Free Republic

I noticed something that seems pretty disturbing.  If you look at how much our government is adding to the debt every year and compare it to how much the economy has grown every year, you see that the economy isn't growing at all outside of government stimulus.  And I'm not talking about just now when we have an anti-American, anti-free market President who is only interested in giving handouts to his special interest groups (though his numbers look pretty catastrophic now when we add over a trillion every year to the debt and only get a meager few hundred billion...

Over the last almost 50 years, two economic indicators, have done a great job predicting the vote share of incumbents in Presidential elections (note I used vote share vs. the main opponent to adjust out the third party candidacies), real GDP growth and consumer confidence. Each has a correlation of 0.8 with vote share and each suggest that Obama will not be able to get 50% in a two way race with Romney. Let's start with real GDP growth (more precisely, real quarterly GDP growth compared to the prior year during the quarter prior to the election): As you can...

Today is just an awful day. If Bush-appointed Justice Roberts had only voted with the rest of the conservatives, we would have been rid of all of Obamacare, not just the mandate, as their dissenting opinion implies. Once again, decisions that George W. Bush are turning out to be disastrous for those of us who believe in individual liberty and limited government.  Let's just do a quick run down shall we? Appointed Ben Bernanke to be Fed Chair.  How he could appoint the guy who actually hired Paul Krugman at Princeton to run our money supply is beyond me.  Bernanke...

While listening to the Jamie Dimon testimony before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee today, I was struck by a comment by one of the Senators.  He mentioned that he had heard, but hasn't verified, that in the last year no new bank charters were granted.  If true that is very damning.  We know that banks continue to shutter and if no new ones come on to take their place, that could explain some of our current malaise.  It looks like what that Senator had heard is true.  Here is what I got from the FDIC statistics: So...

Today, during his press conference, Obama said something that just blows the mind: Question: What about the Republicans saying that you're blaming the Europeans for the failures of your own policies? President Obama: The truth of the matter is that, as I said, we created 4.3 million jobs over the last 27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone. The private sector is doing fine. Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government. Oftentimes cuts initiated by, you know, Governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have...

I'm done.  I'm a lifelong Republican and I'm done.  I've been a Republican since I was 6 and I saw Reagan speak on our old 13" black and white television set about freedom and about the evils of the Soviet Union, where I was born.  I grew up listening to Reagan and I kind of always thought that he was what the Republican Party stood for.  For individual liberty at home & abroad.  "Moderates" like George H. W. Bush seemed like some sort of aberration to me, an exception to the conservative Republican rule.  Looking back though, it's pretty clear...

I've noticed a lot of talk and a lot of hope being pinned on a brokered convention as possibly our last best hope to keep Romney from being nominated. My advice: don't bet on it. Oh sure, Romney might very well be denied enough delegates to ensure the nomination before the convention (all it probably takes is Newt or Santorum dropping out and endorsing the other) but I fail to see the possibility of him not being nominated in Tampa in such a scenario. Based on both his hard bound and total delegate lead, it seems very likely that he...

It's time to stop dilly-dallying. Super Tuesday is upon us and with that, the nomination race could be all but over unless conservatives and libertarians finally unite behind one candidate, a candidate who can beat both Romney AND Obama. That candidate needs to be Newt. Among the not-Romney's he is the only one who can unite the party. Economic conservatives like him because he balanced the budget and reformed welfare. Defense hawks like him because he is the most hawkish of the lot. Social conservatives, when they can get past his personal life, like him for his strong record on...

On December 8, 2005 Romney reversed the legal opinion of his own State Department of Public Health, instructing all Catholic hospitals and others to provide the chemical Plan B “morning after pill” to rape victims. He was quoted as saying, ““I think, in my personal view, it’s the right thing for hospitals to provide information and access to emergency contraception to anyone who is a victim of rape.” ... When Romney was asked in the debate if he had required Catholic hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims and had infringed on Catholics’ rights, he responded, “No, absolutely not....

Now that all of the candidates have been properly vetted it seems pretty clear to me that Newt is the most electable GOP candidate. That is not to say that he will have an easy time against Obama as historically it is very tough to unseat incumbents (it took a Reagan to beat the disastrous Carter and even then it was pretty close until the debate a week before the election) but he would have the best chance out of the current crop. Mitt Romney would do more to fracture the GOP than anyone else in recent history and much...

The market's up, Real GDP was up 2.8% in the fourth quarter of 2011 and unemployment is down to 8.3%, you should be happy as the economy seems to be finally getting out of its slump.  Instead, you, as they did in Star Wars, "have a bad feeling about this".  Well, there is good reason for this as the economy is nowhere near as good as the headline statistics are saying and some are showing that it's getting worse. The Bureau of Economic Analysis itself admitted that over 1.9% of the 2.8% growth we saw in the 4th quarter came...

After Obama released his disastrous budget yesterday, I was looking through some of the historical budget data and came upon something interesting which really hit the importance of entitlement reform home.  If you look at outlays as a % of GDP, you see that discretionary spending (everything from wars to the Department of Education) has actually fallen over the last 50 years and is clearly not the source of government largesse, at least in terms of spending (regulations are a different story).  What really is busting the budget are the "mandatory" items like social security and medicare.  Just take a...

The Diocese of Allentown has enlisted its workers in a fight to defeat an Obama administration mandate that religious employers pay for contraceptives and other reproductive health care services. Unless the rule is overturned, the Catholic diocese would end health care benefits altogether for about 1,000 teachers, administrators and other employees when it takes effect in August 2013, the diocese warned in a letter last week. "The Church cannot be placed in the moral position of directly funding abortions and contraception through these imposed health care reforms," diocese Vicar General Alfred A. Schlert wrote to employees. "Therefore, the only option...

A couple of polls came out from Public Policy Polling this weekend showing that Santorum seems to be replacing Newt Gingrich as the main "not Romney" candidate in Minnesota and Colorado. There seems to be a desire to "give another conservative a chance" as well as to potentially field a candidate without as much baggage as Newt so that Mitt Romney's negative ad carpet bombing will not be as effective. I think though that this reasoning is fallacious and switching support from Newt to Santorum at this point would be a major mistake. Let's just look at what I believe...

I've written about this quite a few times before (most recently here). Essentially, the unemployment number reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is complete fiction as millions of workers have been thrown out of the labor force, artificially lowering the unemployment rate. If you look at the labor force participation rate, it is now at multi-decade lows: As you can see, the labor force participation rate is now down over 2% since Obama has taken office. Some would argue that this is due to demographics, as baby boomers leave the labor force as they reach retirement. The problem with...

Well, look, either you'll have an extremist conservative, be it Gingrich or Santorum, in which case I think it will make a big difference which of the two comes in. If it's between Obama and Romney, there isn't all that much difference except for the crowd that they bring with them. --George Soros Since what I am writing is probably blasphemy to a lot of Republicans, let me just begin by saying that I have considered myself a Republican since I was 6 years old (when I first saw a Reagan press conference) and would never ever vote for...

Mitt Romney, his family, staff and supporters donated a combined $66,000 to help Tim Pawlenty retire the debt left over from his presidential campaign. Romney, his wife, five sons and brother, as well as his associates from Bain Capital were among those cutting maximum checks to Pawlenty, according to a POLITICO analysis of campaign filings released Tuesday. Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor, dropped out of the race last summer after a disappointing showing in the Ames straw poll, and quickly endorsed Romney. At the time, there was talk that Romney’s campaign would help Pawlenty’s retire its debt, then in the...

A couple of years ago, when people started mentioning the idea of the Tea Party becoming its own stand-alone political party, I immediately thought it was a bad idea, one that would guarantee victory to the Democrats. But lately, thanks to the establishment trying to ram Democrat-lite Mitt Romney down our throats, I've started thinking it might not actually be a bad idea and might actually increase the chance of a conservative taking the White House. Right now, the establishment of the GOP has a laser focus on appealing to moderates, the thought being that the base of the party...

Romney will stoop to any level to get someone to be his surrogate. He already offered a job to the Florida Attorney General, Pam Bondi, who surprise, surprise, is now vocally supporting him on Greta. Jim Robinson also writes about it here: Here is the appropriate part of the code: Title 18, Part I, Chapter 29, Section 599 of the U.S. Code: Whoever, being a candidate, directly or indirectly promises or pledges the appointment, or the use of his influence or support for the appointment of any person to any public or private position or employment, for the purpose of...

While in the midst of some intense internecine warfare within the GOP it is sometimes easy to forget exactly what this election is about. It is about getting Barack Obama out of office and making America great again (which will involve fixing all of his numerous mistakes). Anyway, last night's State of the Union address was an excellent reminder of all of this. It's hard to read such tripe even to make fun of it by below are some key excerpts with color commentary from myself: On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of...