ah, spring! So what has been observed during the approximate first week of America's game. Some modest form is already emerging. The heroic Yankees, following bad luck in Tampa, are now back to .500 with scintillating extra inning victories in Baltimore, demonstrating that Marino at 42 is still a force. It is possible the Yankees will win 17 of 19 games against the O's this year. Meanwhile, the Red Sox have continued their malaise of last September with only a solo win thus far. In the NL, the Phillies struggle for stability and the Mets...well, break them up!

Perhaps the most intriguing baseball story thus far is how Ozzie Guillen, new manager of the Florida Marlins, has discovered his love for Fidel Castro in south Florida while the Boston press is already condemning new Red Sox manager, Bobby Valentine, to the ash heap. Problems should have solutions, so here it is: these two managers should trade jobs before each is respectively fired before mid season.

While the great game of baseball is just emerging for 2012 we continue to endure the Obama regime creating class warfare among us. How truly awful. The latest effort of selling the Buffett Rule is so offensive (oh, that ARod would find some offense) and stupid (it does nothing material to close the deficit) and so hypocritical that only perennial bottom feeders such as the metaphoric Pirates, Cubs and Baltimore would pay attention.

In baseball, there are rules. They are followed. Not, however, in the latest chapter of our public life. We have the President/Baseball Commissioner telling the Supreme Court/Umpires that the ObamaCare mandate/new 12 inning game length must be upheld. How silly.

Hell, if one can shred the Constitution, one can certainly shred baseball's rule book. Chaos, why not? Why should the Pirates, Cubs and Baltimore not have a chance, even if they have not paid for players or invested otherwise in their franchises ? After all, we voted for change in 2008, didn't we?

The March of Madness

In an irregular attempt to understand what makes the Left tic, every once in a great while I tune into MSNBC. I marvel at the congregation of far left clowns on this un-watchable network. Circus performers such as Chris Matthews, Rachael Maddow, Ed Schultz, Tameron Hall, Martin Bashir, Al Sharpton all strive hard to make their colleague, Lawrence O'Donnell, appear nearly normal. I wonder how Joe Scarborough cannot be sufficiently embarrassed to just quit. I wonder also how a decent man like Pat Buchanan lasted 10 years in this wasteland. I scratch my head when I hear any of this group spew his or her hatred of common sense and common people. Who watches this remarkably biased crowd, and why?

Sure, it is no surprise that leftist journalistic outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, The New Yorker beat the drum for Obama and his regime but MSNBC is certainly a bridge too far. This group never even challenged the Obama expansion of our national debt, their war on business, their desire to raise taxes, the feckless stimulus, the total absence of 'shovel ready' jobs, the false forecasting of costs for ObamaCare, the transferring of wealth from one social class to another.

The U.S. is in an internecine media war, sort of an extension of the Cold War. The Left has fairly successfully conspired to get its message out via newspapers, art, music, film, schools and TV. Perhaps it could be argued on behalf of MSNBC that if the professional Left was not represented by these clowns we would not be aware of the insidious salami slices taken away from us on an annual basis. After all, if today's Democrat Party was run by Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh, Scoop Jackson and if the media left wing remained being led by the likes of Tim Russert, Walter Cronkite or David Brinkley then we would have little--certainly less--about which to be agitated.

The sheer unpleasantness of the political Left--the hypocritical, the PC attitude, the sanctimoniousness, the taxing, the redistributive desire, the pedantry--is all manifest regularly on MSNBC. Can they not do better?

Even beyond MSNBC how often must we endure the likes of Alec Baldwin or Barack Obama lecturing us on the de-merits of the United States? How often must it be suggested that because I am firmly against the destructive economic policies of the Obama regime that I am a racist? Just what is racist about being for reduced federal spending and a smaller national government?

The idea put forth by Obama and his cronies that money can be taken out of the private sector to be given to the government to grow the economy, as long as it is called an 'investment,' is a fallacy on its face. Has Obama ever run a lemonade stand, a bank, a retail store? Yet he wants to 'grow the economy.' We are in this mess in mid-March due to his arrogance and the likes of his loony and useless sycophants at places such as MSNBC. God help us all.

Heroes

Earlier this week I was in Charlottesville, Virginia learning much about an America hero, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was certainly a very impressive man in spite of his epoch consistency on slavery and women. He was after all a farmer, a surveyor, a lawyer, a planter, a writer, a collector, an innovator, an amateur agronomist, a Governor of Virginia, a diplomat, a Secretary of State, a Vice President under John Adams, our third President, the drafter of the Declaration of Independence, the builder of Monticello and the designer of the University of Virginia. No doubt a Renaissance man who did much in his 83 years. Among other things, he wrote over 90,000 letter in his lifetime, perhaps making him a "blogger" of the 18th and 19th centuries. He can be credited with being the de facto founder of the Democratic Party (although in those days it was known as the Republican Party, no doubt still much to the confusion of 12 year old school boys throughout the country), and creating an American political idea which dominated until about 1860. He was over 6'2'' so if there had been basketball in those days he probably would have also been the Bill Russell of his day.

My heroes have only been three: Mickey Mantle, Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan. Perhaps Jefferson never made it into my pantheon because I perceived him to be a Democrat and maybe, just maybe, I should reconsider. Clearly Friedman and Reagan were conservatives but what is known of Mantle and his political proclivity? Not much, but I think we can stipulate he was conservative: an Oklahoman, a country boy, a white male, a drinker, a New York Yankee center fielder (akin to being an IBMer), a Hall of Fame player, a resident of Dallas. That's probably enough. Plus he won the Triple Crown in 1956!

So I have these three heroes; and now I contemplate adding a fourth. But a Democrat? I think for the time being I will confine old Tom Jefferson to a separate category to be labelled in oxymoron fashion "Liberal Heroes." Who might be added to this group? Certainly not Obama, Clinton, Carter. Not even JFK based now on what we continue to learn of his sexual exploitations. Maybe Scoop Jackson but definitely not Wilson nor FDR. Truman? ML King? Maya Angelou? Karl Marx would, I think, be much too liberal. No, for the time being Jefferson will be alone in this category for me. Maybe someone who reads this might have a good suggestion for a hero in this category but until then TJ will proudly stand alone.

Crossroads for Catholics

It is perhaps safe to say what Obama and company would like to happen to religion is the following. In their strategy, birth control is just the first skirmish in their greater campaign to officially establish, "secular fundamentalism," as our national "faith." If he's reelected, abortion will be the next "reproductive right" to be added to the mandatory "coverage" menu. Planned Parenthood will become the neighborhood, "worship centers." This also means, according to Obama's plan that the Catholic "dominoes begin to fall."

As weak and capricious as its U.S. Bishops have been, the Roman Catholic Church still stands as the greatest remaining obstacle to this diabolical, "evangelizing." For Obama to achieve his goal then, the Church will have to be dismembered. The weapon? The theological "independence" with which Bishops and clerical academics have dangerously flirted with for years.

The Obama policies would, by definition, mean the the end of most Catholic health care, academic and social services. But would it? Or would it cause a staged schism between the factions, which the Obama policies have cynically created? Would the "social justice" clergy (Marxist), academics, government, and Kumbaya "cafeteria Catholics" organize, a "reformed" Catholicism, a sect not unlike the U.S. Episcopalian Church? This "Catholic" sect would follow the gospel according to Obama. Their willingness to accept abortion mandates and the rest, would make them the natural "heirs" to the "Catholic" social services and health care entities in question.

The other side of the Catholic divide would remain traditional Roman Catholics, under the spiritual and episcopal authority of the Pope and Church in Rome. The goal then will be to marginalize these Roman Catholics as the radicals and oddballs. Parishes would choose whether they wished to belong to a "reformed" congregation, or one subject to Rome. Those choosing allegiance to Rome could soon expect their "tax exempt" status to be withdrawn.

If you do not believe this is what Obama and his "Catholic" Democrat cohort in DC as well as the leaders of much of "Catholic" academia have in mind...well, you just haven't been paying attention.

On the other hand, as a very, very good friend who happens not to be Catholic said recently to me given the assault by the Obama regime on Catholics, "We're all Catholics now."

Last night in NYC at yet another fund raiser Obama eclipsed even the Pope when he compared himself to Gandhi and Mandela. Whatta guy.