Revisiting Voting Blocs. Are They More Fluid These Days?

By Alan Caruba

It has long been a tradition in American politics to speak of voting blocs, but in an era of 24/7 news and instant communications, that may be less likely as an indicator of who votes for who.

For example, The Jewish Press, the largest orthodox Jewish weekly, came out with a strong endorsement of Mitt Romney, but the political pundits keep wondering how Jews—usually Democratic and liberal—will vote on November 6.

In point of fact, Jewish voters are a minority at best and not likely to move the dial except in South Florida, and urban centers such as New York, Los Angeles, and their environs. What can be said is that Obama’s hostility to Israel is going to play a role in how Jews vote. Traditionally Democrats and liberals, they are generally close observers of the political winds and, while not all Zionists, they have a strong attachment to the Holy Land.

In a similar way, not all Catholics oppose abortion and they can be found in both political parties. The notion, however, that the government demands that their institutions like hospitals act counter to the Church’s fundamental beliefs has surely angered many Catholics. Hispanics, generally Catholic, tend toward a more conservative point of view, but the thought that they will vote as a bloc also seems a reach. Hispanic citizens come from many different places and cultures. And evangelicals could care less at this point that Mitt Romney is a Mormon. They know a man of faith when they see one.

The current wisdom regarding blacks is that they will support Obama, but it is also widely believed among observers that many will simply not vote in the dramatic numbers of 2008. Blacks are said to be disappointed with Obama regarding the economy and offended by his support for gay marriage. Overall, the African-American community has seen few gains, if any, in an economy gone south.

Women are regarded as a major factor in the election and both the Obama and Romney camps are said to be making a big effort to secure their vote, but I suspect women will either vote within their party affiliation if they are Democrats or cross party lines because of economic issues—lack of employment opportunities, the rising cost of food and gas, children who graduated college this year and are still living at home, et cetera. The Democrat’s farcical “war on women” has no traction.

Political consultants and advisors make their living reading the tea leafs of a campaign, but this one will come down to the economy, jobs, and inflation. These issues affect people no matter what religion, race or gender.

The Wrath of the Seniors

There is one very large group about which and from whom little has been heard. They represent all the other voting blocs and can be regarded as one themselves; senior citizens.

In 2008 the CIA Fact Book estimate of the number of senior citizens, age 65 and older, represented 12.7 % of the population; males 16,263,255 and females 22,426,914. There are more now because baby boomers are entering the ranks of seniors in the millions these days. In 2011 the first of 79 million Americans born between the end of World War II and the mid-1960s will turn 65, swelling the ranks of Medicare and Social Security recipients.

A lot of the seniors, no matter race, gender, or political affiliation are very worried about Obamacare and they should be. Many already know that Obama took over half a trillion out of Medicare to fund Obamacare and you can be damned sure they are not happy about it.

At the other end of the age cycle Generation Opportunity.org, a non-profit group devoted to mobilizing young Americans (18-29) on important economic issues, reports that its polling says 76% of Millennials plan to vote.

Fully 89% say that the current state of the economy is impacting their lives and not in a good way. The youth unemployment rate is 11.8% and, for blacks it is a whopping 21%. The declining labor force participation rate has created 1.7 million young adults who are not even counted as unemployed; bad news for a candidate who promised hope and change four years ago.

No doubt exit interviews and other post-election studies will reveal trends, but if, like 23 million Americans, you’re out of a job, still looking after several months, or just stopped looking, you have plenty of motivation to go to the polls and cast your vote for the only real “hope and change” available, the election of Mitt Romney.

One factor in the election has received little attention, but it should not be overlooked. A lot of states where energy reserves, particularly coal, represent a significant economic factor, have little reason to reelect Obama. An estimated 90 percent of coal reserves are concentrated in ten states, but it is mined in 27 states. Even though the U.S. coal reserves represent as much energy as all the oil in Saudi Arabia, Obama has waged a war on this valuable resource.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal production has fallen 6.5% during the Obama years. So that is one promise he’s kept; largely due to draconian EPA regulations. The EIA expects 8.5% of coal-fired plants will retire by 2016 and 17% by 2020. Coal has fallen to 32% of net electricity generation from 48% when Obama took office.

While indicting the oil industry, the Obama administration has managed to squander billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars on uncompetitive wind and solar companies, electric car production, and at one point he was advocating algae—pond scum—as a source of energy.

Instinctively, Americans know that the U.S. must maintain a strong defense and they know that is not the case these days. They love their fighting forces and their veterans. Obama does not.

For me, the most interesting aspect of the 2012 campaigns has been the total absence of blather about “global warming” and only a few references to “climate change” by either candidate. When Al Gore and John Kerry ran, they were all over this like a doggy chew bone. President Obama who has unleashed the Environmental Protection Agency to impose an insane list of economy-killing regulations has had little to say about an issue that we have been told for decades was the most serious one of all.

While I am still fearful about the apparent close divide in the polls—which are trending now toward Romney—I keep thinking that Obama is going to crash and burn on November 6^th. Even people who are not glued to the news channels or who refuse to process negative information about Obama now know he is a pathological liar and the administration’s response to the killing of a U.S. ambassador and three others in Benghazi, Libya put this on full display.

At least Democrats could believe Bill Clinton when he said he felt their pain, but Obama makes no effort to even pretend he cares about them. He’s fixated on “millionaires and billionaires.” He’s concerned that Muslims not be offended. He’s offering four more years of the worst economic conditions Americans have endured since the Great Depression.

Poor Obama, he can’t blame his failures on George W. Bush any more.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Cartoon Round Up

Fidel Castro: The Quintessential Communist

By Alan Caruba

My foremost memory of Fidel Castro dates to 1961 during the Cuban Missile Crisis when, as a young soldier, the Second Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Georgia was put on full readiness in the event the U.S. had to invade Cuba. I was informed that I would remain in the Army “for the duration” thereby extending my enlistment. Happily, the crisis was resolved in 13 days, but everybody was holding their breath.

I had begun to hear of Castro as he pursued his efforts to overthrow the Cuban dictator General Fulgencia Batista who had overthrown an elected government. Throughout my college years, 1955-1959 at the University of Miami I had become friends with the sons of wealthy Cubans who were sent to the U.S. for a higher education. There were discussions as to whether they should return if he was successful. I knew nothing of Batista beyond the fact he was a dictator, but I harbored doubts about Castro even then. It was during the Cold War and anything that suggested a communist revolution made me wary.

Castro had been born into a wealthy family in 1926 and had drifted into the communist orbit like so many who thought it would bring "social justice" to the masses. He was intellectually gifted and had attended the law school at the University of Havana. The talk at that time was all about nationalism, anti-imperialism, and socialism.

He would engage in a number of unsuccessful coup attempts and even ended up in one of Batista’s jails, but was released in a 1955 amnesty. He went to Mexico where he met up with a psychopath named Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Returning to Cuba in 1956 with his brother Raul and a group of insurgents, they eventually fled to the mountains of the Sierra Madre. From there they mounted a number of successful military campaigns until Batista’s government collapsed in 1959.

The media made no mention of Castro’s communist beliefs for a long time, portraying him as some kind of Cuban Robin Hood, a man of the people. All that gave way to his affiliation with the Soviet Union and by 1961 outgoing President Eisenhower cut off all diplomatic relations and his successor, John F. Kennedy, inherited the CIA’s plans to put their own insurgents in Cuba to overthrow Castro. The Bay of Pigs invasion was a total fiasco. By 1962 Castro’s reliance on the Soviet Union led to the installation of offensive missiles and, as they say, the rest is history. It was a miscalculation by then-Soviet Premier, Nikita Krushchev.

The media kept reporting about things such as Castro’s creation of 10,000 new schools and the improvement in Cuba’s healthcare system, but what was happening was Castro’s positioning himself as the leading anti-American spokesperson in Latin America and encouraging revolutionary movements there and in Africa and Asia.

Meanwhile, Cubans did what they could to escape a prison nation. In 1980 alone, 120,000 fled when Castro let Cubans living in exile—mostly in Miami—to claim freedom for their relatives who wanted to leave. Castro also packed the boats with prison inmates, mental patients, and other social undesirables.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 took down Cuba’s economy with it. In 2001 Cuba suffered massive damage from Hurricane Michelle and President George H.W. Bush offered humanitarian aid in the form of food. To deal with energy needs, Castro ordered thousands of Cuban doctors be sent to Venezuela in exchange for oil imports.

By 2008 Castro’s deteriorating health caused the then 81-year-old dictator to turn the day to day running of the nation over to his brother who was 76 at the time, but he retained power as the First Secretary of the Communist Party.

Castro remains one of the world’s most despicable despots and Cuba’s jails are filled with anyone who openly expresses any opposition to his regime. Others were simply shot. Two Americans are being held hostage these days.

I will break open a bottle of bubbly when I hear the news that he is dead. I will do the same for Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Poverty Nation

By Alan Caruba

Lyndon B. Johnson, President from 1963 to 1969, is probably unknown to the generations since then except for having escalated the Vietnam War. A memorial in Washington, D.C., is a sad reminder of the more than 58,000 young lives sacrificed. As time went along, it became so unpopular LBJ decided not to run again for a second full term. He is likely recalled less for his “War on Poverty”, a classic, liberal government program that to this day has not eliminated poverty in America.

The syndicated columnist and John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Walter Williams, recently wrote about “Poverty Nonsense”, saying, “There’s nothing intellectually challenging or unusual about poverty. For most of mankind’s existence, his most optimistic scenario was to be able to eke out enough to subsist for another day. Poverty has been mankind’s standard fare and remains so for most of mankind.”

One need only read the Old and New Testaments to realize that poverty in ancient times was a concern. "Tzedek, tzedek you shall pursue" -- justice justice you shall pursue (Deut. 16:20). There's a basic human responsibility to reach out to others. Giving of your time and your money is a statement that "I will do whatever I can to help." This reflects the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam, repairing the world. In Matthew 26:11, Jesus says “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.”

It is a liberal fantasy that a society can eliminate poverty, but that does not mean a society does not have an obligation to help the less fortunate. It is the tension between these two views that separates conservatives and liberals, but every time a liberal president has held office, it has become a budget-busting  calamity.

The most recent example has been the soaring spending on welfare since Obama has been president.  The financial crisis did require some effort to provide “a safety net” for those laid off from their jobs and some argument could be made to help homeowners, although many of their mortgages were granted by banks under pressure from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with the full knowledge they were bad loans. They would become known as “toxic assets” that dragged down banks, requiring a massive government bailout to avoid a collapse of the entire system.

A recent article by Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, based on an October report of the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, spells out the current state of government welfare spending.  “Roughly 100 million people—one-third of the U.S. population—receive aid from at least one means-tested welfare program each month.”

“ Average benefits come to around $9,000 per recipient. If converted to cash, means-tested welfare spending is more than five times the amount needed to eliminate all poverty in the United States.”

            Federal: At $746 billion, federal means-tested spending exceeded spending on Medicare ($480 billion) , Social Security ($725 billion), or the defense budget ($540 billion).

            State: In 2011, state contributions into federal welfare programs came to $201 billion, and independent state programs contributed around $9 billion.

            Combined: Overall means-tested welfare spending from federal and state sources reach from all sources totaled $956 billion.

This is money from taxpayers whose personal budgets are squeezed by the rising cost of everything or which has to be borrowed by the federal government.

Rector said “Obama’s big spending plans will result in ruinous and unsustainable budget deficits.”

Why federal welfare requires eighty separate programs is testimony to the slow creep of government growth over the years since LBJ’s War on Poverty. That war was lost before it began, but it reflects the way such programs buy the votes of those dependent on them. It is a bad way to run a nation. It is bad politics. It is bad economics. And it will lead to an inevitable collapse in an economy that has shown virtually no growth in the past four years, an anemic 1.7 percent in the gross domestic product.

Voters disillusioned by the failure of Obama’s “stimulus” or Biden’s promise of a “recovery summer” in 2010 have the opportunity to end this cycle of national impoverishment in November. It may be our last chance.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

The EPA's Planned Destruction of the U.S. Economy

By Alan Caruba

If there was no other reason to defeat President Obama in November, it would be the planned destruction of what is left of the U.S. economy by the Environmental Protection Agency.

In “A Look Ahead to EPA Regulations for 2012” the minority staff (Republican) of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has issued a chilling review of a massive rise in the costs of living for all Americans, massive layoffs in all sectors of the economy, and the destruction of the nation’s energy and manufacturing sectors.

The report provides a nightmarish look at the regulations that EPA plans to initiate, having put them under cover prior to Election Day in order to hide President Obama’s agenda of attacking the energy sector and businesses large and small.

Here’s a list of the regulations:

Greenhouse gas regulation via the Clean Air Act

An Ozone rule

Hydraulic Fracturing

Florida’s Numeric Nutrient Criteria

EPA’s water guidance under the Clean Water Act

Stormwater regulation

Tier II Gas regulations

Boiler MACT rule

Cement MACT rule

316(b) Cooling Tower rule

Coal ash

Farm dust regulation

Spill prevention control and Countermeasure rule

These proposed regulations in aggregate, if enacted—that is to say if not stopped by congressional action based on Republican control of both the House and Senate—would prove disastrous, starting in 2013.

For example, the utterly bogus greenhouse gas regulations are based on the debunked global warming theory that says too much carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is causing the Earth to heat when, in fact, the Earth has been cooling since 1998 and there is zero evidence that CO2 has any impact on the temperature of the planet.

The greenhouse gas regulations would, the report estimates, “cost more than $300 to $400 billion a year, and significantly raise the price of gas at the pump and energy in the home. It’s not just coal plants that will be affected: Under the Clean Air Act, churches, schools, restaurants, hospitals and farms will eventually be regulated.”

If you love poverty, you will love what the EPA intends to impose on the nation.

One astonishingly stupid aspect of greenhouse gas regulation is called the “cow tax” in which ranchers will be required to pay a cost-per-animal permitting fee. More than 37,000 farms and ranches would be subject to greenhouse gas permits at an average cost of $23,000 per permit annually. It would affect more than 90% of the livestock production in America and drive the cost of meat and pork out of sight.

As to regulating ozone, the EPA itself “estimated that its ozone standard would cost $90 billion a year, while other studies have projected that the rule would cost upwards of a trillion dollars and destroy 7.4 million jobs.” Ozone is created and destroyed naturally in the atmosphere by the sun. It is most noticeable over the poles where it has waxed and waned for billions of years.  So-called ozone holes show up over active volcanoes. Apparently the EPA wants to regulate the sun and volcanoes.

The technology of hydraulic fracturing occurs well below the water levels and frees up access to natural gas and oil. Naturally, many agencies in the Obama administration are doing whatever they can to shut it down with costly permit and efforts to link it to water contamination. It holds the promise of driving down energy costs nationwide.

If President Obama is reelected, billions of dollars would be imposed on virtually every aspect of life in America, either directly or through the rise of the cost of everything. This reflects the Greens obsession with destroying the greatest economy the world has ever seen, our standards of living and the quality of life for every man, woman and child in America.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Islam's Many Murders of Americans

By Alan Caruba

Editor’s Note: This commentary was written prior to the third presidential debate.

Moments in history are markers from which we are expected to draw some lessons. Thus, October 23, 1983, twenty-nine years ago, was the date of the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. It had been preceded by the bombing of our embassy there on April 18. A year later, our CIA station chief, William F. Buckley was kidnapped, dying after 15 months of torture by Islamic “militants.”

You can Google the lists of attacks on Americans, our embassies, hijackings of commercial air flights, housing abroad of U.S. military, and embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The USS Cole was bombed in the port of Aden, Yemen in 2000, killing 17 U.S. Navy sailors. Other lists are of Americans killed by various Muslim jihadists here in America.

A key date worth remembering is November 4, 1979 when Iranian Islamists seized our embassy in Tehran, taking 52 American diplomats hostage for 444 days. Then-President Jimmy Carter offered such a weak response to an offense against our nation and international laws that he was voted out of office and replaced with Ronald Reagan. Until Barack Obama came along, he was known as the worst president the nation ever had.

Americans tend to think of attacks in terms of September 11, 2001 when commercial aircraft were flown into the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon. A fourth was brought down by passengers in a Pennsylvania pasture. Nearly 3,000 Americans died.

The truth—the fact--is that America has been under attack for 33 years at this point, at home and abroad, and we still can’t bring ourselves to speak the name of the enemy, Islam.

President Obama whose first and middle names are of Arab origin is testimony to a lethal capacity to forget just how many times America has been attacked by its Islamic enemies and his term in office has seen the Middle East become a bastion of even greater Muslim militancy, culminating with the murder of our ambassador to Libya and three of his staff.

Americans are understandably weary of war having been drawn into conflict in Afghanistan after 9/11. We are still there to no effective purpose. Twice America waged war on Iraq, first to lead a coalition to force it out of Kuwait and then to depose Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein. It took over a decade to finally withdraw our troops from Iraq and, in neither nation, can we point to anything resembling a successful outcome. Both the Taliban and al Qaeda have returned despite the occasional drone strike.

The problem, however, is that Islam in general and the Middle East, along with other Muslim nations in Africa and elsewhere, continues to pose a threat to America and the West. In the past Islam was stopped at the gates of Europe and Crusades were fought against the Muslims in the Holy Land.

A cult built around Mohammed has a “holy book” that requires them to make war without end until everyone is under their domination and all the advances of civilization are reversed. There are more than a billion Muslims in the world and it is not likely they are going to convert to some other religion any time soon.

As for terrorism, much of it is directed out of Iran these days and Iran is perilously close to making its own nuclear weapons. Iran must literally be stopped before that happens and, so far, the only nation intent on actually doing that is Israel.

The Saudis continue to fund all manner of Islamic activity worldwide to the detriment of America and the West.

Having rid themselves of dictators, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt do not appear to be likely allies in the future. The conflict in Syria threatens to escalate and intrudes into Lebanon. The so-called Palestinians remain a festering problem, kept going by nations in the region and the United Nations. Africa remains ripe for increased Islamic conflict.

In his book, “The Audacity of Hope”, President Obama said, “I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”

America is closing in on an election that poses a choice between the most pro-Islamic President to ever hold office and a challenger who is on record as saying he will support Israel in its effort to avoid nuclear annihilation.

There is no real “choice” here except between four more years of a presidency that actually encourages Islamic militancy, sinking further into an abyss of national poverty, the loss of our position in the world as a power for freedom and democracy, and a life of misery for the present and future generations of Americans.

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Newsweek: An Obituary

By Alan Caruba

Newsweek, founded in 1933 by a former Time magazine editor, will cease to publish a print edition at the end of 2012. As a former journalist it pained me to read there will be cuts to its staff of 270 reporters and editors, but Newsweek has been a dinosaur for a long time, destined for extinction as a newsstand magazine and mailed to subscribers.

It always trailed Time magazine in circulation, a perennial bridesmaid, but the obvious reason is that digital news, delivered instantaneously, killed it; its declining advertising and circulation was simply the arithmetic of failure. It will live on as Newsweek Global in the Internet, but I have some doubts about whether even a $24.95 annual subscription price will keep it going. I suspect that most of its most faithful readers are themselves dying off.

Newsweek used to arrive at my home and was devoured by my Dad, Mom, and I. It was pretty good journalism until it was purchased by The Washington Post Company in 1961. Its liberal bias began to take a toll in much the same way it has done for other news organizations.

The decline of anything resembling journalism was captured when reporter Michael Isikoff learned of President Clinton’s dalliance with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky only to have the story spiked by Newsweek’s editors. When the story broke on The Drudge Report it launched Matt Drudge and his news aggregation site into the Internet’s stratosphere of success.

In 2004, a study by Tim Groseclose and Jeff Milyo concluded that Newsweek, along with all other mainstream news outlets except for Fox News and The Washington Times, were irredeemably liberal and, by definition, no longer reliable sources of news.

Newsweek’s Washington Bureau Chief at the time, Evan Thomas, had acknowledged that Newsweek was “a little liberal.” He would later become its Assistant Managing Editor and, in 1996, he went on the record after leaving the magazine saying “there is a liberal bias at Newsweek.” Well, duh!

Things just got worse when, in the May 9, 2005 edition, Isikoff reported that interrogators at Guantanomo had “flushed a Quran down a toilet” to intimidate a detainee, but the magazine later admitted that its anonymous source for the story could not confirm the story. By then, however, the story had sparked the predictable anti-American riots and deaths in the Islamic world. The story was retracted under heavy criticism.

Newsweek’s only concession to a conservative point of view has been the columnist, George W. Will who has been a contributor since 1976. Writers need a steady paycheck like everyone else, but I am sure it must have pained Mr. Will to be associated with a news publication that was suffering a progressive form of suicide.

The Internet has put great strains on the mainstream liberal news media. It came as a shock when historian Niall Ferguson’s article, “Hit the Road, Barack: Why We Need a New President” was the cover story on August 27, 2012. I am betting that Newsweek will still endorse Obama before the election, but as I watch as one daily newspaper after another endorses Mitt Romney, there might be one last gasp of reality at Newsweek. I doubt it.

Liberalism killed Newsweek.

Yes, the Internet pushed it into its coffin, but the mainstream media still haven’t gotten the message. In a world where news is delivered 24/7 and available from a wide variety of sources, putting out a magazine once a week is untenable. Putting out one that endorses liberal politicians and policies is like drinking hemlock.

It is likely that Time magazine will suffer a similar fate and I suspect a host of newsstand magazines will also begin to disappear.

I may be among the last generation to have enjoyed magazines, but I rarely read any these days. I am letting my Bloomberg Business Week subscription lapse for the same reason I stopped reading The Economist.

It gets tiresome to keep reading references to global warming or climate change in these publications when that huge hoax began to come apart in 2009 with the revelations of “climategate.” The emails between the “scientists” who were cooking the books on climate data revealed how worried they were over the beginning of a new climate cycle in 1998 in which the Earth was cooling, not warming.

It is sad to see how formerly respected news organizations have abandoned any pretense about reporting the truth. Perhaps the ultimate example of this was, as media critic Bernie Goldberg put it, their “slobbering love affair” with Barack Obama that has afflicted America with a President who does not like America and may not have spoken a word of truth since he was an infant.

As a young reporter I used to write obituaries. Now I find myself writing one for Newsweek and doing so with a great sense of relief.

© Alan Caruba, 2012