National Review revisited?

Is William F. Buckley rolling over in his grave? I'm not sure, but I doubt he'd be as dismissive of the president as many of his successors.

I have not been back to National Review for well over a year now.  Ever since they climbed aboard the anti-Trump train and were ready to sabotage the nominee out of a supposed purist conservative view reeked of self-serving motivation, not mention stupidity.  No matter how bad they thought a Donald Trump presidency would be, surely at least four years of Hillary Clinton on the heels of an Obama second term would be be truly ruinous for America.

But I have to give the National Review credit.  I went back today and while it seems more split in it's anti-Trump stance, they do give proper voice to the tax reform heading through congress;

The final bill should increase investment, reduce the distortionary effect of tax breaks, and lighten the especially excessive burden that the federal government puts on parents. While the bill is nobody’s idea of perfection, it is nonetheless a solid accomplishment and we are glad that Congress is moving quickly to pass it.

Our 35 percent corporate tax rate has stayed in place for decades as our major trading partners cut their rates. The new tax rate of 21 percent should help us compete better for capital. Allowing businesses to write off the cost of investments more rapidly is another pro-growth win in the bill.

I'm not back to being a National Review regular reader just yet, but I'm willing to give them my eyeballs from time to time and see if they come back to Main Street a little.  After this at least, they've recaptured a sliver of my attention. 

Want to stop Trump? Offer something better.

Victor Davis Hanson, at National Review wrote this recently, in regard to Donald Trump:

In sum, the white lower and middle classes are angry, and they are tired of being blamed for the unhappiness of other tribes. In our world, in which uncouth tribal leaders can say almost anything, these whites wanted their own Sharpton or Ramos, and finally got him with Donald J. Trump. As is true of most revolutionary movements, the aggrieved are not as angry at their perceived opponents as they are contemptuous at the enablers of them.

I've lost a lot of respect for the real 'bitter clingers' at National Review with their vitriol towards Donald Trump. It's been coming across as a personal hatred - something I'd expect as a gut reaction from a progressive liberal, rather than a reasoned and thoughtful debate over his worthiness. The latter is what I'd expect from National Review. In fact early on, when Trump was a novelty candidate they were merely dismissive and not vitriolic. In retrospect, those early arguments were probably fairly reasoned. But as Trump's prospects rose, the shrillness at National Review seemed to rise in response.

But Victor Davis Hanson I do respect and he's not off the mark in assessing the rise of Trump here.

Given his cruelty, obnoxiousness, and buffoonery, Trump should have been a three-month flash in the pan, exactly as most of his critics had prophesied and dreamed. I hope he will still fade, as he should. But the fact that he has persisted this long may be because the hatred our elites so passionately claimed was aimed at the Other was actually directed at themselves.

Yes, there's vitriol towards Trump in that but also truth. The 'hatred' was certainly originally directed at the Other. That explains the victories in the Senate and Congress dating bacvk to 2010. But then nothing was done and there was a transfer of not hatred, but grievance towards Republican elites and their enablers. I expect that Hanson recognizes that some of that includes National Review. The cure is simple - don't become part of the problem, be part of the solution. In that light, Trump is merely a symptom of the angst and frustration. Not recognizing that is the real issue, and it's preventing the party elite from doing anything effective to stop Trump. You want a better alternative then offer voters something that does not validate or ensure the status quo.

Why to vote for the GOP instead of staying home

If you are a conservative voter, the quote below is a must read.  It is the most cogent argument that I have yet seen against conservatives staying home for the midterm elections.

Via Jim Geraghty at National Review's Campaign Spot":

Ask yourself, why should Republican governors take the political hit of opposing the Medicaid expansion when A) grassroots conservatives ignore them or pretend they don’t exist or B) self-described conservative Republicans who most strongly oppose the Medicaid expansion proudly announce they’re not going to vote?

It’s fair to fume at the “Democrats win, therefore we must be more like Democrats to win” philosophy, but if Republican voters stay home, the electorate that is guaranteed to show up shifts to the left. After a few cycles of conservatives declaring “I’m staying home because the candidates aren’t rightward enough for my tastes,” it makes absolute sense for Republicans to try to be more like Democrats, because self-described conservative Republicans announce they’re not going to vote.

That's right.  If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.  As I've always said, it's going to be a lot easier to hold the feet of a conservative representative to the fire and get him to listen than to do the same with a liberal Democrat (as a conservative).  A Republican you can shift right with pressure.  The only direction a Democrat can shift is leftward.  Always.

Racist L.A. Clippers Owner, Democrat

No time to post today but I want to help point out that the media is all too willing to jump all over Cliven Bundy as a racist because he seems like a Tea Party type.  But as soon as a racist comment comes out a high profile rich guy, MBA team owner, who happens to be a Democrat, you have to go to a conservative website like National Review to get the subtext that racism is not a political problem, it's a personal problem.

Via NRO:

L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling, whom commentators have tried to tie to the Republican party after his alleged racist statements, is in fact a Democrat, according to campaign-contribution records.

Sterling is in hot water after TMZ released recordings purporting to be a weird psychosexual rant he directed at girlfriend V. Stiviano, accusing her of publicly associating with black people. The highly offensive comments have drawn condemnation from across the National Basketball Association as well as from many other sources; and inevitably, attempts have been made to link him to the Republican party. These appear to be based on campaign contribution records for a different Sterling, who lives in the state of Texas. Clippers owner Donald Sterling lives in Beverly Hills, has a long history of bigoted behavior in his Los Angeles business dealings, and according to a 2011 RealGM report, was a very occasional Democratic donor in the 1990s...

At the American Power blog, Donald Douglas has an extended discussion of Sterling’s donations to liberal causes and the left-leaning commentators who have lauded him in the past. At the time TMZ released its recording, Sterling was scheduled to receive a lifetime achievement award from the NAACP.

Unfortunately, a Democrat who is a racist goes against the meme that Democrats are the enlightened ones and conservative Republicans are mouth-breathing Neanderthals. Racists can exist in any political stripe. Just as those who oppose gay marriage may have a political issue but they aren't saying vile stuff like Alec Baldwin did. At least the left called Baldwin out on his slurs. But after showing up with the right people at the right event, Baldwin's image will be as right as rain. The same can't be said for anyone on the right. 

Double standards.

Thursday Hillary Bash

Is he holding a joy buzzer or something?

Today's edition of Thursday Hillary Bash (an on-going attempt to poke holes in the rationale behind the coming coronation of Hillary Clinton as the next president in 2016) comes via Andrew C. McCarthy at The Corner at National Review. The topic concerns Hillary Clinton's foreign policy short-comings;

I elaborated on Mrs. Clinton’s pronouncement in a Corner post a little over a year ago, citing to what Madame Secretary was telling the Arabic press (al-Ahram reporting) and tying it into the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood implementation of Erdogan’s strategy in Turkey: gradually impose sharia by exploiting Western progressives’ hostility to military governance – which is the only kind of governance in which Western liberalism has a chance to take root in a majority Islamic-supremacist society...

Here’s what Mrs. Clinton is telling the Arabic press:

Egyptian military authorities must cede power to the winner of the country’s first post-Mubarak presidential elections, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insisted Wednesday.

“We think that it is imperative that the military fulfill its promise to the Egyptian people to turn power over to the legitimate winner,” Clinton said in a discussion hosted at the State Department.

Some of the actions by the military leadership in past days were “clearly troubling,” Clinton said, sitting with former secretary of state James Baker at the event to support the creation of the first US museum for diplomacy. ”The military has to assume an appropriate role which is not to interfere with, dominate or try to subvert the constitutional authority,” she warned.

That’s the Turkey strategy in small compass. Erdogan exploited the bleating of American and European progressives to weaken Turkey’s pro-Western military — transferring control to the Islamist civilian government he controls, and installing Islamists loyal to him in place of the Kemalist military officers he has sacked. Interestingly, Mrs. Clinton does not have much to say about “subvert[ing] the constitutional authority” when Erdogan — who Obama hails as his closest regional ally — jails political opponents, military officers, and journalists.

The secretary of state paid lip-service to the need for the Brotherhood’s New Egypt to support “an inclusive democratic process, the rights of all Egyptians, women and men, Muslims and Christians, everyone has to be respected.” I’m sure Coptic Christians are very impressed, as are the smattering of authentic democrats whom the administration helped the Brotherhood steamroll.

Foreign policy expert? Ready for the 3 a.m. call?  Not by a long shot.

Last word politics and the conventions

The editors at National Review make a sound case today as to why conservatives should not fear the bounce for Obama coming out of the Democratic convention (a bounce that in fact looks soft already).  But in making a good case, I think they may have made a mistake in their pronouncement on tactics.

The Democrats, it seems to us, made better use of their convention than the Republicans made of theirs. The Republican message, especially in the most-watched addresses, seemed less coordinated, deliberate, and focused. Republicans spent too much time explaining what a nice guy Romney is and how happy he is about female empowerment, and not enough time explaining how he would improve the national condition.

Both party coalitions are strong. In the absence of shocks, presidential races will be tight.

(emphasis added)

Here's where I think they got it wrong. 

Rally Round the Romney?

Establishment GOP: "No! We mean someone else!"

A while ago I stopped reading National Review online because of their porous defense of Mitt Romney and associated attack on Newt Gingrich.  What became of National Review?  Conservatism is about being conservative and not about electability.  Nor is conservatism about protecting the candidate who best represents the establishment interests best.  National Review has proposed the premise that Romney is the best choice for Republicans.  That notion did not hold.  What does that mean?

Panic.

National Review - still on the naughty list.

In an effort to be fair, I revisited the National Review online (after promising not to do so for a while) to see if they had recanted their hit piece on Newt Gingrich and basically everyone not Romney or Huntsman.  They haven't.  In fact they've in many ways doubled down on it in some pieces.  But to be fair, there were a couple of pieces that stood in contrast to the semi-endorsement of the editors of the most liberal candidates in the race (Santorum aside as their counter-balance, they know he can't win).

In a piece by the ever-brilliant Thomas Sowell, also carried on RealClearPolitics, they have a Newt-onian dissident.

What the media call Gingrich's "baggage" concerns largely his personal life and the fact that he made a lot of money running a consulting firm after he left Congress. This kind of stuff makes lots of talking points that we will no doubt hear, again and again, over the next weeks and months.

But how much weight should we give to this stuff when we are talking about the future of a nation?

This is not just another election and Barack Obama is not just another president whose policies we may not like. With all of President Obama's broken promises, glib demagoguery and cynical political moves, one promise he has kept all too well. That was his boast on the eve of the 2008 election: "We are going to change the United States of America."

Many Americans are already saying that they can hardly recognize the country they grew up in. We have already started down the path that has led Western European nations to the brink of financial disaster.

But he's not alone.  Andrew McCarthy offers a solid defense of Newt but more-so a dressing down of his editors.  It's truly an effective piece entitled Gingrich's Virtues.

I respectfully dissent from National Review’s Wednesday-evening editorial, which derided Newt Gingrich as not merely flawed but unfit for consideration as the GOP presidential nominee. The Editors further gave the back of the hand to the bids of two other prominent conservatives, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann — a judgment that is simply inexplicable in light of the frivolousness of its reasoning and of the Editors’ embrace of Jon Huntsman, a moderate former Obama-administration official, as a serious contender. 

The editorial surprised me, as it did many readers. I am now advised that the timing was driven by the editorial’s inclusion in the last edition of the magazine to be published this year, which went to press on Wednesday. The Editors believe, unwisely in my view, that before the first caucuses and primaries begin in early January, it is important to make known their insights — not merely views about the relative merits of the candidates but conclusions that some candidates are no longer worthy of having their merits considered. Like many other voters, I haven’t settled on a candidate. What I want at this very early stage is information about the candidates so I can consider them, not a presumptuous and premature pronouncement that good conservatives do not even rate consideration.

I'm not going back for any other reason just yet, but as I said in fairness I did check to see if there was any change in the winds.  The two pieces I mentioned are still sailing into a National Review a strong headwind of anti-Newt. 

Nonetheless, just as I think Newt's past errors should be forgiven, I'm willing to forgive National Review. What I'm not prepared to do is forgive them for doubling down on the anti-Newt stuff.  I would encourage you to read McCarthy's thoughtful, well-considered piece.  The same is true for Sowell, though you can read him elsewhere.  As for the rest of National Review, I'd encourage you to avoid it at the present time.

I'm still not reading National Review and so should you

I used to love National Review.  There's a lot of intelligent writers there and I'm particularly interested in the writings of Jim Geraghty on the Campaign Spot.  But I'm not reading any of it now.  I've said why.  Yesterday in fact.  William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection fame, has a short piece on the need to Defeat National Review.

National Review Editors lose touch

The Editors of National Review give a well worded explanation of whom they feel is an acceptable candidate, and in doing so, lose all credibility.

Next time, think things through. If there is a next time.

Big news: CLASS is over

Calling it classy doesn't make it so.

In a news dump worth of singling out the Obama administration announced late Friday that the CLASS Act (a misnomer if ever there was one) was going to be dropped.  It's a big, big deal regarding Obamacare that will do nothing to derail the overall program from charging forward with reckless abandon.  

First thoughts on the Deficit Commission report

Not my thoughts, I haven't had a chance to read the report yet, but I will.  Rather, here's some responses that you might find interesting. First a few from the far left.  WARNING:  try not to choke while reading this.

Nancy Pelosi;

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said it was “simply unacceptable.”

“Any final proposal from the commission should do what is right for our children and grandchildren’s economic security as well as for our nation’s fiscal security, and it must do what is right for our seniors, who are counting on the bedrock promises of Social Security and Medicare,” she said in a statement.

Bernie Sanders;

“The Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan is extremely disappointing and something that should be vigorously opposed by the American people,” Sanders said in a statement. “The huge increase in the national debt in recent years was caused by two unpaid wars, tax breaks for the wealthy, a Medicare prescription drug bill written by the pharmaceutical industry, and the Wall Street bailout. Unlike Social Security, none of these proposals were paid for.”

Mike Lux at Huffington Post;

I wrote my initial post in such a hot rage over the proposal to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits that I didn't take the time to edit my blog post (sorry about those strange sentence structures), or take the time to look at the details of the proposal. So now that I have calmly taken some time to do that, I have to admit that I was wrong: this thing is even worse than I originally thought, and I way understated the problems with it. The co-chairs and staff found every conceivable way to screw the middle class in ways big (very big) and small, but barely nicked the bankers who caused the meltdown of the economy, or the wealthy whose massive tax cuts ended the big budget surpluses as far as the eye could see coming out of the Clinton years.

The upshot - liberals hate it. It involves spending cuts and for them that is anathema. After such simple wrongness, how about a palate cleanser? First off, keep in mind everywhere you hear the words bi-partisan in relation to this commission, keep the following numbers in mind - 12 Democrats, 6 Republicans.

Now, for a conservative take on it, from National Review;

We are both pleasantly surprised and modestly encouraged by the program outlined by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairmen of the president’s deficit-reduction task force. There’s no VAT in sight, nor is there unrealistic happy-talk about balancing the budget through a federal Taylorism campaign or symbolic assaults on the unholy trinity of waste, fraud, and abuse. Instead, there is a serious series of concrete proposals for constraining entitlement costs, simplifying the tax code, and putting a leash on future federal expenditures. Whereas the Obama-Reid-Pelosi triumvirate had put the country on the road toward a national debt topping 200 percent of GDP — with $1 trillion a year in interest payments alone — the Bowles-Simpson program would stabilize the debt and begin reducing it. The program would keep the debt to 40 percent of GDP in 2037 and would bring annual deficits down to a more manageable 2.2 percent of GDP by 2015, and 1 percent in the following years.

The plan has serious defects, the main one being that it establishes a historically high level of federal claims on the economy — with government revenue equal to 21 percent of GDP — as the new normal. But it is a good start, and it represents the sort of bipartisan starting point that even the most Tea Party–steeped Republican insurgents could begin with while remaining true to their core conservative values. That is not something we’d expected to write about a proposal produced by a go-along-get-along Republican retiree and Bill Clinton’s old chief of staff.

Truly bizarro world - liberals mad at the Democrat commission and conservatives not warm to it, but agreeable that it's a good starting point. Where it leads at this point is unclear but it will prove to be an interesting road to travel.

90 Names To Know - The Conservative Target List

Jim Geraghty made the list, and I'm sure he checked it more than twice.  This list, right now, is the best compilation of on-the-bubble Congressional Democrats that can be beaten in November.  I strongly urge you to read it.

Your job?  See if your Congressional Representative is on here and then figure out what you can do to help conservatives and the GOP take back Congress.  If your rep is listed here - it's going to take more than money, you're going to have to volunteer time and effort to work to Get Out The Vote (GOTV) or engage those who are as of yet undecided.  If your rep isn't listed, consider making donations to Republican candidates that are opposing these vulnerable candidates.

You know who has a great column? Jim Geraghty

With all the electoral prognosticators out there predicting the outcomes of future elections, none have the engaging and timely focus of Jim Gergahty at National Review.  To paraphrase his delivery,  All of Geraghty's posts are insightful - all of them.

Today's post on the future of Stupak proves he's not only a great source but his analysis is timely and shrewd.

If you want to be up-to-speed on the important campaigning, polling and electoral developments, his posts are a must read.

New Year's Day reading

Happy New Year to one and all. Hopefully 2010 will bring a better year than 2009. We can always hope - so long as that's not all we do).

Here's a list of New Year's Day reading worth looking at. Enjoy.

Dana Loesch has a look at the most underreported stories of 2009.

National Review has compiled it's predictions for 2010. Here are mine.

Here's John Hawkins' list of the Top 20 politcal quotes of the decade.

Michelle Malkin's Cone of Shame 2009 Awards. Here's my version.

And there's always good reading here, here and here (new site, same great taste).

And in case you missed it - be afraid. Be very afraid.

Today's articles.

No time to post original content today, but here are some good articles;

BREAKING: Senate to Vote Today on Earmark-Vote Trading from Robert Costa at National Review

McConnell’s takeaways for an earlier Christmas Eve vote from Ed Morrissey at Hot Air

Obama's latest health care lie from Matt Welch at Reason

Another Bad 2010 Omen For Democrats: "Repeal the Deal" Will Be A Rallying Cry in 2010 from Hugh Hewitt at Townhall

CBS reporting on ObamaCare special deals? from Arkady at Right Condition

Check them out.

True Conservatives Still Waiting

There's an excellent article today in National Review by Jonah Goldberg: True Conservatives Just Want a Turn. Goldberg explains how the standard talking point about how conservatives had their way for 8 years under Bush and it clearly was terrible, is factually wrong. It's a great read.

Either it's a straw dog argument put up by liberals to paint conservatism as bad, or they really don't understand that Bush was no conservative. A lot of reflex conservatives probably don't even realize that George W. bush was no friend to conservatism. He betrayed so many conservative principles that you'd think conservatives would be out there talking about it more, rather than reflexively defending Bush policies they weren't necessarily comfortable with but felt obligated to support. Don't get me wrong, Bush did some things right from the perspective of conservatives, but he also did an awful lot wrong. Goldberg's article doesn't even mention some of the Bush mistakes like trying to get Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court.

True conservatives are still waiting for their chance to lead. Reagan even did not hold fast to every conservative principle, but he came far closer than George W. Bush ever did. When someone tells you conservatism is the root of America's problems the correct response is:

"How would you know? We've been operating continuously under a socially liberal, big government model for the past 70 years."

Why? Because it's the truth.

Oh and while we're on the subject, conservatives are often categorized as fiscal or social conservatives (or national defense conservatives).  Why aren't liberals categorized as big government liberals and social policy liberals?  The overlap in those two groups might be just as muddied as on the right side of the political spectrum.

Darfur solved? Thanks Obama! Next Iran.

Jim Geraghty at Campaign Spot on National Review Online breaks the story President Obama has yet another notch in his belt of accomplishments. No more genocide in the Sudan. Apparently the administration has started referring to the situation in Sudan as 'the remnants of genocide'. Genocide over, just remnants left. Peachy.

Setting aside the fact that the phrase makes about as much sense as 'a little bit pregnant', clearly the Democrats are continuing with the modus operendi of style over substance. It's been working, so why not continue? The idea is that if you say something often enough it will become the conventional wisdom. Like global warming is a fact. Like Al Gore invented the Internet. Like President Bill Clinton balanced the budget not the Republican Congress in the 1990's.

The problem with that, is that it's just not true. It's deliberate deceit. We've come to expect that from the Democrats. But with the Obama administration, it's pathological. He's taken a page from the Hitler Germany fascist playbook - the page about the Big Lie. The idea is that the bigger the lie, the easier it will be to get people to believe it.

With Obama, it's not an art form, it's an obsessive compulsive disorder. With every new iteration of the unemployment figures in America, the figures that just keep on creeping upward, the administration ups the ante on the Big Lie. The rate of increase of unemployment is declining. Even better: We're saving more and more jobs. Saving jobs? It's a lie that can't be disproven. But it can't be proven either. Normally the onus would be on the White House to prove they saved 150,000 jobs. But with a compliant, drooling media, no one is asking the important questions.

Back to Darfur. Is genocide still happening? Yes.

Special Envoy to Sudan Scott Gration's comments yesterday that Darfur is experiencing only the "remnants of genocide," thus implying the troubled region's worst violence is in the past, have exposed a deep disagreement on the matter within the Obama administration.

Just two days earlier US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice described the situation as "genocide" and at a press conference in Germany earlier this month President Obama used the phrase "ongoing genocide."

[Emphasis added.]

The point here is to create a narrative that puts another notch on President Obama's belt. If they start saying in A.O. 2009 (Anno Obamani) the Great Caesar Obama solved yet another problem (the Sudan), they are hoping that by 2010 or 2012 it's become the conventional wisdom and keeps Democrat support up.

But there's a problem with or two with that. Firstly, the Big Lie is a flawed premise. Hitler's Big Lie was followed by a big fall. Now for the purpose of re-election, maybe they don't need to worry. The Big Lie is followed by a realization, a re-awakening. Witness the velvet revolution. Witness Tiannamen Square. The truth will eventually win out. But if it doesn't happen before 2012 it doesn't matter.

The bigger problem is how to tell the same tale about Iran. The lack of anything meaningful coming out of the White House on Iran is beyond incompetent. The silence is negligent and anti-Democratic. It's wrong, and it's bad. It gets worse. It turns out the actions being taken are actually anti-democratic.

So how does Obama take credit for solving Iran? He's left himself no room to spin this because he's acting like a little girl on this. Or worse, like Jimmy Carter.

The situation in Iran will far overshadow Sudan. That is reality. And it will be reflected in Obama's popularity ratings. No matter how much you spin, the truth is out there and it will descend upon the collective conscience eventually. The President's ratings are destined to fall, with all apologies to his success in bring peace and harmony to Darfur and the Sudan.

*loud cough*

What he said

A terrific article in National Review on the F-22 fighter being scrapped (reduced actually) by the military. Near the end of the article Jim Talent makes an eloquent and incisive point that goes beyond the military implications and points out the problem with the President's approach.

I can't really improve on those paragraphs so, I'll just say: "what he said".

Beginning in 1993, a small group of congressmen on the Armed Services Committee began warning that America was not modernizing its forces. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.) and Rep. Trent Franks (R., Ariz.) are still sounding the alarm today. But with the exception of Newt Gingrich, who as speaker fought for funding increases, the warnings have gone unheeded. The unexamined assumption of those who had the ultimate authority was that America could not afford to fund its military adequately.

That assumption was never valid; after the recent orgy of government spending, it is laughable. In the last few months, according to CBO estimates, the Obama administration has obligated the American people to $10 trillion in additional debt over the next ten years. For a small fraction of that money, America’s servicemen and women could have been given the modern equipment they need to protect their country. Yet none of the money was spent to sustain America’s military capabilities — an act of negligence that history will neither understand nor forgive, and one that is doubly incomprehensible given the Obama administration’s stated desire to stimulate the economy through government spending.

How can the administration possibly claim Keynesian justification for throwing money at every government agency except the military? No one could credibly argue that doubling the budget of the Department of Energy creates jobs, but buying ships or planes built by American workers in American industry does not.

Truth.

Hot Potato issues - don't avoid them

Max Schulz at National Review has an article about the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository. Obama is not really killing it, he's keeping it on life support. Barely, but nevertheless, he's not killing the patient despite his campaign promise to do so. Now why would he be doing that? The answer is simple - political calculation.

The truth is Obama's agenda, aside from trying to manage the economic crisis, has always been about wealth redistribution in various guises; taxation, health care reform to give everyone health care, mortgage bailouts to those least worthy of credit. It's almost as if it's about reparations. It's personal.

Obama is a crusader. Yucca Mountain is a distraction. But not one to waste an opportunity to further the crusade, then-candidate Obama, promised to close down the Yucca Mountain repository. Anything for a vote.

It would be a simple matter for Obama then, to keep those people concerned about the nuclear waste repository happy by shutting it down. So why not do it? The answer is (still) simple - political calculation.

Obama has come to the realization that the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository cannot be killed. It would cost billions in lawsuits and unrecoverable research costs being wasted.

Under the Nuclear Waste Act, the federal government has a legal obligation to
collect and dispose of the spent fuel from the nation’s 104 commercial nuclear
reactors. To pay for it, the government began levying a surcharge on electricity
generated from nuclear power in the early 1980s. Around $30 billion has been
collected so far, roughly one-third of which has been spent on Yucca Mountain
research.

So what Obama has done, instead of killing it is to starve it. He reduced funding massively, just enough to keep the research on the viability going. Obama is keeping it on life support. He is, in essence, floating it for one term. That way it looks like he's killing it to those anxious to see it. He has 'kept' a campaign promise. On the other hand the facility is necessary. 20% of the nation's electrical energy is produced by nuclear power. The waste has to be stored somewhere. Or else those power plants have to be shut down. That's simply not possible.

Then if he loses after one term, or completes two terms the next President, quite possibly/likely a Republican can pick up the pieces and proceed with the completion of the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository. The Republicans can take the heat for rekindling an issue that Obama had killed off. It is an issue that handled thusly, helps Obama, and the Democrats and the GOP look like the bad guys for working to keep the lights on (literally). And at that time, the press will spin it as having been killed by Obama, not kept on life support for his tenure. Guaranteed.

That's effectively managing an issue - all upside for liberals. Of course it's not really managing the country, but oh well.

Another example of a hot potato issue is the social security. Both Democrats and Republicans have been punting this issue for years because they see no solution to the political issue. Not no solution to issue itself. The issue could have been managed the way President Bush wanted to manage it. Thee was no political will to do so. The issue lingers on. It's a multi-trillion dollar issue that will dwarf this banking crisis. But the solution is on hold because no one wants to take tough solutions back to their constituencies. The biggest hope for conservatives right no, is that the Chicago political machine does not come up with a solution to the political issue, because an Obama trademarked solution means more taxes, more socialism and less America left in the United States.

The lesson for conservatives - tackle this issue head on. Be pre-emptive, don't play defence. Every threat is an opportunity in disguise.