Appealing to Black Voters

Thomas Sowell’s article in the link below talks about how the Republicans can get more Black votes.  A lot of the comments assume we have to change our message to appeal to minority voters.  I don't think we need to change our message.  I do think we have to expand who we talk to.  Years ago, a friend of mine was running for Cook County (Chicago) Sanitary District Commissioner.  He was a white, Jewish, conservative Republican.  He was also the only Republican to appear at Jessie Jackson's Operation Push endorsement meeting.  He explained his views without any filtering for the audience.  However, just because he bothered to show up, they endorsed him.  Republicans have to bother to show up.  We have to explain our positions in Black venues and radio stations.  For example, we have to explain that we favor education vouchers so their children can have better schools, rather than patronage union teachers who aren't doing the job.  We have to explain how increasing the minimum wage has lead to 43 percent black teenage unemployment.  We have to explain that federally mandated sub prime lending lead to foreclosure and financial disaster for many members of their community.  We have to explain that asking for a powerful government is like the Israelites asking the prophet Samuel for a king to rule over them. 

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/344003/me-too-republicans-thomas-sowell

Would Obamacare Repeal Take 60 Senate Votes?

I think Obamacare can be repealed by Senate majority vote because it's so massively expensive.  Repeal would be scored as saving a lot of money, so the procedure called reconciliation would apply.  Reconciliation requires only a majority vote in the Senate to save money.  Filibusters are not allowed.  Of course Obama would veto it.  However, he is more likely to have to postpone more and more of it because he can't reorganize 17 percent of the US economy in the time the bill allowed.  Implementation will be rocky and increasingly unpopular.  Imagine how 7 million people will feel when they find out that even though they like their insurance, they can't keep it.  The result could easily be a Republican Senate voting to repeal Obamacare, followed by a presidential veto.   

Is the Sequester a Threat to US Air Travel?

The president and his party are threatening that the sequester is going to paralyze US air travel.  The House can stop this nonsense by passing a bill privatizing air traffic control.  Canada has already done this, and we know how liberals love to imitate Canada.  Further, if there are lines in airports due to administration "sequester" cuts in TSA screening, pass a bill to privatize passenger screening, as it was before the TSA.  It will halt the sequester narrative in its tracks.  The press will have to consider that the administration's mismanagement is costing the flying public unnecessarily. 

Global Warming: No Feasible Liberal Way Out

The global warming article in the link below and most of the comments are magical thinking in the extreme.  From geological and fossil evidence, we know that climate has varied from tropical to ice ages over the 4.5 billion years of geologic time.  This means that observations over the 10,000 year existence of man would be too short a time to make statistically valid predictions.  So even if the models favored by the warmists were accurately predicting world temperature levels, which they are not, it would seem that the length of time in the models would mean predictions subject to an extremely wide margin of error.  I don’t see how anyone can conclude that any pattern of global warming we observe over the past 150 years is man caused.  Even worse, although the warmists are willing to inflict a lot of economic damage to stop carbon emissions, their actions are not consistent with their beliefs.  Assuming that any global warming we see is man-caused, the answer is nuclear power, which emits no carbon at all.  But warmists don’t like nuclear power.  Assuming you don't like nuclear power, then we have to build a lot of dams, probably killing a lot of snail darters and other endangered fish.  We also have to carpet sunny places like Death Valley with solar collectors without regard to the possible extinction of obscure lizards.  We also have to build wind turbines and kill literally tons of migratory birds and ruin the view from Martha's Vineyard.  We also have to build a lot of high voltage transmission lines through everybody's back yards to move the renewable power from where it’s generated to where it’s used.  But the environmentalists, who fervently believe in global warming, fight all of these things.  Assuming you don't like any of these options, you have to assume a miracle happens in order to stop the carbon.  Or we can go back to 19th century technology.  The expense of all of this gets obscene.  The flimsy justification for the economic ruin that fighting global warming will cause is a statistically insignificant anomaly.  Good luck with the politics of flimsy justification, miracles and economic ruin! 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/matthew-stepp-overlooking-the-limits-of-renewable-energy/2013/04/04/d6df6666-9adf-11e2-9a79-eb5280c81c63_story_1.html