How much politics is too much?

I’ve been trying to stay away from posting about politics (your own posts are fair game for me) since I know its a particularly aggravating season for everyone… but I’m actually just angry today and feel a need to share.

My news and facebook feeds have been filled repeatedly today with a non-stop criticism of Romney’s attempts at charity in Ohio yesterday. The criticisms are varied, but pretty much all of them say by holding a collection for supplies, non-perishables and cash that Romney is politicizing Hurricane Sandy. Someone even claims to have called the Red Cross and says, based on their very misquoted answer, that Romney’s efforts are actually going to cause the Red Cross MORE work because what the Red Cross really wants is money, not other donations (mind you… Romney’s event had multiple direct methods to give cash to the Red Cross advertised). Ok… I’ll actually concede that the criticism is a legitimate interpretation for the people who don’t like Romney or his politics. I would ask you to remember that Romney regularly donates to charity and other good will organizations (just look at his tax records which all of you regularly complain about) and such an event is not outside of his character or history. Perhaps a more tame interpretation is that as a presidential candidate he has a much bigger megaphone than normal and is simply trying to put it to good use.

What really has me angry today is all of the back patting and **** sucking going on (sorry… that’s probably over doing it a bit) saying that Obama is looking presidential through this mess. I agree he is… but where is the wildly negative interpretations about him?!?! We even have another very recent crisis with which to compare and not a single person out there wants to point out the galactic difference between Obama’s reactions to the two events?

A 7 hour long, planned terrorist attack on a U.S. embassy/consulate kills 4 people, one of them our ambassador. Two of those killed were SEALs on a CIA detachment that were specifically ordered to stand down and let the Americans at the embassy die. The state department watched this in real time via cameras on location… The defense department watched this in real time (with a slight delay) via a drone asset overhead. The day after all of this, Obama goes on a campaign tour…? Then, he and his administration go out and claim for two weeks that this was a spontaneous protest about a video and that they were telling the American people everything they knew as they knew it. Even if you’re trying to be forgiving, you have to say that Obama and his spokespeople were spending all of their time to catch up to the news cycle and limit “political damage”.

Now, over the last 2 days, we have a hurricane that threatens serious damage to the northeast (and now we know will cost 10s of billions in damage and 50+ lives) and the president spends an entire day before the damn thing hits getting his face in the news as often as possible. He and his administration are giving repeated press releases and a mountain of information that most people would never care about.

Two crises… two totally different Obamas. Why the difference? Perhaps because the hurricane is affecting the continental U.S. (as opposed to sovereign territory somewhere else) it’s more politically dangerous to appear disconnected from the event (lest he look like Bush with Katrina). Perhaps he learned something from the reaction to the Bengazi attack and didn’t want another serious political mistake looming just before an election. Maybe the hurricane is coming just before the election and the Obama campaign felt Obama sticking his nose into everything to “look presidential” would help his chances to get elected. Maybe he’s just doing his job as president and I should shut the hell up… Maybe Romney is just trying to do a good thing and everyone else should shut the hell up?

I abhor chain mail and forcing people in my contacts list to proactively determine if the crap I’m sending them is more crappy than usual. In an effort to continue in that vein, but also pass on something very interesting I shall put it here.

A pre-warning to all of you, this is highly political in nature (big surprise I’m sure) and I have copied the text exactly as was given to me. If you get annoyed by the text, skip to the end. I’m going to try to provide some references and factual basis, and probably some opinion.

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Rhetoric vs Data

With all of the mud slinging going around about the different budget plans for the federal government, I thought it would be interesting to look if there is any support for or against either side of the “Bush Era Tax Cuts” debate. Everyone is concerned with two things… the health of the government and the health of the economy, so lets look at both:

Source: http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com

I don’t have a graph for the second data set but take a look at this to see US adjusted GDP by quarter.

The first graph doesn’t really show the health of the government, but the total income of the government is very important because that defines how much the government can really do, which I think is what people are worried about. Looking at both sets of data, I don’t think the Democrats have a great argument. The revenue dropped substantially in the recession after 9-11 but went up significantly (even a better year-over-year growth than the Clinton years) after the tax cuts in ’02 and ’03. The GDP leveled off after the recession and also picked up again after the tax cuts. Obviously, correlation is not causation, but other than demonizing the rich and corporations, what else do the Democrats really have to support their continued obstinacy? I fully support getting rid of tax loopholes and most exemptions/deductions out there (doing so would require lowering the top tax rates per income bracket so that the middle class isn’t trampled by taxes) and expanding the tax base, however, I think the Democrats are approaching the issue from the wrong starting point and probably going after the wrong tax changes.

The perfect example.

This is a perfect example of our broken political system. In one article, this man has made crystal clear why nothing can or will be done to improve our situation. Its why Health Care reform was passed in a way that didn’t come close to resembling what Obama talked about in his candidacy (not that he really gave specifics). Its why in the same bill for health care we passed a measure that completely changed the student lending in this country. Its why bills like the Dream Act get attached to military budget measures…

If I may project my own opinion on top of Frum’s, I think the largest part of the degradation, at least publically, has come in the last two years. Bush has been a most gracious punching bag since the Obama administration took over. Obama’s administration on the other hand is playing the worst kind of politics with everything they do. Every reasonable compromise is met with sarcasm and derision with the goal of scoring political points (no doubt John Boehner is playing into that too).