The Barack that Didn’t Bark

The only, truly interesting thing about the dueling Romney-Biden NAACP appearances is the man who was absent from the show. Obama. As with Sherlock Holmes' dog that didn't bark, the interesting thing about this is the case of the Barack that didn't show up to bark, deliver a few jokes, remind everyone that he is the epitome of the NAACP's accomplishments-- including white people who might be considering casting their vote somewhere else.

The contrast between the response to his speech and Romney's, would easily be spun into a victory. He would score a win, the way he scores all his wins, by just showing up. So why not do it? There are two plausible theories.

1. Obama is lazy.

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Black voters are going to vote for him anyway. Why waste time going over to read some remarks from the teleprompter about the civil rights struggle, read in his most serious voice, when he can just send Biden. Sure, it's disrespectful, a slap in the face. Obama can show up to speak to Latino and Jewish groups and outside a small garage somewhere. But those votes are actually in play. Black votes aren't. And, in return for having his back, Obama repaid them with a slap across the face. Some at the NAACP are probably fuming, but what are they going to do about it? Vote Romney?

2. Obama doesn't want to be associated with a prominent black group right now

This one only works if the Obama campaign has been drinking its own Kool-Aid and actually believes that its terrible rating among blue-collar whites is due to racism. Most of us assume that Obama and his people are cynically using claims of racism to deflect criticism-- but what if they actually believe it? Sure, it makes no sense. Obama won more blue-collar whites than his white Democratic predecessor did. If racism was the issue, it would have been the issue in 2008. But liberals do drink their own Kool-Aid. The racism argument is cynical, but that doesn't mean that the people making it don't believe in it... at least to some degree. Could Obama have really avoided appearing before the NAACP in order to pander to perceived racism? Now, that would be truly cynical. ...but there's a similar pattern of Obama ignoring black news outlets.

DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY, RELIGION, TIME-SPACE CONTINUUM

The head of the religion department at Luther College in Iowa recently argued that Jesus Christ, the central figure of Christianity, was in fact, a Muslim.

“‘Was Jesus a Muslim?" asks Prof. Robert F. Shedinger in the beginning of a book he published this year entitled Was Jesus a Muslim?

...at least he's not a history professor, since he's not familiar with the concept of history, or of one thing happening after the other. It's good that he's also not a physics professor, since he doesn't seem to be up on the laws of the universe. Jesus could no more have been a Muslim than he could have been a Mets fan or a reader of Professor Shedinger's book, because you cannot be or do a thing which does not yet exist. Other possible Shedinger book titles. "Was Buddha a Mormon?" and "Was Thomas Edison a Star Trek fan?"

Shedinger also argued that Islam is a better fit for Jesus since it is not a religion but a “social justice movement.” "I had to rethink what Islam is… I came to the conclusion that it was a social justice movement and I think that’s who Jesus was in the first century so I conclude Jesus is more like a Muslim," he said.

Islam not being a religion is news to about 1 billion people. All of them Muslims. It does, however, accord with a thesis in some counterjihad circles that Islam should be considered a political, rather than religious, movement. Those people just got supporting ammo from a liberal religion professor. European governments who might want to take action against Islam can now quote Shendinger too. But Shedingbat clearly fell for a line of Islamic taquiya and then embraced it by showing that he likes Islam because it's not a religion... suggesting that Luther College's professor of religion actually hates religion.

A spokesman for Luther College, a small liberal arts school affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, told Campus Reform on Wednesday that the administration stands fully behind Shedinger’s scholarship.

I bet they would stand just as much behind his work if Shedinger had concluded that Islam wasn't a religion, but an excuse for a 7th century warlord to do some raping and looting. But good news if you want to bring Shedingbat over to speak at your local Islamic center... he does that sort of thing.

SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS THAT DON'T EXIST

So we have a terrible economy, massive debt and a new program for fighting wars using drones, rather than troops. Clearly what we need is a new draft. That's what the New York Times and Thomas R. Ricks think. The first question is why do we need a draft?

Unlike Europeans, Americans still seem determined to maintain a serious military force, so we need to think about how to pay for it and staff it by creating a draft that is better and more equitable than the Vietnam-era conscription system.

Yes, but why do we need a better and more equitable draft than Vietnam? Why do we need a draft at all. Volunteer armies are better and more professional than draft armies.

A revived draft, including both males and females, should include three options for new conscripts coming out of high school. Some could choose 18 months of military service with low pay but excellent post-service benefits, including free college tuition. These conscripts would not be deployed but could perform tasks currently outsourced at great cost to the Pentagon: paperwork, painting barracks, mowing lawns, driving generals around, and generally doing lower-skills tasks so professional soldiers don’t have to.

That "great cost" would clearly be more than balanced by taking hundreds of thousands of teens out of the work force and then paying for their college tuition and health care for life, so that they can do paperwork and paint barracks... even though we can already find volunteers to do this already. And, in a shocking turn of events, those volunteers would actually choose military service as part of their career plan.

Those who don’t want to serve in the army could perform civilian national service for a slightly longer period and equally low pay — teaching in low-income areas, cleaning parks, rebuilding crumbling infrastructure, or aiding the elderly.

So now we're drafting people into a national workforce to clean parks in low income areas? Or we could just use paroled prisoners, long-term welfare cases and bored liberal kids for that.

And libertarians who object to a draft could opt out. Those who declined to help Uncle Sam would in return pledge to ask nothing from him — no Medicare, no subsidized college loans and no mortgage guarantees. Those who want minimal government can have it.

...sounds reasonable. So long as they wouldn't be expected to pay into the system and get tax discounts so they don't have to pay for anybody else's medicare, college loans and mortgages for low income areas. But that's not what Ricks is offering. He assumes these are freebies that the government gives us but that we don't compensate it for in any way, and if we don't want to mop parks in Harlem, then we're free riders.

With an average cohort of about four million 18-year-olds annually, they say, there is simply no place to put all these people. But the government could use this cheap labor in new ways, doing jobs that governments do in other countries but which have been deemed too expensive in this one, like providing universal free day care or delivering meals to elderly shut-ins.

...or fighting in gladiatorial contests for the amusement of high-ranking government officials and a few prominent journalists. But this way the government will have millions of low-paid slaves. And all the government has to do is provide them with free health care and free college tuition. It's a real bargain.

A final objection is the price tag; this program would cost billions of dollars. But it also would save billions, especially if implemented broadly and imaginatively.

This box of cereal costs five dollars. But it also saves you five dollars. Not because it costs five dollars but because math is not a real thing. If you buy this box of cereal for five bucks, you won't have to buy another one for five bucks. Sure this box of cereal will turn out to be a bit more expensive, also stale and a year after its expiration date, but it's more equitable cereal and will remind you of the suffering of others.

One reason our relatively small military is hugely expensive is that all of today’s volunteer soldiers are paid well; they often have spouses and children who require housing and medical care. Unmarried conscripts don’t need such a safety net.

Our "volunteer soldiers" are paid money that no public sector employee, including the postal service, would touch. And a bunch of those 18-year-old conscripts are still going to be married. Some will even have kids by then.

And much of the labor currently contracted out to the private sector could be performed by 18 year olds for much less.

The maximum in-state tuition fees on the GI Bill per term top out at 85,000 dollars. How many private sector employees have to be housed, cared for and monitored by the government. And in minor footnote, paying private companies to do things creates jobs, using an army of slaves to do it takes those jobs away.

It would be fairly cheap to house conscript soldiers on closed military bases.

In Venezuela it might be. Here it won't be. Not even under Democratic administrations which treat soldiers like garbage. Here's the problem with slavery: It's more expensive than you think. Training these conscripts will cost more than it would to pay a private company to do the same work.

The pool of cheap labor available to the federal government would broadly lower its current personnel costs and its pension obligations — especially if the law told federal managers to use the civilian service as much as possible, and wherever plausible.

Imagine if the federal government had a pool of cheap labor, the same kind of cheap labor that is already badly straining military budgets, and imagine if we had laws to tell the military to use the personnel it did not ask for and has no use for. Just imagine.

The government could also make this cheap labor available to states and cities.

Or it could sell them and trade them to other countries. Maybe even breed them. Imagine how many local parks could be cleaned and how much could be saved if a few hundred New York City school custodians were 19, energetic and making $15,000 plus room and board, instead of 50, tired and making $106,329, the top base salary for the city’s public school custodians, before overtime.

Imagine if we fired school custodians and replaced them with a bunch of 19 year olds, who don't want to be there, don't consider this a real job, have no investment in doing it properly, and are then assigned to clean parks.

School custodians, like most pub sec workers are overpaid, but the idea that an energetic 19 year old is a replacement for an experienced 50-year-old school custodian, who actually has a whole lot of skills and more responsibility, and who will use his experience on the job for another decade, is the thinking of a complete idiot. Incidentally, New York City parks are already being cleaned by welfare recipients and corporate volunteers. They are already fairly clean without any help from a slave army.

The savings actually might be a way of bringing around the unions representing federal, state and municipal workers, because they understand that there is a huge budget crunch that is going to hit the federal government in a few years.

Of all the incredibly stupid things that Thomas E. Ricks has written in this editorial, this may be the dumbest of them all. Do you know what will really thrill unions? Being sidelined by a badly paid slave labor army owned by the federal government. They'll be even more thrilled when they are told that it's happening because of a budget crunch. They may even throw Tom a party to thank him.