The Democratic Electoral Trap

 

Sometime next year — mid-2013 or so — the U.S. economy will crater.  The Weimar-Republic-like inflation we've been worrying about will finally become a reality.  The dollar will crumble.  The "world's reserve currency" will have gone the way of the Euro which will likely crumble this year.  The new "world's reserve currency" will be the Yuan and China will call the tune.

The Democrats are hoping they will be able to play the game for another inning or two, but they are probably wrong.  Whoever wins the White House in 2012 will preside over the disolution of the American economy.  Both the Republicans and the Democrats are hoping to be that someone.  It is clear they have a death wish, because the party left standing when the music stops will never thereafter win another national election.

I'm assuming here that Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate and that Ron Paul will not be the Republican candidate.

There is a small non-zero probability that Ron Paul will secure the GOP nomination and go on to defeat Obama in November, but I'm not betting any actual money on it.  If such a miraculous thing happens and if President Paul really does yank all our troops out of foreign countries and if he manages to cut a serious chunk out of the bloated federal budget...  IF...  the economy might be saved at least temporarily.

The short odds are on Romney or Gingrich going up against Obama...  and losing.  The winner loses and the loser wins.  Could it be possible that the GOP is really smarter than we ever gave them credit for?  That they will back a known-loser so that Obama gets re-elected and is thus in a target position when it all comes tumbling down?

I don't believe that.  I believe the GOP is in denial:  they don't believe a meltdown is imminent and they believe they can beat Obama with the likes of Gingrich.  They will lose in November and thus save their party (accidentally) while condemning all the rest of us to Hell.

It will be a good time to be in debt.  The resulting inflation will wipe most of that debt out by allowing the debtors to pay it off with cheap dollars.  I may just refinance my house.

 

Searching For Truth

 

Every true thing was first believed by one person, then hundreds, then millions, then everyone.  Once upon a time, it was obvious to everyone that the stars were mere holes in the crystal sphere of the night sky, that if you were poor or sick it was because God wasn't pleased with you, that the Sun wheeled around the unmoving Earth, and that the Earth was flat.  Today, anyone who tries to convince you that the Earth is stationary is most likely to be judged a dangerous lunatic.

Today we are asked to believe just as many things whose truth is suspect:

• People who vacation in Paris are stupid because the French hate Americans.
• The Moslem world hates us because we're so good and so free.
• Julian Assange and Bradley Manning are traitors who want to see the Western democracies destroyed.
• Ron Paul is an isolationist who can't possibly beat Barack Obama.
• Sometimes you just have to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils.
• Bullshit doesn't stink and is actually quite tasty and nourishing.

In fact, none of that is true.

 

The Republican Electoral Trap

The GOP is in serious trouble.  They have tried with all of their might to marginalize Ron Paul, and they have been only marginally successful.  This is inadequate.  The GOP must be able to make Ron Paul a non-person, an almost impossible feat unless Paul is caught in bed with "a dead girl or a live boy".  Not bleedin' likely.

So, what's the trap?  It's this:  Ron Paul supporters — by and large — will desert the GOP if Ron Paul is not the party's candidate.  'Big deal,' you say.  'Big deal,' I repeat.  Yes, it is a big deal.

If Iowa can be believed, Ron Paul owns twenty-something percent of likely GOP voters, and over the course of time (if things go as they have been going) this will grow.  The problem for the GOP is that most mainline Republicans simply want to beat Barack Obama in 2012.  Ron Paul's supporters want Ron Paul to beat Barack Obama in 2012.  These goals are at serious cross-purposes.  If Ron Paul isn't the GOP's choice to cross swords with the incumbent, Paulistsas will either stay home on Election Day or vote Libertarian.  What if, on Election Day, 20% or more of Republican voters don't show up?  (I'm here positing that voting for some other party is, as far as the GOP is concerned, the same as not voting at all.)  In order to make a decent showing, whoever is the GOP candidate will need every available nominally-GOP voter plus a smattering of nominal Democrats.  A GOP candidate who cannot pull that off cannot defeat the incumbent President.  Cannot.

Ron Paul can.  Romney may if he sucks in a noticeable chunk of Democratic voters;  don't bet on it.  Santorum and Gingrich cannot, nor can any of those candidates who have dropped out of the race.

To summarize:  the GOP seems intent on having Romney go head-to-head with Obama, but he will do so without twenty percent or more of the voters he's counting on, the voters he's depending on.  Romney, no matter how good he looks the morning of Election Day, will lose to Barack Obama.  Ron Paul may also lose to Barack Obama;  it's possible a large chunk of Republicans will desert the GOP if Ron Paul is the candidate;  it's possible.  Walter Williams has already suggested that this election is a waste of money and air time.  Ron Paul is, however, the only Republican who has a prayer of unseating Obama.  That's going to be hard for mainline Republicans to handle.  Can they do it?  My money is on Obama.

 

Enemy Action

 

• Dec 15th, 2011 — Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler was arrested at an airport in New York City after he attempted to check-in a locked gun box holding his Glock 27 pistol and ammunition to a Delta Airlines ticket agent.
• Dec 22nd, 2011 — 39-year-old Meredith Graves, an RN studying for her MD and who has a Tennessee concealed weapons permit, was arrested on a gun-possession charge when she tried to check her loaded pistol at the WTC memorial.
• Jan 2nd, 2012 — Ryan Jerome was enjoying his first trip to New York City on business when the former Marine Corps gunner walked up to a security officer at the Empire State Building and asked where he should check his gun.

A prominent political activist from California, a Registered Nurse-Medical student from Tennessee, and a combat Marine from Indiana, three vicious criminals now safely stowed behind bars in New York City where they won't be able to threaten the peace and safety of the community further.  Score three for the Sullivan Law and New York's no-nonsense zero-tolerance for terrorists with handguns.

Military people will tell you: the first time it's an accident, the second time it's a coincidence, but the third time it's 'enemy action'.  Is it possible this all has nothing to do with H.R. 822 now working its way through Congress?  H.R. 822 would require states that issue concealed weapons permits to recognize permits issued by other states.  People would always have to abide by the local restrictions, but these three would not have been arrested had H.R. 822 already been signed into law.  'Enemy action' indeed.

For a hundred years, New York State's 'Sullivan Law' has made it difficult to get a handgun permit in most of the state and damn-near-impossible in New York City where you have to be a close personal friend of the mayor in order to qualify.  A NYS pistol permit is not even valid in New York City.  As a result, most of the violent crime in New York is committed with guns obtained elsewhere from states with horridly permissive laws.  Oddly, crime in those otherwise lax jurisdictions never seems to rise to the levels of New York despite Rudy Giuliani, 'America's Mayor', having turned the place into a veritable police state.  To deter malefactors from continuing their dastardly pursuits, New York imposes draconian punishments:  each of the three criminals mentioned above are facing three-and-a-half years in slam if convicted, loss of voting rights, and loss of their 2nd amendment rights — in perpetuity.

If convicted.

Therein lies the rub.  New York's DA, one Cyrus Vance Jr., has some experience prosecuting such cases, three of which are now on his docket.  Alas for Cyrus, that experience is mostly bad.  Early in 2011, Jonathan Ryan of Florida was stopped by NYPD for making an illegal right-on-red (legal in NYS, illegal in NYC, go figure).  During the stop, the police discovered a 9mm pistol in the car's glove box and arrested Ryan for illegal possession of a handgun.  Facing three-and-a-half years in prison, Ryan nevertheless rolled his dice for double-or-nothing.  The jury took thirty minutes to deliver a 'not guilty' verdict.  The cops kept Ryan's gun anyway, but he walked out of the courthouse a free man.  The newest three defendants are even more sympathetic and thus even less likely than was Ryan to be convicted.  In view of that, Cy Vance may not even bother charging them.  If Vance takes their cases to court, he will win or he will lose.

If he wins, he will spray gasoline onto the brush fire that H.R. 822 has been thus far.  If he loses, his credibility (and possibly his career as a prosecutor) will lie in tatters — and he will spray gasoline onto the brush fire that H.R. 822 has been thus far.  Win or lose, he loses.  Beyond doubt, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, co-founder of MAIG, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, smells blood in the water.  Is he smart enough to realize (or suspect) that the blood was put there on purpose?...  that high-priced lawyers in the suburbs around Washington D.C. are waiting for him to take a nice, big bite?  And I do mean 'big':  Gura and Possessky PLLC has just been awarded $1.3 million in attorneys' fees for their win in D.C. v Heller where the Supreme Court struck down D.C.'s total ban on handguns.  D.C.'s ban was barely more severe than NYC's regime whereby huge filing fees ($445) are necessary merely to have one's application considered.  There is no guarantee that consideration will result in a NYC concealed weapons permit; in fact, it is a near-certainty that the application will be rejected absent some extraordinary circumstances.  This 'restrictive may-issue' policy thus comes very close to a total ban, such that of NYC's 7 million-plus inhabitants, only 2,291 of them may actually carry a firearm with them wherever they go.

So...  D.C. has had their total ban burned to the ground in D.C. v Heller (2008), and Chicago's ban has been ruled unconstitutional in McDonald v Chicago (2010).  Is New York City next?  One can only hope.