Somewhere in the last week, election season kicked into full swing. I know this not because with Labor Day, Tourist season officially came to a close (which I found rather disappointing, since I was nowhere near bagging my limit in tourists this year), nor by the slight stench of decay which normally permeates the atmosphere when political speeches are emitted by candidates (after all, we've already had three Republican debates). No, it was the tone of Presidential rhetoric that announced the official change of season this year.
With the President's recent stump speeches on his jobs and debt reduction programs (BTW, the lack of capital letters is an intentional insult), gone is the push for compromise, bi-partisanship, and the spirit of shared sacrifice that rang with hollow sincerity just a few short weeks back. Now what we get is full-throated campaign mode, where getting along is no longer the goal and demonizing political opponents most definitely is.
Republicans of course, responded quickly with a round of uncompromising rhetoric of their own. Statements issued within hours by both Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell which attacked the plans put forth and the President himself for encouraging class warfare (or perhaps more accurately, no class warfare). Interestingly enough however, as Peter Nicholas and Lisa Mascaro of the Chicago Tribune pointed out in a recent piece:
"[T]hose Republican rejections may not trouble the White House, because Obama's new proposal was designed less as a solution to the deficit problem than as a political argument to put before the voters."
While this can certainly be a surprise to no one, it does once and for all sound the clarion call of open season on the inconsistent, power-seeking, and self-serving politicians at the beginning of their fall rutting season. It is they and not I who have fired the first volleys in what will now become the non-stop attempts to mate with each and every potential voter (and some of them unfortunately, more than metaphorically); fending off their competition with rhetorical head butting, while attempting to evade sharpshooters like me. This is a herd of vermin that once more cries out to be thinned by shining the light of absurdity (Limbaugh is still hogging the light of truth) on their dis-ingenuous duplicity, and demagoguery. This is a task for which I am well-suited, and this is not my first rodeo. (Of course it would be if it were in fact an actual rodeo, but ... oh, never mind.)
For those of you now blushing or appalled at my choice of violent sounding verbiage; language that certainly does not fit the PC criteria to which Conservatives have been recently limited to ... get over it. I'm long past being sick and tired of a society that's so afraid of speaking its mind for fear of offending someone that it can barely speak at all. I believe that people (well OK, some people) are intelligent enough to be able to tell the difference between well articulated castigation and incitement to violence. (And if you're not, it's your problem, deal with it.) Besides, it seems that if politicians of both major parties are free to take pot shots at each other, that some license is granted to us in the peanut gallery to let off a few rounds of our own.
Perhaps I'm just sick and tired of the bluster and bombast of politicians during what has become an all but perpetual election season. Don't get me wrong, there are actually a few good people running for office at local, state, and national levels. Unfortunately, they are surrounded by throngs of damaged goods who come awfully close to proving that human beings could not possibly have evolved from lower forms of life, since there are no forms of life lower than the members of the herd. The unfortunate few seek a position held in the same regard as used car salesmen cannot help but be cast in an unfortunate light; the pathetic remnant of that shone on their conceited, power-mad counterparts. Much of the light left is likewise obscured by the willing sycophants of the 24 hour news outlets; who prostitute themselves whenever required for the chance of a great sound bite.
You know, I've always like the political season. The weather has grown cooler, which permits me indulge my addiction to smoking cigars without enduring conditions that allow me to light them by exposing one end to direct sunlight. I can bask in an hour of cloudy enjoyment without turning the end of the cigar clenched in my teeth to a sweat-drenched monstrosity and myself into someone appearing to have only barely survived a WWII death march in the process of enjoying my no doubt cancer-causing folly. Mostly however, I truly love this time of year for allowing me to pursue that most guilty of pleasures. So I must ask you please:
Be vewwy, vewwy quiet. Heh Heh, I'm hunting powiticians ....
(GDH 9/21/71 +40. Gone, but never to be forgotten.)
The weather outside has indeed become colder and the first day of winter is less than three weeks away, but this week's effort for the Toledo Free Press has nothing to do with falling temperatures, but rising rhetoric.
In "An Unlikely Winter Freeze", I take the recent announcement by President Obama of a federal employee pay freeze and pose a few questions. Like so many other things that a politician says, it appears to make some sense on first hearing it than it does if you actually attempt to make it happen.
But I'm not the only one looking at the numbers in this week's TFP. Kristen Rapin-Criswell has put together some interesting information on the proposed increases in Toledo's proposed water and sewer rate increases, and Caitlin McGlade looks at the money that the Toledo Symphony Orchestra is looking for from the city for their upcoming Carnegie Hall appearance.
There's cold and snow in the forecast for NW Ohio, so my advice would be to curl up in a warm place and catch up with Toledo's largest circulation Sunday paper, the Toledo Free Press.
Growing up as a child, one of the first police shows that I remember watching was "Dragnet". Sgt Joe Friday (Jack Webb) and Officer Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan) never failed to get to the bottom of the case by looking for "just the facts".
I find a comparison almost ludicrous today while looking at political perspectives. Don't get me wrong. I know that both parties have been guilty of taking liberties with the facts from time to time, but it certainly seems that the guilty party in recent days has been the political left.
Take for example, unemployment numbers. Some of the liberal standard bearers like to crow over decreasing (or at least stable) unemployment based on those not claiming benefits. When the right points out that unemployment numbers don't include people whose benefits have run out or who have given up looking for a job in a climate providing far too few, they are criticized for ignoring or slanting the facts out there or of a misinterpretation of the facts presented.
Some will then go on to point out that the number of jobs created (or saved) since they gained control of both the White House and the Congress have increased. When their opposition points out that many of those jobs touted were either government jobs or temporary govt jobs in the Census Bureau, they are decried for failing to properly give credit to the Administration for its success. When the right goes on to further complain that the bulk of the increase is in public rather then private sector jobs (and adding to the cost of government), the left miraculously shifts its perspective and castigates its opponents for not recognizing the fact that most of the public sector jobs described were temporary ones in the Census Bureau and that they no longer exist.
Hidden in the double speak about these phantom Census jobs however, is the fact that there have still been far too many jobs being created in the last 20 months which been full-time positions for an expanding government bureaucracy (far more than those created in the private sector).
This kind of fact selection with unemployment numbers is not new to many on the left however, and shows the same myopic vision used during the often referred to and oft-lauded progressive thinking of the New Deal era. For those who take the time to track the facts, they will find that unemployment numbers were actually showing a gradual improvement after the stock market crash of 1929, and that the economy may have recovered on its own if not for the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930. This particular bit of government intervention in the economy was a tariff intended to raise the price of imported goods in order to drive up purchases of goods 'made in America', which would in turn produce more employment.
In fact, while Smoot-Hawley did raise the price of foreign products; it had the unintended consequence of causing a trade war with the rest of the world, which led to an even larger and deeper economic crisis. This and subsequent interference on the government's part not only didn't reduce the problem of unemployment in the US, but in fact saw it increase to double digit levels in this country, and helped drag the crisis out until it was finally ended by the economic stimulus of WWII.
Another example of such selective facts may be when some on the left point to the reduction of the federal deficit during the Clinton years. They use this debt reduction as proof that progressive principles and increased taxation lead to a reduction of the national debt. The inconvenient facts however, are that the decreases in the deficit actually occurred during the last years of the Clinton Administration, when control of Congress was taken by Republicans in 1994. The fulfillment of their "Contract with America" contributed to both welfare reform and overall reduced government spending, and is far more likely the cause of any deficit reduction.
Similarly, some of the progressive persuasion will point to the fact that the national debt went up during the Bush Administration, but will carefully avoid the facts surrounding one-time spending related to 9/11 and the subsequent war on terror. Equally absent from the facts cited are that spending and the deficit increased dramatically beginning in 2007 when politicians with a more liberal viewpoint took control of Congress. Nor will anyone on the left acknowledge that even while the country was going through the darkest days of the financial crisis in 2008, that deficit spending came in at $800 billion (including the much ballyhooed TARP money loaned out and mostly since repaid). 2010 deficit spending however, now that we are coming out of this crisis (according to those same progressive thinkers) will exceed $1.4 trillion. Equally absent from these so-called facts is that the CBO expects the deficit in 2011 to come in at over $1.1 trillion under the current levels of spending in this progressively led Congress, even if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire.
There are of course more examples of such tainted and obfuscated facts, but there is not time or space to list all of them. We can use even these brief specimens however to illustrate that while those on both sides of the aisle can play fast and loose with the facts, that these days it is those on the left that find it far easier to argue their point of view when using only selected facts. Once such a selection process has occurred, considerable creativity in interpretation can likewise be used in order to reach a pre-determined conclusion guaranteed more by a point of view than those facts.
While not alone in their guilt in such matters, the left appears to have taken such selective inattention to facts and interpretive creativity to a new level lately, and done so with particular glee. It likewise seems that they are incapable of providing any current argument based solely on 'just the facts'.
