Democrats denying reality.

It's science!

According to Jim Geraghty:

Now, with the presidential election approaching, responses in Wisconsin have suddenly diverged; 45 percent of Democrats now say the economy is improving, and just 7 percent say it is worsening; among Republicans, just 7 percent say it is improving, and 63 percent say it is worsening — a dramatic shift in four months.

Gallup has found that in recent weeks Democrats have grown much more confident about the economy, and independents a bit more confident, while Republicans are still quite pessimistic: “The Economic Confidence Index among Democrats had been ambling along at around +10 from August through early September. Then, in the week ending Sept. 9, spanning the Democratic National Convention, it surged 18 points to +24 and has since averaged +20 or better. A similar pattern has occurred among Democratic leaners, with a 22-point surge in confidence during convention week. Confidence rose somewhat less sharply, up 13 points, among independents who do not lean toward either party (‘pure independents’), while it has held steady at very low levels among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.”

Gallup concludes, “Right now, politics is playing an inordinately large role in the behavioral economic data.”

So that explains why Democrats feel good about the current state of the economy, with its 8.1 percent unemployment rate, its 1.3 percent GDP growth, its gasoline averaging $3.79 per gallon, and median household income continuing to decline even after the recession technically ended. But what about the 10 percent that Gallup considers “pure independents,” who lean toward neither party?

Democrats promote abortion...

...from "safe, legal and rare" to "safe and legal."

There has been an obvious shift among the pro-abortion forces who want abortion to be something that people should be "proud" of, rather than a "necessary evil." [And let's not forget this example of narcissistic evil who "live-tweeted" the abortion of her child.]

Liberal pundit Eleanor Clift observes:

Democrats voiced their unequivocal support for abortion rights at the party’s convention in Charlotte, a sharp departure from two decades of modulating their views on the issue with the phrase “safe, legal, and rare.”

The word “rare” was sliced out of the party platform as Democrats embraced “safe and legal” abortion as an integral part of women’s health, drawing a bright line separating them from Republicans, who hardened their anti-abortion rights stance at their Tampa convention.

Female commentators who normally identify with the Democrats, like Bloomberg’s Margaret Carlson and The Washington Post’s Melinda Henneberger, found the convention’s unrelenting focus on abortion rights off-putting for a party that claims a big tent. Cokie Roberts, appearing on ABC’s This Week, called the convention “over the top in terms of abortion…Every single speaker talked about abortion, and you know, at some point, you start to alienate people. Thirty percent of Democrats are pro-life.”

It's about "ginning up enthusiasm":

It’s not only about revving up the Democratic base, Garin insisted, but also reaching out to suburban women and young unmarried women who are inclined to vote for Obama but need to be energized. “If you ask who you trust on issues like abortion, gay marriage, and contraception, Obama has a very large advantage—in part because how far to the right and how far out of date Romney is in his positions,” said Garin.

Romney is out of date because his current position is identical to that of Obama circa June of 2012.

So, there you go, if your American Dream is gay marriage, abortion as a social virtue and contraception paid for by everyone else, the Dems are your party.

*Sheesh*

Unexpected! Even under the Democrats, government policies favor the kind of people who make major donations to politicians.


Does Quantitative Easing Mainly Help the Rich?

Yes.

Hey! Here's an idea! Let's give the government more things that it can use to benefit the rich!

Gaffe-tastic Democrats.

DNC apologizes for using pictures of Russian ships in tribute to American military.

Usually I don't care about this kind of folderol, but after John Kerry's abysmally classless speech about Romney, it's time to highlight the Democrat missteps.

Just how popular is abortion among Democrats?

Missing! Nobody Attends Planned Parenthood DNC Rally

Two pictures from the same DNC pro-abortion rally:

And:

Via Lifesite News.

"Corporations are People."

Here is Romney's exchange with an "occupy-type" protester where Romney explains that an option for meeting government's commitments are to raise taxes on people. When an Occupier yells out "corporations," Romney calmly and good-naturedly explains that "corporations are people" because the profits of corporations ultimately go to people.

This is obviously true. Moreover, when corporations do bad things, it is people doing those bad things. Corporations are nothing more than a way that people organize themselves freely and collectively. Thus, corporations aren't greedy; people are greedy.

The even stranger thing about this exchange is that Romney is actually saying that he would raise taxes on corporation. After all, if he is agreeable to raising taxes on people, and corporations are people, it follows that he is including corporations among those that he would tax.

So, why is this such a big "tell" for Democrats?

Here is the video of the exchange:

The Party of Envy.

Democrats supporting banning profits:

Washington Post Columnist asks, "knowing that the America of 2012 is so very different than the convention portrait, it’s worth asking how the Democrats’ convention became so divorced from reality."

Amittedly, it's the WaPo columnist assigned to cover the "conservative beat":

If you had been dropped from outer space into the Democratic National Convention, you would have thought that we enjoyed full employment, reduced poverty and stared down Iran, leaving us with deeply important issues like paying for birth control for grown women. You would have thought that a large majority of Americans weren’t sympathetic to Israel and weren’t religious. You’d have thought that the federal government had money to burn and no looming debt crisis. You would never have thought that Obama had signed a “historic” health-care bill. And you’d have thought that the political heavyweight in the Obama household was Michelle. (Well, you might have been right about the last one.)

But knowing that the America of 2012 is so very different than the convention portrait, it’s worth asking how the Democrats’ convention became so divorced from reality.

We saw a party in which the inability to tackle the monumental problems of our time ( entitlement reform, fiscal crisis, endemic high unemployment, a nuclear-armed Iran) has left a large gaping hole where its core should be. As our problems have gotten bigger, the party has gotten smaller, angrier and less grown-up. The house is burning down, and the Democratic constituencies want free ice cream.

So, how does it happen that days are spent on abortion on demand (which we essentially have anyway until the Supreme Court decides differently) and contraception, while big-ticket items are ignored?

The answer is twofold, I think. The current state of the Democratic Party is both the natural consequences of a longtime trend and the reflection of a president who is tragically unequipped to do his job.

Constituent politics is nothing new to the Democratic Party, of course. Ever since FDR strung together an alliance of urban blacks, Southern whites, labor and immigrants, the Democratic Party has been collecting interest groups like a girl collects charms for her bracelet. The groups have multiplied (gays, Native Americans, public employees), but the concept has been the same for 70 years. In exchange for votes the Democratic Party will give you lots of “free” stuff. To get free stuff you have to pay a lot of taxes and idealize government as the font of good deeds, so that citizens won’t mind an increasingly intrusive and expensive government. The point is not to solve problems or even measure success; the point is to keep the swapping (votes for free stuff) going strong.

A lot of the big-ticket items have already been doled out. So now we’re down to the really small beans ( free contraception!). Whether the giveaways are small or large (e.g., unlimited health care for all, free college education) the idea is propounded that the measure of a decent, successful society is how much free stuff you give away.

This phenomenon has been amply documented (most recently by Jay Cost in in his new book, Spoiled Rotten: How the Politics of Patronage Corrupted the Once Noble Democratic Party and Now Threatens the American Republic). But usually the itty-bitty items and the atomized nature of a party strung together only by the common desire to get free stuff are not so obvious. Usually, there is an overarching purpose that takes center stage, while the interest group plate-spinners carry on along the sidelines. What was so startling at this year’s Democratic convention was that there is nothing else but the interest group beg-a-thon.

The DNC should have the City Manager of San Antonio - who gets paid $355,000 - speak, rather than the Mayor - who only gets paid $4,000 - for whatever ceremonial stuff he does.

But since the City Manager is a Person of No Particularly Interesting Color, albeit a woman, that would not have fit the official narrative. They needed a top-ranking hispanic politician and since the Republicans had all the hispanic governors, they had to go with a ceremonial mayor who makes $4,000 a year.

Steve Sailer writes:

The press frenzy over Julian Castro's keynote address tonight gives us an opportunity to see how everybody gets my logic when it's played forward. The media is full of stories about how Castro could become the first Hispanic President because giving this speech eight years ago was how Obama got started on the road to being the first black President.

A little more about Castro. Like Obama, he admits he's a beneficiary of affirmative action, even giving the SAT score that got him into Stanford (1210 old style, equal to about 1300 today -- the same as George W. Bush's score, by the way).

The job of mayor of San Antonio is almost wholly ceremonial. San Antonio has a city manager style of government, with a $355,000 per year city manager hired by the city council. Castro only gets paid about $4,000 per year to do whatever it is he does.

The reason Castro can afford to have his fake job is because Democratic power broker Mikal Watts, a John Edwards-style plaintiff's attorney, gave him and his identical twin brother a huge amount of money for a "referral."

Good point.

Fresno lawyer extrordinaire observes about Eva Longoria's speech:

Eva Longoria is a very good advocate of traditional GOP principles. You know, like paying student loan debt rather than it being forgiven, hard work and a healthy environment for small business. Unfortunately, those ideals are inconsistent with Democratic policy and platform, so it's unclear to me why she is speaking to the Democratic Convention.

I got your blooper reel right here.

John Kerry wants to talk about "blooper reels" on "overseas trips"?

Let's remember this classic bit of comedy called "the President accidentally miscues the band to play "God save the Queen" during his toast."


Lucille Ball couldn't have done it better.

The Alternate Universe reveals itself in so many ways - "In this idyllic landscape of Democratic magical thinking, there is no state and local budget crises...Wish I could live there."

From Reason:

CHARLOTTE—What was your favorite unintentionally revealing moment of Tuesday night's kickoff of the Democratic National Convention? Was it the welcome-to-Charlotte video whose narrator let slip that "government is the only thing that we all belong to"? Perhaps Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn's exhortation to "make the will of the people the law of the land"? Or former Ohio gov. Ted Strickland's thunderous, populist twaddle about "economic patriotism"?

All of these were fun, but for me the biggest direct reveal of how current Democratic rhetoric leads to bad public policy was one of the evening's honorary former Republicans, Cincinnati firefighter Doug Stern. "The Republican Party left people like me," Stern complained. "Somewhere along the way, being a public employee—someone who works for my community—made me a scapegoat for the GOP. Thank goodness we have leaders like President Obama and Vice President Biden who still believe that public service is an honorable calling."

It was classic major-party Manicheasm: Eastasians do bad things for the simple reason that their hearts are bad; Eurasians' hearts are good, so they don't do bad things.

In this idyllic landscape of Democratic magical thinking, there is no state and local budget crises, no unaffordable and underfunded defined-benefit public pension obligations, nothing at all standing in the way of "investing" in our public safety, except (in ex-Republican Stern's words) "right-wing extremists." Vallejo, California is not bankrupt because of public employee pensions, and the rest of the state is not following suit. It's a hell of a place, this Democrat-land. Wish I could live there.

I might suspect that this Jon Stewart Schtick might be a set-up...

...except that the Reason bit isn't.

Compare

With

Tales from an Alternate Universe - "[T]here is a silent majority looking at this festival of the bizarre in Charlotte in absolute revulsion."

The "alternate universe" meme continues to grow.

Redstate offers its thoughts on "The Alternative Universe and the Media Feedback Loop":

Yesterday in Charlotte the Democratic National Convention began as amateurishly as President Obama’s first term has been. Three times Mayor Villaraigosa of Los Angeles tried to get a majority of Democratic delegates to agree to add God and Jerusalem back into the Democratic Platform. Three times he failed. But on the third time, he declared he heard a two-thirds vote for changing the platform. Debbie Wasserman Schultz lied again saying there was no fight and called it a “technical change”, but the Democratic delegates booed putting God and his holy city back into the Democratic Platform.

If booing God and his holy city is a part of the Democratic Convention happening in this universe, I’ll take the alternative universe Bill Clinton said the GOP lives in. This is why Barack Obama stands a good chance of losing. It is the Democrats who have disconnected from America.

And:

The Democrats and most of the mainstream media live in a symbiotic relationship and feedback loop. When Todd Akin says something dumb, the media seizes on it and attacks Todd Akin and the GOP. For the past several weeks the media has fixated on how out of touch the GOP is, its platform is, and its Presidential candidate is.

At the same time, the media has been largely silent on the Democratic Platform except for yesterday’s ridiculousness. Even then, the media mostly failed to point out that the Obama campaign said it had approved the platform removing God and Jerusalem, while going to great lengths to point out Obama intervened to put them back in.

Meanwhile, the Democrats booed God and his holy city the day after claiming we all belong the government as if it is some sort of Rotary Club.

This becomes the fatal problem for the Democrats — the media reinforces that the Democrats are grounded in reality and connected to America when they are not.

The Democrats actually have a very extremist position on abortion. The media that spent so long focused on the GOP’s position has barely dealt with the Democrats. Why? Because most of the mainstream media is in ideological lockstep with the Democrats on this. It’s hard to tell the Democrats they’ve gone too far astray from mainstream America when the mainstream media is over on the lefthand side to begin with.

The Democrats, in other words, overplayed their hand on the War on Women and there is no media voice they listen to saying, “Hold up, you’ve gone too far.” Most of the media is with or to the left of the Democrats on this. For a year now you and I have been hearing about the growing secularization of and atheism in America. I now see that’s no longer a coincidence, but another effort to feed the Democrats’ feedback loop in much the same way polls were being churned out in the press in 2010 showing how popular Obamacare would be despite all objective polling showing it was not.

Consequently, the Democrats turned Sandra Fluke and Elizabeth Warren into cult heroes on feminism and liberal issues. Barack Obama utters, “you didn’t build that” and the Democrats start their convention telling us we all belong to the government. They get rid of God and Jerusalem, give a podium to two disastrous speeches by Fluke and Warren that I’m willing to bet did more harm than good, hand much of the rest of the convention over to abortion rights activists, see MSNBC hosts wear buttons with uteruses on them, and think that they are connecting with middle America because the media is not raising red flags in the way the media does with the GOP.

The feedback loop between the Democrats and the media has pushed the Democrats well outside the mainstream and I believe there is a silent majority looking at this festival of the bizarre in Charlotte in absolute revulsion. They hear “fair share” and cringe. They hear Bill Clinton ask if people are better off than they were four years ago and are shocked the Democrats yell back “yes.”

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news...

The Democrats refuse to talk about the poor and the unemployed.

Obviously, if a Republican in the White House, this would be evidence that they were heartless and out of touch with the concerns of Americans.

Democrats are in favor of "choice."

Their choice.

You must submit.



Fargin' hypocrites.

Great moments in Democracy.

Brooklyn member of the House of Representatives decries the slavery that existed in Brooklyn in 1898 under the perfidious Dutch.

We are so boned as a nation.

Ha! My "alternate universe" meme is spreading!

Even the Washington Post and Anderson Cooper can see it.

Democratic National Committee chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s insistence that there had been no controversy brought CNN’s Anderson Cooper to declare she was operating in an “alternate universe.”

Here's the rest of the story:

Wednesday was a wonderful political day for Republicans. Let’s recap. The day started off with the flap over platform language. That in turn led to the spectacle of Democratic delegates booing the vote to put back Jerusalem and God back into the platform. It was even in the eyes of the most Obama-sympathetic media a horrid disruption, signaling both incompetence and hostility to things that many if not most Americans hold dear. The news got worse as Politico reported that the president had signed off on the platform sans God and Jerusalem. The Romney camp could hardly believe the avalanche of atrocious press. (Democratic National Committee chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s insistence that there had been no controversy brought CNN’s Anderson Cooper to declare she was operating in an “alternate universe.”)

It was a remarkable, actual newsmaking episode, something we rarely get at conventions. Moreover, it was the worst blunder in a scripted TV event in recent memory.

Until the appearance of Bill Clinton, the parade of speakers were cartoonishly angry figures, mouthing the “Bain is evil” and pro-abortion platitudes. It managed to be both dull and over-the-top, and moreover lacking any appreciation for how bad is the economy, the number one concern of voters, really is. Had a Republican convention ignored the economic and human misery like this the media surely would have decried the “insensitivity” and “cluelessness.”

None of this was aimed at undecided voters, and the message was so tired and worn you have too wonder if it really connected with base voters. If Michelle Obama was inclusive and positive,; these folks were negative, accusatory and predictable.

Then came Sandra Fluke. If you think women are victims and have a right to free birth control, you were enraptured. But aside from that sliver of already devoted Obama supporters did this help the Democrats? It is very hard to see how.

Next came Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. Her boiler-plate appeals to fairness and attacks on Mitt Romney went over very well with the crowd, and naturally the press corps. But for any independent voter or uncertain voter, she was simply a cookie-cutter liberal Democrat.

Maybe this is all invigorating for the base. But frankly they could have skipped the entire evening and done as well, or better (at least avoiding the Israel debacle). The build up to Bill Clinton was a downer, a sign that the current Democratic Party is living off trite phrases and nostalgia. Not a good sign for a president wanting to take the country “forward.”

Deep down...not that deep down...barely concealed...well, actually, it's open and obvious...

...the Democrats do not like mainstream American religion or Christians or both.

Further tales from an alternate reality.

Democrats reject gift baskets from a consortium of mainstream churches:

The Democratic National Committee banned dozens of Charlotte churches from distributing gift baskets to delegates because the congregations hold values that are contrary to the party platform, according to local religious leaders.

“They told us our views on women’s rights are contrary to the Democratic party platform,” said David Benham, the lead organizer of the Charlotte714 religious movement.

Charlotte714 is a group of more than 100 churches across the region that mobilized to pray for the Democratic National Convention. More than 9,000 people gathered last Sunday for a time of worship and prayer in advance of the convention.
A gathering of some 200 Muslims praying in Charlotte was given extensive national coverage. The massive Christian received scant coverage.

Benham said the name references an Old Testament passage in 2 Chronicles 7:14 – calling the nation to prayer.

He said 56 churches wanted to “Adopt-a-Delegation.” They put together gift baskets featuring Carolina Pralines and a letter welcoming them to the city and offering assistance in transportation, childcare or spiritual matters.

“We were just trying to display Southern hospitality,” he said. “We wanted them to know we were happy to serve them.”

However, DNC officials conveyed to city leaders that the Christians would not be allowed to present their gift baskets.

“I got a call from the mayor’s office speaking on behalf of the convention and they asked us not to participate,” he said. “They told us our views on women’s rights are contrary to the platform.”

Benham said he was shocked because all the churches involved are mainline denominations ranging from Baptists and Methodists to Assembly of God.

“I was blown away and could not believe it,” he told Fox News.

So instead of gift baskets, Benham asked if they could send welcome letters to the delegates. Again, he said the DNC refused – because the churches hold pro-life values.

“They responded back and said no because our views on women,” he said. “They would not allow it.”

Benham said it is true that all the churches are pro-life – but the baskets did not include a single political or pro-life message. They just wanted to give them regional candies and a welcome letter.

A spokesman for the city of Charlotte referred comments to the DNC. The DNC did not return numerous calls seeking comment.

The DNC is totally living up to its potential!

Democrats continue to demonstrate that they have nothing in common with normal America.

Democrats boo both God and Jerusalem.

Further tales from an Alternate Reality.

Dems narrowly pass amendment to platform re-affirming existence of God (sort of) and that the capitol of Israel is Jerusalem.

Ayes and Nayes sounded pretty similar to me, but Chairman Villaraigosa knew which way the vote had to go.

Booing and consternation ensue.



Good times, good times.