Karl Rove recently stirred the pot by suggesting that Republicans focus campaign efforts more on who could win rather than who rang the right chimes. The idea is to look at the big picture and weed out the cruft that really wouldn’t help achieve goals. J.R. Dunn describes the situation as How the Left Dupes Conservative Voters.

The history goes back to the 2000 election and the ‘revelation’ of a candidate’s drunk driving record.

“The program operates counterintuitively, by manipulating the beliefs and convictions of the voters to misdirect or negate their political activities. Rather than persuade voters to act against their own interests or to vote against their convictions, the left, with the aid of the media, manipulates those very convictions — public morality with religious voters, conservative ideology with traditionalists or tea party voters, and various stances on single issues, to persuade voters to waste their votes on obscure or bogus candidates, to throw support to hopeless or seriously flawed “pure” candidates, and in some cases not to vote at all.”

It is a typical military strategy. Confuse the enemy just enough to impair effectiveness just enough to be able to tilt the odds.

A bill presented to the in Washington state legislature is getting some attention. This is likely because it so well illustrates the nanny state approach to society with the idea that government employees are somehow special and better than the citizens. See the story Sheriffs can inspect homes for safe gun storage in Washington state under Democratic weapon bill.

“A new bill working through Washington state’s legislature would allow local sheriffs to enter homes of gun owners to ensure their weapons are properly stored.

The bill, pushed by Democrats, allows police to search where and how assault weapons are stored — as well as how safely they are stored, according to its text, listed in the state’s online legislative directory as SB 5737-2013-14.
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The definition of a “safely and securely” stored weapon is left largely to law enforcement to decide.”

What with the ‘law enforcement’ killing so many innocents in the recent LA manhunt, the problems of prosecutorial indiscretion, the arrests for public video recording, the problems that resulted in ‘must issue’ laws for concealed carry licenses, and so forth, one has to wonder about just what is driving this sort of idea sufficiently to craft a bill and put it up for legislative vote.

“Once upon a time, the mortgage market was a safe and staid place where widows and orphans could lend to responsible borrowers paying reasonable prices for sensible housing. But a combination of lax regulation, political opportunism, Wall Street (and Fannie Mae) greed, credulous investors and speculative borrowers turned the mortgage market into a horrible mess that cost this country as much money as a foreign war. Let’s try not to do the same thing with our municipal finance system, shall we?”

WR Mead worries about California: Already Stoking the Next Big Financial Crash?. The state has authorized municipal bonds that run interest only for decades.

“It is starting out innocently enough. Looking to expand a number of aging school facilities but loath to raise the taxes necessary to pay for it, California cities have opted to fund school construction projects with capital appreciation bonds, which allow school districts to borrow money now while putting off payments for decades. It sounds like a great deal, but it has one major drawback: The interest rates involved push the eventual price tag to many times the original amount—sometimes as much as ten times more.”

This is basically what happened in the real estate market. Inflation in housing values became considered a given and money was loaned on that basis. The Government pushed loans that were otherwise unsound and impractical. That bubble burst to horrific effect but the desire for ‘free money’ continues. There is concern about student loans and the fact that they don’t provide a real return on investment when it comes to money loaned to a student compared to occupational advantage. Now we see local governments hurting for funding for all the frills and fancies that so many have come to see as a necessary part of government services. The funding for those desires is being pushed off to the children. That has been ongoing as the pension funding problem is already bankrupting cities.

Perhaps this is a way to distribute income? It is the rich after all who are the only ones that can invest money. So when the investments go belly-up, it is essentially just re-distributing their money to the poor and needy depending upon government services. The fact that this sort of thing tends to bankrupt countries doesn’t seem to register with many.

On the one hand is Walter Williams on Women in Combat. There is a difference by gender in important military related variables.

On the other hand is David Horowitz on the difference between political parties.

“Behind the failures of Republican campaigns lies an attitude that is administrative rather than combative. It focuses on policies rather than politics. It is more comfortable with budgets and pie charts than with the flesh and blood victims of their opponents’ policies.”
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“There is a reason for this, and it affects everything that goes on in political campaigns. Republicans and Democrats are not similar people who make opposite judgments about common problems and their solutions—spending is good, tax hikes are bad. Republicans and Democrats approach politics with fundamentally different visions of what politics is about. These visions color not only the way each side thinks about questions of policy, but how they enter the arena to face their opponents.”
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“Unlike Republicans, Democrats are not in politics just to fix government and solve problems. They are secular missionaries who want to “change society.” Their goal is a new order of society— “social justice.””
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“Republicans see Democrats as mistaken. Democrats see Republicans — whatever their individual intentions and behaviors—as enemies of the just and the good. Republicans have no parallel belief that drives them and their agendas, and no similar cause to despise and hate their opponents.”
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“It is the very grandeur of the progressive ambition that makes its believers so zealous in pursuing it.” … “The vision of the glorious future puts urgency into their crusades and encourages them to hate their opponents.”

There is a difference and a politician isn’t just a politician. What drives people influences their values and that influences their tactics. It is why any argument that takes the basis that ‘both sides do it’ is flawed in its first premise. It isn’t just a matter of difference of opinion. As the old saying goes, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. That applies here as well. One side hits in the gut while the other side is trying to tell you that such hits will hurt. One is concrete and the other abstract. One is emotional the other rational. One wants to feel good and the other to be good. That difference makes a difference.

“This bipartisan activist policy is coming to a close with the new “lead from behind” policy of the Obama administration. Perhaps America now believes that the United Nations has a better record of preventing or stopping wars — or that the history of the United States suggests we have more often caused rather than solved problems, or that with pressing social needs at home we can no longer afford an activist profile abroad at a time of near financial insolvency.

Yet the reasons for our new isolationism, analogous to early 1914 or 1939, do not matter; all that matters is the reality that lots of bad actors now believe that the United States cannot or will not impede their agendas — and that no one else will in our absence. Americans are rightly tired of the Afghan and Iraq wars. Yet we left no monitoring force in Iraq and are winding down precipitately in Afghanistan, and thus have no guarantees that our decade-long struggle for postwar consensual government will survive in either place.”

Professor Hanson says War Is Like Rust: “War seems to come out of nowhere, like rust that suddenly pops up on iron after a storm.”

There are some who deny human nature or have a strong belief that history is no predictor. The denial is often flavored with rationalizations such as the idea that the source of all evil is Western Culture — that gets into an interesting exploration about personal feelings of guilt and how they are expressed.

VDH says “there is no evidence in either human nature or our recorded past to believe such a rosy prognosis.”. The biggest problem seems to be that evidence makes no difference to all too many.

“The Marine Corps passed to congress and higher that it would not be a good idea ton implement women into the infantry. What does the Marine Corps know? They only have been fighting our nations wars, that’s all. Well, to already cluster strike an idea that apparently everyone in the room already knows the results except those in DC, a female Marine gives her two cents. But hey, it’s only another Marine telling everyone, it’s a bad idea. Let’s do it anyway!!! Brilliant. “

Maj Pain at BlackFive says Get Over It! We Are Not All Created Equal quoting Capt Katie Petronio, “a company grade 1302 combat engineer officer with 5 years of active service and two combat deployments, one to Iraq and the other to Afghanistan.”

“Who is driving this agenda? I am not personally hearing female Marines, enlisted or officer, pounding on the doors of Congress claiming that their inability to serve in the infantry violates their right to equality. Shockingly, this isn’t even a congressional agenda. … it’s very surprising to see that none of the committee members are on active duty or have any recent combat or relevant operational experience relating to the issue they are attempting to change. I say this because, at the end of the day, it’s the active duty servicemember who will ultimately deal with the results of their initiatives, not those on the outside looking in.”

The captain has ‘been there, done that’ and has first hand experience with the result. Her story is worth careful consideration.

“Frankly, I don’t know whether the majority of Americans have fundamentally changed, whether ignorance, apathy and/or a sense of helplessness have seized too many right-thinking Americans, whether the Saul Alinsky-fed Democrats are just superior at propaganda or whether the Republican political class, out of frustration or lack of conviction, has given up.”

What is the source of this bit of dissonance? A list is presented and the stimulus was a story about a sports star. David Limbaugh offers Half-Plaudits to Mickelson.

“The sports media, which are every bit as shamelessly liberal as their counterparts in the political media, savaged Mickelson for daring to complain about paying his “fair share.” After they shamed him, Mickelson apologized — regrettably — saying he should have kept his thoughts to himself.”
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“Should we applaud a culture that lacks the moral courage to discourage envy and covetousness and instead champions them? This is liberalism, folks. This is the left’s ideal America.”

There are many who are trying to figure out why “what’s it matter” is sitting on top of gravestones, irrational debate has taken over politics, and the Senate majority leader is “disengaging” while the Republicans “cave” – at least according to headlines.

Trying to make women and men equal in all ways is one of those high sounding nifty ideas that recently came to the fore in the idea of allowing women to serve in combat roles in the military. It is also a ‘nifty idea’ that has problems with reality. Scott Johnson quotes and Iraqi marine to label that idea An act of wanton destruction.

“It seems to me an act of wanton destruction — David French calls it “Demilitarizing the military” — of a piece with Obama’s touch elsewhere. I commend to your attention Ryan Smith’s Wall Street Journal column “The reality that awaits women in combat.” Smith himself is a combat veteran with poignant memories of his service in Iraq. Available via Google News, the column may be inaccessible behind the Journal’s paywall. Smith writes:”

You can read a memoir such as Love Company: L Company, 399th Infantry Regiment, of the 100th Infantry Division during World War II and Beyond and you’ll find that the grunt on the front line in the European theater in World War II has a lot of experience that can be shared with one in Iraq in the 2000′s. That experience is considerably different from that envisioned by the ‘equality of sexes’ dreamers.

Jessoca Chasmar reports that an ‘Infuriated’ Boxer stormed out of Benghazi hearing. That was because “Mr Paul said it was “inexcusable” for the State Department to ignore the Benghazi cables.”

“To suggest that she’s retiring from this post after traveling a million miles and being one of the greatest secretaries of state because of Benghazi is unbelievable,” Ms Boxer retorted on MSNBC. “To speak to Sec. Clinton that way, it says more about him than it does about her.”

The fact of the matter is that the mid-east is in turmoil. U.S. diplomats have been killed due to security lapses. These are significant failures. But to people like Senator Boxer, the deaths and turmoil are less important than how far the boss in charge of these areas has travelled.

There is a difference between Democrats and Republicans. It is on display in the Benchazi hearings.

“Overextension is often the result of hubris, the delusion of invincibility as exemplified by Napoleon and Hitler. The enemies of the Bill of Rights have similarly assumed they could exploit the blood of the murder victims to revive an agenda that had been put down hard in 2000, but their resulting hubris yielded at least three irrevocably self-damning statements that should turn their opportunity into a catastrophe.”

William Levinson says it’s The Antigun Movement’s Bridge Too Far. His caveat is that the lessons will fade into the woodwork unless people act to highlight and communicate the lessons that can be learned. These lessons are from Governor Ed Rendell and “The Good Thing About Newton…”, Prime Minister John Howard who thinks Australia “Correctly” has no Bill of Rights, and Governor Andrew Cuomo who says “No One Needs 10 Bullets to Kill a Deer”.

That is, no crisis is too tragic to waste for these folks, they do not understand basic civil rights and why the Bill of Rights was added to the U.S. Constitution, and they do not understand that civilian arms is mostly about property and civil rights and matters of self defense (rather than recreation).

The problem is Joseph Goebbels’ advice that “Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect.” Just how do you turn crude, clear, and forcible appeals to feelings into a nuanced and strong argument based in intellectual integrity? Just how do you get people to stop and think?

“There’s a huge PR opportunity here. Painting the Second Amendment as a defense of racism & slavery is a nice way to rebrand NRA types — both the organization itself and its most virulent supporters.”

Daniel Wattenberg says that the Roots of Glover’s 2nd Amendment interpretation lie in eccentric historical claims of 9/11 truther. The idea that the 2nd amendment roots were in oppression rather than freedom came from a “left-wing website proudly specializing in provocation.”

But, to ‘never let a crisis go to waste’, the war for control over civil liberties takes advantage of every opportunity and ignores constraints of reality and integrity. As in the past election, any tool that can be found to paint the opposition is considered fair game no matter how much it must be distorted and twisted.

Perhaps, just perhaps, more people will take a look at the paint job and begin to see just how sloppy and dishonest it is. Then they can realize it is the painter and not the subject that needs a closer examination.

“repeating once again the facts demonstrating that failure and the flawed ideology that has created it, or more effectively repackaging the facts and arguments and having it delivered by an oratorical genius, is not going to cut much ice.”

Bruce Thornton says “It’s Not the Message, It’s Not the Messenger, It’s the Voter” in suggesting why much of the Republican analysis regarding the loss in recent elections is misdirected.

“Dig deeper into the ideas behind the policies and you’ll find out why the Democrats’ narrative is so much more appealing to such voters than is that of the Republicans. … individuals, families, churches, and communities must see to their own needs and wants and find some way to pay for them. … the limits of human knowledge all mean that we have to accept an imperfect world in which life isn’t fair: there are no winners without losers, there’s no free lunch, and we can’t eat our cake and have it.

The progressive Democrats, in contrast to the timeless wisdom even an illiterate peasant once understood, endorse a therapeutic view of human life. People aren’t responsible for their choices, for an unjust political and economic environment … Risk and trade-offs are not a permanent cost of human aspirations and actions, but can be removed from human life.”
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“Better messages and better messengers are not going to overcome human nature. The melancholy truth is that our debt, deficit, and entitlement problems will not be seriously addressed until a critical mass of citizens feels the pain of these self-interested, shortsighted, catastrophic policies.”

The budget process is an example. For the last four years, government has been run on a cash flow basis with crisis after crisis as new credit is sought to cover bills and pay for expenses. A budget, such as the Senate has avoided, is a way out of shortsighted financial thinking that looks beyond immediate needs and desires.

The U.S. government is ‘special’ because those who created the Constitution were able to develop mechanisms to encourage and stimulate rising above “self-interested, shortsighted, catastrophic policies.” But a proclivity towards such failings is strong and there is no way to require people to think, to reason, and to consider reality. How to move voters in such a direction is a challenge.

Something must be done! History and experience do not matter. Do something! anything!

The problem with unreasoned and ignorant ‘do something’ efforts is that the often run into unintended consequences. The idea to limit magazine size is one such idea.

“The rationale for such limits is that mass murderers need “large-capacity” magazines, while law-abiding citizens don’t. Both premises are questionable, and so is the notion that politicians should be the arbiters of necessity under the Second Amendment.”

Jacob Sullum describes The Threat Posed by Gun Magazine Limits and why Bans on “large capacity ammunition feeding devices” could endanger victims instead of saving them.

“the Court said, the Second Amendment guarantees the right to own weapons “in common use for lawful purposes,” which clearly include guns capable of firing more than 10 rounds”

Why is the right to bear arms in the constitution? It isn’t hunting. Oleg Atbashian provides a clue in Pravda, Guns, and America

In regards to the effectiveness of the ‘do something’ ethos, see Jeffrey Scott Shapiro: A Gun Ban That Misfired. What I saw as a prosecutor in Washington, D.C., makes me wary of strict firearms laws.

The idea of restricting individual rights is one thing. The fanatacism behind efforts to do so is something to behold (and something that should cause concern).

“Many liberal ideas about race sound plausible, and it is understandable that these ideas might have been attractive 50 years ago. What is not understandable is how so many liberals can blindly ignore 50 years of evidence to the contrary since then.”

Liberalism Versus Blacks by Thomas Sowell describes the way that discrimination can be achieved using San Francisco as the example. It just has to fly under false colors as an unintended consequence of a feel good effort.

Bill McBride has hit this several times: Bernanke to Congress: Do your job, Pay the Bills. In doing so, he reveals a political bias.

The debt limit is a financial control. As with any complex system, government expenditures need many controls at many levels. In personal finance, the debt limit is your credit limit. It is a last ditch control.

A more basic financial control is a budget. That is where you plan your spending to meet goals against expected income. The problem the U.S. government has right now is that it doesn’t have a budget thanks to obstructionism of the Senate majority leader. For the last three or four years, the government has been going on a continuing resolution basis using the first budget approved by the President and Congress in 2009.

The President’s assertion about raising the debt limit in order to pay for things Congress has budgeted for sounds very nice. The problem is that the last time Congress passed a budget was two sessions ago. The tactics of the Democrats then are to bypass the upheaval in Congress due to the 2010 election and since.

What has happened in recent history when debt limits have been reached is the threats about teachers, firemen, and police. In other words, when government is faced with having to cut back on expenditures, they try extortion on their constituents. The programs that get put up for suffering are the high value or high emotion ones. The lack of seriousness in such behavior is starting to grind on those constituents but it appears that the President and others haven’t got the message, yet.

This is why the ‘just to pay the bills’ idea is insidious as well as just false. For McBride to fall for it demeans an otherwise excellent finance and economics blog.

“One can distinguish between violations of the D.C. firearms law that occur as a result of providing information to the public and those that do not. Whether the distinction justifies non-prosecution in the former case is very much another question, but one that falls within the AG’s discretion to decide.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult not to suspect that the AG was moved by the fact that he liked the message behind Gregory’s violation of the law. I can’t help but think that the outcome might well have been different if the “First Amendment informational purpose” had been in service of a pro-gun message. ”
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“Prosecutorial discretion should not be exercised in the case of flagrant disregard of the law — e.g., a violation that occurs in the face of instruction by the police that the action being contemplated is unlawful.”

Paul Mirengoff describes how David Gregory skates past prosecution. When justice becomes a matter of who you know and who you are rather than what you do, confidence in the law becomes eroded. It is the essence of corruption.

“What does it tell you when a new group founded to clamp down on gun-ownership rights announces its formation by trotting out the celebrity victim of a crazed gunman?”

Charles Hurt delves into this one and suggests that Using Gabby Giffords as a mascot is an indication of non-seriousness in debating critical issues.

“Of course, Ms. Giffords has no special qualifications or knowledge whatsoever. All her presence does is chill the debate. No matter how right you are that banning guns or ammunition or creating massive new government lists will not fix the problem, most mannerly people don’t much want to disagree with a woman who just keeps pointing to the bullet wound on her head.”

It is one thing when people argue from a point of ignorance – such as the problem in defining ‘assault rifle’ – but it is another when the fundamental issues of self defense and property rights also get dismissed.

The same phenomena occurred after the Reagan assassination attempt where one of the party suffered head wounds and disability. It is another of those ‘never let a crisis go to waste’ type things and they never ever give up or succumb to reason and reality.

“we have run the government for 1350 days by continuing resolutions and omnibus catch-alls, perhaps the least efficient ways of legislating and of working out compromises. Why? Reid doesn’t want conference committees and compromises — he wants capitulations. That’s why we keep careening from crisis to crisis, from cliff to cliff.”

Ed Morrissey asks: Will the GOP force normal order on budgets to resolve debt limit?. What brings that question up is the Senate Majority Leader’s obstruction to budgetary processes mandated by law. The answer to the Senate’s intransigence on the budget was a subject of Byron York’s thoughts that Morrissey notes.

The question is whether the Senate Majority Party will be held accountable for its behavior both in terms of the budgetary process and in terms of spending.

The Senate has not worked on a budget in nearly four years despite a seventies law that says it must. The president doesn’t see any problem with government spending. Republicans see things differently:

“The driving passion for Mr. Boehner in these fiscal debates is his conviction that trillion-dollar deficits are sapping the country of its energy and prosperity. When I ask him when the impact of this debt will start to be felt, he says: “It’s already here today. It’s killing our economy. It’s causing investors to sit on their cash. They’re afraid to invest. It’s a wet blanket on top of our economy.”"

Stephen Moore explains the problem at the WSJ: The Education of John Boehner. Leverage for the next clash: GOP willingness to let the spending sequester take effect.

“With the two sides so far from agreeing even on the nature of the country’s fiscal challenge, making progress on how to address it was difficult.”

Figuring out what problem to solve is a problem in itself.

“The assault on the privacy of these law-abiding citizens, in the name of the liberal media’s anti-gun agenda, is nothing short of tragic. But nearly as tragic is the damage this does to the cause of open government.”

Woman Being Stalked Thanks To Newspaper Disclosing Gun Owner Addresses at SayAnythingBlog

Open government means a lot of records are available online. You can use Zillow to look up any address and see public property records. Concealed carry permits are another that often fall prey to information requests. Newspaper abuse of such requests was highlighted when a New Jersey paper published a map mashup with CCW permit holder information.

Responsibilities, especially civil, ethical, and moral ones, accompany rights. When political players abuse their responsibilities, they attack the rights of all. Rights become an ideological football to play a game neither side can win.

See also: Outing the Gun Owners and the Left’s New Savagery at American Thinker