Several years ago I was at a dinner meeting with more than a few liberals.  The subject came up about women in the workplace.  I made the comment that not all woman dreamed of working outside the home and that I personally knew women whose dream job was to be a house wife and a stay at home mom.  Some of these liberals became very angry and said that this was absurd.  They couldn’t even imagine how any intelligent woman would feel that way.  That is one of the biggest problems for liberals.  They often can’t even fathom how someone could disagree with them.

The real war on women has been waged primarily by women.  The following chart shows exactly what the feminist agenda has accomplished:

I don’t really see how this trend is benefiting women.  There is no question that more women are working.  There certainly are more options for a woman who doesn’t dream of being a stay at home mom.   But there are also a lot of women working full time while trying to manage a single parent household.

There was a time when men quickly learned that there were two kinds of women.  The kind you married and the kind you didn’t.  There were “good girls”  and “bad girls” and men treated them very differently.   Bad girls might appear to have more fun, for a while, but history taught us that in most cases things didn’t end up all that well for the bad girls.

The feminist movement wants a world where every girl can be a bad girl with no consequences.  That is why Sandra Fluke is a heroine for demanding free contraception so she will have no restraints on promiscuous behavior.  That is also why the feminist movement is so pro-choice.  Abortion frees a woman from the responsibility of bearing a child.

The rarest thing in the movies or on television is a girl saving herself for marriage.  A girl like that is portrayed as hopelessly naïve.  Girls can now be just as sexually irresponsible as men, with no consequences.   This is great, for the guys.  But, I have to wonder if it is all that great for the girls.

A woman today is nearly 4 times more likely to find herself the primary source of income while trying to raise a family.  She is over 3 times more likely to end up raising the children alone.   The numbers are much worse for many minorities.   Congratulations feminists, you have really helped women on the path to a happier life.

Suppose that men started treating women the way it used to be?  Just think how terrible this would be for women.  Fewer women would learn the joy of being a single parent.  More men and women would sacrifice excitement for the dullness of being merely being responsible parents.  Fewer children would have the opportunity to watch their parents split up.  More women would be stuck with the terrible prospect of being a stay at home mom.  Why we might even go back to a time when a vast majority of men felt an obligation to provide for their family.   How very demeaning to women.

TDM

The debt ceiling was raised with no spending cuts.  There were only 27 Republicans who voted for that in the House and no Republicans who voted for it in the Senate.  The Republicans lost this battle, but they didn’t necessarily lose the war.

Let’s take a closer look at what was lost and what was gained.  Democrats wanted Republicans to vote against the debt ceiling so they could blame them for shutting down the government.  They did not even attempt to negotiate in good faith.  The main stream media would have hammered Republicans for shutting down the government without regard to the actual facts.  For better or worse, Democrats “own” the debt ceiling just like they own ObamaCare.  If you check out the opinion polls, raising the debt ceiling is not really that popular.

I think Democrats may have made a huge mistake.  How are they going to spin this when running for re-election?   Republicans have stockpiles of video, including clips from Obama, saying that raising the debt ceiling is irresponsible.  Even the main stream media can’t blame Republicans on this one.

The debt ceiling was going to be raised anyway.  Republicans would have caved.  They just would have incurred a lot of casualties in a failed effort.  I would have preferred that they put up a fight, but only if they were prepared to stay the course until they won.  With the current Republican leadership that was highly unlikely.

I think this will really hurt both Boehner and McConnell.  But I also think this may be a huge problem for Democrats in 2014.  They were already in trouble because of ObamaCare.  It is going to be very difficult for Democrats to explain voting to increase the debt ceiling, again, without cutting anything and this time they can’t even blame Republicans.

TDM

NOTE: Kevin Faulconer, Republican was elected Mayor of San Diego.  He now becomes the ONLY Republican Mayor of a major city.  Just last Sunday political polls showed this race to be very close.  The Democratic Party put in the typical last minute get out the vote drive, fueled with union money, and they expected to win. It didn’t work.  It wasn’t even close.  In addition, the voter turnout was actually higher than it was during the November election.  If this is a trend of things to come, 2014 is going to be a very bad year for Democrats.

According to Drudge today, the NSA has been providing targets for all those drone strikes so highly praised by the Obama administration.   Following is a link to an article in The Intercept:

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/

According to this source, if the NSA identifies a target phone, they just wait for the phone/sim card to show up on the GPS and its bombs away.  There doesn’t appear to be any requirement for confirmation that the actual person targeted has the phone.  Even if they have the right person, apparently they don’t worry much about collateral damage.

It is unclear where or when this started.  President Bush definitely ordered drone attacks, but he appeared to have focused on al Qaeda leaders.  President Obama expanded the program and used it to kill a lot of lower level combatants.  He even bragged about it.  The following report from CNN in 2012 explains this in detail:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/05/opinion/bergen-obama-drone/

When you combine the willingness to kill almost anyone with the targeting of people based solely on the location of a cell phone it paints a very ugly picture.  This is particularly true when our troops in Afghanistan have highly restricted rules of engagement specifically designed to avoid civilian casualties, even if it puts our own troops in jeopardy.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/nov/26/rules-of-engagement-bind-us-troops-actions-in-afgh/?page=all

I don’t see how anyone can justify this.  This borders on insanity.  It sure looks like President Obama was lying, again.  Here is what he said last May:

 “before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.”   

“by narrowly targeting our action against those who want to kill us and not the people they hide among, we are choosing the course of action least likely to result in the loss of innocent life.”

His statement that drones are only used where there is “near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured” is absurd.  There is no possibility that this is accurate.  It is even less true than the crap about how you can keep your current health plan and you can keep your current doctor.  Only this time the phrase “Obama lied, people died” is all too accurate.

One has to wonder how bad it has to get before the main stream media becomes concerned.  If there had been a hint that George W. Bush was ordering drones to kill people solely because they were holding the wrong cell phone the main stream media would have gone postal.  They would have been justified to do so.  They went nuts because he was listening to people who were calling known terrorist associates overseas.  We already know that being a liberal Democrat justifies a President lying under oath.  We know that being a liberal Democrat justifies a President lying to the American people and arbritarily changing the law.  Now are we to assume that being a liberal Democrat justifies a President ordering numerous assassinations without even bothering to find out if we are getting the right guy?  Liberals must be very proud.

TDM

Some of you are probably wondering how the unemployment rate continues to drop when the economy is clearly not adding enough jobs and fewer people are actually working.  The answer is really quite simple.  It all depends on how you keep score.

I am a San Francisco Giants fan, so I adopted this formula to help insure that the Giants win the National League West this season.  It is really simple and easy to understand.

Any inning where outside influences unfairly affect the outcome must be discarded.  That is only fair.  Let me explain.  Supposed the dreaded Los Angeles Dodgers score 5 runs in the first inning.  The Giants do not score any runs.  During the second inning the Giants score 2 runs and the Dodgers are held scoreless.  The Dodger runs from the first inning are discarded under the formula, because the Giants were tired after flying back home from the East Coast.  The Dodgers only had to travel from San Diego, giving them an unfair advantage.  The only rational thing to do here is to ignore the first inning, so that the score is more reflective of actual performance.  Once we eliminate the unfair inning, we get a much better measurement of results.  Thus while some naïve people who do not understand the scoring rule might foolishly think the Dodgers are ahead 5 – 2, in reality the Giants are ahead 2 – 0.

These kinds of adjustments continue throughout the game.  After all, what is fair in the first inning is fair throughout the rest of the game.  Some incredibly naïve and biased folks may complain that only innings where the Dodgers score are ignored under this system, but that is unfair.  San Francisco is more accepting of gay people than Los Angeles, so any criticism of this system is clearly the direct result of anti-gay prejudice.   It is totally unfair to criticize San Francisco just because the city is more tolerant.

With this minor change in scoring the Giants are destined to go from last place in the National League West to winning the pennant by a large margin.  It is only fair, because the Giants players are working really hard and they deserve to be considered winners.  In addition, we all benefit from living in a society free from prejudice.

I would like to take credit for creating this approach but in reality I borrowed the concept from the Obama administration.  This new and better system is remarkably similar to the way the Obama administration measures unemployment.

TDM

For years the liberal left has been rewarded for irresponsible behavior.  When is the last time you heard a liberal Democrat talk about widening the party tent?   The liberal left wing of the Democratic Party is totally in control.   They are not interested in appealing to people with different ideas; their goal is to silence anyone who dares have a different idea.

It is almost impossible for a moderate Democrat to win a primary election in most states.   What do you think would happen to a Democrat running in a primary election who said he or she was open-minded about abortion or gay marriage?  Negotiating with the liberal left is like playing chicken with a suicidal maniac.  In a game of chicken the most responsible person always loses.

There are only two solutions to this kind of problem.  One is that some competent authority steps in and punishes irresponsible behavior.  In a perfect world, that would be the main stream media.  But in the United States the main stream media is far too biased to do that.  In a lot of cases the main stream media is the problem.

That leaves the second alternative where responsible people become outraged and start demanding action.   There are signs that this is starting to happen.

First there was the backlash against the Duck Dynasty witch hunt.  People not only stood up for the Ducks, they made it clear that they are tired of this crap and they aren’t going to take it anymore.

Now we have the backlash regarding immigration reform.  John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan were going to try and slip immigration reform by what they considered to be the naïve Tea Party coalition.  They bought into the Democratic lie that Republicans will be punished if they don’t bend over and allow Democrats to pass immigration reform.  That is utter nonsense.  If immigration reform had passed, Republicans would have gotten none of the credit and there would have been an immediate influx of new and excited Democrats.

The good news is that the Republican establishment is no longer operating under the illusion that the Tea Party was just a bunch of “B” rated politicians out of touch with polite society.  There is no “Tea Party.”  There is just a whole lot of people sick and tired of left wing radical Democrats enabled by the spineless Republican establishment.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/7/backlash-immigration-plan-floods-boehner-website/

The Republican establishment is starting to fear its’ base more than they fear the liberal left and the main stream media.  That is a very good thing.

TDM

On Thursday, August 14, 2003 I was at JFK airport in New York City, trying to catch the last plane leaving for the West Coast.  I almost made it.  I was on the jet way getting ready to enter the plane when the power went out.  We were ordered back into the terminal.  At first it didn’t look that bad.  But it was bad.  I ended up camping out in the baggage claim area for a couple of days.  Then the toilets started to back up.  Finally, in desperation some of us pooled resources and bribed a passenger van to take us to Philadelphia.  Unfortunately many people spent the weekend waiting to get out of JFK.

A lot has changed since 2003, but if anything our dependence on our power system has increased.  I am sure a lot has been done to correct the problems that caused the 2003 blackout, but fear another major event is all too likely.  A recent news report confirms that fear.  Last April there was an alleged terrorist attack on a PG&E site in San Jose:

http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_25072628/attack-pg-e-substation-sparks-concerns-about-possible

Few people noticed because the FBI is still claiming that no terrorism was involved.  But the FBI probably doesn’t believe there was terrorism involved in Benghazi either and it sees no evidence of IRS corruption.  Sadly the FBI has lost most of its credibility.

Jon Wellinghoff, former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, says that he believe this was an act of domestic terrorism.  He has an argument.  There were more than 100 shell casings found at the scene, none of which had finger prints.  Someone lifted the lid to an underground vault and severed six fiber optic cables.  The weapons involved were AK-47’s and the facility may have been marked with small rock piles to help the snipers find the right targets.  While this is not exactly proof that al Qaeda was involved it is evidence that someone worked hard to plan this little adventure.

The good news is that even Democrats are paying attention.  Henry Waxman said this incident makes it clear our electric grid is not adequately protected.   I am relatively sure that the administration did not report this as a terrorist attack because they refuse to admit anything is a terrorist attack.  The theory is that if they call it something else, it isn’t really terrorism.  The good news is that it does appear as though the power industry is taking this seriously and is working to beef up security.

There is more to the story.  The perfect time for such an attack would be when alternative power sources are reduced.  Say for example when there is a major drought in California reducing the availability of hydroelectric power.  Or say when a cold wave in the Midwest diverts natural gas from California power plants .  Sound familiar?

I am certainly not predicting an attack.  Terrorists are not stupid and they usually attack when it is least expected.  If anything releasing this story now reduces the potential for an attack.  That is probably why these people went public with the information.  As for me, it is probably time to get around to fixing my backup generator.

TDM

The liberal left is desperately trying to get immigration reform passed.  The latest effort was the recent poll by CNN claiming to show that Americans are totally for legalizing illegal immigrants.  I looked at the poll and it is another example of a liberal push poll guaranteed to deliver the desired results.  Here is the first question:

“What should be the main focus of the U.S. government in dealing with the issue of illegal immigration: developing a plan that would allow illegal immigrants who have jobs to become legal U.S. residents, or developing a plan for stopping the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. and for deporting those already here?”

Note that the choice is between letting people who have jobs stay and trying to deport 11 million people.

The second question was similar:

“Here are some questions about how the U.S. government should treat illegal immigrants who have been in this country for a number of years, hold a job, speak English and are willing to pay any back taxes that they owe.

“Would you favor or oppose a bill that allowed those immigrants to stay in this country rather than being deported and eventually allow them to apply for U.S. citizenship?”

Most of us don’t have much of an issue will illegal alients who meet this criteria.  The problem is that a whole lot of them don’t come close to meeting this critieria.

How about this for a question:

Do you think we should slow down the inflow of illegal immigrants before we start passing laws that will encourage even more people to come here illegally?

I bet the vast majority of people would agree with that one.

In spite of CNN’s best spin efforts, immigration reform is unlikely to pass for one simple reason.  No Republican in his or her right mind would trust President Obama to keep his part of the bargain.  No matter what Democrats promise, in reality Obama will just ignore the law and do what he wants.

TDM

The IRS scandal is now perilously close to the President because of the O’Reilly interview.  Up until now, President Obama successfully distanced himself from the scandal.  Regardless of who was involved there was no evidence that he was in the loop.  But in his angry response to Bill O’Reilly, President Obama just may have provided direct evidence of his personal involvement.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/02/02/transcript-bill-oreilly-interviews-president-obama/

President Obama confirmed that Douglas Shulman, former head of the IRS, visited the White House 157 times.

Obama went into detail explaining why Shulman was visiting the White House using the word “we” frequently.  Then O’Reilly asked if Obama specifically talked to Shulman: Following is the response by Obama:

I do not recall meeting with him in any of these meetings that are pretty routine meetings that we had.

That is a classic non-denial denial.  Any trained reporter or prosecutor will recognize that.  Obama did not say that there was no meeting between him and Shulman.  He also didn’t say the IRS targeting of conservatives was never mentioned.  Instead he said he did not recall meeting with Schulman and then admitted such meeting were routine.  Wow!

Obama tried to blame the whole IRS scandal on Fox News.  Then he incredibly claimed that there wasn’t even a smidgen of corruption.  For one thing that is ridiculous because Lois Lerner pled the 5^th Amendment to avoid testifying.  But a more important question is how could Obama know there was no corruption if he was not personally familiar with the internal IRS investigation?  If the IRS investigation is a sham, as was alleged in testimony today, then Obama may have admitted having knowledge of a cover-up.

I do not know if Republicans have the stomach to pursue this.  If a select committee and/or a special prosecutor is appointed than this could become very serious.  Obama should have been prepared for this interview.  He should have said that he would await the results of the internal investigation along with everyone else.  But his anger and arrogance over powered his judgment.

It is impossible to predict growth of a spine by a congress that has yet to show evidence of such.  But in testimony today it became clear that the IRS continues to target conservative opponents and plans to continue doing that in the future.   At some point even the cowardly lions in the Republican establishment may be shamed into taking action.  If they do, at a minimum, Obama has come perilously close to bringing this scandal into the oval office.

TDM

Two myths were destroyed on national television Sunday.  One was the myth of Peyton Manning as world’s greatest quarterback who could never be defeated.  Peyton Manning is a great quarterback and by all acocunts he is a great human being.  But he looked very mortal during that game.  It takes a team to win and it takes a team to lose.  But, it is Peyton Manning who suffered the big blow to his image.  In some ways this is ridiculous.  In less than 24 hours he went from hero to has been, at least in the minds of some of the fickle sports media clowns.  But, regardless of how fair it is, the myth of Peyton Manning took a really big hit yesterday.

The other myth was that of President Obama.  He was absolutely shredded by Bill O’Reilly.  I sometimes get very annoyed with Bill O’Reilly who just may have the biggest ego in the history of television.  It was particularly disgusting to hear O’Reilly pump up himself as the world’s greatest interviewer prior to this session with Obama.  But  at least on this day, Bill O’Reilly did a pretty good job.  He asked questions no one else has dared to ask Obama and he exposed Obama like never before.  Obama’s answer on Benghazi  was absurd and obviously evasive.  His answer on the IRS scandal ridiculous.  O’Reilly had Obama on the defense the entire session and when Obama tried to take a cheap shot at Fox News, O’Reilly just dismissed him with a wave of his hand.

Most people who listened to the Kennedy – Nixon debate in 1960 thought that Nixon won hands down.  If you read the transcipt, Nixon won hands down.  But on TV, Kennedy, who was actually seriously ill, showed up with a great tan and he looked healthy.  Nixon, who really was healthy, looked pathetic.  Those who watched the debate thought that Kennedy won.  The point is that sometimes what is said doesn’t matter nearly as much as the image of the encounter.  That is why I think this interview really hurt Obama.  He looked and acted defensive.

The main stream media will try to spin this as a good showing by Obama, but they will be wrong.  When a President of the United States sits down with a news reporter, the President is expected to dominate.   If he doesn’t win,  despite the spin, he loses.

TDM

In 2006, Hillary Rodham Clinton was odds on favorite to win the Democratic nomination for President.  She was also odds on favorite to beat any Republican in the general election.  How’d that work out?  Now the same people are convinced that Hillary is a shoe-in to win the Presidential election in 2016.  Are they right this time?

In 2006, Hillary started her campaign before everyone else.  She spent more money than everyone else.  The result was that she peaked in the polls before everyone else.  The Clinton strategy with regard to the election of 2008 was to suck as much cash and oxygen out of the room early so that no serious contender would have a chance.  It didn’t work.

So this time, Hillary is using the same strategy, only she is starting about a year earlier.  Don’t assume that the same failed strategy she tried in 2006 is going to work any better this time.

Political candidates, just like everything else in nature, seldom remain stationary.  They are either moving up or they are moving down.  Hillary is already at the top, which means the only direction she can possibly move is down.  The reason she is polling so high at the moment is that she is being compared to nobody.  Somebody always does better than nobody.  What the polls really show is that the Democrats literally have no bench.

In case you doubt that, name five Democrats who are legitimate Presidential candidates, other than Hillary Clinton.  Are you having trouble coming up with names?  Perhaps the following list will help.

http://2016.democratic-candidates.org/

This is a pretty pathetic list.

Now try to name 10 Republicans who are legitimate Presidential candidates.  Odds are your biggest challenge is winnowing the list down to only ten.  Following is the list of people mentioned as possible Republican candidates:

http://2016.republican-candidates.org/

It is simple.  If you have more qualified people competing for a position, you end up with a much stronger winner.  I believe that the real reason Republicans lost in 2012 was that Mitt Romney had no serious competition.  It seemed like every primary was between Mitt and the next “not Mitt” and eventually we ran out of “not Mitts.”

We’ve heard this coronation tune for Hillary before.  It didn’t end well for Hillary in 2008 and it is unlikely to end well for her in 2016.  She peaked too early in 2006 and she is peaking two early in 2014.  I predict she will be left with Twin Peaks, but no oval office.

TDM