Most of us are less than stellar at predicting future events.  However some things, usually bad, are easy to predict.  The reason is that similar events have happened in the past and scientists know they will happen again.  For example; at some point in the relative near future, California is going to have another major earthquake.  It may not be the “big one,” but it will be a major earthquake and it will do an incredible amount of damage. 

Greece is reminding us of the evitable consequences of spending money you do not have.  This too, is inevitable.  If you spend more than you make, at some point, no one will lend you more money.  This is as true for governments as it is people.  When that happens, you have to cut spending, even if the cuts are unacceptable.

This is hardly a new problem.  Our Government has been running up deficits for decades.  It is important to understand that the “Clinton Surplus” was a temporary situation resulting from a peak in the Social Security Cash Flow.  The following chart, from George Mason University, shows what happened:

It is really simple.  We either cut spending now, or we cut spending later.  The longer we wait, the more it will hurt. 

 TDM

On June 25, 1876, General George Armstrong Custer decided to attack the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, instead of waiting for reinforcements.  He was killed, along with 265 troops in about an hour.  The next day, when General Terry arrived with reinforcements, the Indians took one look and decided to leave.  Custer had accomplished nothing.  It was a stark reminder that suicidal attacks seldom win wars, but they almost always destroy the attackers.

The Republican campaign has disintegrated into a poorly written soap opera.  In an act of absolute desperation, Newt Gingrich is now comparing Romney, unfavorably, with just about every despicable person on earth.  He would have us believe that Romney is an anti-religion, left-wing, pro-abortion, anti-gun, pro-tax liberal.  Now Romney is not my candidate of choice, but this is ridiculous.  Keep in mind that just four years ago, Romney was the conservative alternative to McCain.  He has flip-flopped more than his share, but he is a far cry from a hard core liberal.

The real problem is that Romney had a ton of money available to assault Gingrich, and he had even more ammunition, most of which is at least somewhat true.  Gingrich has now gone over the edge blaming all his problems on the “Republican establishment.”  That is nonsense.  The vast majority of Gingrich’s problems were self-inflicted.  There is no conspiracy against Gingrich; there just are a lot of Republicans who are very concerned with regard to his qualifications to be President.  Frankly, his performance lately lends credibility to their concerns.

Gingrich is acting like a spoiled child.  I understand why he is angry.  He has been running for President, and failing, since the mid 90’s, Gingrich believes he was gifted by God to be President of the United States, and he is angry that his destiny has been thwarted by mere mortals.  The man with a life-long, well-earned reputation for skewering opponents also has the thinnest skin in politics.  The problem is that we simply cannot have a President who is so self-centered and who has such lack of control over his emotions.

In my opinion the Tea Party is going to take a big hit on this.  Some of the Tea Party organizations jumped on the Gingrich bandwagon only to watch him head for the rocks at full speed.  This failed to save Gingrich, but it managed to alienate Romney.  Now we are at serious risk of nominating a candidate that the Tea Party openly tried to torpedo.  That is hardly the way to win friends and influence people.

If the polls are right, Gingrich is going to get walloped in Florida today.  This reminds me of Custer’s last stand.  Custer went down in history as a hero, but in reality he just killed everyone around him.

TDM

The court case in Georgia regarding Obama’s birth certificate is interesting. However, it is neither as great as his detractors hope, nor as harmless as his supporters pretend.

Based on everything I have seen, the odds of Obama being born in Kenya approach zero.  Regardless of the birth certificate issue, there is no evidence that his parents ever lived together as husband and wife.  Barack Obama, Sr. already had a wife in Kenya.  It is very unlikely that he would have taken Obama’s mother to Kenya or anywhere else.  The last thing he would have wanted to do is bring and American wife over to Kenya.

I strongly suspect that the birth certificate is a reproduction based on legitimate imaged records and that Obama will have little problem proving he was born in Hawaii. I think he wants people to challenge his birth certificate, because it is the only document that does support his personal history.  It is, in my opinion, a red herring.

Obama’s father was definitely not a U.S. citizen.  This has never been disputed.  While this makes for an interesting legal argument, I think even Republicans would probably support a finding that he is a natural born citizen, if this is the only issue.  His mother clearly was a natural born citizen and that would probably carry the day.

A much bigger problem is the possibility that he was adopted by an Indonesian man who may have registered Obama as an Indonesian citizen.  This is a very complex subject, so I included a link to an excellent article that describes this in detail:

http://www.visaus.com/citizen.html

The main point is that this is far from automatic.  I suspect that Obama did nothing to regain his citizenship, probably because no one thought it was important at the time.  However, he is extremely unlikely to be removed from office because of his dual citizenship.

His selective service records have inconsistencies, but odds are that Obama did register for the draft in late July of 1980.  The draft was suspended completely in 1975, under President Ford, primarily because of widespread opposition by Democrats in congress.  In 1980 Carter was President and he wanted to put this issue to rest.  In 1977 Carter had pardoned all the draft dodging cowards who fled to Canada to avoid fighting in Vietnam.  In July of 1980, he reinstated registering for selective service, with a promise to never draft anyone.  Proclamation 4771 was issued by Carter on July 2, 1980.  If you want to read the proclamation, here is the link:

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/proclamations/04771.html

Since Obama was born on August 4, 1961, he was required to register within six days of July 28, 1980.  He apparently signed the registration on July 29, 1980 and it was processed effective September 4, 1980.  The timing is consistent with the political reality of the time.

As mentioned above, there are some inconsistencies with Obama’s Selective Service records, as there are with virtually all of his documents.  For example he signed it July 30, 1980, but it is date stamped July 29, 1980. There are other potential problems that have caused some people to consider this document a forgery.  But it seems likely that Obama would have been well aware of what was going on and the vast majority of college students his age took advantage of Carter’s get out of jail free card.

A more serious problem for Obama is the allegation that he has used multiple social security numbers.  There are even reports that he used potentially fraudulent social security numbers.  In the Georgia case, for the first time, this issue came up.  That makes this the first court that has actually demanded Obama produce any documents.  There are so many questions about Obama’s personal history that the production of any documents at all has the potential to create serious problems for him. 

I wouldn’t hold my breath expecting Obama to be declared ineligible for the Presidency any time soon.  For one thing, there simply is not enough time for this to wind its way through the legal process before the 2012 election.  I also would counsel any Republican who cares about their country to serious consider the consequences if Obama was removed from office for any reason.  Joe Biden would become President of the United, which in and of itself should be a concern.  But more important, it would immediately insert Hillary Clinton as the nominee of the Democratic Party for the 2012 election and she is a far more dangerous candidate than Obama.  Quite bluntly, ten more months of Obama will do less damage to the country than the risk of electing Hillary Clinton to a full four year term.

In any event, this is a significant event that is being ignored by the main stream media.  It could, like most other stories about Obama’s birth certificate, die a quick death.  But it is at least a major departure from previous court hearings where Obama was able to obtain dismissals without producing any documents at all.

 TDM

On various occasions I have had the duty to interview people suspected of doing something wrong.  I quickly learned something:  when you run into someone who responds with rage at being asked a reasonable question, watch out.  People who have done nothing wrong will seldom respond that way.  They just answer the question.   But, quite frequently the people, who complain the loudest about the unfairness of the question, are the people with the most to hide.  They are trying to intimidate others into not doing their job. 

Barack Obama managed to avoid scrutiny by placing the race card whenever anyone dared ask him about anything.  This was also Bill and Hillary Clinton’s principle method of avoiding scrutiny. Remember Hillary talking about the vast right-wing conspiracy?  Bill Clinton would refuse to answer legitimate questions on the basis that he was focused on doing his job for the American people.  This approach was perfected when the man, obviously guilty of perjury, managed to pin the blame on Republicans for daring to impeach him merely because he was guilty of a felony.  His reasoning was that this was only about sex, so it didn’t matter.  Perjury always matters.

When I saw the way Newt Gingrich responded to John King, my heart sank.  I immediately recognized the “angry, how-dare-you-question-me routine.”  No one does scorn better than Newt Gingrich.  At first glance, Newt Gingrich’s tirade against John King was brilliant.  It certainly got the crowd excited and won him the election in South Carolina.  But, it is pretty obvious that Gingrich was lying.  The following article from the Daily Beast documents the problem.  Now, the Daily Beast is no friend of conservatives, but unfortunately, in this case, it has its facts down:

 from http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/23/in-newt-gingrich-s-world-rules-do-not-apply-to-him-ex-wife-s-lawyer-says.html

Newt Gingrich is the only Speaker of the House in our nation’s history that was fined by the ethics committee.  The fine was a whopping $300,000.  The Speaker of the House makes an annual salary of $223,500 per year.  It was even less when Gingrich was Speaker.  That means he was fined far in excess of his entire annual salary.  That size of fine says a lot about his real net worth and even more about the seriousness with which House members viewed his actions.  Remember, this was a Republican controlled House at the time.

Newt Gingrich was forced to resign as Speaker after House Republicans staged a mutiny.  He was the man who developed the “Contract with America” and helped Republicans regain the House after more than 40 years in the Wilderness.  This was an accomplishment on a par with the biblical Moses.   The Republicans in the House would have tolerated almost anything from the man who did this, but they could not tolerate Newt Gingrich.  Recently, more and more of them have been speaking out and warning us about serious problems with Newt Gingrich’s leadership.  Perhaps we should start to listen.

The President of the United States is the most powerful person on earth.  This person literally has the power to unleash a nuclear weapon.  In the hands of the wrong person, who responds because of rage rather than reason, this is extremely dangerous.  That is why during the last days of the Nixon administration there were reports that senior administration officials secretly agreed to ignore an illegal order from Nixon, if it came to that.  Fortunately, Nixon never tried issuing such an order.

There is no room for error on this topic.  Republicans need to be absolutely sure they can trust Newt Gingrich’s character, or they dare not nominate him.  This does not mean that he has to be perfect.  It does mean that he has to be someone who has proven himself to be worthy of trust.  With regard to convicting someone for criminal behavior, they are innocent until proven guilty.  With regard to running for President, it is the duty of the candidate to prove he has the right character for the job.  Newt needs to tone down the rhetoric and start being a lot more truthful, if he wants to meet that standard.

 TDM

We must never forget to give due credit when someone displays courage and character.  Today that was done by a Democrat, Gabrielle Giffords.  She didn’t show great courage by getting shot; she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Today, she put her country and her constituency first.  She could have stayed in congress and pretended she was up to the job.  No one would have dared challenge her.  She even could have run for the United States Senate and possibly won that as well.  No matter what she said or did, the main stream media would have deified her.  But she resigned because she knew she could not do the job and she did what was right for Arizona and the country. 

It is a shame that she suffered this horrific injury.  No one should have their career ended by a mad man in a senseless shooting.  But it did happen and the sad reality is that she suffered a serious and permanent brain injury.  I wish her the best possible recovery and a happy and long life.  I also applaud her for doing the right thing.  It must have been very tempting to just stay in office and coast to re-election.  I am absolutely certain that DNC officials were urging her to do just that.  No one in either party would have ever dared hint that she couldn’t do the job.  Only one person could do the right thing, and that person was Gabrielle Giffords.  It is a moment of tremendous character and courage.  I wonder if anyone in the main stream media will notice.

 TDM

A few days ago, everyone was predicting that Mitt Romney would have the nomination sewed up by the time of the Florida primary.  The theory was that he would have won Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and would be the inevitable nominee.  The problem is that he didn’t actually win in Iowa, although he came extremely close.  Now Newt Gingrich has won South Carolina.

I don’t expect Gingrich to run away with this..  The Romney campaign is about to take the gloves off and those boys have a well-deserved reputation for playing political hardball.  So far, whenever anyone looks like a winner, someone else surges past.  It looks like a majority of Republicans don’t want Romney and a majority don’t want Gingrich.  Ron Paul and Rick Santorum are just clogging up the middle going nowhere. 

How can we possibly predict this?  Most of us thought Gingrich was dead and buried last summer.  Romney looked more and more like the best of a bad lot.  All we know right now is that Pawlenty, Cain, Bachmann, Huntsman and Perry are gone.  But there are a lot of signs that “none of the above is the candidate of choice.”  That is why so many people were speculating about a “late entry” candidate.  That isn’t going to happen.  There just isn’t enough time for anyone to enter the race now and mount a real challenge to either Romney or Gingrich.

But, what if nobody won?  What if the primaries are over in early June and no one has enough delegates to win the nomination.  That is exactly what happened in 1976, a little over 35 years ago.  Gerald Ford had more delegates than Ronald Reagan, but not enough to win.  Reagan might even have pulled off getting the nomination, but he foolishly selected Richard Schweiker as his potential VP.  Schweiker was a liberal, and rather than gaining moderate support, Reagan lost conservative support.  Ford was nominated on the first balled.  But, for all practical purposes, it was still a brokered convention.

Sarah Palin has the best political instincts in the Republican Party.  She did not endorse Newt Gingrich.  What she actually said was the following:

 If I were a South Carolinian — and each one of these primaries and caucuses are different, Sean — I want to see this thing continue because iron sharpens iron. Steel sharpens steel. These guys are getting better in their debates. … If I had to vote in South Carolina, in order to keep this thing going, I’d vote for Newt. And I would want things to continue. More debates, more vetting of candidates. Because we know the mistake made in our country four years ago, with having a candidate that was not vetted to the degree he should have been

Read carefully.  She would vote for Newt, not because she necessarily wanted him to win, but rather because she wanted to prolong the process.  Perhaps Sarah has figured out that if no one wins, she wins.  At a minimum, she is going to be a major king maker. 

There is no shortage of “draftable” candidates like Rudy Giuliani, Mitch Daniels, Sarah Palin, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan and even Jeb Bush.  None of them are currently running, but none of them have said they wouldn’t take the job. We started out with Tim Pawlenty, Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.  All of them spent millions campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire.  Wouldn’t it be a stitch if after all that time, money and effort the result was a loud:  “none of the above” decision?

I am not predicting this, but it looks a lot more possible today than it did yesterday.

TDM

Rick Perry can turn his campaign around if he just follows the lead of John Kerry.  In 2004, Howard Dean was leading the Democratic pact.  Kerry, as we all know, is a lousy debater.  He was far behind.  But he turned it around when during a debate he reminded people that they were there to choose a President.

 Here is what Rick Perry needs to say:

 We are not here to elect the Quipster in Chief, but rather the Commander in Chief.  There is more to the Presidency than giving cute 30 second responses to questions on complex and difficult issues.  The real question is which candidate has the experience necessary to handle the job of President of the United States.  This is an executive job which requires executive experience.  That is the reason so many of our most effective Presidents have been Governors of large states.  We have already paid a bitter price for electing someone with no executive experience to be our President.  We can’t afford to repeat that mistake. 

 I have been the Governor of a large state for over 11 years.  My state has prospered during my term in office.  I have governed consistently as a conservative.   If you want to know how I will govern as President, you need only look at my record as Governor of Texas.  My question is:  Are we here to elect a President, or a Chairman of the Debate club?  This election will not be decided by who does the best job in a debate with Barack Obama.  It will be decided by which candidate the American people believe can turn this country around and restore hope in the American dream.  I believe I am that candidate and I ask for your support.

I fear we are on the verge of making a huge mistake because no one is asking the right questions.  Are we really going to let the main stream media, including Fox News, choose our candidate based on this bizarre unending series of meaningless American Idol style debates.  I have never heard one moderator ask the candidates what executive experience they have, yet this is the most powerful executive position in the world.

This is the most important election of our lives.  Shouldn’t we be looking at the best person for the job first?  The American people deserve better than this.  No Fortune 500 Company would ever consider someone as CEO who did not have significant prior executive experience.  Two of our candidates, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have zero executive experience.  It is time to decide if we are choosing a President or a cheerleader?  If the race ends up between Romney and Gingrich or Santorum, we won’t actually have any choice at all, because only one of the three has the type of executive experience necessary to do the job.

TDM

Today there is outrage because of the video of U.S. Marines pissing on some dead Taliban.  The liberal left, loudly supported by the RINO in Chief, John McCain, are outraged.  They are even talking about prosecuting these men.  So far, only one Presidential candidate, Rick Perry, has had the courage to stand up for these men.

In 1945, General George Patton took a brief pause in his drive toward Germany to piss in the middle of the Rhine.  In case you doubt this, I included a picture:

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/EasternGermany/Buchenwald/GeneralPatton.html

It just seemed like the thing to do.

The sad fact is that war is about killing people.  The liberal left cannot grasp this concept.  They celebrate Obama ordering the assassination of Osama bin Laden.  They worship at his feet as a great military leader for ordering an unmanned drone to execute a U.S. citizen, without even the pretense of due process.  Yet they are outraged at the very thought of waterboarding, although it does no permanent damage and certainly doesn’t kill anyone.  Now they are horrified that our troops dared to desecrate the bodies of people they had just killed in firefight.  This reminds me of the woman on TV in San Francisco who was outraged about hunting and said she only ate meat from a Supermarket so no animal had to die.  Apparently the liberal left is ok with killing someone, as long as they don’t have to watch and we treat the body with sufficient respect.  This explains why after sending the Navy Seals in to off bin Laden, we wrapped him up in a nice linen cloth and gave him a sweet Muslim sendoff to the hereafter. 

If are troops are killed by the Taliban, and the Taliban gets control of the body, they decapitate it, put in on a spike and then take turns slapping the head with their shoes. Of course if they are really angry, they do more.  Do you really think a picture of Marines doing their business on them is going to suddenly make them angry at us?  Please!  They are angry at us for existing!

The Marines should not have done this.  It was, at best, a dumb idea.  But who are we to judge these young men who have just survived a vicious battle with people determined to kill them?  Who benefited by the posting of this video?  It certainly did nothing for the family of the dead Taliban soldiers.  It also did nothing to help end this bitter war.  If anything, it just made everything worse.  There is no war crime here, just totally irresponsible conduct, not by the marines, but by those who exploited the situation.  Obviously a portion of the blame goes to those who took the video and posted it on youtube.   But they are only naïve, stupid and irresponsible. 

The real outrage should be toward the main stream media.  If any of you watch major sports on television you will notice that the TV broadcasters never show video of someone from the stands running across the field.  The reason for this is that they don’t want to reward such people with free publicity.  If the media can be disciplined enough to not show something as silly as a fan running out on a playing field, they can be disciplined enough to not run this type of story.

Once again, we are focusing blame on the wrong side of the camera.

TDM

Following is the chart I intended to include in WHAT FAT LADY?  It got lost in the ether and I had to reconstruct it.

This is just a snapshot.   For example, none of the Iowa delegates are actually “required” to vote for anyone, since it is a non-binding caucus.  In addition, there are three delegates unassigned.   As of today, before the New Hampshire results,  Romney, Santorum and Paul each have 6 delegates, Gingrich has 4 delegates and Perry has 3 delegates.  

When you think about it, it is pretty pathetic to pretend someone is close to sewing up the nomination at this point.   Anything could happen.  Here is how it looks today:

Most unlikely to succeed gots to Newt Gingrich.  He is very unlikely to do well and he could drop as low as fifth, behind Romney, Paul, Huntsman and Santorum. 

Most likely to succeed is Mitt Romney.  He will probably win easily in New Hampshire.  If he does more than 38%, that will be very good.  If he drops down closer to 30%, it will be viewed as him losing momentum.

Huntsman could be a surprise.  He could even soar up to challenge Paul for second.  But if he does, he will be competing with Romney for the moderate vote.  My guess is third, slightly ahead of Santorum.

Santorum would require a Tebow type miracle to win.  He could come in fourth or even fifth, which would be devastating to him.

Santorum is certainly not surging any more.  since campaigns are usually headed up or down, he is probably headed down.

Paul probalby doesn’t care where he finishes.  He doesn’t even plan on winning the nomination.  He just wants enough delegates, from caucus states, so that he can have a voice on the Republican Party platform.

Rick Perry never even tried to compete, so if he does anything at all, it’s good for him. 

Gingrich’s strategy to attack Romney appears to be backfiring big time, since he continues to fall in the polls.  But he also appears to have drawn blood.  Keep in mind that regardless of results, he has $5 million available in his superpact, because of a large gift from billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson.  As long as he had money, Gingrich’s ego will probably keep him in the race.  He now appears to be on a kamikazi mission to destroy Romney.   Remember that only incompetent kamikazi operatives survive the mission.

It’s a longer way to Tipperary than the pundits admit.

Note:  Tipperary is a town in Ireland, not actually remote.  The song was apparently written by a lonely Irishman in London.  If anyone watched “Das Boot” it was a very popular song for the German sailors.  I doubt that any of them had any clue regarding the actual location of Tipperary.  

TDM

They say the opera isn’t over til the fat lady sings.  In this case the fat lady is the arrogant group of main stream media pundits who think they get to decide things for the rest of us.  A lot of pundits apparently think the race for the Republican nomination will be over soon.  It may be, but only if we let the main stream media make the choice.  Choosing a winner based on Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina is like awarding the Super Bowl trophy after the first quarter.  There is a reason they make people play the entire game. 

The following chart shows the election schedule and the number of delegates per state.  I added a couple of columns to show how many votes someone would have if they got 100% of the available delegates, 75% of the available delegates and 50% of the available delegates.  As you can see, the earliest someone can actually clinch this is March 13^th, but that would require someone getting all the delegates.  That is not very likely.  The next earliest date is April 24^th, and that would require someone to get 75% of the delegates.  If someone gets 50% of the votes, it won’t be over until the convention.

That used to happen a lot.  Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan fought it out at the convention.  Robert Kennedy was shot right after he won the California primary election in 1968 and the Democrats were headed toward a convention fight.  It used to be rare for Presidential campaigns to be decided after just a couple of primary elections.

What the early contest measures is who can get enough money to stay in the race.  That is why candidates drop out.  They run out of money.  The only candidate who definitely won’t run out of money is Romney.  Santorum is raising some cash right now, but that could change.  He wasn’t raising anything before Iowa.  There are a lot of signs that his “surge” has already run out of steam.  Gingrich already has a big problem raising money and he is in serious trouble.  He could end up behind Huntsman in New Hampshire, and Huntsman is near the end.

But Rick Perry does not have that problem, at least not yet.  Even if he does poorly in New Hampshire, South Carolina, he may still stay in the race.  The reason is that what really matters is how Santorum and Gingrich do.  The smart people with money who are backing Perry know this.  Chris Wallace admitted this last night when he said only Perry has the kind of money and organization it takes to run a nationwide campaign.  It is hard to take anyone seriously who is running in single digits in national polls.  But ultimately the real question may be:  “given a choice between Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, who would you choose. Neither Santorum nor Gingrich can win the nomination; they can only guarantee that Mitt Romney is our nominee.  As long as Romney has two or three people splitting the conservative vote, he wins.  In 2008, Mike Huckabee refused to bow out even when it was obvious he could not beat Mitt Romney.  As a result, we nominated John McCain, a disastrous mistake that resulted in the election of Barack Obama. 

Saturday night, Rick Perry said he would send the troops back into Iraq.  He said he could not stand by and watch the sacrifices made by our military thrown away for short term political gain.  The moderators thought that was a huge mistake.  But I had the opposite reaction.  There is something very refreshing about a candidate willing to tell the American people the truth even it is not politically popular.   I wonder if anyone else noticed.