The Difference Between Free Speech and Buying Votes

There’s a big difference between buying ads to explain your political positions and buying elections.  To help you understand this, let me explain how elections are actually bought. It's by literally bribing voters to vote for you.

I'll start with this historical example. Originally, Senators were chosen by state legislators. In 1899, William A. Clark, a millionaire "Copper King," bribed the Montana state legislature to elect him as US Senator. That's buying an election. It's also a big part of why voters, rather than legislatures, select Senators.

The traditional Chicago election includes a lot of "walking around money," which is used to bribe voters directly or to bribe people who have a lot of influence on voters. The classical direct vote buying method was chain voting. The man with the money hands the voter a marked ballot. The voter goes into the polling place, gets an unmarked ballot and puts the marked ballot in the voting box. Outside the polling place the voter hands the man with the money an unmarked ballot and gets paid.

What Sheldon Adelson does is the same thing George Soros, Tom Steyer or the AFLCIO does. They buy political ads, pay for political pamphlets and pay staffers to make phone calls and walk door to door to get out the vote. All of this is free speech, whether you agree with the message or not. If you don't like it, back the Democrat's attempt to amend the Bill of Rights.

Why The Republican Base is Angry

On the Republican side, the anger is about the leadership's failure to even state a case. Harry Reid filibusters everything in sight, but Republican leaders are not on every talk show complaining about the Democrats' Senate obstructionism. The House passes 5 out of 12 appropriation bills. The Senate passed 0, again due to Democrats' obstructionism. Republican leaders sound like crickets on this subject. Why do we have to pass one big continuing resolution year after year? Because the Democrats refuse to pass any smaller bills funding pieces of the government. Why do the Democrats want to pass one big bill? Because then they can hold the whole government hostage to get every little thing they want. During the last government shutdown, Republicans in the House passed several funding bills for pieces of the government. All of them got filibustered. Because the Democrats want to shut down whatever will inconvenience voters the most, especially Republican voters.

The Pravda Press will never say anything about the Democrats' tactics. The "mainstream" reporters are all Democrats. That's how they get to be "mainstream" reporters. No out of the closet Republicans are allowed. Without Republican leaders who will get in front of TV cameras and explain over and over and over why we end up with one big bill every year, nothing is going to change.

Democratic budget tactics are relatively subtle. I don't see how Republican leadership expects the facts to get out unless they explain repeatedly what's going on. Much more obvious things are hushed up. Press coverage is so biased in not covering events which would contradict the liberal narrative that about 9 out of 10 people don't realize that South Carolina elected a black tea party Republican Senator in 2014, the first black US Senator ever elected from South Carolina, where the electorate is over 65% white. And 99 out of 100 don't know that former doctor Kermit Gosnell was convicted of murder for killing 3 babies in his abortion mill and manslaughter for killing one of his patients. All the facts that fit the narrative is the new motto of the Pravda Press.

Republican Leadership has to realize that they need to get out more to counter the narrative the Pravda Press spreads for the Democrats. It doesn't matter whether it's fair or not. It's reality. If we don't start talking, we will keep getting rolled at the end of the fiscal year by Democrats who take the whole federal government hostage. 

Approval of Terrorism Makes Muslim Refugees Less Sympathetic

There were some complaints last week that Muslims would try to turn countries that gave them refuge into replicas of the countries they fled.  Voting to repeat the same policies that wrecked the place you left is not a uniquely Muslim characteristic. Liberal California "expats" continue to vote liberal Democrat in places like Texas even though they had to leave California to escape the results of liberal policies they are still voting for.

The uniquely Muslim problem is that a large minority of Muslims seems to approve of men, women and children blowing themselves up as long as they can take a few infidels with them. The Muslim culture as a whole does not seem to strongly condemn these acts. This is a dynamite combination of facts that result in innocent Muslim high school students being arrested for bringing home made clocks to class. While the incident sounds stupid, the conditions behind it are deadly serious. The Muslim community has to have the moral and physical courage to denounce religiously motivated terrorism. If they are reluctant to do this, how can they expect any country, even any Muslim country, to resettle Muslim refugees on their territory. The physical risks to any host country may be low, but the political risks are quite high. How can any politician argue that we should help these people when doing so means we are importing potential terrorists, even if the fraction of potential terrorists is only 1%. The Boston Marathon bombers were Muslims who sought and received political asylum. In addition, the public sees news videos of Muslim street celebrations of terrorist attacks, and news stories of stipends paid to the relatives of dead Muslim terrorists. Does anyone think this is good public relations when it comes to allowing the immigration of Muslim refugees? The public is asking why should we take the chance? Charges of racism are wearing out from over use. The suspicions of Muslim refugees are well founded and based on the Muslim community's reluctance to openly and loudly condemn the religious violence that travels with them. If Muslims want quick acceptance as refugees, Muslims have to denounce religious violence in their communities.

Reacting to this article:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/424121/european-refugee-migrants-immigration

Putin's Middle East Goals are More Economic Than Political

Putin’s goal in the Middle East is to raise the price of oil.  If war and chaos stop or even just reduce Middle East oil exports, the value of Russian oil production goes up.  Putin profits from chaos, so that's why he's selling weapons to the Iranians and putting troops in Syria.  If the Persian Gulf is closed to shipping due to war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, it's good for Putin's business. 

Putin's Russia has only one big money world class export sector, energy. Many of their major competitors in the world energy market are based in the Middle East. Putin hopes war and chaos in the Middle East will result in less oil and natural gas production in the region, which would drive up the price of oil. Putin probably needs an oil price of at least $100 per barrel to keep his regime out of bankruptcy. Today, the price of oil is about $46 per barrel. All of the prestige arguments are nice extras for Putin. But Putin's rise to power came after Russia's financial crisis in 1998 when the price of oil collapsed, Russian inflation topped 80% and Russia defaulted on its debts. The aftermath of the 1998 crisis forced Boris Yeltsin to leave power and Yeltsin choose Putin as his successor. Putin knows he can't survive another Russian financial meltdown. He needs a much higher price for oil and natural gas. So Putin is stirring the pot in hopes that he can foment a major war or at least continued chaos which reduces or completely shuts down oil exports from the Middle East. 

The fact that Putin is openly putting Russian troops on the ground in the Middle East says bad things about President Obama.  In 1973, when the Soviet Union was getting ready to send 6 paratroop divisions to Egypt, President Nixon raised the DEFCON alert level of all US Armed Forces.  I was a computer programmer in the 26^th Air Division Headquarters, a huge concrete blockhouse near Phoenix, Arizona, that controlled air defense for the Southwestern United States.  My war time duty was to use prevailing wind direction and speed to predict fallout radiation levels at Air Force bases downwind from nuclear ground bursts.  I got a phone call at about 9:30 PM calling me back to base.  Since we had a practice war that morning, it was not a drill.  Nixon, in effect, was threatening to get nasty if the Russians sent troops to help the Egyptians.  The Russians backed down.  I did not find out until the next morning why the DEFCON alert level had been raised.  My superiors had their orders, but were not given the reason for them.

The president we have today would never think of ordering a higher DEFCON alert level.  Barry the Brilliant has stopped the US from protecting innocent Syrian civilians from the choice of either barrel bombs and poison gas from Bashir al Assad, Iran and Russia, or holy terror, beheadings and sex slave auctions from ISIS.  However, Obama can't stop the Israelis from defending themselves against Russian aggression. 

The Russians have just entered a very tough neighborhood.  They probably have forgotten the lesson of the Israel-Syria Air War of 1982. The Russians, then as now were Syria's main arms supplier.   During a few days in June, 1982, the Israeli Air Force wiped out Syria's ground based air defense systems and shot down 82 Syrian fighter planes. Both the crews of surface to air missile sites and the fighter pilots were officially Syrian, but actually mainly Russian.  IAF losses were 0.  That's right, no Israeli aircraft were lost.  Although times and technologies have changed, the motivation of the IAF has not diminished.  They know that they either win or their families will be slaughtered. 

Putin probably has no intention of trying to win in Syria.  Realistically, I think a Russian win in Syria is beyond Putin’s reach.  Israel will not permit a Russian base which provides unlimited military supplies to their enemies in Lebanon and Syria to exist, and they have the means to destroy it militarily.  Putin just wants to extend the chaos in the Middle East for as long as possible.  If he gets a permanent naval port and airbase out of it, so much the better.  But chaos itself is good for Russian business and thus good enough for Putin.