Who's Afraid of the Fiscal Cliff?

I may be coming to the conclusion that going over the so-called fiscal cliff could be the right thing to do, not for the strategic political advantage some may see, but as a reasonable, practical step toward doing the moral thing. One thing I am certain of is that the "confluence of unpleasant consequences" does not represent a cliff in any real way--more a "bump in the road" to use the president's vernacular.

PATRICK J. BUCHANAN - Were the average Republican asked for a succinct statement of his views on taxation, he or she might respond thus:

“U.S. tax rates are too high for the world we must compete in. The tax burden — federal, state, local, together — is too heavy. We need to cut tax rates to free up our private and productive sector and pull this economy out of the ditch.”

This core conviction holds the party together.

Yet today the leadership is about to abandon this conviction to sign on to higher tax rates or revenues, while the economy is nearing stall speed. Yet, two years ago, President Obama himself extended the Bush tax cuts because, he said, you do not raise taxes in a recovering economy.

Why are Republicans negotiating this capitulation?

Because they have been warned that if they do not sign on to a tax hike, they will take us all over a fiscal cliff.

If we go over, Republicans are being told, you will be responsible for tax hikes on all Americans as the Bush tax cuts expire on Jan. 1.

You will be responsible for a surge in tax rates on dividends, interest, capital gains, estates.

You will be responsible for an automatic sequester catastrophic to the national defense.

This is the pistol Obama is pointing at the GOP. This is extortion.

The Debunker asks: Should the GOP cave on tax hikes?

Republicans are being told that they either vote for something they believe to be wrong and ruinous — or get something worse. Pay the ransom, fellas, Obama is demanding, or take the blame for a second recession.

Like the Panama Canal debate that made Ronald Reagan a hero, this is a defining moment. No GOP senator who agreed to the Carter-Torrijos treaty ever made it onto a national ticket.

What are the perils for Republicans who sign on to an Obama deal? continue reading...

"Inbetweeners" Star for BBC Three Assisted-Suicide Comedy

Sigh. Now, if they had the writers from The Inbetweeners, they might be on to something. Of course, it would probably still at best only give the evil of assisted-suicide an ironic back hand, but the show'd have a decent shot at being funny.

DIGITAL SPY - The Inbetweeners star Blake Harrison is to star in new BBC Three sitcom Way to Go.

Blake Harrison
(Image: BBC Channel 4)

The six-part series is described as a "black comedy" about three men who set up an assisted-suicide business.

Harrison will play Scott, who devises the desperate scheme when his terminally ill neighbor asks for his help to die and his brother Joey (Ben Heathcote) is in desperate need of cash to pay off his gambling debts. continue reading...

Learning Election Lessons

Image: dfb

There will be much navel-gazing on the right over the coming months as the analysis of the exit polls begins and a new strategy will be formed, much like what the Democrats did in 2004. And 2004 is instructive here.

The early steam is that Mitt Romney failed to connect with Latinos. Given how vacuous this election was regarding issues and policy, I am not buying the conventional wisdom that it has much to do with immigration directly--don't forget President Obama's epic failure to deliver immigration reform in his first term and how little play he gave it as a policy goal for his second term.

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Anybody else notice how we had to pass Obamacare so we could learn what was in it, and now we've had to re-elect the president to learn what his agenda for a second term is?

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In early 2005, Democracy Corps (Carville, Greenberg, and Shrum) issued an analysis regarding how Democrats could win back white Catholic voters that had voted previously for Bill Clinton, but turned away in increasing numbers from Al Gore and John Kerry. The short of it (not summarized quite like this) was:

Target heterodox Catholics (those who do not meet their Sunday obligation, or who are open to straying from Church teaching regarding pelvic issues, for example) by watering down the heterodoxy and wrapping it in the broader populist language of solidarity, thereby creating an opportunity for those who are happy to rationalize to make themselves feel good about themselves to employ a moral calculus as justification.

Here are a couple examples from the report of how a Democrat candidate seeking the white Catholic vote could position himself as someone who:

• Wants to repeal President Bush's tax cut for those earning over two hundred thousand dollars a year, in order to increase funding for health care [read: stem cell research] and education, or
• Is committed to building stronger families by easing the financial burden on parents and promoting prevention [read: contraception] to reduce abortions

Think about it. Isn't this what the president and Democrats effectively have done with Obamacare and so-called gay marriage?

Republicans will have to do the same kind of thing with Latinos (and perhaps a percentage of those heterodox non-Hispanic white Catholics), rather than trying to cobble together a cafeteria plate of policy proposals. And they wouldn't have to embrace heterodoxy to do it. The concern is I'm not sure they have it in them.

CREATIVE MINORITY REPORT - This one hurt.

I advised my followers on Twitter last night that the next time I wrote a post about the polls being wrong, somebody should punch me in the ear.

So what does this mean? Many many people, including people smarter than me about these things, expected this to be a turnout election. We expected the turnout to be close to even with either a slight edge to Democrats or a slight edge to Republicans. Either way, most were in a agreement that it wouldn't be anything like 2008. We were wrong. Exit polls have it pegged at D+6, fairly close to 2008.

So, what does this mean. It means that Republicans can no longer win national elections by turning out the base alone. They have to start convincing more people that they have the answers. They can no longer continue to write off blacks and Latinos as un-winnable and expect to win. There is just not enough base to do it.

Another lesson is that Catholics just don't care in the slightest about the persecution initiated by this President and about the unborn. Every indication is that Catholics have granted an imprimatur for their own oppression. continue reading...

Will Chairman Ryan Go To Hell? Bishop Blaire May Think So

And he may very well. After all, who here really knows his heart? But if he does, I'm sure it won't be because of the budget.

CRISIS - We interrupt the presidential campaign to raise this pressing question. Back in 1969, Bill Buckley sent my parents a hilarious book—not his, but his sister’s. Aloïse Buckley Heath was mother of ten rambunctious and inquisitive children, one of whom asked her, some 48 Octobers ago, if Tommy Major’s mother, who lived next door, would go to Hell because she planned to vote for Lyndon Johnson.

The outcome of that saga will have to wait—but a similar rumination comes to mind today. The Chairman of the House Budget Committee, vice-presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), insists that he respects and embraces Catholic social teaching when drafting legislation. Yet, for over a year, Mr. Ryan’s budget proposal has been roundly condemned by a prominent successor to the Apostles. Since the “Ryan Budget” slows the rate of growth in taxpayer-funded social programs, Rep. Ryan has been repeatedly attacked by Bishop Steven Blaire of Stockton, California, brandishing the widely-respected brand name of the USCCB, where he chairs a committee. Bishop Blaire calls Mr. Ryan’s budget cuts (sic) “unjust and wrong” and asserts that they fail to meet “moral criteria.” His condemnation has been gleefully trumpeted by the religious left, with Georgetown University faculty members, Maureen Dowd, and Al Sharpton in the lead.

Recently, several bishops have come to the defense of Mr. Ryan—not endorsing his budget, but affirming his right as a layman to exercise the laity’s specific “charism of political leadership and decision,” as Timothy Cardinal Dolan, citing Lumen Gentium, wrote to the congressman in May 2011. Since then, Catholics both lay and clerical have fruitfully unearthed and explored the distinction between issues involving moral absolutes which bind the informed Catholic conscience, on the one hand, and the freedom of the faithful to differ on approaches to prudential issues, on the other. For Bishop Robert C. Morlino of Madison, Rep. Ryan’s ordinary, the first category addresses “intrinsic evils,” while the second comprises issues “where intrinsic evil is not involved. How best to care for the poor,” Bishop Morlino continues, “is probably the finest current example of this.” continue reading...

"Non-negotiable" Issues

In a stunning development, it appears NCR admits to both the existence of intrinsic evils and the reality of the need for prudential judgment. Don't get too excited, however. Alas, the conclusion is entirely predictable.

PHIL LAWLER - An editorial in the National Catholic Reporter argues that “Catholics who bring with them a conservative political agenda” are doing a disservice to the Church by suggesting that some political issues are non-negotiable. The Reporter cites the words of Blessed John Paul II, who said that intrinsic evils include not only abortion and euthanasia but also “whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat laborers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free responsible persons…”

Wait; haven’t we heard this argument before? As I said at the time:

If you find a politician who openly advocates subhuman living conditions, who calls for arbitrary imprisonments, who attends fundraisers for the human-trafficking industry, who endorses government subsidies for prostitution, who demands legal
protection for slavery, you cannot in good conscience vote for him.

The point—which liberal Catholics seem incapable of grasping—is that no viable candidate on the American political scene advocates prostitution, slavery, and subhuman living conditions. Every responsible politician condemns these intrinsic evils. The candidates differ only insofar as they disagree on prudential judgments about how to counteract those problems. continue reading...

The Choice

I heard on the radio today that this year's presidential election has effectively been reduced to whether America will follow the principles of her own Revolution, or those of the French Revolution. Because I'm not sure the extent to which the French Revolution's ideals truly have survived even in France, I'm hesitant to jump on to that suggestion.

In reality, the image I have is more along the lines of the beginning of An American Werewolf in London:

Two American college students, David Kessler and Jack Goodman, are backpacking across the Yorkshire moors. As darkness falls, they decide to stop for the night at a pub called "The Slaughtered Lamb". Jack notices a five-pointed star on the wall. When he asks about it, the pub becomes very quiet and the pubgoers start acting very strange and hostile. The pair decide to leave, but not before the others offer them pieces of advice such as "Beware the moon, lads" and "Keep to the road." Whilst conversing with each other and wondering what they meant, they wander off the road, onto the moors.

Back at the pub, the owner gets very distressed and suggests that they go after the pair. As she says this, a sinister howling is heard. The rest of the pubgoers, having barricaded the door, decline. Back out on the moors, Jack and David have also heard the howls, and they seem to be steadily getting closer.

In this telling, our choice is whether we scamper back to the road, but even if we try, it's not certain we will find it and keep from being "fundamentally transformed." Yes, the stakes may be that high.

“Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.” That was Barack Obama in 2008. And he was right. Reagan was an ideological inflection point, ending a 50-year liberal ascendancy and beginning a 30-year conservative ascendancy.

It is common for one party to take control and enact its ideological agenda. Ascendancy, however, occurs only when the opposition inevitably regains power and then proceeds to accept the basic premises of the preceding revolution.

Thus, Republicans railed for 20 years against the New Deal. Yet when they regained the White House in 1953, they kept the New Deal intact.

And when Nixon followed LBJ’s Great Society — liberalism’s second wave — he didn’t repeal it. He actually expanded it. Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), gave teeth to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and institutionalized affirmative action — major adornments of contemporary liberalism.

Until Reagan. Ten minutes into his presidency, Reagan declares that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Having thus rhetorically rejected the very premise of the New Deal/Great Society, he sets about attacking its foundations — with radical tax reduction, major deregulation, a frontal challenge to unionism (breaking the air traffic controllers for striking illegally) and an (only partially successful) attempt at restraining government growth.

Reaganism’s ascendancy was confirmed when the other guys came to power and their leader, Bill Clinton, declared (in his 1996 State of the Union address) that “the era of big government is over” — and then abolished welfare, the centerpiece “relief” program of modern liberalism. continue reading...

Why a Good Person Can Vote Against Same-Sex Marriage

It should go without saying, but it is rather telling that a conservative would feel the need to write such a column (with which I don't fully agree, by the way, but that's a different discussion).

Image: Jeff Belmonte some rights reserved

Next week voters in Maine, Maryland and Washington will vote on whether to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples.

Given that there are good people on both sides of this issue, how are we to explain their opposing views?

The primary explanation is this: Proponents and opponents ask two different questions.
Proponents of same-sex marriage ask: Is keeping the definition of marriage as man-woman fair to gays? Opponents of same-sex marriage ask: Is same-sex marriage good for society? continue reading...

A Note on Political Choices... and Political Lies

It is moral to vote for neither major candidate. It may be stupid, but it is moral

[T]here are two moral choices in this year’s American presidential election: Vote for Romney or vote for neither of the major candidates.

Some have argued that a vote for Obama is moral because (a) the culture of life problems on which the candidates differ are now an intractable part of American society; (b) the HHS mandate doesn’t really attack religious liberty since it doesn’t force anyone to get an abortion; and (c) Obama is, on the whole, far more concerned about the common good (in the sense of the common man) than Mitt “Fat Cat” Romney. This argument is so utterly vacuous, on all three points, that I won’t dignify it with a response.

But others have argued, sometimes indicating horror and hurt at my betrayal, that voting for neither major candidate (by writing someone in or not voting at all) is morally equivalent to voting for Obama. This is not an absurd argument, but it is a false one. continue reading...

For Reference:

The Dangers of Voting Your Heart: An Intrinsically Moral Guide

The Wrong Side of History

I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history. - Francis Cardinal George

It is culture, and not politics, that is the engine of history, a point we seem unwilling to recognize, but is at the heart of the matter when Cardinal George wrote recently that the secularizing of our culture is a much larger issue than political causes or the outcome of the current electoral campaign, important though that is. He then when on to observe:

Instead of a world living in peace because it is without religion, why not imagine a world without nation states? After all, there would be no American ambassador recently killed in Libya if there were no America and no Libya! There are, obviously, individuals and groups who still misuse religion as a reason for violent behavior, but modern nation states don’t need religion as an excuse for going to war. Every major war in the last 300 years has been fought by nation states, not by the church. In our own history, the re-conquest of the secessionist states in the Civil War was far bloodier than the re-conquest of the Holy Land by the now despised Crusaders. The state apparatus for investigating civilians now is far more extensive than anything dreamed up by the Spanish Inquisition, although both were created to serve the same purpose: to preserve a government’s public ideology and control of society, whether based on religion or on modern constitutional order.

Analogies can easily be multiplied, if one wants to push a thesis; but the point is that the greatest threat to world peace and international justice is the nation state gone bad, claiming an absolute power, deciding questions and making “laws” beyond its competence. Few there are, however, who would venture to ask if there might be a better way for humanity to organize itself for the sake of the common good. Few, that is, beyond a prophetic voice like that of Dorothy Day, speaking acerbically about “Holy Mother the State,” or the ecclesiastical voice that calls the world, from generation to generation, to live at peace in the kingdom of God. continue reading...

A Touch of Arab Fall in the Air

I, for one, am not buying it that it was a trailer for an amateurish movie, which Rich Galen points out may not even exist fully, that set off a riot in Egypt and an attack on the US embassy in Libya. Then add in the monumental unlikelihood that that it was September 11th was just a coincidence. My hearing in the high band isn't what it used to be, and I'm not sure it was ever that good, but it sure sounds like someone blew a dog whistle.

All of which is neither here, nor there, and only goes to show that, in the Middle East, it is the same as it ever was.

Sure, the names are different, but serial apologies, or no, the season is changing:

Oh if only Islamic radicals would riot over the HHS contraception mandate and gay marriage. If they did, the Administration would fall all over themselves to apologize.

Don’t believe me? Consider yesterday’s events well chronicled by Jeff Emanuel.

A group in the United States exercised their first amendment rights, which set off rioting yet again among the religion of peace. Egyptians stormed the American Embassy, torn down the American flag, burned it, and replaced it with a black flag used by Al Qaeda. In Libya, our consulate was attacked and an Embassy employee killed.

The Obama Administration’s Egyptian Embassy responded by apologizing that someone somewhere exercised their first amendment rights and dared offend the religion of peace. In fact, the Embassy wants it known that no religion should ever be offended ever. So you Christians who think Jesus is the only path to Heaven, don’t say it. It might offend someone.

I guess now Barack Obama will abandon calls for gay marriage and Democrats everywhere will stop calling Christians “bigots” for standing up for their religion. After all, it appears now to be American policy to apologize for offending religious sensibilities. continue reading...

Update:

Skepticism about the "authenticity" of the film continues to steam along.

Update 2:

Well, it appears that the movie is real, but several months old with no real distribution, so its role as riot inciter is still suspect. There's still more than meets the eye here.

Democrats Change Their Minds and Accept Cardinal Dolan’s Invitation

Timothy Cardinal Dolan
Image: CatholicVote

News spread fast yesterday when Cardinal Dolan noted that he offered to pray at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte next week, but that his invitation was declined.

The Democratic Party, sensing that they are alienating the Catholic vote, quickly scrambled and accepted the invitation. continue reading...

The Unwelcome Cardinal Dolan

Ah, religion and politics, my favorite.

At first blush, the decision by President Obama not to offer Timothy Cardinal Dolan an invitation to offer a benediction at the Democrat National Convention seems like bad politics. After all, the Catholic Vote (if there is such a thing) is crucial to the President's re-election hopes. The President has had a tough year with Catholics, what with all that destroying religious freedom thing.

So why wouldn't the President who has already agreed to appear with the Cardinal at the Al Smith dinner have a willing Cardinal Dolan offer a benediction at the DNC? Why wouldn't he have the Cardinal there when that could easily give the impression that the President is still friendly toward the Catholic Church? continue reading...