MaxRedline

They're Called Dimocrats For A Reason

Pew Political IQ Poll: Republicans Consistently More Knowledgeable

When it comes to current political understanding, Pew Research has shown that Republicans consistently outperform Dimocrats, and often by double-digit margins.

A September 2007 quizshowed more Republicans than Democrats could identify even the Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

An April 2007 Pew Quizshowed this about partisan difference: "Republicans and Democrats are equally likely to be represented in the high-knowledge group. But significantly fewer Republicans (26%) than Democrats (31%) fall into the third of the public that knows the least."

And the latest poll, conducted only days ago, shows Dims continuing their trend of cluelessness.

For Dimocratic politicians, things are getting a little unnerving.  It's starting to look like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are leading the Donner Party, the snowbound emigrants who bogged down in the Sierra Nevada winter in the 1840s and resorted to cannibalism to survive.

Don't "Upgrade' Just Yet

Windoze 7 "upgrades" have been trashing a lot of systems.  You may want to wait a bit.

2nd Amendment Turned Back In Court

It doesn't matter if you have a permit, landlords can ban gun possession by renters.  This ruling is clearly unconstitutional.

Oh, Wu Gotta Be Kidding

This came into the mailbox (produced and mailed by your tax dollars, of course).

 
Making Oregon a model for the nation?  

"Congressman David Wu:  Making Oregon a National Model for Green Homes, Offices, and Jobs"

Has this guy noticed the unemployment rate in the state?  Oregon is currently number 2 in the world for taxation, but the state's still broke.  This is a model for the nation?

Moral Morons

Oregon governor Ted Kulongoski shared his sense of spirituality with a reporterette from NPR during the course of a fly-fishing trip.  The article's just a brief puff-piece; the real meat comes in the third comment, posted by Fred Leonhardt.

And according to the kids over at Willamette Week, the going just got a lot tougher for Portland's pervy "mayor", Sam Adams:  the new recall effort is gaining momentum.  Not only is former state Senator Avel Gordly heading it up, not only have prominent business owners Tim Boyle (Columbia Sportswear) and Ron Tonkin (All for the love of cars) signed up as contributors and then some, but a couple more prominent folks have stepped up: Andrew Miller, the CEO of Portland-based Stimson Lumber and Peter Stott, the former CEO of Crown Pacific Partners and now the CEO of the Portland real estate firm SKB.

So, will Sam resign before the fecal material hits the turbine?  Unlikely.  Judgement has never been his strong suit.

Better yet: once Sam's removed from office, Tonkin has suggested that he'll run to replace him.  Of course, he'd never win.  Portlanders have shown time and again that they prefer incompetence in city management.

Mutiny

New York Republicans decided to run Scozzafava against Democrat Owens, but unexpectedly, a conservative jumped in.  Daily Kos endorsed Dede, as did other far-leftists.  What was a battle between two leftists is now a battle between one leftist and one conservative - Scozzafava's essentially out of the running, according to a Washington Post pundit and a number of others.  Newt Gingrich endorsed Dede, but Pawlenty and Palin broke ranks and went with conservative Hoffman.

Conservatives realize that their decision may well put a Democrat in the House district for the first time in decades, but they're out to teach Republicans a long-overdue lesson: Republicans are running out-of-touch candidates, and conservatives are fed up.  The special election may put Owens into the House, but he'd do well not to unpack, as he'll be up for re-election next year.  The question at this point is whether or not the Republican establishment is going to be able to deal with the clear message that's being sent.

The New World Order

The Fall Of The Republic is a spooky piece that goes far toward explaining why conservatives are looking at shaking things up.  It's why Hoffman is receiving support in the New York election campaign today, while "Republican" Scozzafava is dying fast.  There is increasing recognition among conservatives that the Republican party and the Democrat party are two sides of the same coin.  Why were Republicans run out of office?  Because once elected, they behaved exactly like little Democrats.  There was no discernible difference, save one: You knew what you were getting with the Democrats, while Republicans promised one thing, then did the opposite.

PERS

Oregon's Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) is once again being given a bit of scrutiny in the Big Zero.  As always, the Zero's way late to the party; most folks who've been paying any attention have seen the issue looming for half a dozen years.  Vallejo, CA has been in bankruptcy proceedings for well over a year, and other cities are waiting in the wings as the drama plays out.

The problems associated with PERS and similar programs don't lie so much with the employees themselves as with the politicians, judges, and other overseers who inserted themselves into the system.  In a proper pension program, the employers would not have any personal financial stake in the program.  Historically, that's been the case in most private-sector programs.  But we're talking about politicians, here.

And they want their cut.

So in Oregon, just about every politician and bureaucrat in every level of government has been enrolled in PERS.  And the benefits paid by PERS are calculated upon the basis of the highest rate of pay received during the course of a career.  Legislators tend to have fairly short careers, but bureaucrats don't.  So when "governor" Kulongoski bumped up the pay of 100 or so of his favorites, he locked them into the higher rates of PERS "compensation".  Hey, it's only money.  It's only Democratic.

One of the interesting features of PERS is that it's a no-lose proposition.  If the people making the bets and running the show happen to lose, it's not a big deal - positive results are guaranteed.  Any shortfalls must be covered by the various governmental agencies.  Sweet!

Ah, but who pays for all of these agencies?  Who ultimately covers the shortfalls of inept administrators?

Who allowed legislators, judges, and others to become part of a pension program in which they have not only a clear interest - but the power to write the rules by which the program operates?

South Kensingham Science Museum Poll Backfires

The museum’s Prove It! website, which is designed to influence politicians at the Copenhagen climate summit in December, allows members of the public to pledge their support, or lack of it, to the environmentalist cause.

But so far those backing the campaign are out-numbered nearly six-to-one by opponents. 

At the launch, a statement from the Science Museum said: "We're convinced climate change is caused by humans and requires urgent action."

Well, of course they're convinced - they'd be convinced that the moon actually is composed of cheese if it would gain them funding.

Increasingly, however, people have come to understand that "Man-made" global warming, climate change, or whatever the next buzzwords may be are ultimately driven not by science, but by money, politics, and control.

Humans aren't able to significantly affect long-term climate conditions, and despite the hype, most people realize that.  They also understand that the goal of most politicians is the imposition of control.  "Man-made" climate change seemed like a sure fit - right up until folks caught onto the scam.

As politicians want to control things, then they should set their sights upon things that can actually be affected.  This means that they should question conventional wisdom.  Unfortunately, that involves mental exercise.

Conventional wisdom, a term coined by economist John Galbraith, essentially reflects convenience: it is simple, comfortable, and by no means neccesarily true.  Conventional wisdom, for example, suggests that schoolchildren who pass tests with relatively high scores must have been learning.  Bush's "No Child Left Behind" program was based in this tenet of conventional wisdom.  It was simple, it was comfortable.  It was wrong.

It failed to consider a fundamental aspect of human behavior: cheating.  It also failed to consider who, exactly, might be doing the cheating.  However, a study conducted in (where else?) Chicago demonstrated conclusively that (presumably because it was in their best interests to have high numbers of students pass) teachers inflated scores.

Increasingly, conventional wisdom is shown to be unwise, yet it is a daily aspect of life for those who follow news media.  It's what they "report", and rarely do they stray.

Uh-Oh. Dede's Got Issues.

The upstate New York race has taken a defensive turn.  So-called Republican Dede Scozzafava, who counts among her supporters none other than Markos Moulitsas of Leftist "Daily Kos" fame is being outrun by an actual Conservative.  She's really angry.  This is an affront to her, as a conservative Republican.

Wait.  She's supported by Leftists, she supports taxpayer-funded abortion, she supports redefining marriage, she supports union card-check legislation, but she calls herself a Republican - and worse yet, a "conservative".  Yet she employs typical Democrat tactics:

Scozzafava's problems as a candidate aren't limited to ideology. She simply rubs people the wrong way. The Siena poll reported that--by a 16-point margin--voters who had seen her commercials found that the ads made "them less likely to support her." "Let me tell you something," Scozzafava says at the conclusion of her seven-minute speech at the Elks Lodge. "The best revenge in all of this--because it's been ugly and nasty, my family has been personally attacked, I've been attacked, there's been lies--that the best revenge in the end is to win."

I experienced firsthand Scozzafava's politics of personal revenge at the Elks Lodge event. After I persisted in asking her questions about card-check, taxpayer-funding of abortion, and whether her pledge not to raise taxes meant she'd vote against any health care bill that raised taxes, her husband--a local union boss--called the police.

Officer Brandi Groman showed up in a squad car with its lights flashing minutes later. "Maybe we do things a little differently here, but you know, persistence in that area, you scared the candidate a little bit," Officer Groman told me, as she took down my name, date of birth, and home address.

Newt supports the idiot.  Palin has endorsed the actual conservative in the race.  Newt's likely eyeing the 2012 run, though of course it's too early to make a move.  For me, it comes to this: Newt believes in supporting anybody who claims to hold an (R) next to their name.  Palin clearly is willing to ignore affiliation in favor of conservative principles.  So am I.