Cynicism in its most transparent form of contemptuousness. Like a collectivist running his presidential campaign promising a tax cut for “95% of "working families."

One of Barack Obama's most potent campaign claims is that he'll cut taxes for no less than 95% of "working families." He's even promising to cut taxes enough that the government's tax share of GDP will be no more than 18.2% ...

It's a clever pitch, because it lets him pose as a middle-class tax cutter while disguising that he's also proposing one of the largest tax increases ever on the other 5%. But how does he conjure this miracle...? There are several sleights of hand, but the most creative is to redefine the meaning of "tax cut."

Our historic first Islamic apostate president—C-list impersonator of Sun Tzu in the role of a community college instructor for the introductory course “Deception in Politics-101”—appropriates the core objective of voters in opposition to his objectives—cutting taxes and reducing the size of Leviathan—as his own. Expressions of shamelessness and prevarication are his only consistent abilities.

From a country with abundant energy—fossil fuel and human—rich in resources for producing all varieties of food and extracting fundamental forms of materials—from renewable forests to easily accessible ferrous ore—that has a growing population living in freedom from the confiscatory impulses and corrupting influence of distant government bureaucracies employing paper pushers more interested in reading in the media stories about themselves than about the rising wealth of a nation outside of their control, one should expect prosperity, if not a global power, but not an inward looking Leviathan.

Nothing has changed but the seismic disruption of regulations issued out Washington dictating how we must produce our resources at a higher cost and less efficiently .

“Whom do we have to take ours?” There’s nowhere to go but to circulate within our local, state and federal borders and sustain the fight for our freedom to remake our way of life—filled with smokestacks, factories, and prosperity.

Throw the bums out of office, let every regulation sunset into oblivion, and restart in our own county the exploitation of energy and every other resource as we once did—to the benefit of jobs, wealth, and higher living standards.

• The initial item posits the most plausible rapprochement of the two sides on the list. The tea-party movement believes our uniquely American history and institutions have created a nation apart from all others, also a rallying point of the NAZI Party. Believers in multicultural, moral equivalency can be expected to indifferently equate evil with good.
• Compared to collectivization, the left construes individualism as “authoritarian,” so they misunderstand the tea-party movement virtue of self-reliance.
• Social Darwinism correlates most closely with eugenics and the “nuisance” of “unwanted children,” both justifications for abortion, so the leftist reaction to Sarah Palin’s decision to keep her Down-syndrome child invalidates the premise of item 3.
• The Gadsden flag, a symbol of the tea-party movement, represents a prideful reminiscence of our history which the PC education establishment indoctrinates and propagandizes against, making items 4 and 5 a projection of their leftist narrow-mindedness.
• Demonstrable ignorance of history can be expected of leftists, their dismissal of the importance in understanding it the cause.
• Leftists submit to pacifism. “Don’t Tread on Me” asserts self-reliance—it should be expected that they misunderstand the purposes of the military.
• Anti-anti-communist—nuff said!
  

From the tribal media’s point of view, CNN’s, no foreign affairs question is wasted on Congressman Ron Paul. Caricaturally orthodox in his articulation of libertarian disdain for using foreign policy to sustain our benign supremacy over the world’s dictatorships, he discredits better than anyone the one area on which conservatives have formed a consensus—libertarians excepted—and are the most convincing to other voters. Whenever foreign affairs enter into the debate, he is there to disabuse anyone’s temptation to sympathetically hear out Republican seriousness on the issue.

“PAUL: I think the Patriot Act is unpatriotic because it undermines our liberty. I'm concerned, as everybody is, about the terrorist attack. Timothy McVeigh was a vicious terrorist… And they have changed the -- in the -- in DOD budget they have changed the wording on the definition of al-Qaeda and Taliban. It's anybody associated with organizations, which means almost anybody can be loosely associated so that makes all Americans vulnerable.” He agrees with our historic first Islamic apostate president: Our country is no better than any other and cannot be trusted with its inordinate power.

Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on Iraq and Afghanistan: As Delivered by Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen , Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. Thursday, September 22, 2011:

“ADM. MULLEN:… for me there's only two existential threats to our country right now.  One are [sic] the nuclear weapons that Russia has, and I think we have that very well controlled inside New START.  And the other is cyber…”

No sir, there’s worse:

“BACHMANN: My name is Michele Bachmann. I'm a proud member of the United States Congress. I'm privileged to serve on the House Select Committee on Intelligence… [Pakistan] This is more than an existential threat. We have to take this very seriously.”

“I'm Wolf Blitzer and yes, that's my real name.” In other words, never mind those props on stage behind me—none has POTUS material, but we’ll entertain you anyway.

Last night’s gimmick: Republican think-tank experts on "National Security" and its relevance to presidential primary voters:

• Alex Brill: Entitlement reform proposals (no reference to national security).
• Mark Teese: “What national security issue do you worry about that nobody is asking about?”
• Paul Wolfowitz: Millennium Challenge Corporation.
• Unidentified: High-skilled immigration.
• Mike Gonzalez: Israeli nuclear attack on Iran.
• Danielle Pletka: Sanctions on Iran.
• Fred Kagan: al-Qaeda and US relations with Pakistan.
• Israel Ortega: Withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
• Alison Acosta Fraser: Cuts to the defense budget.
• Phil Truluck: Mexican government and drug cartels.
• Katherine Zimmerman: al-Shabab and Somalia.
• David Addington: “Syria borders a major ally of the United States, NATO ally, Turkey.”

Any reference to the €zone collapse would have invited comparison of the wages of European socialism with the performance of our historic first Islamic apostate president’s incumbency—an area the honorable tribal media protects with omertà—which would defeat the purpose of using the candidates as prime-time game show contestants.

The competitive spirit of politicians leads them to take on any attempt to control them.

Leviathanian powers also induce the pursuit of the ultimate act of hubris—assembling and accumulating enough authority to prevail over our Constitution’s purpose of limiting it.

The constitutional conflicts are not about what it keeps them from doing; not what they can make it do for us; but in the temptation to do whatever they want to it.

“Write-off.”

A financial asset is considered uncollectible if the entity has no reasonable expectation of recovery. Therefore, an entity would write off a financial asset or part of a financial asset in the period in which the entity has no reasonable expectation of recovery of the financial asset (or part of the financial asset).

A write-off would be defined as “a direct reduction of the amortized cost of a financial asset resulting from uncollectibility.”

Wild guess about the pernicious thinking of our overlords: All of the inflationary consequences of quantitative easing will level out on the day of reckoning when the financial institutions of the world conduct a massive, coordinated “write-off.”

Circular sovereign obligations disappear. The European Monetary Union restructures into several separate currencies. In and around DC middle-class real estate becomes more scarce, beautiful cars and fast women easier to find.

Assume you enter into a contract with an Italian shipyard for EUR 800 million. Because your revenue is in USD and have decided that the dollar will fall against the euro, you go to the derivative pirates to do a swap locking in future exchange rates for the dates on which payments in connection with the contract are due.

That €800 million swap is a line item in the "$600 trillion derivative market" but (i) multiple transactions occur over a period longer than one year; (ii) if your counterparty disappears, the loss is not the “notational” €800 million; (iii) the real loss is the cost of setting up the swap contract and exposure to the actual exchange rate when the payments in the future are made (which could be a loss or a gain with respect to the expected budget/forecast amount).

So the headline number is not as bad as it appears, but the exposure of banks is worse than what they are reporting. In the above, if your counterparty were a bank, it might have booked the spread as a receivable, inflating its balance sheet. But if the dollar reverses against it, the spread will become a payable.

• All of the states mentioned are currently RealClearPolitics Toss-ups.
• The incumbent Democrat currently wins 201 Electoral Votes.
• As defined above, the Virginia, White collar, strategy ( NC VA CO NV) wins 43 EVs. The Union, blue collar strategy (PA OH MI WI) wins 64 EVs. Both are insufficient to yield the 270 EVs required for victory.

Ideologically, the Union strategy appeals to the traditional Democrat electorate that expects promises of bigger government, food stamps, unemployment, etc. The Southern strategy focuses more on God, guns, and government get off my lawn. However, if the Union strategy wins only NH of the three remaining Toss-up states (i.e. Republican wins FL and IA) then the Electoral Votes are tied at 269 for each party, with the tie-breaking decision made by the GOP-held House of Representatives.

Florida decides the election.

As this is how the Politburo operated, it is encouraging that a plurality of Americans gives credit to Republicans for their lack of cooperation with this extra-constitutional usurpation of the congressional authority and

for their resistance to this unhealthy helping of hyperbole that is expressed in its moniker, "supercommittee."

Response reflects how far the conservative electorate has advanced along the curve of its attentiveness to the horserace, awareness of the candidates’ positions and intensity of enthusiasm for a preferred candidate.

At the start of the curve—general apathy this far ahead of actual voting—is everyone paying little attention, whose first glimpse at the presidential horserace will be this plan. If the majority of the conservative electorate is close to this position, opinions on his “Uproot and Overhaul Washington” message will be positive—a response predicated on the idea, not the messenger.

If the conservative electorate is further along the curve, it will react how it would to an idea expressed by one person more attractive than the other—with more attention paid to the messenger. Those having the least intensity of enthusiasm for a preferred candidate will be the most open-minded about approving it. Those more intensely supporting different candidates will explain why it is against the interests of the country (and their candidate) as the reason to reject it.

The general electorate will react differently than the highly attentive microcosm of Ricochet, or more certainly, is still not interested. The media, the left, will reject it.

“Romney causing concern inside his campaign… he has earned a reputation as "Slick Dancing Mitt" or "Flip-Flop Mitt… The 77-slide PowerPoint presentation offers a revealing look at Romney's pursuit of the White House… allaying voter concerns about his record, his Mormon faith, and his shifts on key issues [2007]."

“…at a debate in Florida... Mr. Romney has become the most disliked… the perception of him as an ideological panderer [2008].”

“…If Mr. Romney’s campaign were condensed… they conceded that they had failed to overcome doubts about Mr. Romney’s authenticity… his shifting on issues, polls showed his favorability ratings plummeting… the perception of Mr. Romney remaking himself into a Reagan-like figure through his positioning on issues like abortion rights and gun control [2008].”

“…that the former Massachusetts governor was a political chameleon -- untrustworthy to the core and an opportunist at heart [2008].”

If he has flip-flopped from that into a steady-footed, likeable, authentic, trustworthy politician, he will be another POTUS “first.”

“The car Romney was driving, a Citroen DS, was hit head-on by a Mercedes driven by a priest. Romney's car was totaled, and all six occupants were injured, one fatally.”

This day four years ago, mid-November prior to primary voting, Hillary was ahead of her closest rival 44.5% to 22.8%. She had high “electability” numbers too. She was next in line too.

The experiments began in July 1961, conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram.

Henri Verneuil used it in his film, I… comme Icare, (in French, 1979).

In agreement with you on Romney's 1994 positions, though running against the Kennedy dynasty makes that campaign a curiosity.

With respect to his 2012 positions, he is to the left of Bachman, Cain, Gingrich, Perry, Paul, and Santorum.