Not really

Dear Brother, I'm amazed at how differently we view political things. Victor Hanson was just writing a column with a couple ideas in it, not a doctor's thesis. Were his statistics wrong? Were his impressions wrong? He himself is a California resident and an employee of the public sector of the California university system. Are his thoughts and opinions -- mainly that California has got some real problems and why is it comparing unfavorably with Texas -- so off base? I just don't see it -- what you write about his personal attacks, writing for his conservative audience, etc. He is very far from a right wing writer just writing for his audience; he is much like me: a liberal democrat quietly disgusted with the drift of party democrats today. I will go and look at the American Enterprise Video that you sent. But let me say right off that the premise -- Republican party extremism -- is just laughable. I don't want to go over too much old ground of our former conversations but let me throw out a few thoughts: Looking at the big picture: Since Vietnam and Watergate, when have the Republicans carried the day on anything related to their agenda? (Aside from the Iraq War of 2003 which had bi-partisan support from the beginning.) The teachers' union - national and local - is Democrat leftist in orientation, the university system is Democrat leftist in orientation, state and local government is Democrat leftist in orientation, the nation's trial lawyers are Democrat leftist in orientation, the media is Democrat leftist in orientation, business, more or less, is Democrat leftist in orientation, Hollywood is Democrat leftist in orientation, the arts community is Democrat leftist in orientation, the grand philanthropic organizations are Democrat leftist in orientation, the CIA is Democrat leftist in orientation, for God's sake the military is Democrat leftist in orientation. They had a psycho major down in Texas sending emails to Al-Qaeda and they did nothing to him until he shot up a bunch of them. To have spoken up prior to the mass murder would have been to reveal oneself a conservative right-wing anti-Muslim bigot. What normal soldier would voluntarily truncate a career over a small thing like a seargent major swapping jocular emails with the enemy? Republicans have managed to hold to one thing since WWII - the right to some variation of personal gun rights. Other than that it is the left/Democrat agenda all the way. The only time Republicans gain any kind of ground in national poliics is when the Democrats mangle the situation so badly that people force themselves to vote Republican. And that includes the so-called Reagan revolution. The Republicans spend as wildly as the Dems when they are in power. I think that is what is happening now. Obama just doesn't have the combination of skills needed to surround human problems and come up with solutions. Nothing is easy and I'm not trying to call great complexity easy just to put Obama down. But I do know that there is a way forward for a certain type of problem-solving individual; Obama just hasn't got it. I suspected as much during his campaign but I didn't make a big deal of it. I remember Obama putting down Joe the Plumber after his encounter with the man a couple days after. Obama smirked at a public campaign podium, "How many plumbers do you know who make a quarter million dollars a year?" I remember thinking, 'How dare you? How dare you put down a working man like this Joe guy. All he did was ask you about your tax plan totax people in the 200K range of income. And, yes, a hardworking team of 2 plumbers hustling could pull down 200K in a year if they worked it right.' I got a lot of insight about Obama after that. I'm getting off topic. We've just watched the president, the media and Crosby Stills and Nash endorse the completely fatuous Occupy Wall Street movement -- which party did you say is getting a bit extreme? But I am not about party politics. I believe we have no leadership. Real leaders, Republican or Democrat would have had us steering away from Middle East energy from the 1970s or at least developing alternatives. Instead we've had a revolving door of politicians spinning off to the ME after their time in office -- the whole DC -- Politician to Consultant to Lobbyist to ME cash Cow -- it's old hat.