Liberal = Forced

Op-Ed Columnist - Have a Nice Day - NYTimes.com

Friedman is a smart guy. At one time he seemed to have a pretty good handle on what global competition means, but lately he seems to have decided that we are too much at peril from global warming to keep being competitive. He makes this rather straight forward statement relative to solar energy:

The reason that all these other countries are building solar-panel industries today is because most of their governments have put in place the three prerequisites for growing a renewable energy industry: 1) any business or homeowner can generate solar energy; 2) if they decide to do so, the power utility has to connect them to the grid; and 3) the utility has to buy the power for a predictable period at a price that is a no-brainer good deal for the family or business putting the solar panels on their rooftop.

I'm always impressed at how quickly the leftward leaning fall into the force mode -- "has to"! They are all about "choice" as long as it is offing the unborn, same sex marriage, or paying taxes (as long as you are a Democrat), but for the stuff they get interested in, "has to" arrives very quickly. A few laws for public safety and preventing crime isn't enough for them -- they need to have a law for every aspect of your life, your companies life, and if possible, the lives of everyone in the "universe" (as in "universal" health care).

 Businesses, markets and such are just not as smart as "the experts" ... although we find out over and over that they are.  

Charles on BO and the Truth

RealClearPolitics - Does He Lie?

Great column, just read it.

Czars!

Nuff said!

Wilson Gauranteed Not Racist

Jimmy Carter Cites 'Racisim' in Joe Wilson's Outburst

If Jimmuh thinks Joe is a racist, that is absolute proof to me that he isn't. It seemed like Jimmuh was right one time, but then he changed his mind.

ACORN Video

Just take the time to watch it, and THEN give just a TINY bit of thought. This ranks amoung the most AMAZING things I've ever seen!! In some ways I almost hope it is a hoax -- one would think it almost has to be. If it isn't, the level of corruption in the Democrat party and the MSM is WAY beyond anything I ever imagined.

If true (which I find increasingly hard to imagine, but if NOT true, why doesn't someone expose them???to one of the liberal dodges to press bias."They just print what sells". Are you KIDDING!!! We have a cute young woman, scantilly dressed running around looking like the college Halloween party version of Pimp and Hooker, but it is WORKING, over and over with employees of a national organization that has both helped and been paid by the current President!!! BO wanted to have these stooges do the CENSUS for crying out loud. The ONLY sort of legit job that BO ever had was as one of these folks!!!!

You've got sex, scandal, stupidity cubed, connection with the President. This is a GREAT story -- except, except -- well, it is the MSM's guy!!! They can't run this, it makes BO look like the idiot he is. If they could have had something like this connected to Bush, it would have been 24x7 -- "when will he resign"!!!

To Almost Get It

Op-Ed Columnist - High-Five Nation - NYTimes.com

Brooks sees the disease, and he ALMOST gets the cause:

And there was something else. When you look from today back to 1945, you are looking into a different cultural epoch, across a sort of narcissism line. Humility, the sense that nobody is that different from anybody else, was a large part of the culture then.

But that humility came under attack in the ensuing decades. Self-effacement became identified with conformity and self-repression. A different ethos came to the fore, which the sociologists call “expressive individualism.” Instead of being humble before God and history, moral salvation could be found through intimate contact with oneself and by exposing the beauty, the power and the divinity within.

Brooks is right -- most of the nation is self absorbed, self promoting, out to "get it all", "only going around once -- and grabbing for all the gusto". We used to have "shared values" -- actually we basically had ONE "shared value" -- that we were all children of God that would finally be judged by a standard that was much higher than our own. Gayle Sayers said it as "God is first, my friends are second, and I am third". I'd argue that God, Family, Friends, Country, and then self might be good, but the only REALLY important think is that God in position one. See, it IS always "God" in position #1 -- for some folks it is self, for some political party, for some money, for some the Packers (OK, so that one is hard for me) ... the point is that EVERY human has a "God" -- the issue is just which one.

The difference in America is that the vast majority of folks have took the eternal, the transcendent and the redeeming person of Christ out of their lives and replaced it with some earthly idol -- for a lot of folks and the media, it is his holiness BO, but one idol is pretty much like another.

The idea that of the supposed "civility thing" being somehow worse now is absurd. The Democrats booed Bush in at least '05 during the SOTU, and I think at other times. John MacEnroe made swearing at the line judges a standard part of tennis, and odd happenings at celebrety awards events are also so normal that they hardly bear reporting except for the media to make some tenuous connection with Joe Wilson and claim that somehow "town meetings" are responsible for the "loss of civility".

Egads, "Bush lied, people died", "Bush=Hitler" and at least some screaming and chanting set of protesters at any sort of a Republican event has been old hat for as long as I have known. It is true that it IS very different to get Republicans away from family, church, job, hobbies, volunteer work, etc to speak out. Democrats figure that leftward demonstrators are "comforting" and supposed "right wingers" are somehow "chilling". The left is always hot to defend your right to agree with them and pretty certain that anyone that doesn't agree with them is dangerous, racist, evil, stupid or all of the above. Democrats don't believe in debate -- they have all the correct positions, it is up to the Republicans to shut up, work hard and pay for whatever crazy scheme the Democrats dream up.

Nothing important ever changes. If it changes, it is just mechanism.

Admonish the Democrats!

The Democrats have gone nuttier than usual.

In the words of our most holy and illustrious leader, BO; "Wiith all that's going on in the country with health care and the economy and the wars abroad, it doesn't make sense to arrest a guy in his own home if he's not causing a serious disturbance."

That was over the Gates arrest, for which it made no sense at all -- it isn't a policeman's job to think about those issues, but it IS the job of congress!! Does it make any sense to take a day of Congressional time to admonish a guy who apologized already? Especially when Bush was booed at a SOTU by the Democrats and called a "liar" CONSTANTLY for saying that Saddam had WMD --- which Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Teddy Kennedy, Harry Reid, and virtually everyone else ALSO said?

We just got done with 6+ years when the MSM and the Democrats succeeded in making "Bush=Liar" essentially the national view over a position that their leadership virtually unanimously shared prior to the Iraq war.

But now when BO spews lies that he MUST know to be lies a mile a minute, it is a HUGE breach of decorum to call him on it? I agree it IS a breach of decorum (in congress) and the ONE Republican that told the truth from the floor OUGHT to have apologized ... which he did.That ought to have MORE than ended it given the past history of the other party.

Who Are they Kidding?

RealClearPolitics - The Media's Pathetic Double Standard

The link covers fairly well the amazing double standard in the MSM. Bush/Cheney were called every name in the book in any venue you can imagine. Bush was booed by Democrats during the SOTU.. **NOW** we are worried about "incivility"???

People are so biased they have lost all contact with reality.

Wisdom on Getting More

RealClearPolitics - Fables for Adults

Sowell is always a fount of wisdom. Here on how when you try to take something away from someone else -- Doctors, Insurance Companies, Rich People, etc, you can often end up losing what you have now.

Defining "Community Organizer" (ACORN)

Power Line - My Heroes

You really need to go off and watch at least a little of one of the videos -- remember, your tax dollars are helping fund ACORN!!

We have a "Community Organizer" as President. ACORN is "the Association of Community OrganNizers". Most people know very little about it because the MSM tells them very little about it. They ended up with indictments against them for voter fraud in how they got out the BO vote, they get millions in GOVERNMENT money as well as millions from Democrats. It is a really cozy relationship -- BO wanted them to do the census for him!!

A couple of young folks enterprisingly did a hidden camera operation posing as a pimp and a prostitute trying to get a house -- AFTER the Sub-Prime meltdown. ACORN took it in stride -- no concerns that they were going to import underage prostitutes (hey, 98% of prostitutes vote Democrat!!!), they were just interested in how they could scam the system in order to get a house! BTW, ACORN was a MAJOR part of creating the Sub-Prime debacle.

Don't see much MSM coverage of this!!!

Perspective of a Russion Immigrant

Take the time to read this. Someone else understands that while greed is a bad human propensity, so is envy. The result of greed as been proven to be more for all, but MUCH more for some. The result of envy driving a system is less in aggregate, far less for 98%, and a "decent living" for a couple % -- but only in relation to the impoverished 98%. Even the "richest" leaders in the USSR had less than the middle class in the US.

Read it and weep. We didn't know what we had, so now we are heading fast down the road to destruction.

The Perspective Of A Russian Immigrant

Posted by NFRA Staff • August 22, 2009 • Printer-friendly The Perspective of a Russian Immigrant, by Svetlana Kunin

In the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, I was taught to believe individual pursuits are selfish and sacrificing for the collective good is noble. 

In kindergarten we sang songs about Lenin, the leader of the Socialist Revolution. In school we learned about the beautiful socialist system, where everybody is equal and everything is fair; about ugly capitalism, where people are exploited and treat each other like wolves in the wilderness. 

Life in the USSR modeled the socialist ideal. God-based religion was suppressed and replaced with cultlike adoration for political figures. 

The government-assigned salary of the proletariat (blue-collar worker) was 30%-50% higher then any professional. Without incentive to improve their life, professionals drank themselves to oblivion. They — engineers, lawyers, doctors, teachers — earned a government-determined salary that barely covered the necessities, mainly food.
Raising children was a hardship. It took four to six adults (parents and grandparents) to support a child. The usual size of the postwar family was one or two children. Every woman had the right to have an abortion and most of them did, often without anesthesia.
There is a comparative historical reality that plays out the consequences of two competing ideologies: life in the USSR and in America. When the march to the worker's paradise — the Socialist Revolution — began in 1917, many people emigrated from Russia to the U.S. 

In the USSR, economic equality was achieved by redistributing wealth, ensuring that everyone remained poor, with the exception of those doing the redistributing. Only the ruling class of communist leaders had access to special stores, medicine and accommodations that could compare to those in the West. 

The rest of the citizenry had to deal with permanent shortages of food and other necessities, and had access to free but inferior, unsanitary and low-tech medical care. The egalitarian utopia of equality, achieved by the sacrifice of individual self-interest for the collective good, led to corruption, black markets, anger and envy.
Government-controlled health care destroyed human dignity. 

Chairman Nikita Khrushchev released facts about Stalin and his purges. People learned of the horrific purge of more than 20 million citizens, murdered as enemies of the state.
Those who left Russia found a different set of values in America: freedom of religion, speech, individual pursuits, the right to private property and free enterprise. The majority of those immigrants achieved a better life for themselves and their children in this capitalist land. 

These opportunities let the average immigrant live a better life than many elites in the Soviet Communist Party. The freedom to pursue personal self-interest led to prosperity. Prosperity generated charity, benefiting the collective good. 

The descendants of those immigrants are now supporting policies that move America away from the values that gave so many immigrants the chance of a better life. Policies such as nationalized medicine, high tax rates and government intrusion into free enterprise are being sold to us under the socialistic motto of collective salvation.
Socialism has bankrupted and failed every society, while capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system. 

There is no perfect society. There are no perfect people. Critics say that greed is the driving force of capitalism. My answer is that envy is the driving force of socialism. Change to socialism is not an improvement on the imperfections of the current system.
The slogans of "fairness and equality" sound better than the slogans of capitalism. But unlike at the beginning of the 20th century, when these slogans and ideas were yet to be tested, we have accumulated history and reality. 

Today we can define the better system not by slogans, but by looking at the accumulated facts. We can compare which ideology leads to the most oppression and which brings the most opportunity. 

When I came to America in 1980 and experienced life in this country, I thought it was fortunate that those living in the USSR did not know how unfortunate they were.
Now in 2009, I realize how unfortunate it is that many Americans do not understand how fortunate they are. They vote to give government more and more power without understanding the consequences. 

Svetlana Kunin, Stamford, Conn.

What About "Settled Science"?

Scientists discover surprise in Earth's upper atmosphere / UCLA Newsroom

That bastion of conservative thought, UCLA discovered a "surprise" that interaction of the Solar Wind and the Magnetosphere is heating the upper atmosphere. They make no mention of Global Warming (I suppose because that is "Settled Science"), but if we live in an era where "Scientific Surprise" is possible, then how can Global Warming be settled?

Tim Walz Healthcare Town Hall

I went to the Tim Walz local healthcare town meeting Saturday. There were around 3000 folks there and it looked and sounded like about 2 to 1 against the current healthcare proposal. In some ways it was almost laughable -- ex Senator Durenberger was there, a big guy from Mayo, a guy from Blue Cross and Blue Shield and a business owner. All agreed that "the biggest problem is medicare" -- it sets the standards for forms, procedures, charges, etc. MN, WI, N&S Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming,, etc have an average cost of $6K a head for medicare and their results are the best in the nation. NY, California, TX, FL, IL, Michigan, etc cost greater than $13K per medicare recipient (adjusted for pop age, cost of living, etc), but their results are the worst in the nation.

Why? Medicare pays on "what you do", NOT on "what are your results" -- and since medicare is by far the largest single payer TODAY, the hospitals, insurance companies, etc have really no choice but to generally follow that lead -- it would increase their costs horribly if they did not. Mayo (and others in the the low cost states) buck that trend -- Mayo lost $800 million on medicare last year, but if they were to try to break even, they would have to spend LESS time with their patients and order more tests that would allow them to get more reimbursement, but would mean that elderly patients were transported, pricked and prodded more often with poorer results.

So why don't they fix it? Well, this is the funny part -- Walz essentially says "they can't" -- those high cost states are bigger and get a lot more money for the way they are doing business now, and they aren't about to admit that "MN / WI do it better" AND take a lot less money from the federal coffers. So the PRESSURE is to "do it worse" -- for Mayo and others to operate like medicare operates even though they know it is wrong. Walz is a Democrat though, so the ONLY thing he can think of to make things better is to pass is "a big new program -- NOT fix medicare, that can't be touched because folks PERCEIVE it to be what they want" -- since the Democrats hope in big government is boundless, even though everyone up there (all brought in by Walz) is in agreement that medicare is the root cause of our rising and inefficient medical costs, the only way to fix it is with ANOTHER government program, and HOPE that one somehow came out better.

Naturally, the 2 to 1 ratio kept trying to say "JUST FIX MEDICARE" !!! they know what to do, there is a big set of states doing it and getting cheaper and excellent results --- all Walz could keep doing was explaining that "CA and NY have more representatives than all the states that are doing it right combined" -- it is politically impossible to do the right thing!!! BUT, "we need to do something"!!! -- and the votes might be there for another Trillion dollar program, so we do a huge new program and HOPE that SOMEHOW whatever political greed, kickbacks and screw ups it was that made medicare into the gold plated albatross that it has turned out to be, "this is different".

I guess just keep repeating "Yes We Can" over and over and click your ruby red slippers together and maybe somehow it will all work out!!!

The highlight of the day was a Russiian immigrant that was lucky enough to get to speak and in broken english said "I grew up in the USSR, I've SEEN what government healthcare is, you people would be CRAZY to go that way! I came to America because I believed it is different, I can't believe that this discussion is even going on here in America!!" He got a standing ovation from the 2/3 of the people opposed to BOcare. The other 1/3 looked mighty unhappy that we allowed legal immigration from the old USSR.

Some closing thoughts:

• Walz talked about "roads and schools" and made the comment "try driving home without roads". Certainly a specious argument in any case ("did you buy your clothes at a government store?" ... it ISN'T "all or nothing"). The idea that there isn't a difference between "federal and local" is especially stupid given the big chart he showed multiple times of the difference between MN and places like NY. Locality matters!!! ... that is a good reason to NOT have FEDERAL healthcare!!
• The idea of "we HAVE to do SOMETHING ... so, it may as well be THIS" ... when "this" is nearly totally undefined borders on insanity. "First do no harm" is an INCREDIBLY good piece of advice. It was WAY easier to screw things up than to make them better -- and the fact that Medicare has screwed things up was very apparent.
  
• Walz had the big show of hands on Social Security and Medicare -- how many are on it, how many want to give it up. Gee, people like "free stuff" -- BUT, when people get exposed to how much it is COSTING, how many TENS OF TRILLIONS we are in the hole with those programs with NO IDEAS on how to get us out, it is different. The fact that the masses like the stuff that they are given is EXACTLY what killed Democracy prior to the US, and exactly why we are killing ours!
  

Humor and Politics

A more liberal friend of mine sent me this Archie Bunker on Gun Control in good fun. I've been a bald guy since I was 21, I learned to laugh at myself a long time ago. I also find the human condition in general to have a lot of humor. So even though I know what Archie is "up to", he is still funny.

Carroll O'Connor, the actor that plays Archie, and Norman Lear, the producer of "All in the Family" are VERY far to the left of the political spectrum. There is nothing wrong with that, and it is exceedingly common in all of our media, from news, television, movies and music to be fairly far left. It is in fact "the dominant culture". News, entertainment, or even entertainers that are not generally left are in fact "called out" -- Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the late Charlton Heston, etc. The general media makes sure to tell everyone, "these outlets are biased -- they have an axe to grind, be careful". Again, it is a free country, that is fine -- although one wonders what it really means when the pot calls the kettle black. What does the claim of "bias" against those found to somehow be "conservative" say about those pointing??

The Archie character uses his malappropisms and bigoted attitude to malign and belittle the idea of "guns making us safer" by the assertion that "we ought to just hand out guns to people getting on planes" in order to stop hi-jacking. While Archie was well in advance of 9-11, I find it interesting as a CC holder thinking of those folks on the aircraft being flown into the WTC buildings faced relatively well trained men that had almost certainly killed or were holding a Stewardess or worse (maybe kids, we don't really know) under the threat that they would "slit their throats".

A 9mm slug to the forehead will pretty much abate throat slitting. If US citizen CC permit holders were allowed to carry on domestic aircraft, I sincerely doubt that 9-11 would have happened at all ... at least not the way it did. The non-us citizens could not have got a permit at and would have known that it was highly likely that their box cutters would have had to face one or more armed citizens that they would not have been able to discover in advance. Even if they DID manage somehow to illegally obtain a permit, not knowing who is going to draw a gun on you increases your difficulty.

The combination of educational system attitudes and the general media makes it seem like "legal gun owners are stupid" (I often wonder if they think that criminal gun owners are smarter than the legal ones?) -- BO's 2nd book has the quite laughable thinking that "conservatives think of their guns like liberals think of their books". It is always comfortable to think that folks that think differently from us are "less intelligent". Given the vast limits of human intelligence, the sad fact is that we are all stupid enough relative to the problems of existence, let alone meta-existence, that it is more than likely that ALL human positions are far more inaccurate to actual reality than we realize. On a universal scale, the difference between "Archie Bunker and Albert Einstein" is likely about as significant as the difference between the smartest ant in the ant hill and the least intelligent. From our vaunted position, we feel such discussions about ants are meaningless.

You can go look around the web and find a lot of evidence that CC laws seem to reduce crime. Like anything on the web, I'm sure you can find some counter examples, but it seems that if there was even a SHRED of evidence in the other direction, at least one of the 39 states that have liberalized CC laws in the last couple decades would have repealed the change. While my view is that criminals are generally less intelligent, one might think that the thought that your intended victim may be legally armed isn't all that comforting. As a criminal, it isn't very likely you get out to the range very often in order to improve your competence with your weapon, so the prospect of a gun owner that does silver dollar multi-tap groups on a regular basis is likely not to help your sleep. That seems like common sense to me, and when statistics and common sense go together, it seems pretty plausible.

More RTC, less crime: Since 1991, 23 states have adopted RTC laws, replacing laws that prohibited carrying or that issued carry permits on a very restrictive basis; many other federal, state, and local gun control laws have been eliminated or made less restrictive; and the number of privately-owned guns has risen by about 90 million.² There are more RTC states, gun owners, people carrying firearms for protection, and privately owned firearms than ever before. In the same time frame, the nation's murder rate has decreased 46 percent to a 43-year low, and the total violent crime rate has decreased 41 percent to a 35-year low.³ RTC states have lower violent crime rates, on average, compared to the rest of the country (total violent crime by 24 percent; murder, 28 percent; robbery, 50 percent; and aggravated assault, 11 percent).⁴

You Lie!

PostPartisan - Republicans Behaving Badly

Naturally, the MSM has been all over the one congressman that said "you lie!" to BO. I agree, that is bad behavior and he was right to apologize. Listen to the Democrats boo and guffaw away in the background while Bush tries to make progress on overhauling Social Security in the video below -- another multi-Trillion dollar bad debt hanging over our collective heads. Remember any outcry in the MSM over the impropriety of that show of disrespect? Neither do I!




How many times has Bush been called a "liar" for WMD? I'd think thousands by just the Democrat elected officials alone, yet a "lie" assumes that one KNOWS the truth. Saying "the stock market is going to go down" and then seeing it go up isn't a LIE, it is making a bad prediction. The Republican that blurted out "liar" apoligized and could validly claim "heat of the moment", but what about the same rule of decorum being followed by the President since he is speaking in the chamber? Certainly he can't assert that he said this in "the heat of the moment":

Some of people's concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.

While "death panel" is certainly incendiary speech, that sort of speech is far from unusual in congress. I recall Reagan's "Dirty Water Bill", and BO recently appointed Van Jones (who had to resign) that claimed that Bush did 9-11 as an "inside job". BO himself mentioned "And we will also create an independent commission of doctors and medical experts charged with identifying more waste in the years ahead." So what is "waste"? Is it a waste to give expensive brain cancer treatment to a guy in his late '70s with brain cancer? (like Teddy Kennedy) I honestly don't know -- to one set of folks, it is probably "wasteful", but to another set, not doing it would be a "death panel". How about if he was 85? 95? 105? Does it EVER become "wasteful"? What does it mean when someone is too old for national health care to pay for some treatment?

Isn't this EXACTLY what is "uncivil" -- one side says "independent commission", the other says "death panel" and then the president escalates it to "lie"? Can we talk about some age where "heroic measures" are just going to prolong suffering rather than improve life? Who decides that? A "commission"? the individual? insurance companies (including maybe the "government option"?). Isn't that what the discussion is supposed to be about?

Oh, and while we talk about that, last night's speech had a lot of examples of the Democrat's favorite argument -- SHUT UP!!

Finally, our health care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers. When health care costs grow at the rate they have, it puts greater pressure on programs like Medicare and Medicaid. If we do nothing to slow these skyrocketing costs, we will eventually be spending more on Medicare and Medicaid than every other government program combined. Put simply, our health care problem is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close.

These are the facts. Nobody disputes them. We know we must reform this system. The question is how.

Reminds me of Global Warming -- "the debate is over".

So Medicare and Medicaid are growing out of control. Wouldn't a sane person say to control the costs of Medicare and Medicaid FIRST, then we will give the government more control over health care once they have proven that they can control the costs on these two programs that they have owned for decades? If the government can't control the costs of these key programs, how in the world is it going to control the costs by taking on MORE??? If the CURRENT burden is "unsustainable", then why in the world would we want to ADD to that burden?? "These are facts, nobody disputes them". In other words, "shut up". But you follow it with "the question is how". My goodness, "Death is a real issue that causes a lot of grief, nobody disputes this. We must reform death. The question is how."

Indeed -- the question very often is "how" -- sometimes just because in the case of winning the game, making a really good cherry pie, or getting a kiss from Cindy Lou, it is the HOW (execution) that is difficult not the goals, even if we have decided on the outcome that we would like. Sometimes, like the death case, and possibly like the health care case, even though the problems are obvious, the solutions (how) are anything but. They are flat out impossible (like death), or they require a whole set of trade-offs that are so difficult or costly that they are fraught with peril. In those cases, the obvious answer is INCREMENTAL! Show the brilliance and resourcefulness of the US government by fixing medicare and medicare FIRST. Instigate various programs at a STATE LEVEL and verify that they work, and THEN see if they SCALE!! Things that work for 30 million people are not guaranteed to work for 300 million people. If you doubt this, put 300 lbs in your trunk, see how your car drives, and then try it with 3,000lbs!! (10x, same scale factor as 30 million to 300 million). The scale factor alone is one of the reasons that our situation is different from Canada, England and others.

BO did very little to help on that path. One man's "bickering" is another mans "discussion of issues" -- were a Republican trying to deal with a real problem (as Bush did with Social Security), no matter how much he "reached out", there would be ZERO help from the other side (as there was with FICA) and he would be 100% demonized over "trying to kill social security" (as Bush was). It is really interesting to watch the MSM be 100% on the reverse side -- all BO's motives are pure, he would NEVER try to create a bunch of big government unionized bureaucracy that would vote Democrat!! or (perish the thought), try to pay off one section of the population that he thinks will vote for him with money taken from those he thinks will not!!! Certainly, the great and pure BO is above that!!