It’s not that I don’t have ideas for article titles. There’s certainly no dearth of material out there. Which, in part, brings me to the subject, which is that it doesn’t matter where I look, nationally, locally, or globally, events scream for attention. I want to fire off articles on each and every one of them.

We are living in very perilous times… far more perilous than most people realize. There is the imminent threat of war in the middle east. Despite Obama the Betrayer doing his very best to prevent Israel from acting in its own best interest (read ‘survival’) by attacking the country whose sworn goal is the destruction of Israel and the murder of every man, woman and child. Iran must be stopped. There’s no equivocating it. We know that Barack MaoBama, despite all the tough words around his mouth, does not have the courage or the leadership to attack Iran and end her nuclear ambitions. In fact, many feel that Obama would rather see Israel destroyed. Perhaps, so does Israel. And no, they won’t give us or anyone else warning.

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In 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama ran, not against the promises of Republican nominee John McCain, but against the policies of second-term president George W. Bush.  In 2012, Obama apparently plans to run against Bush once more.

Obama sure doesn’t seem to want to run on his record, since the economy is still in terrible shape after three years of his leadership.  Instead, it appears he’s going to campaign on the conceit that Bush left him with a much worse economy than anyone—he, economists, Nostradamus—predicted.  Obama now would have us believe that his policies prevented an economic slide the likes of which would have made 2010 look like boom times.

That’s a very interesting campaign platform, because even a cursory look at the trajectory of unemployment rates and economic growth in the months following the country’s recessions of the past 50 years shows that the downturn that started in December 2007 is singularly deep, protracted, and devastating.  If Obama’s right, and our economy would have been much worse had he not enacted his resuscitating policies, then our country narrowly dodged a plunge to a standard of living on par with that of the 1960s.  read more »

On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” GOP presidential soon-to-be also-ran Rick Santorum dismissed frontrunner Mitt Romney’s snowballing delegate count, declaring, “This isn’t a mathematical formula.”  Later that day he told a Fox News reporter, “It’s pathetic isn’t it?  I mean, now you’re gonna make the argument, ‘I should be president’ because of math.”

Actually, what isn’t mathematical about the delegate accrual process?

Presidential primary nomination season is rife with mathematical calculations.  Each state boasts its own complicated apportionment formula, ranging from mostly proportional to quasi-proportional to winner-take-all.  Savvy campaign managers earn big bucks planning winning strategies for accumulating the requisite number of delegates.  Campaign tacticians create sophisticated statistical models to predict state, district, and citywide outcomes and to plot contingency routes for reaching a majority of delegates.  Campaign finance staff forecast revenue from donations, estimate advertising costs, and manage a budget equivalent to that of a midsized company.

What does Santorum think is going to happen after his failure to clinch the nomination: that God will intervene and change the laws of mathematics for him?  read more »

Excerpts from The Four Pillars of the Kingdom by Joe Brooks (aka Immaccon)

DMV Christians

And the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take upon thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord – Hosea 1:2

It is a sad irony that the United States, a nation that has the greatest percentage of self-professing Christians of any nation in the world, may also be one of the most morally hollow nations, as well. According to a Pew Poll on Religion and Public Life, over 75% of Americans call themselves a Christian of some denomination. Yet, only 56% say their religion is an important aspect of their lives. Let that in consistency sink in for a mo me nt. large portions of people who call themselves Christians do not consider their faith to be an important aspect of their lives.  read more »

First of all, if you are offended by harsh words, you may not want to read any further. This piece will be filled with the kinds of words that I would take my kids out behind the wood shed for using. But, the use of these words is necessary to illustrate the problem at hand. First, the set up: Sandra Fluke is a thirty year old (not twenty-three, as reported) liberal activist. She graduated from Cornell University in 2003 with a degree in feminist, gender and sexuality studies. Fluke then enrolled in Georgetown Law School with the express goal of overturning the school’s health insurance policy exemption on birth control. Fluke is the co-president of the Georgetown chapter of Law Students for Reproductive Justice. And, it is thanks to this, that she was called to testify before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee hearing on women's health and contraception.  

The end game here, of course, is the Obama Administration’s attempt to force religious institutions like Georgetown, a Catholic school, to cover the health care costs of things they find morally repugnant, like birth control. Under ObamaCare, things like one’s religious conscience take a back seat to unhindered access to condoms and birth control pills. The definitive protection of religious freedom provided by the first amendment is being over shadowed by the ever-expanding “emanating penumbras” of sexual freedom.  read more »

Here are five surprising 2012 Super Tuesday delegate predictions, based on my analysis of Real Clear Politics polling averages, public opinion polls, straw polls, and recent events in the ten states voting tomorrow.

(The takeaway: Non-Romney candidates will have their moments in the sun… and then the Romney juggernaut will continue crushing everything in its path.)

Prediction #1: In almost every primary state, the candidate who wins the most delegates will win more delegates than all other candidates combined in that state

In other words, in each of the seven primary states (not the three caucus states, where anything goes), one candidate will almost always win more than 50% of that state’s delegates.  This may seem unlikely, given the fractious nature of the 2012 GOP primaries, dispersed support for the remaining candidates, and the proportional nature of delegate allegation.  However, these states’ apportionment systems are quasi-proportional, which means that large numbers of delegates end up going to the top two (occasionally three) candidates, and none to those who fail to meet a minimum threshold of 15% or 20% of the vote.  An even larger haul goes to the first-place winner, even if he beats the runner-up by only a small percentage.

Prediction #2: Rick Santorum will win only two states, Oklahoma and Tennessee  read more »

So far there’s not a whit of evidence that Mitt Romney’s “gaffes” in inadvertently referencing his personal wealth at campaign appearances and debates have cost him a single vote in the 2012 presidential election.

We hear from mainstream pundits and wire service reporters—most of whom wouldn’t dream of voting for a conservative but are terrified that Romney will be the GOP nominee—how Romney’s horrifying Freudian slips are bound to alienate undecided voters, Reagan Democrats, and moderate Republicans.

Romneys’ unspeakable comments have: extolled voluntary contracts in the free market (“I like being able to fire people… if someone doesn’t give me the good service that I need”), affirmed the social safety net (“I’m not concerned about the very poor—we have a safety net”), challenged candidate Rick Perry on a falsehood (“$10,000 bet?”), and expressed his support for the Detroit auto industry (“Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs”).  These forbidden lines have supposedly frightened off otherwise open-minded voters and driven them straight into the comforting arms of everyman Obama.  Good citizens everywhere were supposedly all set to pull the lever for Romney, but are now running screaming at the thought of a president who has achieved phenomenal business success in the private sector and isn’t ashamed of it.  read more »

Poor Greece is on the verge of defaulting on its bills and declaring bankruptcy.  Credit rating agencies S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch long ago downgraded Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain (the PIGS) and gave them negative outlooks, with Greece getting Cs across the board.  (Cuba, Pakistan, and Burkina Faso are a few of the nations with better ratings than Greece.)  If Greece runs out of money and fails to pay €14.5 billion to service its debt on March 20, European markets could be badly shaken.

Greece’s financial woes are the result of its unsustainable social welfare entitlement state, whereby working adults are promised generous pensions and early retirements, and younger generations must cough up the money to pay for these goodies, though they won’t receive similar benefits when they retire.  (Sound familiar?)  The government has been borrowing to subsidize these pensions, but it’s not enough—partly because Greece has one of the lowest birthrates in the world, and partly because swaths of young educated Greeks are fleeing the country and emigrating elsewhere to find work.  read more »

Michael Barone titled a recent column “Romney Appeals to White Collars, Santorum to Blue.”  Santorum’s appeal to blue-collar workers—at least those who believe in hard work, small government, personal responsibility, and self-driven upward mobility—is highly suspect.

Santorum woos primarily conservative voters who obsess over opposing abortion and gay marriage.  These voters would gladly hand over the country to a big government “compassionate conservative,” so long as he channels his policies on social issues from holy men in white collars.

Mitt Romney downplays social issues relative to Santorum (which isn’t hard) and focuses on economic issues, emphasizing his private sector business experience running Bain Capital and the Salt Lake City Olympics.

How are “blue collar voters” supposed to get excited about a candidate whose strongest campaign positions are outlawing abortion and gay marriage rather than stopping the federal government from micromanaging our economy via taxes, regulations, and shovel-ready-job-killing “green” initiatives?

Santorum boosts “faith-based initiatives”—basically welfare redirected toward religious rather than secular agencies.  He calls for expanding Medicare, and authored a “Social Security Guarantee Act” that promises never to cut seniors’ benefits—in fact increases them every year.  read more »