How You Know They're Not Serious About "Securing the Border"

Have you seen this ad? We're told that S.744 (the "comprehensive immigration reform" bill that passed the Senate last month) contains "the tough border security America needs." Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), one of the "Gang of Eight" Senators who supposedly drafted this legislation,  assures us that the bill “puts in place the toughest enforcement measures in the history of the United States, potentially in the world.” Is that a fair statement?

Last week, I posted a critique of S.744 and detailed some of the problems with the bill's approach to immigration reform. I originally endeavored to go into even greater detail about the language of the legislation, but then I decided that the more tedious analysis belonged in a separate post. So, here, I will analyze with greater specificity where and how the Senate's bill comes up short. First, though, a brief passage on the policy lingo of immigration reform is needed.

The principal responsibility for protecting our country's border security, cybersecurity and economic security lies with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DHS is also charged with overseeing citizenship and immigration in the United States. The United States Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) oversees legal immigration to the United States and is the agency that grants immigration and citizenship benefits. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) is "the principal investigative arm of DHS, and its primary mission is to promote homeland security and public safety through the criminal and civil enforcement of federal laws governing border control, customs, trade, and immigration," according to this thing somebody referred me to.
 

When discussing/debating "legalizing" illegal immigrants, it's important to understand that a pathway to legal status is not necessarily a pathway to citizenship. (To some, any legalization is "amnesty", but that's a topic for a separate post.) S.744 speaks of "registered provisional immigrant status," which if granted would then allow an immigrant to stay in the U.S. legally, without receiving all the rights and benefits of a U.S. citizen. In this post, I'll refer to applications for registered provisional immigrant status by the acronym "ARPISs".

It's also important to understand that, as was the case with past efforts toward "comprehensive immigration reform", the end game of S.744 is to legalize immigrants who are currently in the U.S. unlawfully without requiring them to resort to existing legal channels (which, in most cases, would require them to first leave the U.S. and re-enter the country legally). There are some who are categorically opposed to this, but most Americans who have an opinion on this subject are not. Most members of Congress, too, are willing to support legislation that would provide illegal aliens with a path to legal status or even citizenship, but a lot of them want any legislation that provides such a pathway to address the problem of illegal immigration with, inter alia, more border security, enhanced & increased "interior enforcement" and measures that discourage the wrong kind of immigration (to wit, illegal immigration and the immigrants who come here legally with an eye toward living off the government).

Rubio and other Republican proponents of the bill have insisted that it contains multiple security "triggers" that must be met before any immigrant currently in this country illegally can be legalized. Skeptics have contended that these "triggers" are weak, meaningless and/or can be easily manipulated/circumvented to fast-track the legalization process. Many Senators offered amendments to S.744 (discussed herein) that would strengthen the triggers or add additional preconditions to legalization.

You've probably heard of the "border surge" provisions in S.744. In the bill, what some are calling "the Border Surge" is part of the Comprehensive Southern Border Security Strategy. I'll just call it the Border Surge. There's also the "Southern Border Fencing Strategy," which is exactly what it sounds like. (S.744 requires the `Southern Border Fencing Strategy' to identify "where fencing (including double-layer fencing), infrastructure, and technology, including at ports of entry, should be deployed along the Southern border.") "E-verify" refers to a mandatory employment verification system required by current law  that the federal government never got around to implementing (at least not as originally conceived). There is currently a federal employment verification program in place, but it is not very potent or effective.

Now to the "triggers." I haven't read and analyzed the entire bill yet, so I can't tell you exactly what's in it. However, I can say what's not in it, and that's critical. By looking at what the proponents of this legislation voted against, you can see that they're not at all serious about border security.
 

Six weeks ago, the Senate agreed to table (kill) an amendment by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) that would have allowed DHS to begin processing ARPISs only after the Secretary of Homeland Security has certified to Congress that "the Secretary has maintained effective control of the Southern border for a period of not less 6 months." Such a nebulous standard could hardly be regarded as a serious precondition, so it should come as no surprise that Handsome John Thune's amendment, which contained more specific prerequisites, was also defeated by a vote of 39 to 54. Thune's amendment would have required 350 miles of Southern border fencing to be completed before the Secretary could commence processing ARPISs and conditioned any adjustment in the status of aliens who have been granted registered provisional status on the Secretary's written certification that:

• the Comprehensive Southern Border Security Strategy “has been substantially deployed and is substantially operational;” 

• the Southern Border Fencing Strategy has been submitted to Congress, implemented, and is "substantially completed;"
• 700 miles of Southern border fencing “that is double-layered and constructed in a way to effectively restrain pedestrian traffic” has been completed;

•  the Secretary has implemented E-verify; and
 
• the Secretary is using an electronic exit system at air and sea ports of entry that operates by collecting machine-readable visa or passport information from air and vessel carriers.

Note that both Grassley's and Thune's amendments suffer from the same flaw: The predicate for legalizing illegals is not actually securing the borders but rather the Secretary of Homeland Security's certification that the southern border is secured. (Grassley's amendment also contained a special carve-out for aliens granted blue card status, which is a special legal status for agricultural workers; Grassley’s home state of Iowa is about 95% farmland.) We already know that members of Obama's cabinet have no compunction about lying to Congress, so what good is the DHS Secretary's word on anything?

Later that same day,  Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., offered a good fix: require Congress to vote annually for five years on whether the border is secure. "If Congress believes that the border is not secure," the Senator explained in a speech on the Senate floor, "then the processing of undocumented immigrants stops until it is secure." As David Nakamura of the Washington Post reported it:

Paul’s amendment would require the Department of Homeland Security to implement specific border security measures, including hundreds of miles of additional fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border, and provide a report to Congress each year on its progress.

Then Congress would vote annually as to whether the agency had met its goals. Each year, another group of illegal immigrants would earn legal work visas if the metrics are met, Paul said.

This short summation--while accurate and concise--does not do Paul's amendment (styled the "Trust But Verify Act of 2013") justice. Indeed, those who crafted this particular legislation appear to have thought of everything. The bill specified what the Secretary must conduct an annual comprehensive review of and provided specific border security metrics, the progress toward which must be reported on. It stated what the joint resolution affirming that the border is secure must say and prevents the resolution from being amended. It even contained a provision limiting debate on the joint resolution "and on all debatable motions and appeals in connection with such resolution" and curtailing the ability of would-be obstructionists to use parliamentary shenanigans to delay a vote on the resolution or dispose of it without a vote. 

Paul's amendment also addressed the problem of DHS officials using their administrative authority to not enforce the law (as discussed in my earlier post) by prohibiting the Secretary from making "any alteration to the Border Patrol sectors in operation or the boundaries of such sectors" without first notifying both the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees of the proposed change "not later than 120 days before any such change would take effect," by which time Congress could act to thwart any undesired changes. It also required the Secretary to establish a Student Visa National Security Registration System and submit an annual report to Congress that describes the effectiveness with which DHS is screening student visa applicants through the System and "indicates whether the System has been implemented in a manner that is overbroad or results in the deportation of individuals with no reasonable link to a national security threat or perceived threat." And, the amendment capped the number of  applicants who may be granted registered provisional immigrant status under the law in any calendar year at 2,000,000 (a ridiculously high limit, but apparently too low for some people). 61 Senators voted to table Paul's "Trust But Verify" amendment.

Maybe Senator Paul was just asking for too much. (I don't think so, but reasonable minds can differ.)  Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) had a simpler request: Hey, remember that integrated entry & exit data system (a system to track the border comings and goings of foreigners) that was supposed to be developed and implemented under a 1996 law? You know, the one we're still waiting on? Well, forget all the stuff that Paul wanted. Let's just condition the temporary grant of legal status to, or adjustment to citizenship status of, any individual who is unlawfully present in the United States on the Secretary's written certification that that biometric border check-in/check-out system (officially the US-VISIT System) has been fully implemented at every land, sea and airport of entry. Oh, and Congress has to pass a joint resolution stating that this integrated entry and exit data system has been sufficiently implemented, because, you know, we don't trust this administration's word. Senator Vitter proposed an amendment to that effect over a month ago. It even included "fast track" procedures for getting the requisite joint resolution through Congress without unnecessary delay.

Now, it seems that a piece of legislation that basically just says, "Hey, let's incentivize the executive branch to do what they're already required to do by conditioning something that they want but that nobody really needs on them doing that thing they're supposed to do." shouldn't be something that a lot of Senators would find a reason to vote against, but if you view their votes on Senator Vitter's amendment, which was rejected by a vote of 36 to 58, in the context of most of them not giving a damn about securing our borders, then it makes sense. Another amendment, proposed by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), that would have required “fast-track congressional approval” of what the Gang of 8 legislation merely requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to certify was also voted down, 39 to 59.

Enter Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), tall, learned and circumspect, a conservative Republican from a state with a large population of illegal immigrants. As the Senate Minority Whip, it's his job to make sure GOP Senators vote the party line on critical pieces of legislation. Cornyn, who was Texas Attorney General before being elected to the U.S. Senate, had criticized the "border-security triggers" in S.744 as "talking points disguised as policy." Could he offer a serious bill for predicating any legalization of illegal immigrants on actual, verified border security measures? Well, a little over a month ago, after the amendments proposed by Senators Grassley, Thune, Paul, Vitter and Lee had all been voted down, Senator Cornyn offered an amendment to the immigration bill that would have kept newly legalized immigrants from becoming permanent residents or pursuing citizenship until certain border goals were met. Those goals were:

• to achieve and maintain operational control of the Southern border;
• to achieve and maintain full situational awareness of the Southern border;
• to fully implement a biometric entry and exit system at all land, air and sea ports of entry; and
• to implement E-verify.

All these goals would have to be met "within 5 years of the date of the enactment of this Act," i.e., the comprehensive immigration reform bill. As used in Cornyn's amendment, the term "operational control" meant that, "within each and every sector of the Southern border, a condition exists in which there is an effectiveness rate, informed by situational awareness, of not lower than 90 percent." The term "situational awareness" was defined as "knowledge and an understanding of current illicit cross-border activity, including cross-border threats and trends concerning illicit trafficking and unlawful crossings along the international borders of the United States and in the maritime environment, and the ability to predict future shifts in such threats and trends." The Secretary and the U.S. Customs & Border Protection Commissioner would have to "jointly submit" to the President and Congress a written certification, under penalty of perjury, that the Secretary had met these goals.  This submission could not be made sooner than 9½ years after the comprehensive immigration reform bill becomes law and must include "a comprehensive report detailing the data, methodologies, and reasoning" justifying the certification. And, the Comptroller General of the United States would be required to "review such certification and provide Congress with a written report reviewing the reliability of such certification" and expressing the Comptroller General's own conclusion as to whether or not the specified border goals have been achieved.

The Secretary would still be required to submit a strategy "for achieving and maintaining operational control and full situational awareness of the Southern border" to the Comptroller General, and within 60 days of the submission of such strategy, the Secretary would also have to submit "an implementation plan for each of the border security components of the Department to carry out the Strategy." This plan must include, at a minimum:

• a comprehensive border security technology plan for continuous and systematic surveillance of the Southern border, including a documented justification and rationale for the technologies selected, deployment locations, fixed versus mobile assets, and a timetable for procurement and deployment;
• the resources, including personnel, infrastructure and technologies that must be developed, procured and successfully deployed, to achieve and maintain operational control and full situational awareness of the Southern border; and
• a set of interim goals and supporting milestones necessary for the Department to achieve and maintain operational control and full situational awareness of the Southern border.

It seemed doomed to fail, but Cornyn's amendment had something the others didn't: an appropriate acronym. The Senator dubbed his amendment, "Requiring Enforcement, Security and safety while Upgrading Lawful Trade and travel Simultaneously (RESULTS)," and it fared better with his colleagues than the other amendments I've described here did. Only 54 Senators voted to kill it. Two Democrats, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, voted against the Motion to Table, as did Senator Rubio, who had opposed the aforementioned amendments offered by  Senators Grassley, Thune, Paul, Vitter and Lee. (Curiously, Rand Paul voted with the anti-enforcement coalition, but that may have been because of the amendment's hefty cost.) Heritage Action ("The Heritage Foundation’s lobbying arm") urged Senators to vote “NO” on Cornyn's RESULTS amendment "because it fails to solve the enforcement problems in the underlying bill" and would "serve as political cover for [multiple Senators] to justify their support for the Gang of Eight’s amnesty."

So, on June 27th, S.744 passed the Senate, free of any amendments that would require DHS to actually secure the borders before illegal aliens could be legalized. It did include language from a border security and enforcement amendment proposed by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and modified by the much-touted Corker-Hoeven Amendment, which inludes a lot of stuff that should turn off congressmen and women  on both sides of the aisle. (Leahy, who "begrudgingly" supported the changes to his amendment offered by Senators Corker and Hoeven, complained that their legislation “reads like a Christmas wish list for Halliburton.”) While Corker-Hoeven does delay the legalization of illegals (No Registered Provisional Immigrants can receive Green Cards until at least ten years after the bill becomes law) and strengthens the border-security "triggers" to legalization, it fails to cure many of the bill's other deficiencies and focuses on border security but not interior enforcement. Then there's the price tag; the CBO reported it would add $38 billion to the cost of the act. At the very least, the amendment added language to S.744 aimed at preventing the abuse of federal benefits by illegals who would be legalized under the legislation, including:

·         preventing immigrants who used a fraudulent or false Social Security number while they were unlawfully present in the U.S. from getting Social Security credits for that period;

·         restricting certain non-immigrant visa holders, such as tourists and foreign students, from accessing Medicaid, SCHIP and Obamacare benefits; and

·         providing that the Department of Health & Human Services may not grant waivers to states to allow them to use Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) dollars to give cash assistance benefits to registered provisional immigrants.

That ad I mentioned at the beginning of this post calls the Border Surge "the toughest border security plan ever passed by Congress." That it may be, but again, border security is only part of what we need. S.744 falls short of ensuring the aggressive interior enforcement that is desperately needed and eliminating the government-created magnets for illegal immigrants. Also, it fails to predicate legalization on a congressional affirmation of border security or other objectively verifiable metrics. If any of that bothers you, then please contact your Representative and admonish him or her not to vote for any bill that contains the same flaws as the Senate bill. But first, follow us on Twitter.

Republicans and Democrats Working Together...To Screw Over Taxpayers

It's no secret that the U.S. Postal Service is having problems. It's run a deficit every year since FY2007, largely because of the extremely generous pensions and other benefits it's obligated to pay former employees. Last month, the USPS announced that, beginning in August, Saturday delivery service would be discontinued as a cost-cutting measure...sort of. The USPS will still deliver packages, mail-order medicines, Priority Mail and Express Mail six days a week, and all forms of mail will continue to be delivered to Post Office boxes on Saturdays. Still, this is supposed to save the Post Office $2 billion a year.

Except now it won't. On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate approved a bill that included a provision that prevents the USPS from reducing delivery service. The House of Representatives followed suit on Thursday. Both measures passed with bipartisan support.

If President Obama signs the legislation into law, then it will be back to the drawing board for whoever is tasked with trying to make the USPS financially sound. In the meantime, I suggest they adopt a new logo:

 

(It has nothing to do with the Republican Party. If that's what you thought, then look up "white elephant".) 

Something to Think About on Taxes

After I started this post, I read Stephen F. Hayward's piece in the December 3 issue of National Review, in which he offered House Republicans an idea on how to deal with Taxmageddon: 

The House GOP should call the Obama-Krugman bluff--of letting us go over the fiscal cliff on January 1--by passing a sweeping, pro-growth tax reform package right now, and sending it to the Senate, coupled with an announcement that it is not going along with tax increases for anyone unless taxes increase for everyone. The House GOP could even just pass Simpson-Bowles, and rightly say they are passing the plan President Obama's own commission recommended.

I was about to suggest much the same thing, albeit in my customarily garrulous style. Since taxes still seem to be the focal point of the negotiations between President Obama and Speaker Boehner, the House Republican Conference might as well accept that they're not going to convince the president and enough Senate Democrats to agree to a reasonable substitute for what will happen under current law before year's end and pass something like the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Unless they already have something drafted, however, that might not be feasible, so they could just use the Simpson-Bowles plan, but tax filers who itemize should still be allowed to take the full deduction for charitable contributions.

The other part of Hayward's/my idea--that the House GOP should announce that it is not going along with tax increases for anyone unless taxes increase for everyone--may sound like a move wrought with peril. At first blush, it sounds like it would play into the Democratic meme that Republicans are holding middle-class tax cuts "hostage" to protect "the rich," but the GOP has a ready retort, courtesy of the same Democrats who are levelling that charge: "shared sacrifice".

The argument is simple: If President Obama and congressional Democrats are serious about everyone needing to "share" in the "sacrifices" that must be made to get our fiscal house in order, then any deal we reach to reduce the deficit ought to send the message that "we're in this together," and therefore it's only fair that either all wage earners pay higher income taxes, or nobody pays higher income taxes.

Clever Democrats (yes, there are a few) might counter that the "sacrifices" that middle- and lower-income households will have to make should not come in the form of taxes but rather in cuts to entitlements and social welfare programs, but if they made that argument, then Republicans could simply challenge them to name specific programs and services they're willing to cut and at least offer an estimate of how much less they're willing to spend. (I have long believed that Senate Democrats will not be able to provide enough votes for the kind of spending cuts and entitlement reforms that would entice a sufficient number of Republicans to agree to the kind of massive tax hike for which the White House is calling.) 

In this vein, Republicans can also usurp the "fairness" issue, which Democrats always seem eager to inject into any debate over tax policy. Obama has demanded that the top individual income tax rates go from 33% and 35% to 36% and 39.6%, respectively, and that all other tax rates should stay the same. Prior to EGTRRA (the first Bush tax cut), the top rate was 39.6% and the lowest income tax rate was 15%. That's an 8:3 ratio between the highest and lowest income tax rates. Since 2003, individual income has been subject to a six-bracket (one more than under Clinton) schedule with a top rate of 35% and a bottom rate of 10%, a 7:2 (or 3.5 to 1) ratio. In other words, the current federal income tax is actually more progressive than it was under Clinton. Obama wants a six-bracket schedule with a top rate of 39.6% and a bottom rate of 10%, the most sharply graduated rate schedule in a generation. Not only should this be troubling to anyone who understands bracket creep, ubt I think most middle- and lower-income Americans would agree that it's not "fair" to lump a household making $300,000 or $400,000 a year into the same tax bracket as Donald Trump and Bill Gates (unless it's a flat tax, which Democrats have long eschewed). 

There's another dynamic at work here: The debate over the best way to effect a tax increase--whether to do it by raising tax rates or by limiting/eliminating tax credits and deductions--is fueled in part by the prospective impact of any such change in current tax law on future efforts to reform the tax code. Arch-conservative Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) recently said that he "would rather see the rates go up than do it the other way because it gives us a greater chance to reform the tax code and broaden the base in the future."

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform who I think has some pledge or something maybe I don't know, had previously explained why he didn't like the concept of "raising revenues" through "closing loopholes," as House Republicans offered to do in their initial proposal to avert the "fiscal cliff". As he told Neil Cavuto:  

"They’re not talking about a few deductions and credits. They’re talking about a trillion dollars’ worth of deductions and credits; that’s what -- that's what the other team wants. If you do that [then] you’ve just killed tax reform for a generation. Why? How do you ever get the rates down if you don’t have the deductions and credits? What Obama’s hoping to do is raise taxes, spend the money, kill tax reform for individuals dead all at the same time."

It's something every Republican--in fact, every member of Congress who cares about the future of this country--ought to consider before voting, or even pledging to vote, for any bill designed to raise taxes, whatever the method. "Tax reform," as I and I think most other fiscally-astute Americans think of it, means cleaning up the tax code by lowering income tax rates and reducing and/or eliminating credits and deductions. If there aren't enough credits or deductions to reduce/eliminate, then this endeavor simply becomes a tax cut.

With this in mind, Taxmageddon is starting to look like an awfully appealing option. If they haven't already, then congressional Republicans ought to start hammering out an income tax reform bill along the lines of what Messrs. Simpson and Bowles called for. Post-Taxmaggedon, they'll be able to sell it as a middle-class tax cut that extracts more revenue from wealthy Americans. If the Democrats don't have a comparable counter-offer ready, then they'll be boxed in: oppose the GOP bill and keep taxes high on middle- and lower-income Americans, or sign on to it and effectively concede defeat on the tax policy argument.

What a great way to start Obama's second term.

101 Reasons to Elect Mitt Romney (or, to replace President Obama with a President Romney)

Recently, National Review published a list of 689 reasons to defeat Barack Obama. It was very good, but I wanted to give voters who were still on the fence as many good reasons as I could to not just vote against President Obama in 2012 but to vote for Mitt Romney, so I set about making a list. Admittedly some of the reasons on the NR's list are also reasons to vote for Romney, but I decided not to reuse any of those reasons. So, here now is my list of reasons to elect Mitt Romney president of the United States:

1. He’s actually balanced a budget.

2. He signed a balanced budget into law every year as governor.

3. His signature health-care reform law is popular.

4. His signature health-care reform law didn’t include over 20 different tax increases.

5. His signature health-care reform law didn’t include a single tax increase.

6. He read his signature health-care reform law.

7. He never disavowed his popular health-care reform law that didn’t raise taxes, despite numerous entreaties from the Right to do so.

8. Because he doesn’t kowtow to the Right.

9. Because the people who claim he kowtows to the Right need to be smacked upside the head with reality.

10. Because his health-care reform law was a constitutional exercise of the state government’s power to regulate commerce within the state, so he didn’t have to lie and tell people it wasn’t a tax, then send his solicitor general before the Supreme Court to argue that the individual mandate is constitutional because it is a tax.

11. “Corporations are people.”

12. The Left’s reaction to “Corporations are people.”

13. Because corporations are founded by, run by, owned by and employ people.

14. We’ve never had a bad president from Massachusetts.

15. Nobody else in this race is serious about balancing our budget. (No, Gary Johnson doesn’t count.)

16. Massachusetts’s credit rating was upgraded under his tutelage.

17. During his term as governor, household income in Massachusetts increased.

18. During his term as governor, Massachusetts’s unemployment rate dropped from 5.6% to 4.7%.

19. He cared enough about the family dog to bring him on vacation instead of dumping him in a kennel somewhere (or eating him. Let’s not forget Obama ate dog.)

20. Paul Ryan

21. Vice President Paul Ryan

22. President Paul Ryan

23. Because the next Supreme Court appointment should be made by a president who actually respects the Constitution.

24. Because he never said he likes firing people.

25. Because we like being able to fire our bank, our insurance company, our long-distance carrier etc. if we’re not satisfied with the services they’re providing us.

26. Because we ought to fire our president and hire someone who understands what it means to be accountable to people.

27. We need a president who understands the difference between outsourcing and offshoring.

28. He used money people chose to invest with him, knowing the risks they were taking, to help create jobs here in the U.S.

29. Barack Obama used taxpayer money to stimulate companies that expanded their overseas operations. (Union members: that means “companies that ship our jobs overseas.”)

30. He knew that GM and Chrysler would eventually have to go through bankruptcy before they could “come roaring back.”

31. Obama didn’t.

32. Planned Parenthood has spent millions slandering a man who stood by his wife through her battles with breast cancer and multiple sclerosis.

33. That wife donated $500 to Planned Parenthood.

34. Make Planned Parenthood regret their smear campaign even more than Ann Romney regrets that donation. (Ideally, their regret should be magnified by the ratio of their total ad spending this year to Ann Romney’s donation.)

35. Enough “Recovery Summers”; it’s time for a recovery presidency.

36. Forcing Lawrence O’Donnell to cover the defeat of President Obama by Mitt Romney is the second-most fitting just dessert for his vicious attack on Ann Romney. (A kick in the head from Rafalca would be the most fitting, for those of you who were wondering.)

37. Mitt Romney donated a greater share of his income to charity in 2011 than did President Obama.

38. Paul Ryan donated a greater share of his income to charity than Joe Biden, the man who said it’s “patriotic” for people to pay higher taxes.

39. Paul & Janna Ryan actually made less money in 2011 than Joe & Jill Biden but gave more to charity.

40. Because charity comes from the heart, not from the Dept. of Health & Human Services.

41. It’s time for Kathleen Sebelius to get rejected by Brookings and wind up teaching at some third-rate university.

42. Because nearly 47% of wage earners in this country pay no federal income taxes.

43. Because most of the people voting for President Obama really do consider themselves “victims” who are entitled to “free” stuff.

44. He gave an honest answer when asked about security concerns ahead of the London Olympics.

45. When it comes to being a leader, candor is more important than tact.

46. We shouldn’t reward voyeurism.

47. To teach Barack Obama that lying doesn’t pay.

48. To teach the mainstream media that they are not puppetmasters.

49. To teach Priorities USA that we’re not that gullible.

50. He’s the most experienced executive to be nominated for president by a major party since Dwight D. Eisenhower.

51. He was a success as the head of Bain Capital.

52. He was a success at running the Olympics.

53. He was a success as governor of Massachusetts.

54. Obama has been a failure as president.

55. If Obama’s presidency has been a success, then it would mean that he was trying to weaken us as a country, in which case we need a different president.

56. Lech Walesa endorsed him.

57. Hugo Chavez endorsed Obama.

58. Ann Romney won’t chide Olympic gold medalists for eating at McDonald’s.

59. He can tell the good components of Dodd-Frank from the bad parts.

60. He will approve the Keystone Pipeline.

61. He's a self-made (multi)millionaire.

62. The Left hates that fact.

63. Joe Soptic

64. He doesn’t want the United States to be a “major customer” of foreign oil.

65. He has a serious plan to wean us off foreign oil.

66. His plan to wean us off foreign oil doesn’t involve dumping billions of tax dollars into “green energy” scams.

67. Prove to the world that we can be counted on to choose style over substance.

68. Because economic policies based on principles of economic freedom, limited government and “rugged individualism” actually do work.

69. Because he understands that, and Obama apparently doesn’t.

70. For Gibson Guitar.

71. For the 90,000 U.S. troops currently serving in Afghanistan.

72. For the millions of seniors who will lose their Medicare Advantage plans if Obamacare is fully implemented.

73. For every policyholder who has seen his/her insurance premiums increase since Obamacare became law.

74. For every worker who has lost or is going to lose his/her health-care plan because of Obamacare.

75. For the children trapped in failing public schools.

76. He actually has a record of working across party lines to get things done.

77. Because he’s willing to work with a guy who stood on the Senate floor and told untenable lies about his taxes and said he’s “not the face of Mormonism”...

78. ...but we’re supposed to believe Obama can’t work with congressional Republicans because their floor leader in the Senate acknowledged that they want Obama to be “a one-term president.”

79. He’s actually saved and created jobs.

80. Because, while government can create jobs, it’s better to let the private sector do that.

81. Jack Black

82. His detractors claim he wants to “cut” education.

83. Even though he cut spending as governor, the Commonwealth’s schools were ranked first in the country.

84. People respect him enough to spend $50,000 to dine with him at a friend’s house; no appearances by George Clooney, Beyoncé or Jay-Z necessary.

85. Let the Obamas spend their next anniversary in the romantic seclusion of private life.

86. He won’t lambast you for going to Las Vegas.

87. So that our nation can begin to heal.

88. Because, while Osama bin Laden is dead, al Qaeda is very much alive.

89. He wants to sign the repeal of Obamacare.

90. He will grant waivers to all 50 states until Obamacare is repealed.

91. He won’t be distracted during important meetings by a recurring nicotine fix.

92. He’s willing to touch the third rail of American politics.

93. He’s offered specific reforms to save our entitlement programs from bankruptcy.

94. He keeps track of the promises he makes.

95. He’s never raised taxes.

96. Because it is possible to balance the budget without raising taxes...

97. ...which he did as governor of Massachusetts.

98. Nancy Pelosi said, "Mitt Romney is not going to be president of the United States. ... I think everybody knows that."

99. Sandra Fluke

100. He did more to create jobs as one man in the private sector than Barack Obama has done with all the power and resources of the presidency.

101. We need a president we can trust.

This list may grow as time passes, but with only a month to go before Election Day and early voting already underway in most states, I decided to go ahead and post what I had. Check back often!

Deval L. Patrick: One Malevolent Masshole

Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick speaks at the Democratic National Convention
in Charlotte, N.C. (Alex Wong - AFP/Getty Images)

 

If you're not familiar with Deval Patrick, the Democratic governor of Massachusetts, then here's what you should know: He’s an accomplished Harvard lawyer who worked in the Clinton Justice Department under Attorney Gen. Janet Reno. In 2006, he defeated then-Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey (R) to become the first black governor of Massachusetts. As governor, he raised taxes, increased state spending (after being forced to cut the budget during the recession) and generally messed up state government. For reasons I’ve stopped trying to figure out, 1.1 million Massachusetts voters re-elected him in 2010. In this article, I will—among other things—explain why everyone who voted for Governor Patrick two years ago is either stupid, a fool or a terrible person who ought to be stripped of his/her right to vote until he/she learns the error of his/her ways.

Now, suppose you become governor of your home state, and your predecessor bequeaths to you a budget surplus, a booming economy and a school system that is ranked first in the nation. Would you think the policies he had in place were worth preserving? If so, then Governor Patrick has no use for your kind, because his actions upon taking office betrayed a determination to turn the corner on the Mitt Romney way of doing business.

With the Massachusetts economy still in good shape, like most of the country in 2007, the Commonwealth was looking forward to another year of increased tax receipts (State revenues in 2006 had risen by $1 billion more than estimated and were projected to grow by another 4% in FY '07.), but the newly elected governor had made lofty promises during his successful campaign (Sound familiar?) that would require lots of new spending. At the same time, he was disingenuously warning of a mythical $1 billion budget deficit.

More spending was predictable, but the magnitude was jaw-dropping. The budget for FY08 Patrick signed increased spending by nearly $1.8 billion over the previous fiscal year. In 2009, Patrick and the legislature slapped voters with a barrage of tax increases, which the Democrat-friendly Boston Globe reported would ensure “Massachusetts residents will pay more for everything, from satellite dishes to cheeseburgers.” The lion’s share of new revenues would come from a hike in the sales tax from 5% to 6.25%.

The economic verdict on Patrick’s tax-and-spend agenda was damning: In the governor’s first term, Massachusetts lost a net 66,400 jobs. By comparison, the state added a net of 48,344 jobs during Romney’s four years. Under Patrick, the state’s unemployment rate shot up from 4.7% when he took office to 8.7%, where it remained until March 2010. Amid this historic economic slump, the governor proposed soaking Massachusetts residents for another $100 million through new taxes and fees in his 2010 State of the State address. Incredibly, he won re-election, albeit by a considerably smaller margin than he had won by in 2006.

Now, being a terrible governor doesn't make Deval Patrick a bad person. What does call his character into question is his speech at the Democratic National Convention last week. On Tuesday night, he took to the podium onstage at the Time Warner Cable Arena and delivered a spirited defense of President Obama's record that revved up the audience and struck a chord with undecided independent voters. 

No, just kidding. He attacked Mitt Romney! "In Massachusetts," he said in an almost comically petulant tone, "we know Mitt Romney."

Nothing objectionable about that. Just listen to what Mitt's fellow Bay Staters Bob White, Kerry Healey, Jane Edmonds, Ted & Pat Oparowski and Pam Finlayson said at the Republican National Convention last week. Unlike these people, however, Patrick had an incentive to lie, so it should come as no surprise that what he said about Romney was neither complimentary nor true. 

"Today," he shouted over the din of the peanut gallery--which pretty much described the entire audience--"we're out of the deficit hole Mr. Romney left...." A couple lies in one: Not only did Mitt Romney leave Massachusetts in good fiscal shape, but Patrick has yet to close the budget gap he and Democrats in the state legislature created. Even Ezra Klein, the Washington Post's leading faux policy wonk, called him out on this outrageous bit of mendacity.

Governor Patrick not only lied about Mitt Romney's record as governor, he embellished his own, even taking credit for Romney's accomplishments. He actually had the audacity to boast, in a speech bashing Mitt Romney, that "Massachusetts leads the nation in . . . health-care coverage . . . ." (For the record, Patrick played no role whatsoever in the passage or enactment of Romneycare.)

Let the above sampling suffice to apprise you of the content of Patrick's convention speech. If you crave more, then Patrick Brennan posted an incisive takedown of the governor's dishonest diatribe on The Corner; I encourage you all to read it.

It takes some brass to use a prime-time speaking slot at a national convention to inveigh against one's predecessor who, by pretty much every objective measure, had a more successful tenure in office than you did, but that's just the kind of person Deval Patrick is. No further castigation is necessary; his reprehensible conduct speaks for itself.  

Nothing New Under the Sun

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9.

That Bible verse has been stuck in my head all weekend. I keep thinking about how many things in the news this week harken back to things that we've already been through. Take, for example, the reprisal of two lines of attack--one from the Right on President Obama, the other from the Left on presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney--that have been tried before and provided fodder for the supporters of their targets.

Bashing Bain

The Obama campaign released a predictably dishonest, two-minute ad spot on Monday, highlighting some steel mill in...you know what? I'm so sick of this story. We've seen this before. We get it, Democrats. You don't like capitalism, except when you're raking in campaign contributions from Wall Street, trust-fund babies, Silicon Valley and/or the entertainment industry. You can say this wasn't an attack on private equity in general, but that claim doesn't hold water, especially since the truth is that Bain & Co. under Romney's leadership was actually one of the tamer, less ruthless, more compassionate private equity firms out there.

The Return of Reverend Wright

As much as they seem to enjoy attacking a man who actually did create and save jobs  (and who put his own money at risk, instead of wasting taxpayer money on loser bets), nothing seems to make the Left quite as horny as the opportunity to argue against their favorite straw man: racially-charged attacks on President Obama. The New York Times gave them that opportunity again this week when it ran a story saying that Republicans were considering a $10 million ad blitz linking President Obama to the incendiary, race-infused diatribes of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. This coincided with Sean Hannity's televised interview with Ed Klein, author of The Amateur, which from what I've heard is one of the most accurate, in-depth accounts of Obama's time as president. On Thursday night's show, Hannity told his audience, "I believe that the president's relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a man that influenced him for over twenty years, inspired him, is a very important campaign issue." (You can imagine the left-wing reaction.)

As for the Super-PAC's proposed ad campaign, by Thursday it became clear that this plan was as dead as a doornail, but that didn't stop the Left from chattering incessantly about it. It was the lead story on The Rachel Maddow Show Friday evening, and every Sunday morning round table I watched took up the topic today.

Debt Debate Redux

House Speaker John Boehner's speech at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s 2012 Fiscal Summit similarly gave the Left an opportunity to reignite the fiery debate over raising the debt ceiling, while at the same time disingenuously claiming that it was Boehner who first expressed a desire to re-hash the fight that transfixed so many around the country (particularly on Wall Street, inside the Beltway and on Sunday morning talk shows) last Summer.  

True, Boehner did harken back to the debate last summer in his speech, but he never, as the Washington Post's Ezra Klein put it, "threaten[ed] the Obama administration with default in order to extract concessions on spending." All he said was that, when it comes time to once again raise the U.S. debt limit, "I will again insist on my simple principle of cuts and reforms greater than the debt limit increase." (He added, "This is the only avenue I see right now to force the elected leadership of this country to solve our structural fiscal imbalance," but that part hasn't been played over and over again by the TV news media as the preceding sentence has.)

For whatever reasons, Democrats and the media seem all too willing to rehash this fight over the Debt, the deficit and spending. Klein's fellow Postman Dana Milbank wrote on Friday that the Speaker's speech "goes beyond talking down [the economy] and approaches the realm of precipitating a crisis," musing, "Does Boehner want the economy to tank?" Over at TalkingPointsMemo.com, a web site that apparently exists, some guy named Brian Beutler scribbled something about Republicans having "an appetite for debt limit brinksmanship — even after the last round nearly crippled the economy, and left the GOP’s congressional approval ratings in the sewer." (I just have to add what Beutler wrote in the very next sentence so you can all have a good laugh at his pathetic attempt to rewwite history: "When Republicans went home for recess last August, after placing the country’s AAA credit rating at risk, and narrowly avoiding a self-imposed default on the national debt, they caught such an earful from constituents that they spent several weeks toning down their rhetoric and avoiding big public spats with Democrats.") Why left-wingers wants to start this debate up again right now escapes me (unless most of them really are delusional enough to believe that last summer's fiasco irreparably damaged the Republican brand, while Democrats escaped unscathed); the conflict-obsessed mainstream media's motivation for doing the same is less of a mystery. 

Austerity: Never Again

Speaking of deficits, debt and government spending, word out of the G-8 is that multiple European countries are reconsidering the so-called austerity measures that we keep hearing about. (For the record, only three members of the G-8 are in the Eurozone.) This was to be expected from France, whose new president got elected on an anti-austerity platform, but as senior Mercatus fellow and University of Paris alum Veronique de Rugy has explained, the "austerity" policies enacted by the French, British and other European governments lo these past couple years are actually not true austerity. Writes de Rugy:

First, France has yet to cut spending. In fact, to the extent that the French are frustrated with "budget cuts," it's only because the increase in future spending won't be as large as they had planned. The same can be said about the United Kingdom. Spain, Italy and Greece have had no choice to cut some spending. However, in the case of these particular countries, the cuts were implemented alongside large tax increases. In fact, The Washington Examiner's Conn Carroll calculated that "Europe raised taxes by almost €9 for every €1 in actual spending cuts."

How Not to Defend President Obama

Newsweek's latest cover story--a generous load of buls**t by Obamaniac Andrew Sullivan--has caused quite a stir, and for good reason. The article is provocatively titled "Why Are Obama's Critcs So Dumb?", an obvious jab at those who dare to call out our Dear Leader on his manifest incompetence/impudicity/hypocrisy, but it's the content of the piece that should really gall any right-thinking person.

Even-tempered conservatives have registered their discontent (I suggest you all read Joel Pollak's excellent column at BigGovernment.com.), as have some of our more visceral brethren. If you're not familiar with Andrew Sullivan, then here's a brief primer. For years, he purported to be a conservative but in 2008 showed his true colors by enthusiastically supporting Barack Obama for president. In a particularly revealing display of malevolence, he called on Sarah Palin to produce evidence that she was in fact the real mother of her infant son Trig. (Trig Palin, you may recall, suffers from Trisomy 21 and was the subject of a vicious smear by people who ought to be flayed before a jeering crowd.) Unlike other so-called conservatives who made the mistake of jumping on the Obama bandwagon in '08, however, Sullivan has not acknowledged the error of his ways. Rather, he has doubled down on his mystifying support for this terrible, terrible president. This has led him to make some absurd claims and cost him credibility with virtually everyone whose respect is worth having, but his latest pile of tripe takes Obamania to levels not seen since 2008, and possibly ever.

Pollak's article covered a lot of what was wrong with the Sullivan piece. I would, however, like to offer my own analysis/critique of this so-very-inane attempt to make the case for re-electing a president with such an abysmal record.

Rather than launch right into a spirited diatribe, Sullivan hems and haws for a couple paragraphs before asserting that the attacks "from both the right and the left on the man and his policies [are] simply—empirically—wrong." I'm a big fan of empiricism; I'm all ears (or eyes, as this is a written article). In a rare bit of intellectual honesty, Sullivan discloses that he was "an unabashed supporter of Obama from early 2007 on," but in the very next sentence, he gives every reasonable-minded reader good reason to doubt his credibility, writing, "I did so not as a liberal, but as a conservative-minded independent appalled by the Bush administration’s record of war, debt, spending, and torture." (The first three were legitimate beefs with the former president, but to support a candidate who wanted to spend even more than George W. Bush did and continue waging the War on Terror makes no sense for someone who purported to be "appalled by the Bush administration’s record of war, debt, spending, and torture.") Sullivan had no credibility left with me to lose, so I kept reading. After making the prima facie over-the-top declaration that Obama’s "reelection remains ... as essential for this country’s future as his original election in 2008," Andy turned his attention to the right's criticism of his man-crush:  

The right’s core case is that Obama has governed as a radical leftist attempting a “fundamental transformation” of the American way of life. Mitt Romney accuses the president of making the recession worse, of wanting to turn America into a European welfare state, of not believing in opportunity or free enterprise, of having no understanding of the real economy, and of apologizing for America and appeasing our enemies. According to Romney, Obama is a mortal threat to “the soul” of America and an empty suit who couldn’t run a business, let alone a country.

Sounds fair to me. Statistically, Obama did make the recession worse, and even now, more than two years after it supposedly ended, there are over 1 million fewer people working in this country than there were when he took office. He has expanded entitlement programs and increased government handouts while calling for higher taxes on the most productive members of society. One need look no farther than his speech last fall in Osawatomie for evidence that he doesn't believe in opportunity or free enterprise, and his entire political career is replete with examples of how he doesn't understand "the real economy," if Sullivan means by that what I think he does. The "apologizing for America" charge is not one that I have personally leveled against Obama, but it's a fair criticism of a man who during the 2008 campaign implied that we were no longer a great country and who on one of his first trips abroad as president told a throng of Europeans that "there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." As for "appeasing our enemies," the fairness of that charge depends on who the person making it considers "our enemies." So what sounds like the lead-in to a straw-man argument is actually a series of perfectly defensible critiques of Obama's presidency thus far. Sullivan's response?

Leave aside the internal incoherence—how could such an incompetent be a threat to anyone? None of this is even faintly connected to reality—and the record proves it.

I think that first sentence was a rhetorical question, but it's so easy to answer that I'll indulge myself. When the awesome powers, duties and prerogatives of the American presidency are vested in an incompetent, that is a threat not only to our country but to the World. Moving on to Sullivan's bold assertion that "the record proves" that none of the aforementioned indictment "is even faintly connected to reality," he tries in vain to back this up with undisputed facts, but he can't even get those right:

On the economy, the facts are these. When Obama took office, the United States was losing around 750,000 jobs a month. The last quarter of 2008 saw an annualized drop in growth approaching 9 percent. This was the most serious downturn since the 1930s, there was a real chance of a systemic collapse of the entire global financial system, and unemployment and debt—lagging indicators—were about to soar even further. No fair person can blame Obama for the wreckage of the next 12 months, as the financial crisis cut a swath through employment.

"Economies take time to shift course," Sullivan insists. "But Obama did several things at once: he continued the bank bailout begun by George W. Bush, he initiated a bailout of the auto industry, and he worked to pass a huge stimulus package of $787 billion."

True on the bank bailout, but the auto industry bailout was also initiated before Bush left office, and the stimulus cost far more than $787 billion (even if you don't count the interest). So, when Sullivan said, "All these decisions deserve scrutiny," I took it as a minor concession on his part that reasonable people could disagree with his analysis of Obama's actions, but apparently, the "scrutiny" of Obama's decisions that Sullivan desires is not the critical analysis that's always warranted when a president makes big, consequential decisions. Rather, says Sullivan, people just aren't giving Obama credit for how great his decisions were. "[I]n retrospect," he writes, "they were far more successful than anyone has yet fully given Obama the credit for. The job collapse bottomed out at the beginning of 2010, as the stimulus took effect. Since then, the U.S. has added 2.4 million jobs. That’s not enough, but it’s far better than what Romney would have you believe, and more than the net jobs created under the entire Bush administration."

That last part was just a bald-faced lie. Whether you follow the seasonally-adjusted or non-seasonally-adjusted numbers, the cold, hard reality is that there were millions more people working in the United States when George W. Bush left office than there were when he was inaugurated. It's also beyond dispute that there has been a net loss of jobs in the U.S. since Obama took office. Yet, Sullivan preposterously declares that "the stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to do," writing:

It put a bottom under the free fall. It is not an exaggeration to say it prevented a spiral downward that could have led to the Second Great Depression.

I think those two sentences are absurd enough on their face to stand alone. If, however, you think they might have a point, then I invite you to read my airtight debunking of the left-wing myth that President Obama's policies averted "the Second Great Depression."

From there, Sullivan just goes completely off the rails. In what is clearly a provocative statement with no basis in reality, he declares that Obama's spending record "is also far better than his predecessor’s." Granted, George W. Bush was no fiscal conservative, but listen to Sullivan's tortured logic in defense of the most fiscally irresponsible president since F.D.R.:

Under Bush, new policies on taxes and spending cost the taxpayer a total of $5.07 trillion. Under Obama’s budgets both past and projected, he will have added $1.4 trillion in two terms. Under Bush and the GOP, nondefense discretionary spending grew by twice as much as under Obama. Again: imagine Bush had been a Democrat and Obama a Republican. You could easily make the case that Obama has been far more fiscally conservative than his predecessor—except, of course, that Obama has had to govern under the worst recession since the 1930s, and Bush, after the 2001 downturn, governed in a period of moderate growth. It takes work to increase the debt in times of growth, as Bush did. It takes much more work to constrain the debt in the deep recession Bush bequeathed Obama.

Suffice it to say, I don't know what the hell Sullivan is talking about, and I'm starting to think that neither does he. President Obama has already added more to the national debt in nominal dollars than any of his predecessors. Also, even if this was "the worst recession since the 1930s," which it isn't, it's only that bad because Obama and the Democrats made it that bad. Lest we forget (as Sullivan and his fellow Obamaniacs would like us to), the U.S. economy was booming before the Democrats took over Congress and a majority of state governments in 2007. Saying--or even implying--that Barack Obama is a fiscal conservative is even more inane than saying that Adolf Hitler was a tolerant, even-tempered humanitarian.

Then Sullivan comes to what he calls the "great conservative bugaboo" that is Obamacare. His attempt to defend this budget-busting boondoggle fell flat with me right away, as he chose to begin with the now thoroughly discredited claim that "The Congressional Budget Office has projected it will reduce the deficit, not increase it dramatically." As Republicans have repeatedly pointed out, the deceptive shenanigans and budgetary gimmicks in the health care reform bill that the CBO actually scored led to an inherently flawed analysis by the CBO that made it appear as though the federal budget deficit would have been higher in future years had Obamacare not been enacted than it will with the law in place. Sullivan's abject ineptitude as a pitchman is underscored by his choice to lead with this ridiculous and totally unjustifiable assertion, rather than any of the correct statements he actually followed it with. He correctly pointed out that Obamacare "is based on the individual mandate," an idea proposed and advocated in years past by conservatives. He is also right to say that the law "does not have a public option" and "gives a huge new client base to the drug and insurance companies." As if to try and subtly remind his audience that he purports to be a conservative, he threw in a reference to "the Clintons’ monstrosity in 1993," and he compared the final version of Obamacare to "Nixon’s 1974 proposal," just to show he's a student of history as well.

To his credit, Sully acknowledges that Obamacare "needs improvement in many ways," (an extreme understatement, to be sure, but more than one would expect from a die-hard Obamapologist like Andrew Sullivan) yet he makes the uncorroborated assertion that "the administration is open to further reform and has agreed to allow states to experiment in different ways to achieve the same result." It would be helpful if I knew what he meant by that; the reality is that the administration has spurned states' attempts to opt out of this costly chimera.

Sullivan's defense of Obamacare boils down to this: Obamacare is not as far-left a socialist boondoggle as the Left wanted, so it should be viewed as a centrist compromise. It's kind of like me claiming that I should have gotten an "A" on a final exam because I turned in a series of coherent sentences and didn't just take a s**t on the paper.

On foreign policy, Andy attempts to defend the indefensible by making absurd statements that have almost no basis in reality. He claims that "Obama reversed Bush’s policy of ignoring Osama bin Laden, immediately setting a course that eventually led to his capture and death." (I'm sure this "policy of ignoring Osama bin Laden" will come as a surprise to the thousands of individuals who worked for the Departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security under George W. Bush, especially those who collected the valuable intelligence that made the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden possible.) I will give him credit for this, though: he was prescient enough to realize how inane such a claim would come off to the learned reader and saw fit to blunt the shock of it by following it with the correct statement that "when the moment for decision came, the president overruled both his secretary of state and vice president in ordering the riskiest—but most ambitious—plan on the table." (He laid it on a little thick by adding that Obama "personally ordered the extra helicopters that saved the mission," another dubious and uncorroborated claim, and he accused George W. Bush of "talk[ing] tough and act[ing] counterproductively" but didn't provide a scintilla of evidence to back up this outlandish charge.) In a rare display of brevity, I'll hold back from firing off a lengthy rebuttal of Sullivan's inflammatory rhetoric on this subject and borrow a tack from the Rules of Evidence: as the proponent of these claims, it's Sullivan's duty to back them up with evidence. If he doesn't, then I need not put on evidence supporting my rebuttal for reasonable minds to conclude that Sullivan's contentions are hogwash.

Staying on the topic of foreign policy, Sullivan turns his attention to the Left, who he says "is less unhinged in its critique" of the President (which of course they would be, as he is one of theirs). Here, the author tries a different vein: rather than mix a handful of truisms and justifiable assertions in with a big pot of crazy, he instead starts off with a series of agreeable statements (e.g., that "liberals projected onto Obama absurd notions of what a president can actually do in a polarized country" and decried "his too-small stimulus, his too-weak financial reform, and his too-cautious approach to gay civil rights.") and then descends into incoherent drivel.

In defending Obama to the American Left, Sullivan need not stick to truth or reality, as ardent left-wingers characteristically refuse to accept reality. Thus, he reiterates his ridiculous claim that a “depression was averted” and throws in a few more. “The bail-out of the auto industry was—amazingly—successful,” he says. (I’m not sure how he defines success, but I doubt it’s the same as Merriam-Webster’s definition.) “Torture was ended,” he declares, as if the U.S. had tortured anyone in decades. (For the record, I think having to suffer through an Obama-Biden administration is more than any decent citizen of this great country deserves.)

Touting the president’s record on “gay issues,” Sullivan, who is openly gay, rightly gives Obama credit for ending DADT and directing his Justice Department not to enforce DOMA, but he also mentions New York’s legalization of same-sex marriage, as if the president had anything to do with that. He similarly mentions the end of the War in Iraq, conveniently omitting that Obama opposed everything that allowed our valiant troops to wrest victory from the brink of defeat. (Yes, that’s a mixed metaphor; deal with it.) The rest of his pitch to the Left consists of reciting things that sound good to progressives and bad to the Right: obscene sums of public money spent on “noncarbon energy investments;” increased fuel-emission standards; the nominations of Justices Sotomayor and Kagan to the Supreme Court.

Sullivan chatters and babbles for a couple of paragraphs before finally producing a couple of sentences I can agree with:

Obama was not elected, despite liberal fantasies, to be a left-wing crusader. He was elected as a pragmatic, unifying reformist who would be more responsible than Bush.

True on all counts. Unfortunately, rather than continue this rational prose, Sully returns to his crazy talk:

And what have we seen? A recurring pattern. To use the terms Obama first employed in his inaugural address: the president begins by extending a hand to his opponents; when they respond by raising a fist, he demonstrates that they are the source of the problem; then, finally, he moves to his preferred position of moderate liberalism and fights for it without being effectively tarred as an ideologue or a divider.

I'm going to cut that paragraph off right there. Again, I think any reasonable person should notice the manifest absurdity of that last sentence. I'll once more try to contain myself; suffice it to say that history is clear: Obama never extended the olive branch to conservatives, at least not in good faith. From the moment he took office, he cast himself as a partisan ideologue, intent on getting his way at all costs. The Republicans who were foolish or naïve enough to think he was sincere about wanting to build bridges soon discovered this. Those who stood up or dared to challenge him were to be castigated, derided and marginalized. In spite of all this, Sullivan has the gall to blame Obama's failure "to end Washington’s brutal ideological polarization" on "Republican intransigence." Recall that it was only after Americans registered their disapproval of the president's bridge-burning m.o. at the polls in November 2010 did that Obama began to pivot toward a more centrist approach. Query whether the president would have made this shift had the Democrats' Washington monoply remained intact.

The crux of Sullivan’s puff piece seems to be that the president's long game will, as Sullivan puts it, “outsmart his critics.”

This is where the left is truly deluded. By misunderstanding Obama’s strategy and temperament and persistence, by grandstanding on one issue after another, by projecting unrealistic fantasies onto a candidate who never pledged a liberal revolution, they have failed to notice that from the very beginning, Obama was playing a long game. He did this with his own party over health-care reform. He has done it with the Republicans over the debt. He has done it with the Israeli government over stopping the settlements on the West Bank—and with the Iranian regime, by not playing into their hands during the Green Revolution, even as they gunned innocents down in the streets. Nothing in his first term—including the complicated multiyear rollout of universal health care—can be understood if you do not realize that Obama was always planning for eight years, not four. And

Did you notice how Sullivan surreptitiously slip in an explanation for his hero’s unforgivably ham-fisted handling of the Iranian regime? Apparently, we’ve just misunderstood his “long game”: he was just playing it cool. Calling out the Iranian government for their flagrant human rights atrocities would’ve just been “playing into their hands.” I’m sure that sentiment will comfort the families of those who were slaughtered in the streets for daring to speak out against a brutal, backwards theocratic oligarchy.

I would be remiss if I did not commend Sullivan for one thing that impressed me about this article, and that his how he outdid himself when it seemed impossible. Despite all the foregoing absurdity, Andy managed to take his ludicrous pitch for Obama's re-election to a new level, postulating that an Obama victory in November would be "a mandate for an eight-year shift away from the excesses of inequality, overreach abroad, and reckless deficit spending of the last three decades."

Yes, let's reject "reckless deficit spending" by re-electing a president who has added more to our National Debt than any of his predecessors and who, should he get his way, would double that debt by the end of his second term. Sullivan then fully detaches himself from reality, weaving a tapestry of delusional prose, a tale so tall that Rod Serling would find it far-fetched. He calls himself a civil libertarian, despite having just defended the liberty-threatening, Constitution-defying power grab that is Obamacare. He once again brings up “torture,” reminding attentive readers that he has repeatedly used such a loaded term without once providing an example of the U.S. government torturing anybody. He calls Obama “a man of peerless eloquence,” while tarring his predecessor as “a tongue-tied dauphin.” (For the record, I don’t recall George W. Bush ever forgetting how many states there are or the age of one of his daughters, and while the former presidents propensity for malapropisms is well-documented, you won’t find an instance of him mispronouncing a simple word like “corpsman.”) He claims Obama “has offered to cut entitlements” (I must have missed that, though Sullivan rightly notes that the president “has already cut Medicare”.).

Andy concludes by admitting his bias, but insists that he is "biased...toward the actual record, not the spin; biased toward a president who has conducted himself with grace and calm under incredible pressure, who has had to manage crises not seen since the Second World War and the Depression, and who as yet has not had a single significant scandal to his name." I'm not sure what Sullivan considers "spin," but as I have made abundantly clear in this and other posts, I disagree that President Obama "has conducted himself with grace and calm". Similarly, I'm not sure what Andy considers a crisis, but I don't think the challenges this president has faced (to the extent they were not of his own making) were/are greater than anything seen since the 1940s. Is Sullivan not familiar with the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the U.S. sat on the brink of a nuclear war with the U.S.S.R. for nearly two weeks? Did he forget about 9/11? Also, at what point does a scandal become "significant" in his mind? Evidently, Fast & Furious, Solyndra and the revelations of corruption within the Justice Department under Attorney General Holder don't qualify.

I am sure that Andrew Sullivan wants to see President Obama re-elected. He may even believe everything he wrote in this article (in which case, I'm surprised that he has the intellectual capacity to churn out such prose), but his failure--whether it was a concious refusal or just an inability--to base his case for returning this president to office in reality makes me think he knows that the truth is not on Obama's side, and his re-election hopes depend on surrogates like Sullivan disseminating their specious sophistry into our political discourse in the hopes of drowning out cogent arguments to the contrary. Then again, he may just have written this in the hopes of provoking guys like me so that our energy would be redirected from campaigning to replace Obama with someone who will actually know what he's doing, in which case I consider myself PUNK'D.