Being reported @ Politico, there’s once again some new polling data out that is both semi-understandable and interminably frustrating (here):

…The Quinnipiac polls, conducted in three states across the past month, all find likely voters to have complex and contradictory views on these repeal lawsuits as well as health care reform itself.

By a slight majority, likely voters tend to oppose the health care reform law. But they also tend to oppose the repeal lawsuits as a “bad idea” that would, for a sizeable portion of voters, make them “less likely” to support a given candidate….

Which seems roughly equivalent to wanting to win the football game, but not really wanting to deal with scoring points…. or as Politico reports:

…In short, voters simultaneously don’t want to [sic] health care reform but don’t want to challenge it either…

There is a scientific explanation for this called cognitive dissonance (DA posts here).  There’s also some logical evidence that helps explain why we as humans seek to reduce anything seen as contentious by the rest of society.

It’s frustrating because time and time again it seems the majority does understand that government is not some Utopian solution.  For instance, they seem to understand that the current tax code is 60K pages of government sponsored corruption where the normal citizen or even the IRS agent has little idea exactly what all 60K pages means together, but special interests, nonprofits, businesses, and others all work to make the code a little better for themselves. (Freedomworks – Top Ten Reasons to Scrape the Code here).

Yet polls showing voter disgust, such as the dismally low congressional approval ratings, only show feelings.  The reality is even with rates of congressional approval as low as 16%, the rate for the election of incumbents is well over 90%.

There’s a Japanese Proverb that begins with “Vision without action is daydream.”  Well, here we are, proving, that some truths are universal.  Proving that believing in something strongly or knowing something real well is meaningless if never acted upon.

Use a simple analogy to prove this true – what good is the best doctor in the world without patients or students?  What good would have come out of Newton’s genius, or Salk’s genius, if their abilities were followed up by only inaction?

The only good thing that can really be said about genius without action, is that it doesn’t directly harm anyone.  You can make a moral argument that Salk had some level of obligation to help since he could, but inactive genius shouldn’t be the main concern as the real problems will come from people acting without understanding.

& there’s where the second 1/2 of the proverb comes “Action without vision is nightmare. ”

Too bad we’re seemingly in a society today where both are true depending only upon the group in question.

It’s almost embarrassingly easy to pinpoint the talking points or narratives that will prevail with any story, but if fish in a barrel don’t want to be shot… they should get out of the barrel.

Starting sometime last week, you could see the narratives shaping up in anticipation of a Brown victory based upon the trends of the poll data.  On January 9th, people still believe in Coakley (here):

…Buoyed by a huge advantage with independents and relative disinterest from Democratic voters in the state, Republican Scott Brown leads Martha Coakley 48-47….

…All that said Coakley can certainly still win this race, perhaps even by a comfortable margin….

Indeed, Real Clear Politics shows polling from various sources starting in September (here), showing a 30+ lead for Coakely being worn down to a tie in early January, then to a 9+ lead leading into the election.

However, the expected Brown win, was still an upset.  Both the fact that MA is a Democratic state that Barak won by 28 points and the fact the vacant seat was a Democratic torch bearer who is recently deceased… any way you wish to view this, it is a failure on the part of the Democratic party to have lost.

The narratives of course focus on “who” to blame – for the Republicans, this is sure sign that Barak’s agenda is being pushed to the side by the American people (here):

…Seeing President Barack Obama reverse course and make a last minute/last ditch effort to save the Coakley campaign brings back memories of November, when Obama put his prestige and political capital on the line in an unsuccessful attempt to save the gubernatorial campaigns of New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine and Virginia’s Creigh Deeds.

Combined, those two elections were a stinging rebuke of the Obama Agenda–higher taxes, government control of health care and out of control spending….

While for the Democrats, Barak isn’t hurt in the least by the pathetic showing from Coakley (here):

…The usual blame Obama faction in this community were quick to criticize the President for being the reason Martha Coakley lost her bid to replace Ted Kennedy in his long held Senate seat….

…If anything, the media spin had a lot more to do with the ascendency of Scott Brown than anything Barack Obama or Democrats had done….

Even going so far as to blame the media:

…The first year of the Obama Presidency has been a year of spin.  He has been scrutinized more than any other President in history. In some respect, this extreme coverage has created an anxiety about this President that, at times, has verged upon negative fanaticism, where daily hurdles are created and expectations have become increasingly unrealistic. For some on the fringe, Obama seems to have become the cause of all that ills America….

As usual, the truth is somewhere in the muddled middle… though I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the faulty logic associated with the Daily Kos (I know, I know… fish in a barrel…).  The idea that the media pushed a fringe blame Obama group to result in 52% of the population voting for Brown is almost too stupid to analyze.

On the other hand of course, the idea that this was a direct and total Obama failure is less certain than it appears as well.  Even the President has his thoughts about a “mood” (here):

…The president suggested the same forces that elected Brown “swept me into office” in 2008. People are frustrated “not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”…

With more to come:

…White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters at his daily briefing, “That anger is now pointed at us because we’re in charge. And rightly so.”

Gibbs said Obama would address the Massachusetts results “and what they mean” in his State of the Union address next Wednesday….

Odd that the President plans to use the State of the Union speech to discuss one senate race in MA, but I digress.

The truth is, given the numbers, the percentage of independent voters who voted for Brown, the state, the Senate seat itself, basic voter demographic information… this is surely a failure which can be place @ the President’s door.

However… this doesn’t mean that Brown’s election is necessarily a referendum to oppose health care reform or a mandate to filibuster everything.   All politics is local is still true for the most part in that anybody other than a Democrat was not guaranteed a victory based solely on Obama’s agenda.

In fact, I think the President is correct when he “suggested” the country is just angry… not only at the current administration, but also the last 8 years.  Unwittingly he might have pinpointed the main issue people are having trouble dealing with, and that’s the continuous growth of government regardless of the idiot in charge.

So just like the ’08 election which swept Obama to office on the anger of Bush – it wasn’t a mandate for Obama’s policies so much as a punishment for Republicans, though a lesser politician would have still lost to McCain… just as a crappy GOP candidate would’ve likely lost to Coakley, even with a high level of anger towards the current administration.

& last but not least, let’s not forget that since 1862, there have been 36 midterm elections held during the first or second terms of an administration. In 33 of those 36 elections, the opposition party gained seats in the House.

All in all, it’s really no consequence to most of us as to “why” this or that person was elected in a state/district in which you don’t vote.   Your vote should be based upon your preferences and your candidates & hopefully the person you want to win does (assuming that person is pro-individual freedom of course, I’ll join in on your wish).

All the rest of this crap is just a narrative… IE – the standard tit-for-tat spin-game politicians play with the media as willing participants.

Amid the controversy of  Ahmadinejad receiving more than 65% of the total vote, amid the protests and global cries of election fraud, the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has asked for an investigation.  From the great analytical outlet Stratfor:

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered Iran’s Guardian Council, the country’s highest legislative body, to probe into fraud allegations over the June 12 presidential vote, Iran’s student state-controlled news agency ISNA reported June 15. Guardian Council spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodai said that the council would review formal appeals from reformist opposition candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi and would then issue its ruling within seven to ten days.

This likely doesn’t mean much as the ruling council will likely uphold the vote.  After all, there is precedence for this sort of thing in Iran:

There is precedence for such intervention by the Supreme Leader. In 2004, when the Guardian Council rejected the applications of 3,600 out of nearly 8,200 people seeking candidacy in Iran’s upcoming parliamentary elections in a blow to Khatami’s presidency, Khatami used the same language as Mousavi and his supporters are using today, calling the move a “silent coup d’etat” by the state. Khatami and then speaker of the Majlis Karroubi demanded a full review of the candidate screening, and the Supreme Leader responded by ordering the Council to look into the matter and reconsider some of its decisions. In the end, the Council acquiesced to having some of the candidates reinstated, but at the end of the day, the clerical body was still fully capable of fully containing Khatami and his reformist agenda.

It will be interesting to watch over the next couple of weeks as Iran attempts to hang on to their regional & domestic power, while trying to increase their international standing as well.

Read the whole thing here.

For the next couple of days, the eyes of the world will be on Iran and their upcoming Presidential election.  While Ahmadinejad’s backers include Iran Security forces and state TV, his reformist challenger Mousavi, is still getting out the word through more open forms of communication.

While it’s unlikely at this point to know if the election is not going to be rigged, it is certainly a good thing to see such dynamic debate in the theocratic regime of Iran (here):

They came face-to-face with a similar number of Ahmadinejad’s backers, who were gathering at the Imam Ruhollah Khomeini mosque, with each side shouting slogans and waving their respective flags.

Even with state backing of the current President and refusal of the state to allow the contender any place to hold rallies, the reformers in Iran are still brave enough to speak out (here):

Supporters of Ahmadinejad’s main challenger, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, had to be more inventive to find a place for their rally. Over the weekend, a government organization refused permission for his campaign to use Tehran’s 120,000-seat Azadi Stadium for a rally originally planned for Sunday. But in less than 24 hours, using text messages and Facebook postings, thousands of Mousavi backers gathered along Vali-e Asr Avenue, Tehran’s 12-mile-long arterial road.

While it’s true that in Iran, the President does not have a lot of power due to the authority of the mullahs and the election will likely be rigged to what the mullahs want to see – it’s still good news to see a petty tyrant, holocaust denier, being diminished in middle eastern politics.

Let’s hope this trend continues.

I wrote in late March (here) about the Employee Free Choice Act.  Since the bill was named by union backed politicians, you can guess that it means exactly the opposite of what it says.  It reduces freedom, by increasing the ability for unions to coerce employees who otherwise would be allowed to unionize or not based on secret ballots.

As an update – over at the Federalist Society they are debating the topic.  Richard Epstien is one of the dissenters and as is usual with his prose, he provides a very well thought out dissent of the bill.  It’s well worth reading (here).

When the federal government isn’t too busy running automobile companies, credit card companies, the energy sector, telling you where to buy your products from, telling companies how much money they can spend on what, telling you how many gallons of water you’re allowed to flush….

The state and local governments are busy directly hassling you.

In Sandusky, Ohio – a gentlement had the nerve, the gall even, to try to clean up a neighborhood park by picking up the litter and mowing the grass.  But of course, from the government’s perspective, he’s not smart enough to be able to handle tricky things like mowing grass, so they arrested him (article here).

Not to be outdone, Virgina decided to make the idiotic, long, and painful process of getting a driver’s license even worse.  You’re now not allowed to smile…because apparently you were just too happy to begin with (here).

& then there’s the Connecticut police, arresting priests who dare video tape them abusing minorities (here).  After all, he’s dangerous…

As most know, we can continue this ad infinitum,  so I’ll just end with this:  until voters start demanding better out their government instead of just demanding more "free" stuff – this corruption of the entire system will continue unabated.

As the saying goes, the only thing required to allow evil to prevail, is for good men to do nothing.