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Post by philunderwood on Apr 18, 2012 8:14:53 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?p=12850Quote of the Day: How big and intrusive has government gotten edition Published April 17, 2012 | By Bruce McQuain The quote comes from a Heritage Foundation post on taxes and notes that today is “tax freedom day”, or the day in which what you earn from now on actually is supposed to belong to you: In other words, for the first 111 days of the year, everything you earned went straight to Uncle Sam. Compare that to back in 1900, when Americans paid only 5.9% of their income in taxes and Tax Freedom Day came on January 22. And in 1900, Americans felt that amount was outrageous. But this puts in context the huge growth of government in the last century. Here’s the problem though, it’s going to get worse – 2013 would be the year of the Obama tax increases if he’s re-elected and Congress doesn’t move to keep the current tax rates (which the left insists on calling the “Bush tax cuts” but which have, instead, been our current tax rates for years). If those tax rates are allowed to expire, you can tack on another 11 days before we see “tax freedom day”. That’s all due to Taxmageddon — a slew of expiring tax cuts and new tax increases that will hit Americans on January 1, 2013, amounting to a $494 billion tax hike. Heritage’s Curtis Dubay reports that American households can expect to face an average tax increase of $3,800 and that 70 percent of Taxmageddon’s impact will fall directly on low-income and middle-income families, leaving them with $346 billion less to spend. Like sequestration, these tax increases are scheduled to happen on January 1st of next year. Both are likely to have huge negative economic impacts. On the tax side, Heritage’s Dubay points to immediate impact of some of the taxes that will become effective on that day: If Congress fails to act, workers won’t have to wait very long to feel the effects. Every payday, they would see a jump in their payroll tax as it takes a bigger bite out of every paycheck. And that only reflects one of the direct hits they’ll face. They’ll feel the pain of other tax hikes they won’t pay directly, like the health care surtax on investment income and salaries over $250,000 — which begins in 2013 along with five other Obamacare tax hikes — because these hikes will slow job creation by taking away resources from businesses, investors, and entrepreneurs. James Pethakoukis puts it into a chart for you: Says Pethakoukis: If you combine all the other tax increases from 1980-1993, they add up to 3.3% of GDP, according to the brilliant budget team at Strategas Research. The coming “taxmageddon” of 2013 surpasses all those tax hikes combined! How could the Obama White House even toy with the idea, which it has, of letting them happen? If they happen, can anyone guess what will happen to the economy? So obviously, stopping this is a priority with President Obama, right? That fact, though, isn’t making its way into President Obama’s talking points. He’s not mentioning that, absent action, Americans will pay higher income taxes, payroll taxes, and death taxes. He hasn’t spoken about the impending increase in the marriage penalty, the decrease in the child tax credit and the adoption credit, or how those who get tax breaks for education or dependent care costs will see them decreased. He hasn’t mentioned the new taxes under Obamacare, or how middle-income families will be forced to pay higher taxes under the Alternative Minimum Tax — a measure that was only supposed to impact “the rich.” Sound familiar? Instead of dealing with Taxmageddon, President Obama wants to change the subject with a gimmicky policy like the “Buffett Tax.” The Senate obliged him yesterday by voting on this distraction. Fortunately, it was rejected. Still, while President Obama trains his fire on this class warfare policy, he ignores that if Taxmageddon strikes, the lower and middle class Americans that he says he is fighting for will pay substantially more in taxes to the federal government starting on January 1. Call it the unadvertised side effect of Barack Obama’s failed leadership. So many “unadvertised” leadership failures in so few years. Let this happen and watch the economy head toward the bottom again. Of course, Obama won’t particularly care if he’s re-elected. He’ll no longer be answerable to the American people. He’ll have more “flexibility”. He’ll be free to move more to the left. A wonderful scenario and, in answer to the question in the title – you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. ~McQ
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Post by philunderwood on Apr 19, 2012 9:31:57 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=commodities-marketsScapegoating oil speculators–Obama counts on public’s economic ignorance to shift blame for high gas prices Published April 18, 2012 | By Bruce McQuain Icould pretty much stop there and say the title tells you the story. Obama knows high gas prices are not good for his re-election campaign. He also knows his energy policies have actively worked against ameliorating or lowering the price of gas. Therefore, it is necessary to find a scape-goat. Someone or something he can shift the blame too and demonize. In other words, the usual disingenuous attempt at distraction. David Harsanyi explains what “speculators”, otherwise known as commodity traders, do: Let’s start by being thankful for oil speculation — no matter what the motivation of those involved might be. To begin with, speculation allows companies with exposure to fluctuating commodity prices to hedge against rising costs by locking in. Sometimes the bet pays off; other times it doesn’t. But risk and profit are not yet crimes. Oil speculation also offers consumers and investors information about the future that can help them make informed long-term decisions. Speculators trade commodities based on the information available in the marketplace. They reflect reality; they don’t create it. But sometimes, unfortunate as it is, prices will rise. "Gouging," the close scaremongering cousin of "speculation," helps persuade consumers not to use what they don’t need. It incentivizes to modify behavior — our driving habits or the size of our cars. We conserve more when prices are higher, so we avoid shortages, and producers intensify their production. (Funny how Democrats get this concept when writing energy policy designed to artificially spike fossil fuel prices.) In reality, this sort of trading helps moderate the market. And, being a zero sum game – i.e. if you make money someone else loses it – it is done carefully. As Harsanyi explains, they “reflect reality; they don’t create it”. In essence you’re seeing a relatively free market work as it should. Of course, what Barack Obama wants to do is have government intrude on that market because politically he doesn’t like the reality it is reflecting because it is politically damaging to him. So: Speaking from the Rose Garden, the president announced a proposal to spend $52 million to fund increased government oversight of oil futures market trading in addition to harsher civil and criminal penalties for manipulation in energy markets. “We can’t afford a situation where some speculators can reap millions, while millions of American families get the short end of the stick,” Obama said. “That’s not the way the market should work.” Or, said another way, if you make a profit based on your foresight, you’d be considered a criminal. If you lose money, I suppose, that’s ok in Obama’s world. Of course, it’s all nonsense (I mean how would Mr. Obama regulate oil trading in foreign exchanges?). It is a calculated attempt to use ignorance of how these markets work to cause voters to shift their rage from him to his designated target. Successful scapegoating means one less issue the opposition has to use against him (not that he doesn’t provide a target rich environment anyway). He’s counting on this sort of populism to work. David Kruetzer asks some questions I’d like to see the press ask: If speculators are making unconscionable profits on energy, why are they only doing it occasionally and not all the time? Why are there only speculators in oil, not natural gas (whose current price is about half of what it averaged over the last decade)? And given how the petroleum market works — for every speculator who makes money on a trade, somebody else will lose money — the president’s theory “requires an endless string of chumps to take the other side of the speculators’ deals.” And Kreutzer points out the basics of any commodities market, again something of which Obama banks on your ignorance: For speculation to drive up prices, the speculators must either cause oil production to slow down (which they haven’t) or to pull oil off the market. If the flow of petroleum and its products remains unchanged, the price at the pump will not change. If petroleum is pulled off the market, which can happen even though there are limits to what can be stored, it will eventually come back on the market. The question becomes, ‘When the oil comes back on the market, is the price higher or lower than when it was pulled off the market?’ The price will only be higher if the amount supplied at that time is lower or the demand is higher. In either of those cases, speculators have helped moderate price fluctuations and will be rewarded with profits. If the price is lower, then the speculators did a bad thing and will be punished by losing money. So those are the basics of the issue as it concerns such trades and markets. As can plainly be seen, Obama hasn’t a leg to stand on. But that doesn’t stop him from claiming that government is the answer to this made up problem. Why? Well other that it is his political nature, he can’t sell the nonsense without some sort of “action”. It becomes much more believable to those who don’t know better if he’s going to spend millions to regulate the contrived problem out of existence. Of course he knows his actions will not have any positive effect on gas prices, and, in fact, may actually have a detrimental effect, which is why he couches this attempt at scapegoating the problem via government with “none of these steps by themselves will bring gas prices down overnight”. But he can claim to be taking action while continuing to blame speculators for the problem and counting on general economic ignorance to carry the day for him. Pretty typical of the man, I’ve come to learn. ~McQ
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Post by philunderwood on May 8, 2012 7:44:23 GMT -5
Truth Is Major Obstacle to Obama's Re-election By David Limbaugh www.JewishWorldReview.com | President Obama formally kicked off his re-election campaign in Richmond, Va., and Columbus, Ohio, Saturday, and his theme was certainly not, shall we say, "it's morning again in America" — President Ronald Reagan's optimistic re-election slogan in 1984. Obama's central message was more like: "Hey, I realize things look bad, and I'm not going to pretend you want four more years of this. But just think how much worse it would have been without me and how much worse it's going to get if you get rid of me." Interestingly, mainstream media journalists Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake were certain enough that Obama wasn't sufficiently forthcoming in his speech that they co-wrote a piece for The Washington Post "parsing" it. Without a whiff of disapproval, they said, "This being politics, Obama said less than what he meant. But, that's where we come in." The two then set out Obama's "most quotable lines" and followed each with their "translation of the message he was trying to send." The writers are obviously sympathetic to Obama's agenda and, as fellow liberals, share his end-justifies-the-means sleight of hand — whatever it takes to keep this federal juggernaut barreling along. Let's look at just a few of the quotes they highlighted. Obama said: "I don't care how many ways you try to explain it: Corporations aren't people. People are people." The writers said Obama was responding to Mitt Romney's earlier remark that "corporations are people," and they said Obama intended to send this message: "Romney is the business candidate. I am the people's candidate." Well, Romney is right. Most corporations (excepting holding companies and the like) are owned and operated by people. But Obama must depersonalize them because it makes his attacks on business seem less personal, which brings us to another point. Obama has denied he is anti-business, but everything about him screams otherwise, and even many of his liberal defenders, from these two writers to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to Fareed Zakaria, have been hard-pressed to deny that he either is anti-business or sends unmistakable signals that he is. Notice also how Obama framed the issue, which is revealing both as to his attitude toward business (mildly adversarial to hostile) and as to his general political worldview (us against them). He gratuitously drew a line of demarcation between corporations (read: business) and people. This is a false choice. Why can't we be pro-corporation and pro-people? Shouldn't an American president be bullish on both? The answer is yes, but Obama can't be; his class-conscious ideology forbids it, and electoral imperatives demand that he demonize his political opponents, which is why his hype about all of us coming together as one rings so hollow and disingenuous. If you still doubt Obama's mindset, you should consider another quote: "We came together because we believe that in America, your success shouldn't be determined by the circumstances of your birth." Is there any way to read this statement apart from the drippingly bellicose class warfare resentment it connotes? Obama also said, "Osama bin Laden is no longer a threat to this country." Not to dabble in ancient Greek philosophy, but I dare say that the influence of a human being, especially one who has been as pivotally important to al-Qaida's ongoing jihad against the United States and its allies, can live well beyond the grave. What's more naive and even dangerous about the statement is that it implies that bin Laden's death justifies the false hope that the enemy is less determined to destroy us than before and that we may now relax our guard. Yes, we get that Obama wants to keep reminding us that he issued the kill order for bin Laden, but let's not give him the further leeway of overblowing the significance of the kill to the war on terror. This whole issue is a bit spooky when you consider Obama's double-minded approach to the war. On the one hand, he would have us believe it's darn near over; he's replaced our so-called jingoistic rhetoric with such gems as kinetic military actions and overseas contingency operations, and he seems to believe his overt efforts to reach out to the Muslim world, including flowery panegyrics to Muslim culture and the construction of Gitmo basketball courts, have mitigated Islamist hatred toward America and the West. (Polls emphatically say otherwise.) On the other hand, he's operating assassination drones like a repressed schoolboy with new toys and indulging in indefinite detentions of enemy combatants, as if wholly unaware of what the other half of his split personality has been preaching. I've just scratched the surface, but the inescapable conclusion is that Obama cannot spin his domestic and foreign policy records enough to conceal the truth of his actual record. Indeed, the stubborn truth will be his greatest obstacle in November.
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Post by philunderwood on May 16, 2012 9:31:13 GMT -5
Dr. Sanity Shining a psychological spotlight on a few of the insanities of life
Tuesday, May 15, 2012BARACK OBAMA'S THEORY OF EVOLUTION Obama's personal endorsement of Gay marriage was embraced by the political left as evidence of his "evolution" on the matter (I saw it more as "gay for pay", but then, I'm rather cynical); but there is no reason to suppose that his position on this or any other issue is not continuing to morph into anything he needs it or himself to be.
We get some idea of President Obama's theory of "evolving" from this:
In that conversation with Wright is compressed the whole of Barack Obama’s problematic process of evolution. Things that are to most people fixed points of life are garments to be thrown on and off with him. He changes his name. Adopts a definite racial identity when he might have claimed a more mixed ethnicity. He changes religions — though Wright is ambiguous on the point — shedding one persona only to adopt another like a shape-shifter assuming a new form. He does all this with alacrity of a man changing his shoes.
All of us change over the course of our lives, but for most of us it is gradual and nothing like the frenetic transformations that the President of the United States puts himself through. Barack Obama’s latest evolution on gay marriage shows that he is not done shape-shifting yet. He is still a work in progress.
But the conversation with Wright illustrates the perils of too rapid a change. Someone gets left behind holding the empty clothes. In this case it was Jeremiah Wright who found himself on the floor like a piece of used Kleenex. For the trajectory of Obama’s personality changes do not describe a Random Walk. The paradigm shifts he undergoes are directed. They never go from a position of greater power to lesser. The changes may alter all else, but in the respect of power the progress goes only one way.
And whatever blocks the way had better yield.
Isn't it interesting that the more information we find out about this tabula rasa that was elected POTUS in 2008, the more frightening is the thought of him serving a second term....?
I say the word frightening because Obama is definitely not the kind of person to whom I would entrust either my country or my personal well-being.
I could (almost) understand 2008 when he was a bright, shiny new thing with no past (worth looking into anyway) and a supposedly glorious future (as described by the gullible media and other adoring fans). But anyone who votes for this incredibly egomaniacal man in 2012 is asking deliberately asking for big big trouble on the economic and international front--and who knows what other surprises he may have in store as he further "evolves."
I encourage any and all efforts to mock the overweening and undeserved self-regard that sadly drives this peculiar faux messiah.
History will certainly make mincemeat of his evolving omni-incompetence.
Posted by Dr. Sanity
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Post by philunderwood on May 17, 2012 7:41:35 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=gay-marriageHow do you know Obama’s gay marriage declaration was for political purposes only? Published May 16, 2012 | By Bruce McQuain Disclaimer – this post isn’t about whether or not you support gay marriage. I don’t care. The post is to discuss the politics of the declaration by President Obama and to make a point. If you want to rant about the pros or cons of gay marriage, go somewhere else. That said, how do you know it was done explicitly for political purposes? Timing for one. The word was out that big donors who happened to be gay were withholding big bucks. Declare. Problem solved. Additionally – and this is no surprise – the bonus of declaring not only freed up that money (which apparently isn’t as easy to raise this time around) but it offered another distraction from the economy, the debt and the dismal Obama record. Every day that the economy, debt and the rest of his record isn’t being discussed is a good day for Obama. But here’s the real reason you know it was all for political gain and he plans to do absolutely nothing about it in reality: Strange, too, that Obama declared gay marriage a civil right, but insisted it should be left to the states. His political allies are scratching their heads over that one — it’s a civil right or it’s not — but the media haven’t pursued that incoherent angle either. That’s right, he declares it a “civil right” but then shunts it off to the states to “decide”. Really? Obviously we can argue all day about whether or not it is a civil right, but that’s irrelevant to the point here. He declared it a civil right. And he also said that what we call ‘civil rights’ should be decided at the state level. “No civil rights for you!” Uh, okay. George Wallace and Orville Faubus were within their rights as the heads of their states to deny blacks their “civil rights” if that’s what the people of their state wanted? We all know the answer to that. So this is how our resident “Constitutional Scholar” makes some political hay without any intention of actually doing anything to back up his declaration (even while offering an incoherent reason that should be the talk of the media … uh, yeah, that’ll happen). Nada. Zip. Zero. As worthless a gesture as Syria signing the UN’s “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”. But politically, it’s worth big dollars just when he needs big dollars. Forward! ~McQ
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Post by philunderwood on May 22, 2012 8:04:00 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=conn-carrollObama election campaign: The politics of politics Published May 21, 2012 | By Bruce McQuain I don’t know if you’re familiar with the kerfuffle involving the Mayor of Newark, NJ, Corey Booker, but it provides an interesting political point. Conn Carroll brings you up to date: The fun started on Sunday when David Gregory asked Booker to defend the Obama campaign ads attacking Romney over his tenure at Bain Capital. Booker responded: As far as that stuff, I have to just say from a very personal level, I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity. To me, it’s just this–we’re getting to a ridiculous point in America, especially that I know. I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, it ain’t–they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses, And this, to me, I’m very uncomfortable with. … This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides. It’s nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity, stop attacking Jeremiah Wright. This stuff has got to stop because what it does is it undermines, to me, what this country should be focused on. It’s a distraction from the real issues. It’s either going to be a small campaign about this crap or it’s going to be a big campaign, in my opinion, about the issues that the American public cares about. For that, Booker caught terrific heat from the usual suspects on the left and, has since, begun to walk back this apparent political heresy. So … what does it all mean? Booker’s Meet the Press bungle will probably be forgotten by election day, but it is a symptom of a much larger problem for Obama. He has no positive record to run on. His advisers know he can only win by tearing down Romney. But this strategy is the opposite of the brand he established in 2008. The “Hope and Change” are gone. This is not the last time we are going to see Obama surrogates fail to stay on Chicago’s reelection message. Unlike Obama, many of them will have to face voters again. Carroll hits the nail on the head. Where politicians of all stripes on the left could and did enthusiastically and unconditionally endorse Obama last campaign, now that he has a record, and a poor one at that, such an endorsement could be a huge political liability for them. Pushing the talking points could mean electoral trouble. Keeping a distance from Obama could mean the difference between winning and losing an election. So … that’s what it all means. Corey Booker is no fool. And what he said is surprisingly honest as well as a reflection of how most people feel. All of this is a “distraction from the real issues”. But then, that’s the strategy of a president with an abysmal record. Booker is a political animal and most likely has aspirations for higher office. He’s begun the inevitable walk back. But his moment of honesty and clarity signal some potential trouble for the distraction strategy known as the Obama campaign. When your own party operatives are dissatisfied with how you are conducting your campaign, it isn’t particularly difficult to conclude that most voters feel that way as well. Somewhere, sometime, Obama is going to have to actually face the political music about his record. The sooner, of course, the better. When the focus turns to that, the numbers he enjoys now, along with the slight lead in the polls, will most likely disappear. And as they do, more and more Democrats are likely to be busy with “previous commitments” on days he visits their states. ~McQ
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Post by philunderwood on May 31, 2012 6:43:34 GMT -5
Obama Campaign May Be Fooling Itself By Michael Barone www.JewishWorldReview.com | "Axelrod is endeavoring not to panic." So reads a sentence in John Heilemann's exhaustive article on Barack Obama's campaign in this week's New York magazine. Heilemann is a fine reporter and was co-author with Time's Mark Halperin of a best-selling book on the 2008 presidential campaign. While his sympathies are undoubtedly with Obama, he does a fine job of summarizing the arguments and tactics of both sides. And he's capable of directing snark at both candidates. Samples: Romney "seems to suffer a hybrid of affluenza and Tourette's." "A cynic might say that the liberation Obama feels is the freedom from, you know, actually governing." Heilemann's article is well-sourced. It's based on interviews with David Axelrod, the former White House aide now back in Chicago, David Plouffe, the 2008 manager now in the White House, and Jim Messina, the current campaign manager. The picture Heilemann draws is of campaign managers whose assumptions have been proved wrong and who seem to be fooling themselves about what will work in the campaign. One assumption that has been proved wrong is that the Obama campaign would raise $1 billion and that, as in 2008, far more money would be spent for Democrats than Republicans. Heilemann reports the campaign managers' alibis. Obama has given donors "shabby treatment," he writes. This of a president who has attended more fundraisers than his four predecessors combined. As for the Obama-authorized super PAC being $90 million short of its $100 million goal, well, it was late getting started and some money-givers don't like negative ads. A more plausible explanation is that big Democratic donors don't trust the political judgment of super PAC head Bill Burton — who was passed over for promotion to White House press secretary — the way big Republican donors trust Karl Rove. Here's another: A lot of people like the way Obama has governed less than they liked the idea of Obama governing. A second assumption is that the Obama managers "see Romney as a walking, talking bull's-eye" and have "contempt for his skills as a political performer." You can find some basis for this in Romney's performance in the primaries. But you can also find evidence to the contrary. In my own experience as a political consultant, I found it dangerous to assume your opponents will screw up. Sometimes they don't. As for fooling themselves, I have to wonder whether the Obama people were spoofing Heilemann at points. He quotes Plouffe as saying. "Let's be clear what (Romney) would do as president," and then summarizes: "Potentially abortion will be criminalized. Women will be denied contraceptive services. He's far right on immigration. He supports efforts to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage." These claims don't seem sustainable to me. No one seriously thinks there's any likelihood of criminalizing abortion or banning contraception. Romney brushed off that last one in a debate. Nor is there any chance an anti-same-sex marriage amendment would get the two-thirds it needs in Congress to go to the states. Opposing legalization of illegal immigrants is not a clear vote-loser, particularly now that, the Pew Hispanic Center reports, a million have left the country. Also, the Obama managers' explanations about why it's really not inconsistent to attack Romney as a flip-flopper during the primaries and then flip-flop to attack him for "extreme right" views do not ring true. It sounds as "thoroughly tactical" as Axelrod's description of Romney. Heilemann quotes Messina as saying Obama has "a distinct advantage" in battleground states. He envisions the campaign as a long, hard slog through the target states, like George W. Bush's re-election campaign in 2004. That's what it looks like now. But there are other possibilities. Bush was running in a 10-year period in which partisan preferences were very steady. In five straight House elections from 1996 to 2004, each party got about the same percentage of the popular vote every time. We're in a different setting now. Obama won the popular vote by 7 points in 2008. Republicans won the House popular vote by 7 points in 2010. Many more voters have been moving around than had been eight years ago. The strategy of rallying currently unenthusiastic core Obama voters — Hispanics, young voters, unmarried women — risks alienating others who may be more moveable than their counterparts were in 2004. The Obama managers seem unaware of that risk. Could be a problem for them.
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Post by philunderwood on Jun 5, 2012 7:52:37 GMT -5
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Post by philunderwood on Jun 6, 2012 6:40:33 GMT -5
The Desperate Campaign of Barack Obama By Bernard Goldberg www.JewishWorldReview.com | I have figured out President Obama's re-election campaign strategy: Keep throwing stuff against the wall until something — anything — sticks. The "war on women" strategy didn't work. Only hard-core lefties believe Mitt Romney is anti-woman. And even they don't really believe it. The "he's too rich and out of touch" wasn't resonating with the peasants either. Neither was the "he put his dog on the roof of the car" and drove to Canada thing. When they threw "Bain Capital" against the wall, they must have figured they had a winner. Here was a guy who ran Bain, they told the voters, who was out to "maximize profits" not "create jobs." Oh, the humanity! Or more accurately: Oh, the ignorance! There isn't a company in the entire USA — not a mom and pop drug store or a multinational conglomerate — whose main goal is job creation. Not one! Someone needs to tell the president that "job creation" comes only after you "maximize profits" � that only when profits rise and business grows do the people who run the company need more workers to keep up with demand. President Obama didn't know that because he doesn't know anything about business. But enough of his supporters — Democrats all — went on TV and said it's wrong for the president to demonize private equity in general and Bain in particular. These companies, the Democrats said, do a lot of good for the country. So now, in case you haven't noticed, Team Obama has settled on a new strategy, at least for the moment. And it's as thoughtful and reasoned and smart as all the rest. And it pretty much comes down to this: A President Romney would be a disaster. I'll bet anything that Team Obama put the word "disaster" in front of a focus group of potential voters and found that "disaster" engenders negative feelings. No kidding! So a recent headline in the liberal magazine Rolling Stone shouted: "Why 'President Romney' Would Be a Disaster for Women" And a left-wing Web site told us that "Romney Is a Disaster on Education" � while another liberal site informed us that, "A Romney presidency would be a foreign policy disaster." Not all Democrats, of course, think Mitt Romney is a disaster. Bill Clinton for instance, doesn't think so. He thinks Romney is a calamity. Just a few days after praising Romney's "sterling" business career, Clinton told an Obama fundraiser that a Romney presidency would be "calamitous for our country and the world." Bill Clinton and other Democrats say that since Romney is running as a businessman who claims to know how to turn around the economy, then it's fair game to challenge him on that central plank of his campaign. And it is. They say when Romney was governor of Massachusetts he didn't create a lot of jobs and the state's economy lagged behind almost every other state in the country. For this there's a simple response, one that every voter will readily understand: "When I left office in Massachusetts," Romney should tell President Obama at their first debate, "our unemployment rate was 4.7 percent. Down from 5.6 percent when I took office. After almost four years as president, America's unemployment rate is 8.2." Then, after a brief, dramatic pause to let those two numbers sink in, he should look over at the president, smile weakly, and put the nail in the coffin. "Most of the folks listening to us tonight, Mr. President, would be thrilled with my 4.7 percent. It's a lot better than your 8.2 percent." One more thing: If a Romney Presidency would be "disastrous" and "calamitous" what should we call the Obama presidency? I mean, besides "incompetent."
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Post by philunderwood on Jun 7, 2012 6:30:10 GMT -5
From hope and change to fear and smear By Victor Davis Hanson www.JewishWorldReview.com | Barack Obama lately has been accusing presumptive rival Mitt Romney of not waging his campaign in the nice (but losing) manner of John McCain in 2008. But a more marked difference can be seen in Obama himself, whose style and record bear no resemblance to his glory days of four years ago. Recently, the president purportedly has been reassuring Democratic donors that his signature achievement, Obamacare, could be readjusted in the second term -- something Republicans have promised to do for the last three years. What an evolution: We have gone from being told we would love Obamacare, to granting exemptions to favored companies from it, to private assurances to modify it after re-election -- all before it was even fully enacted. Obama's calls for a new civility four years ago are apparently inoperative. The vow to "punish our enemies" and the intimidation of Romney campaign donors are a long way from the soaring speech at Berlin's Victory Column and "Yes, we can." Obama once called for a focus on issues rather than personal invective. But now we mysteriously hear again of Romney's dog, his great-great-grandfather's wives, and a roughhousing incident some 50 years ago in prep school. The "hope and change" slogan for a new unity gave way to a new "us versus them" divide. "Us" now means all sorts of targeted appeals to identity groups like African-Americans for Obama, Latinos for Obama, gays for Obamas, greens for Obama, or students for Obama. "Them," in contrast, means almost everyone else who cannot claim hyphenation or be counted on as a single-cause constituency. In 2008, the Obama strategy was supposedly to unite disparate groups with a common vision; in 2012, it is to rally special interests through common enemies. Remember the Obama who promised an end to the revolving door of lobbyists and special-interest money? Then came the likes of Peter Orszag, who went from overseeing the Obama budget to being a Citigroup grandee, and financial pirate Jon Corzine, who cannot account for more than $1.5 billion of investors' money but can bundle cash for Obama's re-election. If you told fervent supporters in 2008 that by early 2012 Obama would set a record for the most meet-and-greet fundraisers in presidential history, they would have thought it blasphemy. Obama is said to go over every name on his Predator drone targeted-assassination list -- a kill tally that is now seven times larger in less than four years than what George W. Bush piled up in eight. Guantanamo is just as open now as it was in 2008. If Obama supporter and former Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh was once accusing President Bush of being "torturer in chief," he is now an Obama insider arguing that bombing Libya is not really war and that taking out an American citizen and terrorist suspect in Yemen is perfectly legal. Previously bad renditions, preventative detentions and military tribunals are now all good. Some disgruntled conservatives jumped ship in 2008 for the supposedly tightfisted Obama when he called for halving the deficit in four years and derided George Bush as "unpatriotic" for adding $4 trillion to the national debt. Yet Obama already has exceeded all the Bush borrowing in less than four years. What accounts for the radical change in mood from four years ago? The blue-state model of large government, increased entitlements and high taxes may be good rhetoric, but it is unsound reality. Redistribution does not serve static, aging populations in a competitive global world -- as we are seeing from California to southern Europe. "Hope and change" was a slogan in 2008; it has since been supplanted by the reality of 40 straight months of 8-percent-plus unemployment and record deficits -- despite $5 billion in borrowed priming, near-zero interest rates, and vast increases in entitlement spending. Obama's bragging of drilling more oil despite, rather than because of, his efforts is supposed to be a clever appeal to both greens and business. Private equity firms are good for campaign donations but bad when a Republican rival runs them. "Romney would do worse," rather than "I did well," is the implicit Obama campaign theme of 2012. To be re-elected, a now-polarizing Obama believes that he must stoke the fears of some of us rather than appeal to all of our hopes by defending a successful record, while smearing with the old politics rather than inspiring with the new. That cynical calculation and constant hedging and flip-flopping may be normal for politicians, but eventually it proves disastrous for the ones who posed as messianic prophets.
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Post by philunderwood on Jun 11, 2012 8:35:45 GMT -5
All the President's . . . money By Mark Steyn www.JewishWorldReview.com | Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Diamond Jubilee a few days ago — that's 60 years on the throne. Just to put it in perspective, she's been queen since Harry S Truman was president. At any rate, her jubilee has been a huge success, save for a few churlish republicans in various corners of Her Majesty's realms from London to Toronto to Sydney pointing out how absurd it is for grown citizens to be fawning over a distant head of state who lives in a fabulous, glittering cocoon entirely disconnected from ordinary life. Which brings us to President Obama. Last week, the republic's citizen-president passed among his fellow Americans. Where? Cleveland? Dubuque? Presque Isle, Maine? No, Beverly Hills. These days, it's pretty much always Beverly Hills or Manhattan, because that's where the money is. That's the Green Zone, and you losers are outside it. Appearing at an Obama fundraiser at the home of Glee creator Ryan Murphy and his fiancée David Miller, the president, reasonably enough, had difficulty distinguishing one A-list Hollywood summit from another. "I just came from a wonderful event over at the Wilshire or the Hilton — I'm not sure which," said Obama, "because you go through the kitchens of all these places and so you never are quite sure where you are." Ah, the burdens of stardom. The old celebrities-have-to-enter-through-the-kitchen line. The last time I heard that was a couple of decades back in London when someone was commiserating with Sinatra on having to be ushered in through the back. Frank brushed it aside. We were at the Savoy, or maybe the Waldorf. I can't remember, and I came in through the front door. Oddly enough, the Queen enters hotels through the lobby. So do Prince William and his lovely bride. A month ago, they stayed at a pub in Suffolk for a friend's wedding, and came in through the same door as mere mortals. Imagine that! So far this year, President Obama has been to three times as many fundraisers as President Bush had attended by this point in the 2004 campaign. This is what the New York Post calls his "torrid pace," although judging from those remarks in California he's about as torrid as an overworked gigolo staggering punchily through the last mambo of the evening. According to Brendan J. Doherty's forthcoming book "The Rise of the President's Permanent Campaign," Obama has held more fundraisers than the previous five presidents' re-election campaigns combined. This is all he does now. But hey, unlike those inbred monarchies with their dukes and marquesses and whatnot, at least he gets out among the masses. Why, in a typical week, you'll find him at a fundraiser at George Clooney's home in Los Angeles with Barbra Streisand and Salma Hayek. These are people who are in touch with the needs of ordinary Americans because they have played ordinary Americans in several of their movies. And then only four days later the president was in New York for a fundraiser hosted by Ricky Martin, the only man on the planet whose evolution on gayness took longer than Obama's. It's true that moneyed celebrities in, say, Pocatello or Tuscaloosa have not been able to tempt the president to hold a lavish fundraiser in Idaho or Alabama, but he does fly over them once in a while. Why, only a week ago, he was on Air Force One accompanied by Jon Bon Jovi en route to a fundraiser called Barack On Broadway. Any American can attend an Obama event for a donation of a mere $35,800 — the cost of the fundraiser hosted by Dreamworks honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg, and the one hosted by Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, and the one hosted by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett, and the one hosted by Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, and the one hosted by Crosby, Stills and Nash. $35,800 is a curiously non-round figure. Perhaps the ticket cost is $36,000, but under ObamaCare there's a $200 co-pay. Those of us who grew up in hidebound, class-ridden monarchies are familiar with the old proverb that a cat can look at a king. But in America only a cool cat can look at the king. However, there are some cheap seats available. A year-and-a-half ago, big-money Democrats in Rhode Island paid $7,500 per person for the privilege of having dinner with President Obama at a private home in Providence. He showed up for 20 minutes and then said he couldn't stay for dinner. "I've got to go home to walk the dog and scoop the poop," he told them, because when you've paid seven-and-a half grand for dinner nothing puts you in the mood to eat like a guy talking about canine fecal matter. And, having done the poop gag, the president upped and exited, and left bigshot Dems to pass the evening talking to the guy from across the street. But you've got to admit that's a memorable night out: $7,500 for Dinner With Obama* (*dinner with Obama not included). And here's an even better deal, for those who, despite the roaring economy, can't afford even $7,500 for non-dinner with Obama: the President of the United States is raffling himself off! For the cost of a $3 non-refundable online-application processing fee, you and your loved one can have your names put in a large presidential hat from which the FBI background-check team will pluck two to be ushered into the presence of their humble citizen-executive. That's to say, somewhere across the fruited plain, a common-or-garden non-celebrity will win the opportunity to attend an Obama fundraiser at the home of "Sex And The City" star Sarah Jessica Parker, co-hosted by Vogue editor Anna Wintour, the British-born inspiration for the movie "The Devil Wears Prada." I wish this were a parody, but I'm not that good. But I'm sure Sarah Jessica and Anna will treat you just like any other minor celebrity they've accidentally been seated next to due to a hideous faux pas in placement, even if you do dip the wrong end of the arugula in the amuse-bouche. If you're wondering who Anna Wintour is, boy, what a schlub you are: She's renowned throughout the fashion world for her scary bangs. I'm referring to her hair, not to the last sound Osama bin Laden heard as the bullet headed toward his eye socket on the personal orders of the president, in case you've forgotten. But that's the kind of inside tidbit you'll be getting, as the commander in chief leaks highly classified national-security details to you over the zebra mussel in a Eurasian-milfoil coulis. For a donation of $35,800, he'll pose with you in a Seal Team Six uniform with one foot on Osama's corpse (played by Harry Reid). For a donation of $46,800, he'll send an unmanned drone to hover amusingly over your sister-in-law's house. For a donation of $77,800, he'll install you as the next president-for-life of Syria (liability waiver required). For a donation of $159,800, he'll take you into Sarah Jessica's guest bedroom and give you the full 007 while Carly Simon sings "Nobody Does It Better". There are monarchies and republics a-plenty, but there's only one 24/7 celebrity fund-raising presidency. If it's Tuesday, it must be Kim Cattrall, or Hootie and the Blowfish, or Laverne and Shirley, or the ShamWow guy ... I wonder if the Queen ever marvels at the transformation of the American presidency since her time with Truman. Ah, well. If you can't stand the klieg-light heat of Obama's celebrity, stay out of the Beverly Wilshire kitchen.
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Post by philunderwood on Jun 12, 2012 15:10:00 GMT -5
Socialist or Fascist? By Thomas Sowell www.JewishWorldReview.com | It bothers me a little when conservatives call Barack Obama a "socialist." He certainly is an enemy of the free market, and wants politicians and bureaucrats to make the fundamental decisions about the economy. But that does not mean that he wants government ownership of the means of production, which has long been a standard definition of socialism. What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands. That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector. Politically, it is heads-I-win when things go right, and tails-you-lose when things go wrong. This is far preferable, from Obama's point of view, since it gives him a variety of scapegoats for all his failed policies, without having to use President Bush as a scapegoat all the time. Government ownership of the means of production means that politicians also own the consequences of their policies, and have to face responsibility when those consequences are disastrous — something that Barack Obama avoids like the plague. Thus the Obama administration can arbitrarily force insurance companies to cover the children of their customers until the children are 26 years old. Obviously, this creates favorable publicity for President Obama. But if this and other government edicts cause insurance premiums to rise, then that is something that can be blamed on the "greed" of the insurance companies. The same principle, or lack of principle, applies to many other privately owned businesses. It is a very successful political ploy that can be adapted to all sorts of situations. One of the reasons why both pro-Obama and anti-Obama observers may be reluctant to see him as fascist is that both tend to accept the prevailing notion that fascism is on the political right, while it is obvious that Obama is on the political left. Back in the 1920s, however, when fascism was a new political development, it was widely — and correctly — regarded as being on the political left. Jonah Goldberg's great book "Liberal Fascism" cites overwhelming evidence of the fascists' consistent pursuit of the goals of the left, and of the left's embrace of the fascists as one of their own during the 1920s. Mussolini, the originator of fascism, was lionized by the left, both in Europe and in America, during the 1920s. Even Hitler, who adopted fascist ideas in the 1920s, was seen by some, including W.E.B. Du Bois, as a man of the left. It was in the 1930s, when ugly internal and international actions by Hitler and Mussolini repelled the world, that the left distanced themselves from fascism and its Nazi offshoot — and verbally transferred these totalitarian dictatorships to the right, saddling their opponents with these pariahs. What socialism, fascism and other ideologies of the left have in common is an assumption that some very wise people — like themselves — need to take decisions out of the hands of lesser people, like the rest of us, and impose those decisions by government fiat. The left's vision is not only a vision of the world, but also a vision of themselves, as superior beings pursuing superior ends. In the United States, however, this vision conflicts with a Constitution that begins, "We the People..." That is why the left has for more than a century been trying to get the Constitution's limitations on government loosened or evaded by judges' new interpretations, based on notions of "a living Constitution" that will take decisions out of the hands of "We the People," and transfer those decisions to our betters. The self-flattery of the vision of the left also gives its true believers a huge ego stake in that vision, which means that mere facts are unlikely to make them reconsider, regardless of what evidence piles up against the vision of the left, and regardless of its disastrous consequences. Only our own awareness of the huge stakes involved can save us from the rampaging presumptions of our betters, whether they are called socialists or fascists. So long as we buy their heady rhetoric, we are selling our birthright of freedom.
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Post by Ritty77 on Jun 15, 2012 17:23:25 GMT -5
Crosshairs on a Congressional map: Hate speech that promotes violence.
Exploding busses: Not a problem.
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Post by philunderwood on Jun 18, 2012 8:04:14 GMT -5
Earthly woes mount as Obama's rhetoric soars By Mark Steyn www.JewishWorldReview.com | Round about this time in the election cycle, a presidential challenger finds himself on the stump and posing a simple test to voters: "Ask yourself – are you better off now than you were four years ago?" But, in fact, you don't need to ask yourself, because the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances has done it for you. Between 2007 and 2010, Americans' median net worth fell 38.8 percent – or from $126,400 per family to $77,300 per family. Oh, dear. As I mentioned a few months ago, when readers asked me to recommend countries they could flee to, most of the countries worth fleeing to Americans can no longer afford to live in. Which means we'll just have to fix things here. How likely is Barack Obama to do this? A few days ago he came to Cleveland, a city that is a byword for economic dynamism, fiscal prudence, and sound government. He gave a 54-minute address that tried the patience even of the most doting court eunuchs. "One of the worst speeches I've ever heard Barack Obama make," pronounced MSNBC's Jonathan Alter, as loyal Democrat attendees fled the arena to volunteer for the Obamacare death-panel pilot program. In fairness to the president, I wouldn't say it was that much worse, or duller, or more listless and inert than previous Obama speeches. In fact, much of it was exactly the same guff he was peddling when Jonathan Alter's pals were still hailing him as the world's greatest orator. The problem is the ever-widening gulf between the speech and the slough of despond all about. Take, for example, the attempt at soaring rhetoric: "That's how we built this country – together. We constructed railroads and highways, the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge. We did those things together," he said, in a passage that was presumably meant to be inspirational but was delivered with the faintly petulant air of a great man resentful at having to point out the obvious, yet again. "Together, we touched the surface of the moon, unlocked the mystery of the atom, connected the world through our own science and imagination. We haven't done these things as Democrats or Republicans. We've done them as Americans. Beyond the cheap dissembling, there was a bleak, tragic quality to this paragraph. Does anyone really believe a second-term Obama administration is going to build anything? Yes, you, madam, the gullible sap at the back in the faded hope'n'change T-shirt. You seriously think your guy is going to put up another Hoover Dam? Let me quote one Deanna Archuleta, Obama's Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior, in a speech to Democratic environmentalists in Nevada: "You will never see another federal dam." That seems pretty straightforward. America is out of the dam business. Just as the late Roman Empire no longer built aqueducts, so we no longer build dams. In fairness to the Romans, they left it to the barbarians to sweep in and destroy the existing aqueducts, whereas in America the government destroys the dams (some 200 this century) as an act of environmental virtue hailed by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior. Obama can urge us all he wants to band together because when we dream big dreams there's no limit to what Big Government can accomplish. But these days we can't build a new Hoover Dam, only an attractive new corner office for the Assistant Deputy Assistant Deputy Assistant Secretary to the Secretary of Deputy Assistants at the Department of Bureaucratic Sclerosis, and she'll be happy to issue a compliance order that the Hoover Dam's mandatory fish ladders are non-wheelchair accessible, and so the whole joint needs to close. That we can do! If only we dare to dream Big Dreams!! Together!!! As to "touching the surface of the moon," I touch on this in my most recent book, whose title I will forbear to plug. Imagine if we hadn't gone to the moon in the 1960s. Can you seriously picture Obama presiding over such an event today? Instead of the Apollo 11 guys taking up a portable cassette machine to play Sinatra and the Count Basie band's recording of "Fly Me To The Moon," the lads of Obamo 11 would take an iPod with Lady Gaga or Ke$ha or whatever... Yet, even as you try to fill in the details, doesn't the whole thing start to swim out of focus as something that increasingly belongs not only to another time but another place? In the Sixties, American ingenuity burst the bounds of the planet. Now our debt does, and "touching the surface of the moon" half-lingers in collective consciousness as a dimming memory of lost grandeur, in the way a date farmer in 19th century Nasiriyah might be vaguely aware that the Great Ziggurat of Ur used to be around here. But all he can see stretching to the horizon is sand. So today our money-no-object government spends lot of money but to no great object. What are Big Government's priorities now? Carpeting Catholic universities with IUDs. Regulating the maximum size of milk-coffee beverages. As Obama told us: "'That's how we built this country – together. We constructed railroads and highways... Together, we touched the surface of the moon, unlocked the mystery of the atom.' And as we will one day tell our grandchildren: 'Together, we touched the surface of the decaf caramel macchiato and deemed it to be more than 16 ounces. Together, we unlocked the mystery of 30-year-old college students' womanhood. One small step to the IKEA futon for a lucky Georgetown Law freshwoman, one giant leap for womankind. Who will ever forget the day when the Union Pacific Board of Health Compliance and the Central Pacific Agency of Sustainable Growth Enhancement met at Promontory Community College, Utah, to hammer in the Golden Spike condom dispenser?'" Most of us don't want a new Hoover Dam. We would like our homes to be less underwater, but there's no danger of that anytime soon. Most of us don't want America to go to the moon. We would like a few less craters on the economic wasteland down here. Soaring rhetoric at a time of earthbound problems – jobs, debt – risks making the president sound ridiculous. Granted, there's a lot of it about this time of year – commencement speakers assuring kids who can't manage middle-school math that you can be anything you want to be as long as you dream your dreams. But Obama offers an even more absurd evolution of this grim trope: "I can be anything I want to be as long as you chumps dream your dreams." Self-pity is never an attractive quality, and in an elected head of state even less so. Obama whines that his opponents say it's all his fault. One can argue about whose fault it is, but not, as my colleagues at National Review pointed out, whose responsibility it is: It's his. He's the only president we have. And he made things worse. He increased the national debt by some 70 percent, and what do we have to show for it? No dams, no railroads, no moon shots. Just government, and bureaucracy, and regulation, unto national bankruptcy. "Fly me to the moon/Let me play among the stars..." Who needs another moon shot? Obama's already up there, soaring ever more unmoored from reality. Pity us mere mortals back on Planet Earth, living in the land he made.
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Post by Ritty77 on Jun 18, 2012 20:03:20 GMT -5
The media are in a tizzy over a reporter's interruption of Obama's little speech. Unprecedented. Hateful. Disrespectful. And of course, according to Sam Donaldson and others, racist. What was your excuse, Sam? And how disrespectful is this? And why aren't they asking Obama about F&F and the leaks? Those are rhetorical questions, of course.
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Post by philunderwood on Jun 22, 2012 6:44:41 GMT -5
Obama no longer bothers to hide his socialist bent By Diana West www.JewishWorldReview.com | Are we watching the meltdown of Barack Obama, soon to become a radioactive pile from which voters will run come November? Or are we instead witnessing the stirrings of a kind of political phoenix heretofore unseen in American history? By any traditional measure, news in the past week or two alone should sink Barack Obama's chances for a second term. First, Obama biographer Stanley Kurtz reported new and definitive proof that, as a 34-year-old embarking on his political career, Obama belonged to the anti-capitalist -- indeed, socialist -- New Party, a phase of his political development he has not only never repudiated but also has hidden from the American people. By any traditional measure, such news would at least intensify any Obama meltdown. But wait. Kurtz and other researchers discovered this fact back in 2008, only to be smeared by the Obama campaign as not wrong but "crackpot." They were right all along and deserve an apology. (Don't hold your breath.) Do Obama and his campaign get away with lying about this key entry in the president's political resume? Does Obama get away with having masked his early efforts to socialize America? So far, even against the backdrop of imploding European socialism, the answers are "yes." Next, there was the president's Rose Garden amnesty of June 15. That's when the president seized legislative powers by declaring a brand-new law to exempt an entire class of illegal aliens -- those 16 to 30 years old -- from deportation laws enacted by Congress. Frankly, revolutions have started over shorter dictatorial overreach. As kids in elementary school should know, but aren't taught -- no time with all those sex-ed and "green" energy requirements -- the executive branch doesn't make law; it executes it. Even Barack Obama has repeatedly made the point. What changed? The conventional wisdom, assuming the White House is in political "panic," explains this presidential diktat as a desperate act of pandering to anti-immigration-law Hispanic voters. No doubt. But as Mark Krikorian noted at National Review Online: "One needs to ask why the White House thought it could get away with such a shocking power grab. And the answer is that no one stopped them before, so they figured ... they could go further." Was the White House right? Opposition hasn't coalesced -- let alone any volcanic eruptions of good, old-fashioned outrage -- and that's putting it mildly. Thus, 130-plus days from the election, the New Party emeritus president has grabbed powers that not only tighten the already constricted job market for the American unemployed, but make mincemeat of the Constitution, trample national sovereignty and advance the erosion of our once-beloved English-speaking culture (the love that really dares not speak its name). Meltdown, right? Nope. The only villain of the piece to emerge is Neil Munro of The Daily Caller, who interrupted the president's press audience (no questions, please) to hurl the issue of jobs for Americans (not for foreigners already illegally exploiting the U.S. taxpayer) into the mix. Off with his head, cried the prObamedia, echoes reverberating. To his everlasting credit, Munro's editor, Tucker Carlson, defiantly announced he would instead give Munro a raise. The echo-chamber narrative, however, was set. Obama did the right thing, "everyone" said, notwithstanding all that rude, right-wing "heckling." Which brings us to this week. After House Republicans on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee took the unprecedented step of voting Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for withholding documents relevant to its investigation of the Fast and Furious "gun-walking" operation, President Obama invoked "executive privilege," dropping the dubious mantle of secrecy over all the documents in question. This time, House Republicans and media conservatives hit the roof. But what of the great national echo chamber? It hit the mute button. The Washington Post, still brushing Watergate anniversary confetti from its hair, reported on Page A1 that this assertion of presidential privilege at the climactic moment of Congress' 16-month investigation simply "reignited a long-running Washington debate over the limits of White House power." In other words, ho-hum. The story sits low in The New York Times' online queue, with a headline winding up the perfect PrObamedia pitch: "House Panel Vote Steps Up Partisan Fight on Gun Inquiry." "Partisan fight," of course, is New York Times-ese for "heckling." So is the president melting down or rising like a phoenix? For a socialist with dictatorial inclinations -- or is that a dictator with socialist inclinations? -- he's shockingly buoyant in the polls. Watch out, lovers of constitutional liberty: Unless We, the people, make ourselves heard, this rara avis could still take flight.
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Post by philunderwood on Jun 24, 2012 8:31:25 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=fund-raisingObama/Biden campaign hit bottom with wedding gift appeal Published June 23, 2012 | By Bruce McQuain Of all my years watching politics, this has got to be one of the most pathetic, ham-fisted, self-centered and stupid attempts to raise campaign cash I’ve ever seen. From the Obama/Biden campaign website: Got a birthday, anniversary, or wedding coming up? Let your friends know how important this election is to you—register with Obama 2012, and ask for a donation in lieu of a gift. It’s a great way to support the President on your big day. Plus, it’s a gift that we can all appreciate—and goes a lot further than a gravy bowl. Setting up and sharing your registry page is easy—so get started today. Your special day? Screw your special day, make sure the president has the cash necessary for his special day. Talk about a tin ear. Does anyone staff these ideas? And if they do, did they really end up thinking this would be a good idea (read the comments on this beauty)? And finally, does anyone get just a whiff of desperation in an appeal like this? ~McQ
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Post by philunderwood on Jun 26, 2012 8:21:51 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=racismAs Obama’s political troubles multiply, the “racism” excuse begins to emerge Published June 25, 2012 | By Bruce McQuain Michael Barone notes something I’ve been watching happen over the past few months: As Barack Obama’s lead over Mitt Romney in the polls narrows, and his presumed fundraising advantage seems about to become a disadvantage, it’s alibi time for some of his backers. His problem, they say, is that some voters don’t like him because he’s black. Or they don’t like his policies because they don’t like having a black president. Barone goes on to explain what that’s such a bankrupt excuse: There’s an obvious problem with the racism alibi. Barack Obama has run for president before, and he won. Voters in 2008 knew he was black. Most of them voted for him. He carried 28 states and won 365 electoral votes. Nationwide, he won 53 percent of the popular vote. That may not sound like a landslide, but it’s a higher percentage than any Democratic nominee except Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Democratic national conventions have selected nominees 45 times since 1832. In seven cases, they won more than 53 percent of the vote. In 37 cases, they won less. That means President Obama won a larger percentage of the vote than Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and (though you probably don’t want to bring this up in conversation with him) Bill Clinton. Those are facts. Those that didn’t vote for him or support him, for whatever reason the last time, are even more unlikely to support him this time, given his record. If race was the reason for not voting for him in 2008, you’re probably going to find 99% of those type people in this bloc of voters in 2012 as well. So if he loses, he’s going to lose because his support eroded among those who put him over the top the last time. Some aren’t going to vote for him this time and others are going to support the opposition candidate. Is the left really going to try to sell that as a result of “racism”? Yes. That is a developing theme. The fear, I suppose, is that the white guilt the race war lords have tried to instill and exploit for years has been assuaged by his election and thus can no longer be exploited for his re-election. Thus the push to reestablish the meme. It’s all over the place. Joy Behar and Janeane Garofalo provide a typical example. How absurd has it gotten. Well, the Congressional Black Caucus is always a good place to go to figure that out: Angela Rye, Executive Director of the Congressional Black Caucus, argued that President Obama has struggled during his first term due to racially-motivated opposition from conservatives who dislike having a black president. "This is probably the toughest presidential term in my lifetime," Rye said during CSPAN’s Q&A yesterday. "I think that a lot of what the president has experienced is because he’s black. You know, whether it’s questioning his intellect or whether or not he’s Ivy League. It’s always either he’s not educated enough or he’s too educated; or he’s too black or he’s not black enough; he’s too Christian or not Christian enough. There are all these things where he has to walk this very fine line to even be successful." She said that "a lot" of conservative opposition is racially-charged, citing the use of the word "cool" in an attack ad launched by Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS superPAC. "There’s an ad, talking about [how] the president is too cool, [asking] is he too cool? And there’s this music that reminds me of, you know, some of the blaxploitation films from the 70s playing in the background, him with his sunglasses," Rye said. "And to me it was just very racially-charged. They weren’t asking if Bush was too cool, but, yet, people say that that’s the number one person they’d love to have a beer with. So, if that’s not cool I don’t know what is. She added that "even ‘cool,’ the term ‘cool,’ could in some ways be deemed racial [in this instance]." “Cool” is racist? Who knew? They’re essentially making this stuff up on the fly. Racism has become, for some, the tool of choice to stifle debate and muffle free speech. Don’t like what you’re hearing? Claim it’s racist and they’ll shut up. How “cool” is that? By the way, speaking of “blaxploitation”, what would you deem this ad? More examples of racially charged words you never knew about? Well, consult the ever knowledgeable Ed Shultz for the latest: On his MSNBC program last night, Schultz referred to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), someone Herman Cain would seriously consider as a running mate, as "the guy who used an old Southern, racist term when talking about defeating President Obama during the healthcare debate. Below is the offending statement: DeMint (Audio, July 9, 2009): "If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." “Break” = racism. Of course Ed Shultz, “racism” authority, was also the guy who edited a tape by Governor Perry of Texas to make a perfectly innocent remark sound racist. He later apologized for it. Chris Matthews is not averse to making the racism excuse, or at least, interviewing those who will: MSNBC’s Chris Matthews asked former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown if House Chairman Darrell Issa’s treatment of Attorney General Eric Holder was "ethnic." Brown agreed, and Matthews said some Republicans "talk down to the president and his friends." Because, you know, lying to Congress and the death of two federal agents as a result of a horrendous operation has nothing at all to do with Issa’s inquiry. Finally there is this nonsensical “correlation is causation” study that the NYT saw fit to print. Oh, yes, the racism charge is fully loaded and ready to be used, no question about it. Obama’s possible failure to be re-elected couldn’t be because he’s been a dismal failure as president and a huge disappointment even to those who elected him could it? Nope, it has to be because he’s black. Back to Garafalo and Behar for a wrap up: “And I don’t understand why so many people are reticent to discuss race in this country. We are not a post-racial society,” she added. “No, not yet,” Behar said. “Not in our lifetime. There‘s no country in the world that’s post-racial yet, I don’t think.” “Until the human condition changes, we won’t be,” she added … Actually, it won’t change until some among us quit finding racism as the primary motive behind everything that happens when there are much more plausible reasons available. The fixation on racism comes from the left and is its fall back position whenever it encounters political or electoral reverses. It is convenient. But racism is an excuse, not a reason. This goes back to the almost religious belief on the left that it isn’t their message (or performance) that is being rejected, so it must be something else. The means of message delivery must be deficient or the race of the messenger is causing a racist public to reject it. It couldn’t be because he has been a terrible president or that the message sucks. Nope, it has to be racism. ~McQ
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Post by philunderwood on Jun 27, 2012 7:26:54 GMT -5
You Can't Make This Stuff Up . . . By Bernard Goldberg www.JewishWorldReview.com | When I first heard about the Obama Event Registry I thought it was a joke - a conservative dirty trick designed to make the president look bad. The president's re-election campaign team couldn't possibly have sunk so low to do what they were accused of doing. But they did. So here it is, from the You Can't Make This Stuff Up Department: Team Obama is asking supporters who are getting married or having a birthday or celebrating an anniversary to tell your well-wishers not to give you a gift, but to give the money to the president's re-election campaign instead. I'm not kidding. Here it is, straight from the campaign's Web site: "Got a birthday, anniversary, or wedding coming up? "Let your friends know how important this election is to you—register with Obama 2012, and ask for a donation in lieu of a gift. It's a great way to support the President on your big day. Plus, it's a gift that we can all appreciate—and goes a lot further than a gravy bowl." Think about it. Instead of buying your newlywed friends some china, or instead of giving your nephew David a bar mitzvah president, instead of giving grandma a few books for her 100th birthday, you can donate the money to � Barack Obama! "Got a special milestone or event coming up? the Web site asks. Well then, "Instead of another gift card you'll forget to use, ask your friends and family for something that will go a little further: a donation to Obama for America. Register your next celebration—whether it's a birthday, bar or bat mitzvah, wedding, or anniversary—with the Obama campaign. It's a great way to show your support for a cause that's important to you on your big day." I swear, I still can't believe that this isn't a Republican dirty trick. Except � I went to snopes.com, the Web site that checks out rumors and urban myths and Snopes says this one is � "True." So, after you register, you can type in a message to your friends - perhaps this one which the Obama Web site suggests: "For my big day, I'd like to show my support for a cause I believe in — re-electing President Obama. That's why I'm asking my friends and family to donate to the Obama campaign. Thanks for chipping in!" My sources tell me Mr. Obama is planning a similar fund raising campaign for Christmas. The Web site, I'm told, will say: "Hey kids, you don't want a bicycle from Santa for Christmas, or a doll or baseball glove. Who needs crap like that? So, tell your Mom and Dad to contact Santa right away and tell him to take the money he would have used to buy you that junk � and send it to Barack Obama." If Mr. Obama uses the money to take a long trip to get over losing the election in November, I'll call Santa myself.
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Post by philunderwood on Jul 7, 2012 9:33:56 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=recovery-actJobs for June? Not many Published July 6, 2012 | By Bruce McQuain But the “official” unemployment rate stayed at 8.2%. The broader measure of unemployment – includes job seekers as well as those in part-time jobs – inched up from 14.8% to 14.9%. GDP? Predictions have been revised down: Federal Reserve officials last month lowered their economic-growth projections to between 1.9% and 2.4% this year, and forecast the jobless rate would hold between 8.0% and 8.2%. That’s not a recovery rate by any means (and given how accurate former predictions have been, I wouldn’t count on the unemployment rate staying as low as 8.2%). But it is the reality of the situation and one that will definitely have an effect on the election. That is if people are reminded of some promises made by the administration. Can you say “utter failure”? Of course you can. As with ObamaCare, the people were sold a bill of goods about the recovery plan. In fact it ended up being a huge political payoff plan while our leaders told us they were focused like lasers on recovery. 4 years later, here we are. We were supposed to be at 5.6% now, with the stimulus plan enacted. That was the promise. Of course, this administration has promised all sorts of things it hasn’t delivered, so I’m sure that their failure here doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise to anyone but the media. Forward. ~McQ
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