Obama is Narcissist-in-Chief

Is there any limit to this man's narcissism?

From Drudge Today:

Here's the picture of Obama as the Obama tribute (link) to Neil Armstrong; the Daily Caller asserts that "This is not a Photoshop. This was actually posted on Obama’s official Tumblr page:"

Romney-Ryan versus Obama on Saving Medicare

I’m happy about Romney’s pick of Paul Ryan as his running mate, thinking his knowledge, earnestness, and experience (7 term Congressman), particularly on budget issues (current chair of the House Budget Committee), will help the ticket’s chances in November.  My only concern about Ryan on the ticket has been the willingness he and Romney would show to proactively and aggressively rebut the Democrat smear that his thoughtful approach to Medicare reform amounts to “pushing granny off the cliff”.  I have thought that Romney and Ryan can win the argument on Medicare reform, but only if they are willing to confront the issue head-on and not be reactive to Democrat smears and distortions.

 

Happily, Romney and Ryan are doing just that – taking the argument to voters and getting favorable responses (link).  The simple reality is that the current Medicare program is financially unsustainable and that the Ryan reform plan only affects people now under 55.  Obamacare, on the other hand, already law, takes a huge chunk of money out of the current Medicare program, affecting seniors right now on Medicare – a chunk estimated by the government at about $450 billion when the law was first enacted and now pegged by the Congressional Budget Office at over $700 billion (link).  That’s it -- Obamacare takes out over $700 billion from the Medicare program seniors are currently on.  On top of that, throw in Obamacare’s new rationing board and the current law, enacted entirely by Democrats with no Republican support, dramatically affects seniors right now.  Once these facts sink in to more people it’s Obama who will be rightly seen as pushing granny off the cliff.

 

The Democrat response to this unpleasant reality – more smears and lies.  Yuval Levin at National Review Online (link): 

Last week I spoke with a journalist who covers health care who was marveling at the trouble the Democrats had allowed themselves to get into on Medicare — thanks to Obamacare on the one hand and the Romney-Ryan plan on the other, it’s suddenly Democrats who would cut the program for current seniors but would fail to save it from collapse and Republicans who would leave current seniors protected and stand a real chance of saving Medicare (and the federal budget) in the long run.  In their attempt to run away from this new reality, the Democrats have found themselves pushed into a series of increasingly implausible and unserious defenses and seemed to be losing ground on Medicare, which they had hoped might be their strongest issue this year.  

“So what will they do?” I asked him. He didn’t hesitate: “They’ll just lie.” He thought they would revert to the same story they have told for years — Republicans will increase seniors’ costs and destroy Medicare and Democrats won’t — and assume that people will just believe it.  That certainly made sense, and we now know he was right. On Saturday, the Obama campaign released this ad attacking the Romney Medicare proposal. The ad doesn’t walk some sort of narrow line between misleading and deceiving, it’s just simply a pack of lies from top to bottom.... 

....Those are all the claims in the ad, and they are all false. At least as striking, though, is what the ad doesn’t mention. It doesn’t mention that the Romney Medicare proposal would leave current seniors entirely unaffected or that it would provide a guaranteed comprehensive benefit to future seniors through a premium-support system. It doesn’t mention that the Democrats cut $716 billion from Medicare in this decade to spend on Obamacare, and did so largely through increased price controls, which are the most counterproductive way to reduce short-term costs since they tend to drive up long-term costs and undermine efficiency, quality, and access. It doesn’t say that Obamacare subjects Medicare to a board of 15 rationers who will decide which benefits are worthwhile and which are not — for both current and future seniors.  In other words, the [Democrat] ad pretends Obamacare does not exist, ignores the reality of the Romney Medicare proposal, and presents a series of flatly untrue claims in its place.

Now, people can debate the Ryan proposal and whether it would ultimately save Medicare or not, or suggest (implausibly) that in the long run it will take as much out of Medicare as Obamacare now does, but one cannot deny that Obamacare is taking $700+ billion out of Medicare as we speak.  Florida will be the laboratory this election on whether Obama, Slow Joe Biden, and the other Democrats can piss on seniors and convince them that it’s a sun shower with a rainbow at the end. 

John M Greco

Real Liberal “Chicago Values” in Action = “19 People Shot in Overnight Shootings Across Chicago”

Chicago’s hardball Ultraliberal Mayor Emanuel’s now infamous “Chicago Values” (link) on display:  “19 People Shot in Overnight Shootings Across Chicago” blares the Chicago Tribune web page headline (link). 

 

Since the ultraliberal took over, and hired as police chief an east coast guy who promptly took a puzzling, gratuitous, but nevertheless character-revealing swipe (link) at Sarah Palin, Chicago’s violence has skyrocketed, mostly in black and to a lesser extent Hispanic neighborhoods, though with notable instances of roving bands of minority youths violently flashmobbing in tonier spots.  By one measure, Chicago is, after years of despotic control by the Democratic Party, the "deadliest global city" (link).

All this in a city with some of the most restrictive gun control laws in America.  Despite the plain facts that much of the mayhem in the city over the years has been committed with knives, bats, and other non-projectiles, mostly by fatherless young men sustained by the loose requirements of the welfare state, and the relative dearth of gun violence in rural areas where many more people have guns, the reflexive liberal response to all this violence is to march (link) for more gun control and shout down critics who think that addressing a poverty of culture is part of the solution. 

Gotta keep those folks in the hoods fearful that Republicans are “gonna put them all back in chains”, as Vice President of the United States Joseph Biden recently told a largely black audience in Virginia, so they’ll keep voting for Democrats.

 

John M Greco     

After Ryan Pick, By Agreeing to Ultra-Liberal Debate Questioners Romney Rejoins the Stupid Party

After a courageous choice of Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate, which will test the electorate's ability to think like responsible adults, Mitt Romney got very stupid very fast.  He agreed to a series of three debates with ultra-liberal questioners (link).  Obama will get asked questions like "Are you surprised how difficult it has been to get needed reforms past racist, homophobic, sexist, stupid, selfish, and evil Republicans?", while Romney will get asked questions like "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" 

He could have insisted on two questioners for each debate, one picked from each side, or insisted on a predetermined set of questions that eliminated the questioner all together.  Or he could have insisted that at least one of the three questioners be a conservative.  But no.  He agrees to all ultra-liberal interrogators.  My guess is that that stupidity will cost him one to two points in swing states.   

Roger L Simon writes (link):

I was appalled, although not surprised, to read the just announced list of moderators for the forthcoming presidential debates....  All liberals from liberal news organizations.....  I don’t have any idea why the tradition of allowing a biased media to run these events continues. It is a testament to the passivity of the Republican Party. We saw how it worked during the primary season. Now we are going to get a rerun during the main event, with more subtlety and ultimately more subversion.

Unbelievable.  After all the debate history obvious to all, this is Simply Unbelievable. 

John M Greco

Investing Solo – Leveraged Closed End Funds Still Appeal

I thought I would update my investment approach, since my last post on this was about a year ago.  Then, I thought the time was a sweet one for Closed End Funds (CEFs), and a year later I think that’s still true, maybe even a bit more than before.

My approach is one of investing in light of the intermediate-term market and economic macro picture.  I don’t think of this as market timing, as I don’t trade for short-term profit.  I think of my approach as one of strategic asset allocation.  Right now I think the intermediate-term macro picture is one of (1) substantial deleveraging at the state and individual level, and (2) the boomer reach for yield in the face of a long-disappointing stock market and growing skepticism of the “stocks for the long run” approach, as the lead edge of that demographic is now reaching retirement age. 

I think that consumer and government financial retrenchment combined with less demand for stocks as investments will lead to continued economic and stock market weakness for years to come, which in turn will result in low interest rates (as seen in Japan for the last 15 years or so) and reasonable demand for quality debt (“fixed income”) assets for many years.   One can only invest consistent with some assessment of market prospects, and that’s mine.  Whether the US economy is technically in a recession versus being in a very low growth state seems immaterial, other than for its potential psychological effects on investors and the possible government actions it provokes.      

As a result, I have gradually moved my portfolio even stronger into leveraged CEFs, which borrow at short-term interest rates and use those extra dollars to invest in more securities to generate higher returns.  The leverage is modest by financial wheeler-dealer standards – at most, one borrowed dollar for every one of investor equity, so that the maximum leverage as a percent of total assets cannot be greater than 50%, and usually is between 20 to 40%.  In this environment, as Bill Gross has said and written, why not act like a banker and borrow at low rates and lend at higher ones?

For me right now, the risk of a carefully-selected leveraged CEF that yields 6% to 9% is acceptable in this environment.  I don’t want to sit by earning 2% to 5% on a fully investment grade vehicle with inflation running, let’s say, 2%.  I’m willing to study my CEF options and take the risks, which I ameliorate somewhat, beyond ongoing due diligence, through diversification across types of funds and sponsors.  CEF portfolio managers have tools available (derivatives) that they can employ to cushion the effect of rising short-term interest rates, when that eventually begins to happen.

I now have a majority of my portfolio dollars in leveraged debt CEFs, earning a much higher return than I would without them.  Some of my largest holdings include: PFN and PKO (both Pimco) with diversified debt; KTF (DWS) and NEV (Nuveen) with tax-free muni bonds; TLI (Legg Mason) and JRF (Nuveen) with floating rate senior secured bank loans; FFC (Flaherty & Crumrine) and JPS (Nuveen) with preferreds/exchange-traded debt; DMO (Legg) with mortgages; and GBAB (Guggenheim) with taxable Build America muni bonds. 

The only CEFs I hold with equity are in the midstream energy/MLP space (i.e., pipelines and storage).  My largest positions are KYN and KMF (both Kayne Anderson) and NTG (Tortoise).         

A caveat: I thought these CEFs were good buys when I accumulated shares, and I still like them here at least as holds.  In recent months, CEF prices, and those of other debt instruments, have been bid up in the reach for yield, and as such most of my funds are trading at modest to moderate premiums right now.  Whether they are good buys right now, or at any time, and particularly relative to other CEF choices, is up to each investor to assess. 

Outside of CEFs, in light of my macro picture, I have by now exited all my floating-rate preferred securities, such as MET-A and MS-A, that I had begun accumulating in 2010 and early 2011.  Non-midstream energy MLP-related equities are now less than 10% of my total portfolio. 

Mike Parenti

Link to all Investing Solo Posts

Longmire on TV

I’ve been enjoying A&E’s new crime drama TV series Longmire, about the trials and tribulations of a Wyoming county sheriff.  Like so many such series, and movies as well for that matter, a big part of the appeal is the stimulant to the imagination, about life is such a place at such a time.  Sometimes the story lines can be secondary to what’s running through one’s mind eye.   

The writing and acting are generally pretty good, and I’m glad I took a flyer although I should say that I abandoned one episode (I later relented) because of head-shaking remarkable coincidences and excessive intertwining of the lives of the small number of major characters that so often fill TV series.   

For my tastes, it’s hard to find a good series, with historical or geographic or scientific interest, that strikes an acceptable balance, for me, between main plot versus character backstories and subplots – I prefer when the latter is kept in check.  Sometimes a good series deteriorates into mostly character stories, like CSI (which I stopped watching a few years ago) and the third season of Deadwood.  Even American Restoration, an interesting reality TV show about a Las Vegas restorer of artifacts, antiques, and old objects, has been reducing the technical restoration-related content in favor of the personal inter-relationships among the characters; not a good development.

John M Greco

UChicago's Milton Friedman at 100

My dilapidated copy, purchased 1/11/1971

Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning long-time Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, would have been 100 years old yesterday.

His ideas and I were first introduced in a freshman Common Core Economics course at the University of Chicago, taught by a colleague.  One of the key book assignments was, of course, Capitalism & Freedom, which has influenced my thinking ever since. 

Fellow Nobelist and UChicago Economics Professor Gary Becker called Friedman "the most important economist of the 20th century.”  Friedman was a leader of the "Chicago School" of Economics, the principles of which he discussed in addressing the University's Board of Trustees in 1974 (link):

“In discussions of economic policy, ‘Chicago’ stands for belief in the efficacy of the free market as a means of organizing resources, for skepticism about government intervention into economic affairs, and for emphasis on the quantity of money as a key factor in producing inflation.  

“In discussions of economic science,” he continued, “‘Chicago’ stands for an approach that takes seriously the use of economic theory as a tool for analyzing a startlingly wide range of concrete problems, rather than as an abstract mathematical structure of great beauty but little power; for an approach that insists on the empirical testing of theoretical generalizations and that rejects alike facts without theory and theory without facts.”

From the UChicago Magazine (link) at the time of Friedman's death about 6 years ago:

That his ideas often met with criticism didn’t faze him. “Mr. Friedman loved to argue,” [Chicago] Graduate School of Business professor Austan Goolsbee wrote in the November 17 New York Times. “They say he was the greatest debater in all of economics.” In a 2000 PBS interview former Secretary of State George P. Schultz, a former Chicago colleague, recalled: “[T]here was a saying: Everybody loves to argue with Milton. Particularly when he isn’t there.”

Last I heard, the Becker-Friedman Economics Institute (link) at the University will be taking over the buildings long occupied by the Chicago Theological Seminary, across 58th Street from the Oriental Institute and kiddie-corner from the new Business School complex.  In this time of ominous growing government control over our economy and our private lives, his legacy is as important now as it has ever been.

Richard Balsamo

Related Posts:
Re: The "Stimulus": Economics As the Dismal Science -- Keynesians Say 1+1=3, Milton Friedman & Common Sense Say No Way

Democrat “Values”, Gays, Islam, Marriage, & Chick-fil-A

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and Boston Mayor Tom Menino, both Democrats, today jointly announced that they are instituting a Democrat “Party Loyalty” card, which they advise holders to carry with them at all times.  They stated that this development stems from their growing concern as mayors that many residents of their cities do not hold the proper “values”.  Holders of the wallet cards will also receive Party Loyalty car and window stickers, all of which, say the mayors, will help police and other city officials to better appreciate the civic loyalty of any residents who are stopped for violations or who need city services.  Eligibility will be determined by such factors as an individual’s record in requesting Democrat ballots in primary elections and Democrat Party ward committeeman recommendations.  The mayors stressed that Democrat Party Loyalty cards are certainly not mandatory.      

Veteran political observers say this move reflects these mayors’ growing desire to increase resident awareness of their declared city “Values,” which recently was evidenced in the Chick-fil-A flap, involving reaction to a company official’s personal view in support of the traditional definition of marriage.  Meanwhile, a smiling Boston mayor Menino, taking a short break from another ribbon-cutting ceremony at another new Boston mosque (link), told reporters that the mosque’s imam’s personal view that all homosexuals should be immediately stoned to death is part of the rich cultural heritage of Islam, which, as President Obama has recently said, has always been a part of the fabric of America.   

John M Greco 

Rahm Emanuel, Chick-fil-A, Democrat Corruption, Murder, & "Chicago Values"

Notwithstanding his recent cooperation with and praise for viciously anti-Jewish Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakahn, his former bosses Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s positions in support of the traditional definition of marriage, the long history of profound and vile institutionalized corruption by his own ruling Democrat party in Chicago, and recent distraction due to the city’s staggering record-breaking murder rate since he took office, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, of Jewish descent, condemned support of traditional marriage, the official position of the Roman Catholic Church and, at least, hundreds of thousands of Chicago citizens, as against “Chicago values”.

Perhaps Democrat Mayor Emanuel, the elected chief executive of a secular municipal administration in a diverse Republic, would care to expound to the benighted Chicago proletariat on other "Chicago Values" and the definitions of tolerance and diversity.

John M Greco

Chicago Pols Declare Liberalism a City-Approved Religion

Rahm Emanuel, Chicago's ultraliberal mayor and former no-holds-barred political operator for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, has declared (link) that Chick-fil-A's president's public support for the traditional definition of marriage is inconsistent with "Chicago's values."  Chicago's values.  This comes on the heels of a Chicago alderman's declaration that he'll try to block a Chick-fil-A from opening a site in his ward because he doesn't agree with the company's president's personal views, echoing the recent similar pronouncement from Boston's benighted mayor.  And, of course, there is not a hint or allegation that the company discriminates in any way against anybody or is breaking any laws whatsoever.  Link

Putting aside the ridiculousness and frighteningly-threatening specter of the mayor of a municipality in a free republic declaring approved specific social values and punishment for dissenters, just what might "Chicago values" be?  Profound, chronic, and costly vile corruption by the Democrat party which has fooled and helped to further impoverish enough poor and immigrants to keep it in power?  (The unofficial motto of the city, after all, according to the late Chicago-guy Mike Royko is "Where's Mine", paired with an open and outstretched palm, as in "where's my share of the take".)  Record-breaking street violence and gang murder?

By the way, the Catholic Church endorses the traditional definition of marriage (as does B Obama at least publicly).  Is Emanuel anti-Catholic?  And, many and perhaps most Muslim organizations seem quite, ahem, supportive of the traditional definition of marriage.  Is Rahm anti-Muslim, heaven forbid to a liberal? 

Another Chicago value in action from Rahm Emanuel, who's nominally Jewish but is actually a high priest of the Church of Liberalism:  vicious anti-Semitism and anti-white ideology is hunky dory and so apparently a "Chicago Value".  Headline today at the very liberal Chicago Sun-Times:  "Rahm welcomes help from [Nation of Islam leader] Farrakahn, ignores anti-Semitic remarks".  (Another link.)

John M Greco

Obama & Skipping Out on Student Loan Debt

Barack Obama has recently proposed that student debt be dischargeable in bankruptcy, a proposal consistent with his apparent long term strategy of bringing the American economic system down upon itself in order to create the opportunity for a new America based on a very different set of principles. 

Of course the Obama proposal is just a naked pander for the youth vote and is consistent with Obama’s stated aim of “spreading the wealth around”.  I say Obama backers are much more likely to be current and future student loan defaulters than Romney supporters; I doubt anyone would want to fade me on that.  But to consider the proposal seriously for a moment:

The student loan process differs from others in that the likelihood of the borrower’s ability to pay back the loan is not a factor in whether the loan is granted in the first place or in setting the interest rate to be charged.  So if student loan debt can be later made to disappear, thus stiffing taxpayers (i.e., me) on government loans or private lenders on private loans, while infuriating those who dutifully paid off their own student loans, then the likelihood of the student’s defaulting must be taken into consideration in the granting process. 

How about this as the major factor – the relevance of the major to subsequent job prospects and ability to earn a wage that might actually be enough to pay off a loan.  Pursuing a degree in science or technology – no problem.  Engineering or math – no problem.  Economics or business – no problem.  Medieval French poetry, lesbian studies, or pop psychology – now we’ve got a problem.  Want a PhD in feminist theory – pay for it in cash.

John M Greco

Avanti! Redux

While flipping through TV channels late one recent evening I came across a Billy Wilder film I had never seen.  Being a fan of many of his pictures, particularly One, Two, Three (the subject of an early post on this blog), Stalag 17, Some Like It Hot, and the lesser known Kiss Me Stupid, I took a flyer.  Glad I did.  I only saw part of the movie the first time through, though, joining somewhere in progress, but that didn’t bother me.  When I was growing up, my father would take my brother and me to the movies some Sunday afternoons, and we would get to the theater whenever we got there and join the movie in progress, then later sit through the beginning and leave at the point we came in.  Arriving at the theater before the beginning of a picture came to me later.  Fortunately this time, I was able to record a later showing of the film and watch it from the beginning a few days later.   

Avanti! is a romantic comedy, and something a bit more.  It tells the bittersweet story of an American (Jack Lemmon) and a Brit (Juliet Mills) who independently journey to Ischia in the Bay of Naples, he to retrieve the body of his father and she that of her mother, both of whom just died together in an automobile crash.  Lemmon discovers to his chagrin that the two elders had been having a surreptitious one-month summer affair for 10 years.  The movie becomes an understated story of the beginning of a second generation affair between two unlikely people who start out at odds, but where soon enough the gruff exterior of the harried American businessman softens in the face of the charm of Ms Mills’s character and of the Italian setting (Italy isn’t a country, it’s an emotion, says Ms Mills).  Remarkably, Avanti! isn’t very well known today, and isn’t shown much on cable TV (as a veteran channel-flipper, I know), but on release in 1972 it received 6 Golden Globe nominations, and one win (Lemmon).  

The movie reminds me of a late-career, very personal, and similarly undeservedly underappreciated picture by another favorite director of mine – John Ford’s Donovan’s Reef.  Like that one, this one is full of the director’s many special touches – comedy, sentimentality, satire.  Mills’s riff on not being taken for granted while she enthusiastically unpacks her clothes in Lemmon’s room is hilarious, the hotel manager is superb, the medicinal mud baths promise an older diplomat the acidity of a man of 20, and it’s delightful to discover how well-stocked the ristorante is with the many varieties of pasta.  There’s plenty of the sardonic humor for which writers Wilder and Diamond are known – an impatient, overbearing American diplomat is approaching the small island in a helicopter and asks the pilot “Are you sure this is Ischia, because I do not want to land in Africa?”, from whom comes the reply “That would be bigger”.  Subtle comedic touches abound -- the movement of the door handle at a moment of Sicilian passion, the pop of a wine bottle at dinner, a reflexive fascist salute, soaking fingernails in a sugar bowl.  The beautiful score consists mostly of well-chosen established Italian tunes – Un’ Ora Sola Ti Vorrei, A Tazza E’ Café, and Senza Fine particularly set the moods and pace.  At its core, this is the story of an awakening, a passing through a doorway to a fuller life – Permesso?  Avanti!

R Balsamo

Heaven's Gate Once Again

Lately I’ve been watching the “director’s cut” of the movie Heaven’s Gate, the 1980 epic that supposedly bankrupted a studio and effectively ended the career of director Michael Cimino.  I saw at a theater the original release of a truncated version, which bombed on debut.  The longer cut is a much better film that perhaps deserves more appreciation.

The film has two story lines:  the larger is the conflict between powerful Wyoming cattle ranchers and the poor Eastern European immigrants who are spilling onto grazing land, and the smaller is the love triangle involving a brothel madam (Isabelle Huppert) and her two lovers, the local lawman named Averill (Kris Kristofferson) and the enforcer for the cattlemen named Champion (Christopher Walken). 

The film’s structure is in three parts:  a main narrative set over a short period of time in Wyoming bookended by a long 20 minute prologue of the Harvard class of 1870’s graduation ceremonies and a short epilogue set back east in Newport.  The main character is Averill, one of the Harvard graduates who years later is the county lawman duty-bound to protect the immigrants but who seems at times wearily resigned to the inevitability of their oppression by the powerful and violence-prone ranchers.  Billy (John Hurt), classmate and friend of Averill, speaks at the graduation ceremony and concludes that society is “well arranged”, contravening the main graduation speaker who encouraged the men to make the world a better place.  Twenty years later they both are out West, where society is definitely not “well arranged”, although Averill is trying to make it more so. 

The film has problems, to be sure.  The uneven narrative meanders, lingering here and there with poignant “slice of life” segments such as a rousing roller skating scene and the graduation segment.  Poor sound quality and mumbled dialog (this could almost be an Altman movie) makes the narrative frustratingly hard to decipher in places.  Nevertheless, the movie is captivating, surprisingly so since the plot in many ways is so mundane.  It’s beautifully filmed in many parts, especially those showing the hardscrabble lives of the immigrant poor, their perseverance and resilience in the face of great hardship, and their exuberance and emotionalism as well.  Perhaps the movie works best as a collection of slice-of-life portraits, which somehow taken together amount to more than the whole.

“Heaven’s Gate”, incidentally, is the name of the roller skating rink in the immigrant-dominated town of Sweetwater which proudly proclaims in writing to offer a “moral and exhilarating experience”.  The film reminds me of another revisionist Western with a story similarly of growing intensity, explosive violence, and haunting music -- Sergio Leone’s 1968 film Once Upon a Time in the West, which itself incorporated many references to earlier Westerns and whose story revolves around a railroad baron’s ruthless ways that eventually lead to his ruin at a crucial piece of land named, perhaps only coincidentally, Sweetwater.

R Balsamo

Obama Gets More Nervous

Today comes news (link) that President Barack Obama has publicly declared, in an ABC interview "hastily" arranged this morning, support for gay marriage, just a day after voters in swing-state North Carolina defeated (link) a proposition in favor of such.  This announcement also comes a day after Obama was nearly beaten (link) by an obscure incarcerated felon in the West Virginia Democratic Party primary, for which some Democrats are shockingly blaming (link) Democrat voters’ racism rather than disgust with Obama’s record, after voters in Wisconsin came out shockingly strongly for Republican governor Scott Walker in the primary for the recall election (link), and after Obama’s favorite Republican senator, the squishy Dick Lugar, shockingly overwhelmingly lost in the Indiana primary. 

Add to that national popularity polls that show Obama either behind Romney or just only slightly ahead in those propaganda polls that overweight Democrats so that Obama comes out on top.  Bottom line is this picture looks to me like Obama now ever more so desperately feels the needs to shore up his unenthusiastic base and continue to distract away from his record and from the economy.  All these are positive signs for Romney, if he stays on message.

John M Greco

Change, Then Hope

I've read that Barack Obama's new slogan for his reelection campaign is "Forward".  Anne Sorock writes at Legal Insurrection (link):  "Similar to the 2008 concept, Change, this one-word slogan captures a vague sense of movement without articulating a strategy, end, or principle. The movement this terms evokes is no more than a different state than we’re currently in, and a positive trajectory."  Well, when you have a disastrous record, you can't run on that, so what have you?  Apparently an appeal to go "Forward", which, in a remarkable coincidence, happens to be an old socialist slogan (link) [not to mention the Wisconsin state motto (link)].  Hmmm.

Here's my suggestion for Romney:  "Change, Then Hope".

John M Greco

Harvard & Liberal Dem Senate Candidate Speak with Forked Tongue in Diversity Fraud

Oops.  Fraud is such strong language, but if the shoe fits....  Let's see -- years ago, liberal Harvard comes under flak for not having enough minorities on its Law School faculty, so poof! it offers up a woman named Elizabeth Warren as part American Indian, and wallah! Diversity!  Problem (link):  she can't prove it, apparently relying instead on "family stories", and fantastically claims that despite contemporaneous Harvard publications touting her minority status, she remembers nothing about it all.  Besides, she now says to questioners, “You’re trying to raise something from 15 years ago.”  You see, she's a law professor and knows the statue of limitations on fraud has run.  Warren is also embroiled in another kerfuffle about a 10-year interest-free loan she has received from Harvard for reasons unclear.  Hmmm.

Oh, this ultraliberal Native American and Obama acolyte Warren is running as the Democrat candidate for Senate in the Bay State. 

John M Greco

Notre Dame Profs Outraged Over Bishop’s Criticism of Obama, Infanticide Protector and Notre Dame Honoree

Finally, over a hundred professors of the apparently nominally-Catholic University of Notre Dame have found something to be outraged about.

They weren't outraged when Notre Dame honored (link; link) Barack Obama, one of the, if not the, leading defender (link; link; link; link; link) in the Illinois legislature of infanticide, where hospital nurses placed viable infants born alive after botched abortions alone in storage rooms to die without medical care, a practice famously publicized by a nurse who had witnessed it at the incongruously-named Christ Hospital in suburban Chicago.

But let a Bishop criticize Obama and the Notre Dame faculty erupts like Mount Vesuvius.  The Chicago Tribune reports (link) that “More than a hundred University of Notre Dame professors have demanded that Illinois Bishop Daniel Jenky renounce comments he made criticizing President Barack Obama's stance on religious liberty that compared him to dictators Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin....”  The Bishop is a Notre Dame graduate and sits on the ND Board of Fellows and Board of Trustees, says the Tribune.  “In his homily, Jenky compared the administration's stance to anti-religious figures in history such as Hitler and Stalin who 'have tried to force Christians to huddle and hide within the confines of their churches.' " 

Infanticide?  To each his own.  Late Term Partial Birth Abortions?  Who am I to judge?  Criticize Obama?  HOW DARE YOU?  So goes the Catholic University of Notre Dame, a great institution that has fallen of late into some very bad hands.  

John M Greco

The Obama Eating Dog Story Looks To Have Legs

What does Obama call Romney’s dog?  Meals on Wheels

Obama has been “hoist with his own petard”, to recall Shakespeare’s phrase.  How apropos.  I’m getting a big kick out of the way the Democrat’s cruelty to dogs smear against Romney has boomeranged to smash them squarely in their collective head. 

If I had a dog, it would look like the dog Obama ate*

Recap:  on a family car trip, Romney placed their dog on the car’s roof in a secured dog carrier fitted with a wind shield.  Word from the Romney family is that not only did the dog do fine, the dog liked it.  This would come as no surprise to any sentient being who would have observed that dogs love to stick their heads out of car windows at high speeds, something that has always amazed me.  But the Obama campaign Democrat brain trust seems somehow to have missed ever seeing such a thing. 

New Obama Campaign Theme ....How Much Is That Doggie In The Window

And of course, since Obama can’t run on his record by a long shot, all they can do is dredge up 30 year old tiny stories like this one in a desperate and surely pathetic attempt to gain traction with inattentive and easily fooled voters – i.e., the kind the Democrat controlist elite depends on for votes but whom they secretly despise.

Harry Truman: if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.  Good thing Obama wasn’t around then.

Well, not only does turn out that the Romney dog loved the rooftop carrier, but that Obama wrote about eating dog as a child with his Muslim step-father in Indonesia in his memoir “Dreams From My Father.”  The Obama Smear Brain Trust  Missed that one too – obviously no one actually read, or at least remembered, Obama’s book.

   Perhaps we should refer to the President as Bark Obama

Amidst all this humor, David Goldman sees (link) a deeper, and longer-lasting meaning:

What a careful reader will take away from Barack Obama’s memoir “Dreams From My Father” is not only that the president used to eat dog meat, but more importantly, that he identifies with dog-eaters. He wants us to understand that he is one of them....  [T]here is something far more visceral, more existential to the president’s dislike of the United States, and that arises from his early residence in the Third World, and his identification with the people of the Third World whose lives are disrupted by the creative destruction that America has unleashed.

It really isn’t unfair at all to bring Obama’s canine consumption to public attention. The president isn’t really one of us. He’s a dog-eater. He tells the story in his memoir to emphasize that viscerally, Obama identifies with the Third World of his upbringing more than with the America of his adulthood. It is our great misfortune to have a president who dislikes our country at this juncture in our history.

The bottom line is that for the Obama team, the Romney canine-on-the-roof  smear is one dog that won’t hunt.

After his defeat in November, Obama won’t eat crow -- he'll want collie

John M Greco

* a reference of course to Obama’s inappropriate, inflammatory, and prejudicial comment on the Martin/Zimmerman affair

** The quips and jokes aren’t mine -- I’ve seen them at various webs sites

The Prosecutor Takes Sides in the Martin/Zimmerman Affair, and Justice Sighs

I caught today on radio the first few minutes of special prosecutor Angela Corey’s news conference in the Martin/Zimmerman affair, at which she announced (link) second degree murder charges against George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin, and I was shocked to hear her opening remarks refer to speaking with the family of the dead young man and her sympathy for them.  Prosecutors are supposed to examine the evidence in a dispassionate manner and make determinations in a fair, impartial manner without even the appearance of impropriety or bias.  Well, not so here, not at all so here.   

Here are special prosecutor Corey’s opening words after introducing herself:

“Just moments ago we spoke by phone with Sabrina Fulton and Tracy Martin.  It was less than three weeks ago that we told those sweet parents that we would get answers to all of their questions no matter where our quest for the truth led us.  And it is the search for justice for Trayvon that has brought us to this moment.”

“Those sweet parents”?!  “Search for justice for Trayvon"?!  And the prosecutor's on an intimate, first name basis already with the deceased?!

We have already seen, in this highly politicized affair, black liberal Democrats such as Obama, Sharpton, and Jackson foment a lynch-mob atmosphere, and major liberal news organizations NBC and ABC distort the facts through highly deceptive and prejudicial editing of audio and video tapes.  We have seen some news organizations, such as the New York Times and Gwen Ifill, a black liberal public TV commentator, refer to the half-Hispanic and half-white Zimmerman as “half-white” and “white” respectively, terms apparently never before used by them for a person at least half Hispanic.  We have seen the New Black Panthers, a racist organization already on video record for intimidation of white voters in Philadelphia in a case that black Obama Attorney General Holder ignores, issue “Wanted Dead or Alive” posters for alleged shooter Zimmerman.  So much for Obama’s Hope and Change and a new era of race relations in America.  And now the local prosecutor in Florida has joined the mob.     

Attorney William Jacobson writes (link) at Legal Insurrection blog:  “What irked me was to hear the prosecutor thank the Martin family attorneys....  For the prosecutor to embrace the Martin family attorneys with thanks at the press conference, and for AG [Obama Attorney General] Eric Holder verbally to praise Sharpton today, tells me that a case which should be about facts of who did what to whom is going to turn into an even bigger racial narrative for a variety of purposes which have nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of the accused.”

A commenter to the above-referenced post wrote: ‘The [prosecutor’s] comment about seeking “justice for Trayvon” did not sit well with many attorneys that I know who heard the comments. It was unprofessional at best on the part of a prosecutor who should KNOW better with a case this potentially charged. The prosecutor attempted to mitigate through her later comments, but the damage was done.  It is not to seek justice for an individual, but simply to do justice (whatever that happens to be).’

It’s the Duke Lacrosse racial lynch mob hysteria all over again – for some, dispassionate examination of the facts is avoided, and all that matters is for blacks to get a sacrificial offering to make up for past injustice. Whether or not the actual accused is guilty matters not.  Here are comments from today from a law professor, a law professor for God's sake, in the Obama Administration (link):

Christi Cunningham, an associate secretary of regulation at the [Obama Administration] Department of Labor and a law professor at Howard University, spoke today at the National Action Network’s conference in Washington, D.C. Cunningham started her speech by calling for “justice for Trayvon Martin” and preempting the impending trial of George Zimmerman by asking rhetorically, “Why are people acting like this is a confusing situation and we don’t know what happened? We know exactly what happened, because it’s happened before.”

In reaction to the second degree murder charge based on how the facts known so far match up against what is required for the prosecution to prove second degree murder, one commenter at National Review Online said “How disgusting the State Attorney denied a grand jury the opportunity to review the evidence and determine what, if any, charges it supported against Zimmerman in order to make a craven, politicized, possibly unethical charging decision on her own.” 

I have no idea what happened that night, but I'm repelled by the lynch mob atmosphere and the stated effort of the special prosecutor to "search for justice for Trayvon".  I want to see justice done, not justice for Travon Martin or justice for George Zimmerman.  Just justice.

John M Greco

Show Boat at the Lyric Opera

Chicago's Civic Opera House

The seminal work in American musical theater begins with loud, uncomfortable notes, filled with foreboding, as the curtain opens on black stevedores loading cotton while singing “Niggers all work on de Mississippi, Niggers all work while de white folks play ....”  Whoa!  Imagine sitting in the audience on opening night, December 27, 1927, expecting the usual light fare.  Mark Steyn writes in Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: “From that first shocking word, confronting mid-town Manhattan with aspects of their society they preferred not to think about, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II presented their audience with something new: drama in music, with neither element constrained by the other.  It is the ultimate opening number, because it is the opening number for all [in American musical theater] that follows.”   Show Boat was the first work to take serious themes and tightly integrate music and lyrics into the narrative, where they advance and expound on the story line, a serious story line – resulting in what Steyn calls “the most important work in American musical theater, [as] it sums up what’s gone before and points the way ahead.”  

Show Boat Backdrop on the Stage of the Civic Opera House

A couple of weeks ago at Chicago’s Lyric Opera I took in the season’s last staging of the work that became Hammerstein’s masterpiece – actually, the first of many for the greatest lyricist in musical theater and perhaps its greatest dramatist.  The production was well-done and spirited, although to bring the running time in at a brisk 3 1/3 hours it by necessity didn’t include every one of the many scenes and songs written by Kern and Hammerstein for the original and for various stage and film reprises (for that we have the excellent 1988 compilation by John McGlinn featuring Frederica von Stade, Jerry Hadley, Teresa Stratas, and Karla Burns, among others).  The singing and acting were very good and the music and lyrics, of course, incomparable, although the sparse set was disappointing for a Lyric production, granting the challenges of frequent scene changes and the invariable budget constraints.  The ensemble of supporting black singers and dancers was exceptional, and Ashley Brown as Magnolia and Angela Renee Simpson as Queenie particularly stood out. 

The narrative spans several decades, and, against the backdrop themes of racial privilege and discrimination and the timelessness of the River, at the core is the sad story of a young woman who, despite being warned of the danger of falling in love with a “no-account river fella” because when “a girl like you starts to love a man, she don’t stop so easy,” nevertheless falls in love with a no-account river fella who later abandons her and their young daughter, proving that indeed, to her lifelong detriment, she couldn’t help lovin’ dat man.  
    
R Balsamo