Politics – Page 103 – Shall Not Be Questioned

A Lack of Faith in Obama’s Response?

I haven’t been able to follow much news since Friday because I’ve been behind the wheel of a car for hours on end every day. However, I just loaded up HootSuite to see this tweet:

pool corrects: Romney camp raised 10 million over the last 2 days (yesterday and today) not 10 day

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) July 23, 2012

Um, I might venture a guess that it means some constituencies around the country don’t have much faith in Obama’s response to the issues of the last few days. It seems to be a perfect storm to prompt a few groups to action.

Gun Owners: We’re a given. Gun owners are worried about what kind of gun control may be headed our way. Bloomberg was out of the gate with demands for more gun control before many on the East Coast had even tuned in to the morning news. The typical anti-gun leaders have been all over the media calling for more action. Don’t even get me started on the crap on social networking sites – celebrities wondering why guns are still legal at all in America and some pretty hateful comments from political activists. Most pundits agree that it’s not going to happen, but we need to see what they are going try rally support to ban.

Conservatives of All Stripes: Thanks to Brian Ross, everyone who has any opinion that maybe the country’s financial house could be in better order with less spending was attached to this plot inaccurately. The fact that a major media outlet would allow a reporter to go on the air with such a patently false and poorly “researched” assertion cemented in the minds of many voters that the media will go to any length to discredit a conservative message. The fact that Brian Ross still has his title of “Chief Investigative Correspondent” when he clearly is not capable of seriously investigating even the simplest of facts before going to air with such slander against a private citizen only adds fuel to the fire.

So, the great irony in this situation is that Obama might not actually have to do a thing in order to motivate the GOP base and GOP-leaning voters for Mitt. His base and perceived surrogates are doing a great job at convincing voters to flock to the other guy if this fundraising haul is any indication.

ATF Boss Crushing Whistleblowing

Dave Hardy notes that the new boss ain’t much different from the old. In other news, it seems if I don’t post, someone else won’t come along and do it for me. Who knew?

The Corruption of Chief Ramsey

Anti-gun Philly police commissioner may have been guilty of some violations of the Uniform Firearms Act himself. It seems he was never sworn as a law enforcement officer in Pennsylvania until recently. An attorney alleges this constitutes a violation of Pennsylvania law, including gun laws, and demands that someone bring charges. The law… psssht… that’s only for the little people.

Good Ad for Gun Owners

From John Richardson, who says “I think it is an effective and well done advertisement.”

I agree. I think it’s a lot more direct, and cuts to the real issue this November. I like it better than the “All In” rhetoric NRA’s PR firm came up with, which I think is cheesy.

No Knock Gone Wrong

Cops knock on the wrong house, a man answers with a gun, and the man ends up dead. I feel fortunate to live in a good neighborhood where SWAT raids are not a regular occurrence, because if someone breaks down my door early in the morning, without announcing their intentions, I’d probably be found in the same position: SWAT team in the living room with me visibly armed. I’d likely suffer the same fate unless I can ascertain they are indeed police officers quickly enough.

I would point out, if it wasn’t for the War on Drugs, we’d have relatively little need for this kind of military tactic. No knock warrants are generally used to prevent destruction of evidence, which if you’re going to do, you had better be sure the crime warrants putting people’s lives at risk. I don’t think preventing people from getting high is worth that, personally.

Romney – Rice 2012: Not Gonna Happen

I have to admit, I’d be pretty stoked if Romney picked Condi. But it’s not going to happen. If Mitt nominates a pro-choice, pro-gay-marriage, pro-gun candidate, I’ll eat my hat. Mitt has enough troubles with the SoCos, given that he used to be pro-choice, and once engaged in platitudes about gay rights when he was Governor of Massachusetts. They’ll string him up if it’s Condi.

Knife Preemption Introduced in Pennsylvania

The folks at Knife Rights have managed to get a bill introduced. The bill would also remove automatic knives from Pennsylvania’s list of prohibited offensive weapons. Knife preemption is something we badly need in Pennsylvania, especially for people who regularly travel into Philadelphia. I welcome this progress, even if it’s going to be a long road ahead to even get this bill a hearing.

We Need an Antibiotic Prize

It’s rare that I call for government intervention, but because government already raises the cost of drug development to such stratospheric heights, if they don’t do something to encourage new antimicrobial drugs to be developed, we’re going to be very very screwed. By the time this rises to the level of a real crisis (e.g. when there are enough sick people dying of diseases that haven’t been lethal for years) it’ll already be too late, and you’ll be waiting a decade or more before any effort started at the point of a crisis come to fruition.

The problem is this: new antibiotics are difficult to find, and any new antibiotic that would hit the market is practically guaranteed to be held in reserve for infections that can’t be treated by current antibiotics. The market will tend to be small. Because of these market realities, there have only been two novel classes of antibiotics produced in the past 40 years.

I would suggest a prize of sufficient size to guarantee a hefty return on investment to any research team or company that can successfully bring a new class of antibiotic to market, and that has a reasonable safety and pharmacological profile. For libertarians that are uncomfortable with government involvement with the market, you can justify it with the fact that antimicrobials are a critical component of our war fighting capacity as a nation. There’s definitely a military justification to spawn new development. The fact is that without some kind of incentive, new antibiotics just are not going to be developed, and I don’t think you’ll have any luck convincing the American people to drop the FDA requirements that raise the barriers for new drugs entering the market. A prize is the most efficient way to deal with this kind of problem.

ATF Using Bogus Brady Campaign Statistics

This is often a problem when we have unfriendly administrations in the White House. The ATF has maintained a sometimes cozy relationship with the anti-gun movement, which hasn’t exactly helped ATF achieve its mission. In order for ATF to be effective, they can’t be seen as working with the enemies of firearm freedom, and the fact that they often are, is what destroys their credibility with our community, and our cooperation is necessary for that mission to be fulfilled.

What If There’s a Tie?

I know that the readership of this blog isn’t likely to need an explanation of what happens if the Electoral College ties. We know that it goes to the House of Representatives. But what about the actual votes from the House; how many folks have sat around discussing that aspect? I’ll be honest and say I haven’t really thought about it. The default thinking is that if the House is controlled by the GOP, they will vote for Romney. Of course, it’s not quite that simple…

Nonetheless, the fact remains that there are so many different ways to reach a tie that it behooves both sides to start dossiers on every House member to figure if any of them might be moved, under certain circumstances, to vote against their party, or to abstain. In the House, the vote is done not by individual member, but by state delegation. A state like Minnesota, with four Republicans and four Democrats, would presumably vote â€œpresentâ€ unless a member didnâ€™t vote for his/her own partyâ€™s nominee. By my armchair projections, Romney would probably win the support of about 28 delegations (26 are needed to win) â€” but several of those delegations would be by one-vote margins, meaning that if my projection is slightly off, or if a Member could be convinced to switch parties or to abstain, the margin would be even smaller.

How could this happen? Well, imagine a 269-269 Electoral College tie, but with Obama building up such large margins in populous states like New York and California that he wins a clear popular-vote margin. Cue the Occupy movement to protest in favor of the House voting to ratify the popular vote rather than by party. Cue the media to overwhelmingly push that same notion. Now look at a few GOP House members who won by only narrow margins, but in districts carried by Obama, where the media message would be that they have a duty to vote with the majority of their constituents. Obviously, all of this could get very dicey indeed.

Looking at your state, how do you think they could vote if it did result in a House vote?

For Pennsylvania, we’ll have 18 Congressmen. Five of those will absolutely be Democrats. One more will very likely be a Democrat. Six are safe for the Republicans, with five likely to lean that way. One is a GOP seat right now, but a true toss-up. I would say that Romney will have a solid lead in enough of the GOP districts that he’ll come out okay even with the Philly media going nuts over how it’s just not fair that we have to follow that stupid Constitution and the stupid election laws that allow those stupid Republicans to even have a vote.

UPDATE: And Dave Adams of VSSA has posted about how Virginia’s delegation could possibly vote if the presidential race went to the House. He outlines legitimate ways in which it could be 6-5 in either direction.