The Middle

I have written before about my joys and frustrations in reading a particular website. He subscribes to what I would call the "single issue anger." Admittedly this unnamed website does not simply attack the opposition to Bush's immigration deform, but several other attacks on Bush's wayward behavior. The key point for him is the supposed Conservative attack on Bush's variance from the supposed Conservative gold standard.

As hated as Nixon is today and as demeaned as election strategy is too (move rightward for the primary and move to the center for the general election), he understood some basic concepts. He understood that the body politic is actually not just two parties but several groups. These groups are small and align around broader, similar concepts. These groups become successful and powerful when they aggregate larger and larger alliances together. Part of the process is dropping concepts from their main message that the larger group cannot support. Part of it is softening catch phrases to remove the harshness of tone. Moving between groups at different times is part of group building.

The part that few people wish to admit, except at times of radical transition, is that a common enemy is the biggest group builder of all. The common sentiments of frustration and anger allow people to shed old alliances and the older, larger groups start shrinking. These new unaligned voters may stay unaligned unless they find a group that shares their message and tone. The common enemy allows old hatreds to begin to appear petty compared to the new frustration and growing anger. This allows a courtship, similar to the old lyrics from the "Facts of Life" theme song: "The boys you used to hate, Now you date."

The famous French philosopher La Rochefaucauld wrote, "La haine est plus proche de l'amour que l'amite": Hate is closer to love than friendship. Obama has succeeded in causing a growing number of his passionate followers to turn on him. These ex-followers are his greatest problem because they will turn forever on him and his party.

The middle that does not wish to ever be passionate but wants to appear reasonable, those are moving away from him. He can get them back so long as they stay dispassionate. They want to reason issues out and find a middle way. These are the people that socialism and its kissing cousin fascism have always played to. Mussolini invented the modern use of the phrase the "third way." He sensed that coloring his socialism for the middle of his body politic would get him elected. He played to this desire for dispassion and made them passionate for an undefined "something else."

Obama rose to power on his version of the third way: "Hope. Change." Like Mussolini, he was less than clear on the stump of what he sought to do. He allowed the radical left to see the details to keep them happy by having white papers on his website that gave details. He knew that the middle of population would never research the white papers. They had too little passion to research his ideas. It was too big of a burden to challenge their hope for a third way. Why deal with the facts when you are comfortable in the middle.

Now Obama has done something that few have done successfully in recent American political history. He has made portions of the middle uncomfortable and angry. They are getting angrier every time they learn more about his health plan.

What's worse is these angry people start doing research on the plan and run across articles on the global warming myth. They get angrier still.

We may soon start to see a disappearing middle. The middle won't disappear because of the brilliance of current GOP leadership. The middle will disappear because they have focused anger that won't allow them to pretend they are being reasonable. They will start to see that reason has a home in the GOP's body politic (even if it is remarkably absent in the Republican party establishment in DC). The GOP's thinkers and middle America members are the real intellectual powerhouses of the country. Their ability to communicate without the DC establishment as an intermediary has created chorus of strong-minded, clear-thinking, passionate, and all-too-polite people. The middle won't be able to remain dispassionate nor to ignore the violence-prone thugs representing Obama's cause. Once the pendulum of political passion starts to sway, it is harder to bring back to rest.

That is Obama's problem. He is getting hit by the pendulum that he put in motion. The pendulum threatens to grow into a wrecking ball.

The quick answer to stopping a swinging wrecking ball is an application of an equal force in the exact opposite direction. Since that is difficult to do, the application of thug power in another direction will cause the wrecking ball of passion and resentment against Obama to careen into his fellow Democrats in Congress and spread the damage.

A disappearing middle and a careening wrecking ball leads to unpredictable results. Damage will spread far and wide. Republicans in Congress should not rest easy. The new class of Republicans will expect privileges that junior members only get when they are a large group (like the Class of 1994). They will insist on changes within Congress and the Republican Caucus. Smart members of the current Republican Caucus will avoid defending the Caucus's recent stupidities of boondoogle earmarks and reckless spending prior to 2006. They will seek strong law-and-order measures, such as border enforcement and immigration law enforcement (as two separate issues rather than one jumbled mess). They will seek simple laws that are easier to self-police, leading to smaller, less wasteful government.

Simplicity of law is liberty. Bureaucracy is the midwife of tyranny. When the middle becomes passionate about these ideas, Obama's agenda is dead.

Comments on Obama's Iconography

This video is a wonderful comment on Obama's scary use of iconography without showing the disturbing socialist iconography of the past.

Democratic Repetition of Soviet Propoganda

While this article proves nearly nothing about whether the Soviets did or did not infiltrate the Democrat Party, it describe well a set of circumstances that seems more likely than not given Democrat methodologies and stated goals.

Truly frightening.

My research on this subject and the truth behind the Vietnam War tend suggests that Soviet propoganda only failed because it did not reach full strength until 18 years after the USSR fell.

Folks created mess

So Obama wants the people who created the mess out of the way.

Does that mean that he will be asking Speaker Nancy Pelosi (failing to address Pres. Bush's attempt to reform Fannie Mae prior to meltdown), Rep. Barney Frank (creating the Fannie Mae system), or Sen. Chris Dodd (creating system) for their resignations any time soon?

Obama, Democrats, and Soviet Communism?

Here are a few articles worthy of consideration as to whether we are reaping the Soviet infiltration that President Reagan observed in the 1950's in the Screen Actors Guild.

http://www.globalpolitician.com/23436-terror-russia
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obama-regresses-to-cold-war-mythology-and-switches-sides/
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/obamas-quest-into-the-magic-world-of-anti-american-mythology/

Obama Supports Violating Constitution . . . of Honduras

Obama's State Department revoked the visas of Honduran officials appointed by the constitutional interim government of Honduras.

How are we not to interpret that Obama believes that our Constitution should be ignored as readily when he finds it equally inconvenient.

For text of the Honduran constitution in English see this post.

Killing the Elderly

Obamacare would have the de facto effect of saving money in many entitlements:
1. Medicaid;
2. Medicare;
3. Veteran's Hospitals;
4. Social Security Retirement;
5. Social Security Disability;
6. SCHiP, etc.

Five out of the six are mostly for the aged. Each of these programs will save money for every year one of their beneficiaries dies earlier than currently expected.

Assume that Medicaid would cost $3,000 per year per patient in their last ten years of life only. In that period, that saves $30,000 per patient. Nursing homes in Indiana cost a measly $120 per day or $3600 per month or $43,200 per year. The average patient is only in for two years, so we don't actually see $100,000 per patient in Indiana. But New York or California might. Indiana's still close.

One third of patients will need this type of care. The actual projected cost per patient should be the actual cost times the probability of care or $28,512 per person over 65.

If we quit paying for life-extending care in persons aged 85 and up, that would save the last two years of life expenses on much of that 33% of the population. The $28,512 per person over a population of 2.1 million people in 2010 (National Institutes of Health, Institute on Aging), that could save $59.9 billion. For the next age cohort of 75 to 84, find a way to reduce their projected population 17 million in 2010 or 18 million in 2015 or 20 million in 2020 by 10% and you save another $59 billion on the same math.

Reduce every other age cohort through attrition of bad care by 0.5% to 1% with cost per patient of $3,000 in an America of 300 million inhabitants, you can save $90 billion per year.

I have shown a very dramatic example by reductio ad absurdum. No American will tolerate this methodology imposed nakedly. Bury the method behind rhetoric and "for the good of the country" nonsense and a quick incentive to kill the elderly will creep in.

Smaller populations reduce healthcare costs. Abort them. Let them die early. Obamacare saves money.

The problem is that healthcare costs cannot go down, as I have suggested in earlier posts.

So now the costs keep rising because supplies of providers dwindle and need to be replaced in a very expensive fashion; the ability to provide care must be rationed to maintain the current level of care for some preferred portion of the country. According to Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of Obama's health advisors, that preferred portion of the population is late middle-aged.

In Logan's Run, the solution to knocking off people over 30 was Carousel.



Is Obamacare going to implement this?

Obama SAVED the economy?! Whatthe . . . !

How sure are you?

Comments on Strata-Sphere

Strata-Sphere is a blog that I read religiously. AJ is a joy to read about science, logic, and foreign affairs. I rarely disagree with those conclusions and often am educated to extraordinarily intricate levels. He does a wonderful job of making complex ideas simple.

Then he gets mad at the Republicans, particularly conservative republicans that insist on consistency. These he treats as pariahs. Admittedly I am one of those. Like every other person, I want people whom I respect to respect me in turn. I have no problem earning that respect. So, am I eligible to earn that respect?

1. Harriet Miers should never have been on the court. Justice Alito is superb. Conservatives erred in seeking an upgrade? The point of confirmation, according to the Federalist Papers, is to avoid having the presidents' friends of dubious quality be appointed without comment. How does this differ from that ideal?

2. AJ hates the attempt to block immigration legislation. Fiat justitia ruat caelum: Let justice be done though the heavens may fall. A bit bold in tone but actually in my practice a way to get things cleaned up quickly. If a case gets knotted up with a judge trying to dictate a "fair result," it often is highly inefficient and likely to reward the wrong-doer. If the judge flatly enforces the rules quickly and efficiently, the result is more likely to be that the parties resolve the issue themselves in a more efficient manner. This is the problem with the immigration debate position that AJ takes, he is interested in being fair to the law breaking immigrants. Unfortunately, he would reward the rule breakers and claim jumpers at the expense of those immigrants wishing to play by the rules. Experience has quickly shown us that refusal to give jobs in states to illegals and a weakening economy quickly reverses the net immigration flow. If we take a few more steps to tighten those up by more aggressive enforcement against cheating business owners, the immigrants leave quickly. The experience of history with immigrants is something like an eight-to-one ratio: eight leave voluntarily for every one that suffers enforcement of the rules. I suggest that ratio would go higher as the immigrants believe the free-ride of welfare, education, false automatic citizenship, and tax evasion (i.e., under the table payments) are closed down. Legal immigration will be much easier to justify.

I would add that I am in favor of immigration, but I want a small ratio from any one country. Diversity of country of origin will weaken the down side of immigration allowing more divergent strengths to appear. Too much of one profile is damaging.

3. Pushing Specter out. If jumping from the party is seen as detrimental, the party will build cohesion. Specter got a temporary advantage of going with the Democrats. The Democrats have helped the Republican cause by treating him like a pariah. Less likely to get followers. Now if a person stays, he is going to be more sensitive to primary voters. Independents naturally get mad at this result, because they don't want to lower themselves to belong to a party.

In fact, the more people that join a party and regularly vote for it in the primaries, the more the party will move toward the center. The parties would serve themselves well by making party primary participation be more valuable: discourage open primaries and make challengers easier. That will push the parties toward the center of their end of the spectrum. A party should never be in the center, because then there is less benefit from changing parties by voting. The weaker party is always the most centrist because they feel they need to imitate the winner.

I would argue that 60% of the population tells Gallup that they live and act conservatively in daily life. If the Republicans can show how their ideas better reflect these habits, we will persuade more.

4. AJ does not radical sounding language. The problem is that parties build loyalty by activating their followers passions. I wish it were not so, but people are persuaded by their emotions nine times out of ten. Put another away, market research on convincing clients to implement one legal strategy over another shows only 10% of the population can be persuade by "the bottom line" of accounting numbers. Why is a legal strategy implemented by Congress different?

In fact Democrats own most of the population either in party identification or means of persuasion because they show a reckless disregard for the truth when passions will get them what they want. Lie, cheat, steal . . . who cares, they say, just win.


I want Republicans to get the best people in the job, that strictly adhere to the rules, and argue on logic with the ability to show passion simultaneously and to clearly identify friend from foe.

Compromise where it actually moves your agenda forward. Stand firm where compromise only weakens your cause.

If that makes me a radical, then radicalism in the defense of liberty is no vice.