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Post by philunderwood on Jan 30, 2012 8:16:26 GMT -5
Sorry, Newt. Only the debt ceiling will reach the moon By Mark Steyn www.JewishWorldReview.com | Had I been asked to deliver the State of the Union address, it would not have delayed your dinner plans: "The State of our Union is broke, heading for bankrupt, and total collapse shortly thereafter. Thank you and goodnight! You've been a terrific crowd!" I gather that Americans prefer something a little more upbeat, so one would not begrudge a speechwriter fluffing it up by holding out at least the possibility of some change of fortune, however remote. Instead, President Obama assured us at great length that nothing is going to change, not now, not never. Indeed the Union's state – its unprecedented world-record brokeness – was not even mentioned. If, as I was, you happened to be stuck at Gate 27 at one of the many U.S. airports laboring under the misapprehension that pumping CNN at you all evening long somehow adds to the gaiety of flight delays, you would have watched an address that gave no indication its speaker was even aware that the parlous state of our finances is an existential threat not only to the nation but to global stability. The message was, oh, sure, unemployment's still a little higher than it should be, and student loans are kind of expensive, and the housing market's pretty flat, but it's nothing that a little government "investment" in green jobs and rural broadband and retraining programs can't fix. In other words, more of the unaffordable same. The president certainly had facts and figures at his disposal. He boasted that his regulatory reforms "will save business and citizens more than $10 billion over the next five years." Wow. Ten billion smackeroos! That's some savings – and in a mere half a decade! Why, it's equivalent to what the Government of the United States borrows every 53 hours. So by midnight on Thursday, Obama had already re-borrowed all those hard-fought savings from 2017. "In the last 22 months," said the president, "businesses have created more than 3 million jobs." Impressive. But 125,000 new foreign workers arrive every month (officially). So we would have to have created 2,750,000 jobs in that period just to stand still. Fortunately, most of the items in Obama's interminable speech will never happen, any more than the federally funded bicycling helmets or whatever fancies found their way onto Bill Clinton's extravagant shopping lists in the Nineties. At the time, the excuse for Clinton's mountain of legislative molehills was that all the great battles had been won, and, in the absence of a menacing Russian bear, what else did a president have to focus on except criminalizing toilet tanks over 1.6 gallons. President Obama does not enjoy the same dispensation, and any historians stumbling upon a surviving DVD while sifting through the ruins of our civilization will marvel at how his accumulation of delusional trivialities was apparently taken seriously by the assembled political class. An honest leader would feel he owed it to the citizenry to impress upon them one central truth – that we can't have any new programs because we've spent all the money. It's gone. The cupboard is bare. What's Obama's plan to restock it? "Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary," the president told us. "Asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense." But why stop there? Americans need affordable health care and affordable Master's Degrees in Climate Change and Social Justice Studies, so why not take everything that Warren Buffett's got? After all, if you confiscated the total wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans it would come to $1.5 trillion. Which is just a wee bit less than the federal shortfall in just one year of Obama-size budgets. 2011 deficit: $1.56 trillion. But maybe for 2012 a whole new Forbes 400 of Saudi princes and Russian oligarchs will emigrate to the Hamptons and Malibu and keep the whole class-warfare thing going for a couple more years. The so-called "Buffett Rule" is indicative not so much of "common sense" as of the ever-widening gap between the Brobdingnagian problem and the Lilliputian solutions proposed by our leaders. Obama can sacrifice the virgin daughters of every American millionaire on the altar of government spending, and the debt gods will barely notice so much as to give a perfunctory belch of acknowledgement. The president's first term has added $5 trillion to the debt – a degree of catastrophe unique to us. In an Obama budget, the entire cost of the Greek government would barely rate a line-item. Debt-to-GDP and other comparative measures are less relevant than the hard-dollar numbers: It's not just that American government has outspent America's ability to fund it, but that it's outspending the planet's. Who gets this? Not enough of us – which is exactly how Obama likes it. His only "big idea" – that it should be illegal (by national fiat) to drop out of school before your 18th birthday – betrays his core belief: that more is better, as long as it's government-mandated, government-regulated, government-staffed – and funded by you, or Warren Buffett, or the Chinese Politburo, or whoever's left out there. What of his likely rivals this November? Those of us who have lived in once-great decaying polities recognize the types. Jim Callaghan, Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street in the Seventies, told a friend of mine that he saw his job as managing Britain's decline as gracefully as possible. The United Kingdom certainly declined on his watch, though not terribly gracefully. In last Monday's debate, Newt Gingrich revived the line and accused by implication Mitt Romney of having no higher ambition than to "manage the decline." Running on platitudinous generalities, Mitt certainly betrays little sense that he grasps the scale of the crisis. After a fiery assault by Rick Santorum on Romney's support for an individual mandate in health care, Mitt sneered back at Rick that "it wasn't worth getting angry over." Which may be a foretaste of the energy he would bring to any attempted course correction in Washington. Newt, meanwhile, has committed himself to a lunar colony by the end of his second term, and, while pandering to an audience on Florida's "Space Coast," he added that, as soon as there were 13,000 American settlers on the moon, they could apply for statehood. Ah, the old frontier spirit: I hear Laura Ingalls Wilder is already working on "Little House In The Crater." Maybe Newt's on to something. Except for the statehood part. One day, when America gets the old foreclosure notice in the mail, wouldn't it be nice to close up the entire joint, put the keys in an envelope, slide it under the door of the First National Bank of Shanghai, and jet off on Newt's Starship Government-Sponsored Enterprise? There are times for dreaming big dreams, and there are times to wake up. This country will not be going to the moon, any more than will be the British or French. Because, in decline, the horizons shrivel. The only thing that's going to be on the moon is the debt ceiling. Before we can make any more giant leaps for mankind, we have to make one small, dull, prosaic, earthbound step here at home – and stop. Stop the massive expansion of microregulatory government, and then reverse it. Obama has vowed to press on. If Romney and Gingrich can't get serious about it, he'll get his way.
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Post by philunderwood on Feb 28, 2012 8:49:25 GMT -5
Pettiness and Mud By Thomas Sowell www.JewishWorldReview.com | The only good news for the Republicans coming out of the seemingly endless presidential candidate "debates" is that some Republican leaders are now belatedly thinking about how they can avoid a repetition of this debacle in future elections. What could they possibly have been thinking about, in the first place, when they agreed to a format based on short sound bites for dealing with major complex issues, and with media journalists — 90 percent of them Democrats — picking the topics? The conduct of the candidates made things worse. In a world with a record-breaking national debt and Iran moving toward creating nuclear weapons, they bickered over earmarks and condoms. I am against earmarks, but earmarks don't rank among the first hundred most serious problems facing this country. Mud-slinging has replaced rational discussions of differences on serious issues — not only during the debates themselves, where the moderators sic the candidates on each other, but even more so in the massive television character assassination ads in which Romney supporters seem to specialize. Groups supporting Mitt Romney have turned character assassination almost into a science. You take something that most people, outside of politics, do not understand and twist it to sound terrible to those who are unaware of the facts. Blanketing Florida with misleading ads attacking Newt Gingrich won that state for Romney, after Gingrich scored an upset victory in South Carolina. The ads made a big deal out of charges that the former Speaker broke tax laws — charges that the Internal Revenue Service exonerated him of, after a long investigation. When Rick Santorum suddenly surged after his upset victories in Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado, the Romney character assassination machine attacked him for having voted in the Senate for various things that conservatives don't like. But, when it comes to voting in Congress, seldom do you get a pure bill that you can agree with in all its parts. If you never voted for bills containing anything you didn't like, you might get very little voting done. But, if it is a bill to provide American soldiers with the equipment they need to fight a war, and somebody has put into it an earmark for a federal boondoggle in his district, are you going to vote against that bill and let American soldiers go into battle without all the equipment and supplies they need? Taking advantage of the public's lack of knowledge is something that Barack Obama already does very effectively in his political propaganda. But is that something the Republicans want to imitate? It has worked during the primary season, when the media are perfectly happy to see Republicans destroying each other. But it will not work in the general election campaign, when even truthful criticisms of the president will have a hard time getting out through the media, which hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil when it comes to Obama. The pettiness and mud-slinging during the Republican primary campaigns is especially irresponsible during a time when there are very serious problems, at home and abroad, that need to be addressed in a serious way. Discussions of particular issues, one by one, often miss the larger point that goes beyond the issue at hand — namely, this administration's steady movement toward arbitrary government that circumvents the restrictions of the Constitution. Nothing demonstrates this more starkly than the president's arbitrary power to waive the requirement that employers have to provide ObamaCare coverage for their workers. That can be the difference between paying, or not paying, millions of dollars. What does that mean for anybody's other rights? What does freedom of speech mean if criticizing the administration can mean you get no exemption, while your competitor who keeps quiet, or who praises the administration, gets a waiver? The Constitution requires "equal protection of the laws" for a reason. And what about nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran, the world's leading sponsor of international terrorism? Is that not worth discussing in something other than sound bites?
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Post by philunderwood on Mar 1, 2012 10:18:49 GMT -5
'Super Tuesday' By Thomas Sowell www.JewishWorldReview.com | Many people are looking to the many primary elections on March 6th — "Super Tuesday" — to clarify where this year's Republican nomination campaign is headed. It may clarify far more than that, including the future of this nation and of Western civilization. If a clear winner with a commanding lead emerges, the question then becomes whether that candidate is someone who is likely to defeat Barack Obama. If not, then the fate of America — and of Western nations, including Israel — will be left in the hands of a man with a lifelong hostility to Western values and Western interests. President Obama is such a genial man that many people, across the ideological space, cannot see him as a danger. For every hundred people who can see his geniality, probably only a handful see the grave danger his warped policies and ruthless tactics pose to a whole way of life that has given generation after generation of Americans unprecedented freedom and prosperity. The election next November will not be just another election, and the stakes add up to far more than the sum of the individual issues. Moreover, if reelected and facing no future election, whatever political constraints may have limited how far Obama would push his radical agenda will be gone. He would have the closest thing to a blank check. Nothing could stop him but impeachment or a military coup, and both are very unlikely. A genial corrupter is all the more dangerous for being genial. The four remaining Republican candidates have to be judged, not simply by whether they would make good presidents, but by how well they can cut through Obama's personal popularity and glib rhetoric, to alert the voters as to the stakes in this year's election. Ron Paul? Even those of us who agree with much of his domestic agenda, including getting rid of the Federal Reserve System, cannot believe that his happy-go-lucky attitude toward Iran's getting a nuclear weapon represents anything other than a grave danger to the whole Western World. Rick Santorum has possibilities, but can he survive the media's constant attempts to paint him as some kind of religious nut who would use the government to impose his views on others? And, if he can, will he also be able to go toe-to-toe with Obama in debates? I would not bet the rent money on it. And what is at stake is far bigger than the rent money. Mitt Romney is the kind of candidate that the Republican establishment has always looked for, a moderate who can appeal to independents. It doesn't matter how many such candidates have turned out to be disasters on election night, going all the way back to Thomas E. Dewey in 1948. Nor does it matter that the Republicans' most successful candidate of the 20th century — Ronald Reagan, with two consecutive landslide victories at the polls — was nobody's idea of a mushy moderate. He stood for something. And he could explain what he stood for. These may sound like modest achievements, but they are very rare, especially among Republicans. Newt Gingrich is the only candidate still in the field who can clearly take on Barack Obama in one-on-one debate and cut through the Obama rhetoric and mystique with hard facts and plain logic. Nor is this just a matter of having a gift of gab. Gingrich has a far deeper grasp of both the policies and the politics than the other Republican candidates. Does Gingrich have political "baggage"? More than you could carry on a commercial airliner. Charges of opportunism have been among the most serious raised against the former Speaker of the House. But being President of the United States is the opportunity of a lifetime. If that doesn't sober a man up, it is hard to imagine what would. Do any of the Republican candidates seem ideal? No. But, the White House cannot be left vacant, while we hope for a better field of candidates in 2016. We have to make our choice among the alternatives actually available, of which Obama is by far the worst.
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Post by Ritty77 on Mar 9, 2012 18:22:54 GMT -5
Romney needs to quit pandering. He's terrible at it. Embarrassing.
It's OK that you're rich, Mitt. Talk about solutions.
Meanwhile, GO Newt!
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Post by philunderwood on Mar 19, 2012 9:19:53 GMT -5
The 'Inevitability' Vote By Thomas Sowell www.JewishWorldReview.com | Many people may be voting for Mitt Romney because of the view in some quarters that he is the inevitable Republican candidate for President of the United States and the candidate with the best chance of beating Barack Obama, rather than because they actually prefer Romney to the other candidates. Inevitability has a very unreliable track record. Within living memory, totalitarianism was considered to be "the wave of the future." During the primary season, people should vote for whomever they prefer, on their own merits, not because pundits have pronounced them inevitable. Regardless of what the polls or the pundits say about Mitt Romney's chances of winning the Republican nomination, the conditions that made him the front runner in the primaries are the direct opposite of the conditions for the general election. The biggest single reason why Governor Romney is the front runner is that he has had the overwhelming advantage in money spent and in "boots on the ground" running his campaign in states across the country. Romney has outspent each of his rivals — and all of his rivals put together. His campaign organization has been operating for years, and it has put his name on the ballot everywhere, while neither Santorum nor Gingrich had a big enough organization to get on the ballot in an important state like Virginia. In the general election, President Obama will have all the advantages against Romney that Romney currently has against his Republican rivals. Barack Obama will have boots on the ground everywhere — not just members of the Democratic Party organization but thousands of labor union members as well. Incumbency alone guarantees the president plenty of money to finance his campaign, not only from enthusiastic supporters but also from businesses regulated by the government, who know that holders of political power demand tribute. And the mainstream media will give Obama more publicity than Romney can buy. How does anyone ever defeat a sitting president then? They do it because they have a message that rings and resonates. The last Republican to defeat a sitting president was Ronald Reagan. He was the only Republican to do so in the 20th century. He didn't do it with polls. At one point during the election campaign, President Jimmy Carter led Ronald Reagan with 58 percent to 40 percent in the polls. So much for the polls that so many are relying on so heavily today. The question is not which Republican looks better against Barack Obama in the polls today, before the general election campaign begins. The question is which Republican can take the fight to Barack Obama, as Reagan took the fight to Carter, and win the poll that ultimately matters, the vote on election day. The biggest fighting issue for Republicans is ObamaCare. Can the author of RomneyCare as governor of Massachusetts make that an effective issue by splitting hairs over state versus federal mandates? Can a man who has been defensive about his own wealth fight off the standard class warfare of Barack Obama, who can push all the demagogic buttons against Mitt Romney as one of the one-percenters? Rick Santorum, and especially Newt Gingrich, are fighters — and this election is going to be a fight to the finish, with the fate of this country in the balance. Mitt Romney has depended on massive character assassination advertising campaigns to undermine his rivals. That will not work against Barack Obama. Even a truthful account of the Obama administration's many disastrous failures, at home and abroad, will be automatically countered by the mainstream media, 90 percent of whom voted for Obama in the 2008 election. It is truer in this election than in most that "it takes a candidate to beat a candidate." And that candidate has to offer both himself and his vision. Massive ad campaigns against rivals is not a vision. Some, like President Bush 41, disdained "the vision thing" — and he lost the presidency that he had inherited from Ronald Reagan, lost it to a virtual unknown from Arkansas. The vision matters, more than the polls and even more than incumbency in the White House.
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Post by philunderwood on Apr 19, 2012 9:39:58 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=social-issuesThe GOP has a chance to take the White House if it can discipline itself to stay on message Published April 18, 2012 | By Bruce McQuain Pew Research as a survey out today that is one taken after Romney became the presumptive nominee for the GOP. It compares its numbers to a survey taken while the GOP’s nomination was still contested. Pew entitles it’s piece about the survey, “With Voters Focused on Economy, Obama Lead Narrows”. It subs it with “Social Issues Rank As Lowest Priorities”. Hello out there GOP – are you reading this? There’s your campaign. What to stress. What to avoid. Any chance they’ll actually figure that out? I mean so far we’ve talked about sluts, contraception, race, wars on women, stay at home moms, even about dogs riding on roofs (well at least the Romney’s didn’t eat the dog). We’ve been distracted by the outrage of the week – Rush Limbaugh, Hillary Rosen, Ted Nugent, Bill Maher, etc. That’s the left’s game plan, for heaven sake – Obama has a dismal, in fact awful economic record. Horrible. And yet the GOP is walking into every distraction trap the left sets like they haven’t a clue. As I’ve been saying for months, once the nomination is settled, regardless of who the nominee is, and the focus begins to turn on Obama and his record, there will begin a shift in voter preference that should (note the word) carry the GOP nominee to the White House - if the GOP plays its cards right. Should. Here’s what I mean: Obama’s lead over Romney has narrowed since last month, when he had a 12-point advantage, though it is comparable to margins from earlier this year. While Obama’s advantage has declined since March, there is little to suggest a specific problem or campaign event as having a critical effect. While there have been debates over issues related to gender, the rise and fall in Obama’s support has largely crossed gender lines, with a fairly consistent gender gap over time. For example, since March, Obama’s support among both men and women has slipped five percentage points. Independent voters remain up for grabs. In the current survey, 48% favor Romney while 42% back Obama. A month ago, it was 47% Obama, 44% Romney. If anyone would not expect an incumbent president to have some sort of lead at this point, I’d say you don’t know much about American politics. That said, as you can see by the change in a month, the lead is at best tentative, soft and narrowing. But … there is still a way to absolutely screw up this chance at making Obama a one-term president and, unfortunately, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the GOP manage that. That is, to concentrate on the wrong issues. They have a track-record of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory doing exactly that. I’ll make it as simple as possible. Limit the main issues of the GOP campaign to three themes: the economy, jobs and the debt. Talk about how to improve the first two and reduce the third. Talk about getting the hell out of the way while giving business the green light to lead us out of this economic morass. Declare the war on fossil fuel to be over. Talk about exploiting our natural resources and the jobs that will bring. Put confidence back in the business sector that expansion and hiring will be enabled and supported, not killed with more and more regulation. Talk about repealing ObamaCare and draconian regulations. Talk about bringing America back. Once the incumbent has given his concession speech, talk about whatever else tickles your fancy then. But discipline yourself until then. Until then narrow the focus and be relentlessly on message. Refuse the distraction traps. Just flat refuse them. Do that and the GOP has a shot. The numbers will continue to improve. Fall into the distraction traps and kiss victory goodbye. If the other side is allowed to frame the campaign and establish the narrative and avoid examining Obama’s record, the GOP loses. We’ll see which course they choose. ~McQ
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Post by Ritty77 on Apr 19, 2012 17:11:14 GMT -5
Romney is currently using the slogan, "Obama's Not Working" in his ads and on his podiums.
It says three things right off to me:
Obama (the policies) are a failure.
Obama (the man) is all talk and is not a leader.; not a hard worker.
Obama (stagnant growth, enemy of fossil fuels) does not equal working (jobs).
I like it; hope they keep it.
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Post by philunderwood on May 2, 2012 8:14:58 GMT -5
A Cynical Process: Part II By Thomas Sowell www.JewishWorldReview.com | A small headline in the 2nd section of the Wall Street Journal last week told a bigger story than a lot of front page banner headlines. It said, "U.S. Firms Add Jobs, but Mostly Overseas." Just as there is no free lunch, there is no free class warfare. Some people may be inspired by President Obama's talk about making "the rich" pay their undefined "fair share" of taxes, or taking away corporations' "tax breaks." But talk is not always cheap. It can be very costly to those working people who are looking for jobs that the Obama administration's anti-business policies are driving overseas. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Thirty-five big U.S.-based multinational companies added jobs much faster than other U.S. employers in the past two years, but nearly three-fourths of those jobs were overseas." All these companies have at least 50,000 employees, so we are talking about a lot of jobs for foreigners with American companies overseas. If the Wall Street Journal can figure this out, it seems certain that the President of the United States has economic advisers who can figure out the same thing. But that does not mean that the president is interested in the same thing. In this, as in so much else, Barack Obama is interested in Barack Obama. Whatever bad effects his policies may have for others, those policies have had a track record of political success for many politicians in many places. To put it bluntly, killing the goose that lays the golden egg is a viable political strategy, provided the goose doesn't die before the next election. In this case, the goose simply lays its golden eggs somewhere else, so there is no political danger to President Obama. Unemployment may remain a problem to many Americans, but that only provides another occasion for the Obama administration to show its "compassion" with extended unemployment benefits, more food stamps and various interventions to save home buyers from mortgage foreclosure. This can easily be a winning political strategy. Franklin D. Roosevelt won his biggest landslide victory after his first term in office, during which the unemployment rate was never less than twice what it has been under Barack Obama. The "smart money" inside the Beltway says that a high unemployment rate spells doom at the polls for a president. But history says that people who are getting government handouts tend to vote for whoever is doing the handing out. The Obama administration has turned this into a handout state that breaks all previous records. Lofty rhetoric about "stimulus," "shovel-ready projects," "green jobs" or "investment" in "the industries of the future" all give political cover to what is plain old handouts to people who are likely to vote to re-elect Obama. At the local level as well, history shows that some of the most successful politicians have been people who ruined the local economy and chased job-creating businesses away. Mayor Coleman Young of Detroit in the 1970s and 1980s was not worried when affluent whites began moving out of the city in response to his policies, because they were people who were likely to vote against him if they stayed. Of course they took their taxes, their investment money and the jobs they created with them. But that was Detroit's problem, not Coleman Young's problem. Barack Obama may win re-election by turning the United States into Detroit writ large. Something similar happened in earlier times, when James Michael Curley served 4 terms as mayor of Boston, and 2 terms in prison. As the non-Irish left the city, in response to Curley's policies, that increased Curley's likelihood of being re-elected. This kind of cynical politics is even more likely to succeed when political opponents fail to articulate their case to the public. And Republicans are notorious for neglecting articulation. The phrase "tax cuts for the rich" has been repeated endlessly by Democrats without one Republican that I know of saying, "Folks, I don't lie awake at night worrying about millionaires' tax problems. Millionaires have lawyers and accountants who get paid to do that. But I do worry about jobs being lost to millions of American workers because we make the business climate here worse than in other countries. That's a high price to pay for rhetoric." The case can be made. But somebody has to make the case.
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Post by philunderwood on Jun 3, 2012 8:36:21 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=obamaObama: "Hey, Mitt, wouldn’t you rather be a nice loser than a mean winner?" Published June 2, 2012 | By Billy Hollis In a patented Instapundit zinger, Glenn sums up Obama’s whining about Romney with four words: I’LL BET HE DOES: In tough fight with Romney, Obama longs for McCain. Obama has spent his whole life getting pretty much what he wanted, with token opposition at best. He obviously likes it that way. I suppose if I had lived a charmed life as long as he has, I would also feel entitled to see the charms continue forever. I’m on record as being no fan of Mitt Romney. I don’t expect to vote for him. I see grave danger that he will end up being the scapegoat of an unprecedented economic meltdown – if it happens on his watch, you can be sure the legacy media journalists and the academic left will work overtime to pin it all on him, and lie through their teeth to minimize the contribution of Democrats and leftists to the problem. But I do loathe the sanctimonious, smarmy president we have now. Let me translate some of his sanctimony: It will only be when Mitt Romney is defeated, the president continued, "that the fever may break, because there’s a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that." “There’s a tradition in the Republican Party of making a good show and then rolling over for the big-government left. Hey, they’re supposed to be more loyal to the rest of the political class, including me, than to those whackjobs that actually vote for them. It’s not fair if they don’t keep doing that.” "The last time we ran, we had a Republican candidate who — I had some profound disagreements with him, but he acknowledged the need for immigration reform, and acknowledged the need for campaign finance reform, acknowledged the need for policies that would do something about climate change," Obama said. "Now, what we’ve got is not just a nominee but a Congress and a Republican Party that have a fundamentally different vision about where we need to go as a country." “Come on, Mitt, don’t you want to be a loser like McCain? He understood the kabuki Republicans are supposed to perform. He embraced a whole bunch of leftist positions, but still pretended to be conservative. He knew he wasn’t supposed to really criticize me and my Lightworker persona. Now, I have to run against people who won’t play my game, and insist on setting out some kind of clear choice. That’s not fair.” At about the same time, the Obama campaign released a web video that also featured McCain nostalgia. "John McCain stood up to the voices of extremism in his party," the video said. "Why won’t Mitt Romney do the same?" “Why won’t Mitt Romney play the game the way I want? He should be wasting his time on the things I want him to waste time on. See, the whole repudiation thing is a win-win for me. With the help of my comrades in the media, I can keep Romney busy defending the indefensible, and he’ll still come out of it looking bad no matter how much he apologizes or repudiates. Plus, his base gets demoralized. Why won’t he go along with that? Doesn’t he understand that I need him to play the role of the valiant loser who gets a nice compliment in my victory speech? It’s not fair.” I don’t expect that his whining is going to win over many voters, but what else can he do? His record is dismal in just about every respect you can name. He has to talk about something, and as out of touch as Obama is, even he knows he’d better not talk about unemployment, lack of growth, or troubles in Europe. When he tries to talk about foreign issues, he ends up speaking of the Maldives instead of the Malvinas, or Polish death camps, or whatever. With his speaking record already including 57 states and “corpse-man”, maybe he’s better off if he sticks to generic whining.
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Post by philunderwood on Jun 5, 2012 7:46:24 GMT -5
Preference cascade: How solid are Obama’s favorability numbers? www.qando.net/?tag=cnn-pollPublished June 4, 2012 | By Bruce McQuain I wonder about the validity of these sorts of numbers: While rising 14 points since February, Romney still trails the president, who currently has a 56% favorable rating, with 42% saying they hold an unfavorable opinion of Obama. The president’s favorable and unfavorable ratings are unchanged from CNN polls in March and April. “The biggest gap between Obama and Romney’s favorable ratings is among younger Americans. More than two-thirds of those under 30 have a favorable view of Obama, compared to only four-in-ten who feel that way about Romney. Romney is much stronger among senior citizens, but the gap is not nearly as big," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Romney may have a small advantage among independent voters, but that is offset by his lower favorable rating among Republicans than Obama has among Democrats." A couple of things – how strong, really, is Obama’s favorable ratings among a demographic scared to death of being called a racist if they happen to have an unfavorable view of our first black president? That’s a legitimate question. Old folks, for the most part, don’t give a damn about that and may more closely mirror the real feelings out in fly over land. The reason I say that is Obama’s “favorable ratings” have continued to stay high while his job performance numbers have continued to fall. That seems somewhat unlikely. Usually the two show some movement in the same direction even if one is higher than the other. Romney is going to grow on Republicans if he continues to attack (i.e. not be the designated place holder for the GOP and refuse to do what is necessary to win as did John McCain), keep the campaign focused on the real issues of the campaign (and Obama’s record) and not fall for the distractions that are sure to be tossed out to the media every week by the Obama campaign. Republicans are eager for someone, anyone, who will carry the political battle to the Democrats. John Hayward talks about the Glenn Reynolds “preference cascade”, a phenomenon Reynolds notes while talking about the collapse of totalitarian regimes. Hayward describes it here: A large population can be dominated by a small group only by persuading all dissenters that they stand alone. Most of their fellow citizens are portrayed as loyal to the regime, and everyone around the dissident is a potential informer. A huge dissident population can therefore be suppressed, by making them believe they’re all lonely voices in the wilderness… until the day they begin realizing they are not alone, and most people don’t support the regime. The process by which dissent becomes seen as commonplace, and eventually overwhelming, is the preference cascade. This analysis doesn’t have to be confined to the study of repressive, dictatorial regimes, or even politics. Consider the phenomenon of celebrity without merit – that is, people who are famous for being famous. Their popularity tends to evaporate in a preference cascade eventually, as people in the audience begin wondering if anyone else is tired of hearing about the ersatz “celebrity,” and soon discover that everyone is. He then applies it to the politics of this race: That’s what began happening over the past couple of weeks: a large number of people discovered it’s okay to strongly disapprove of Barack Obama. His popularity has always been buttressed by the conviction – very aggressively pushed by his supporters – disapproval of his personal or official conduct is immoral. You’re presumptively “racist” if you disagree with him That’s what began happening over the past couple of weeks: a large number of people discovered it’s okay to strongly disapprove of Barack Obama. His popularity has always been buttressed by the conviction – very aggressively pushed by his supporters – that disapproval of his personal or official conduct is immoral. You’re presumptively “racist” if you disagree with him, or at least a greedy tool of the Evil Rich, or a “Tea Party extremist.” A negative mirror image of this narrative was installed around Mitt Romney, who is supposedly a fat-cat extremist (and, thanks to the insidious War On Mormons, a religious nut) who nobody likes… even though large numbers of people in many different states voted for him in the primaries. Of course he has his critics, and I’m not seeking to dismiss the intensity or sincerity of that criticism… but the idea was to make Romney supporters feel isolated going into the general election, particularly the people who don’t really get involved in primary elections. Both of those convergent narratives began crumbling this week: Obama is deeply vulnerable, and his campaign has no real answer to criticism of his record – they’ve even tried floating an outright fraud, the now-infamous Rex Nutting charts that presented Obama as some kind of fiscal hawk. (Stop laughing – major media figures took this garbage seriously for a couple of days, and Team Obama did push it.) Major Democrats, beginning with Newark mayor Cory Booker, expressed criticism of the Obama campaign… and the Left reacted with shrieking hysteria and vows of personal destruction for the “traitors.” Meanwhile, Mitt Romney effectively presented both substantive criticism of Obama, and a positive agenda. Attacks on his business record that were supposed to destroy him through class-warfare tactics failed to draw blood. The idea that he can win became widely accepted. That doesn’t mean he won the 2012 argument… but unlike Barack Obama, he is offering one. What is beginning to lose its effectiveness, it’s cache, is, as Hayward notes, " … disapproval of his personal or official conduct is immoral. You’re presumptively “racist” if you disagree with him …”. But when polled, especially among younger voters, that presumption is still powerful enough I would guess, to see those voters lie to pollsters. It is a sort of social conditioning that has taught them to avoid such a label even at the cost of a lie (and even when speaking to a pollster). So, and it is merely a guess, but based on a life long study of human nature, there is a distinct possibility that the “Tom Bradley” effect may be pumping up Obama’s popularity numbers. And, as Hayward points out, as it becomes less and less effective or acceptable to accuse those who do not like Obama of being racists, the possibility of a preference cascade negative to Obama’s favorability is a distinct possibility. No one who has watched the beginnings of this race can, with any credibility, claim the Obama campaign isn’t struggling. Donors are deserting him, his record is an albatross around his neck, there is strife between his administration and campaign and many of his political supporters seem luke warm at best with any number of Democrats running for reelection in Congress content not to be seen with the man. Too many indicators that point to the probability that the numbers CNN are pushing aren’t quite as solid as they may seem. Hayward concludes with an important update: I should add that the most powerful cascades occur when an artificially imposed sense of isolation crumbles. That’s very definitely what is happening here. Widespread popular discontent with the Obama presidency has been suppressed by making the unhappy campers feel marginalized. The failure of that strategy is akin to watching a dam burst under high pressure. The race, once it gets into high gear, is what will cause the “dam burst” as more and more Americans discover they’re not alone in their feelings about the President and that they are not at all on the margins, but very mainstream. Once that happens (and it will), when everyone finally realizes they’re not the only one who has noticed the emperor has no clothes, the chances of a one-term Obama presidency increase exponentially. ~McQ
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Post by philunderwood on Jun 12, 2012 15:29:40 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=excusesObama: Excuses R Us Published June 12, 2012 | By Bruce McQuain It has been fairly well established that unless something that happens on his watch reflects well on him, President Obama is in the habit of trying to pass off all bad things to someone or something else. In the case of our economic woes, the latest pass off target is Europe. But the Wall Street Journal does a pretty darn good job of taking that argument apart. First with history: In 1997 Asia’s economy imploded. Currencies collapsed, countries had their ratings downgraded to junk, millions of people lost their jobs, governments were replaced, regimes fell. In October a jittery Dow, fearing the effects of "Asian contagion," lost 7.2% of its value in a single day. Trading had to be halted twice. And yet the American economy was unscathed. In 1997 GDP grew by 4.5%. In 1998 it grew again by 4.5%, this time despite the Russian ruble crisis. In 1999, annual growth reached 4.9%, a pace it hasn’t exceeded since. Unemployment fell to 4.2%. The government ran a surplus. Obama claims that Europe is our “largest trading partner”. Well, they’re not: Europe is not our largest trading partner. Canada is. Followed by China. Followed by Mexico. Followed by Japan. "Europe" only counts as America’s largest trading partner in an aggregate sense. An honest apples-to-apples comparison would find that U.S. trade with North America or East Asia dwarfs trade across the Atlantic. And, tossing his blatantly false claim aside, is trade where our problem really lies? Now take the question of how much trade matters to America. In 2009, foreign trade accounted for 24.3% of the U.S. economy. By contrast, the foreign-trade-to-GDP ratio was 51.9% for China, 71.1% for Canada and 89.2% for Germany. When it comes to foreign trade, the U.S. is the world’s least dependent major economy. That’s right, it isn’t Europe and it isn’t trade that’s the problem. It is economic policy. Domestic economic policy and a rudderless ship of state, the captain more interested in fund raising and re-election than doing the hard work of trying to turn the situation around. Which brings us to another excuse – Congressional Republicans: Again, a little history is in order. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 passed the Senate 58-33 in an evenly split chamber. Bill Clinton managed to do business with a GOP that controlled both houses of Congress for six of his eight years in office. Ronald Reagan passed all of his economic agenda through a House that was under constant Democratic control. Somehow it is only Barack Obama—whose party, in an inconvenient truth for his campaign, still runs the Senate—who seems incapable of working with any Congress not under full partisan control. (And even then he had trouble.) Americans expect their presidents to be able to assemble coalitions of the politically willing in order to achieve pragmatic and relatively popular results. The Obama administration method, by contrast, has been to shove what it can down the public throat, then act surprised when the public gags, or throws up. Leadership, of course, makes a difference – Clinton, Reagan and Bush were able to exert the sort of leadership necessary to work with Congress to get what they wanted. Obama seems to think “working with” means he dictates and Congress passes what he dictates. And when that doesn’t happen, well, it’s off to another fund raiser. Peggy Noonan talked about politicians “laying down lines” before an event so they can spin what happens in a positive way even if what happens isn’t at all positive. That’s what you see here – the President of the United States laying down a line of BS about Europe and trade so, if and when Europe collapses he can point his finger across the Atlantic and blame that continent for the problems here. For the record, it isn’t the first or last time: As president, Mr. Obama has attempted to make scapegoats of bankers, bondholders, private-equity firms, insurance companies, energy companies, ATMs, the Chamber of Commerce, the Catholic Church, opponents of illegal immigration, European politicians, Supreme Court justices and even Japanese tsunamis. But he got bin Laden, didn’t he? However, the 14.3% unemployed are not particularly impressed. Forward! ~McQ
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Post by philunderwood on Jun 15, 2012 8:09:02 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=mark-critzQuote of the Day: Which Republican said this edition Published June 15, 2012 | By Bruce McQuain Tell me if you know which Republican Congressman said this: "President Obama and others in Washington need to realize that we cannot spend our way to prosperity and that to in order to create jobs," … "We need to address unfair trade deals that ship jobs overseas and enact policies that allow us to take advantage of our vast natural resources such as coal and natural gas in a safe and responsible manner which will lower energy costs and create jobs and approving the Keystone XL Pipeline would be a good first step." House Speaker Boehner? Paul Ryan? Eric Cantor? Uh, no … it wasn’t a Republican at all. It was Rep. Mark Critz, D-PA. The guy who represents most of John Murtha’s old district. Does this sound like a guy who is wanting the president anywhere near his district as he runs for re-election? Meanwhile the President gave a “major speech” yesterday in Ohio that was 54 minutes long and could be boiled down into one sentence – No change: more spending, more taxes, same old failed economic policies and blame Bush. It was widely panned by the usually supportive media. Said Jon Healy of the LA Times: President Obama’s much-anticipated speech Thursday on the economy didn’t lay out any new initiatives or make any new arguments. It often sounded like a recap of his first three years, or another version of the familiar "how we got here" blamefest. Meanwhile, going back to part of Rep. Critz criticism, the Keystone XL pipeline, something which would mean jobs for this country and a big step toward increasing our energy security, is indeed proceeding – toward China or elsewhere: While Joe Oliver, Canada’s minister of natural resources, said in an interview that the United States would remain Canada’s “most important customer,” billions of barrels of oil that would have been refined and used in the United States are now poised to head elsewhere. Expansion of Canada’s fast-growing oil-sands industry will be restricted by the lack of pipeline capacity before the decade’s end, he said, which “adds to the urgency of building them so that the resources will not be stranded.” Three new pipeline network proposals — two that call for heading west and the other east — have been put forward. If ever there were a blunder of historic proportions, Obama’s petulant and politically motivated disapproval of the pipeline rank up in the top. As John Sexton writes: The scale of this blunder, which the President made ostensibly on environmental grounds, is compounded by the fact that there is no putting the genie back in the bottle. Once a new pipeline is built, Canada has no reason to return to selling its oil products solely to the U.S. at a reduced price. The decision not to approve Keystone XL makes Solyndra look like a stroke of genius. Indeed. Oh and finally, can anyone guess what was required to attend the President’s Ohio speech? Yeah, that’s right – a photo ID. ~McQ
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Post by philunderwood on Jun 19, 2012 10:05:45 GMT -5
The Immigration Ploy By Thomas Sowell www.JewishWorldReview.com | President Obama's latest political ploy — granting new "rights" out of thin air, by Executive Order, to illegal immigrants who claim that they were brought into the country when they were children — is all too typical of his short-run approach to the country's long-run problems. Whatever the merits or demerits of the Obama immigration policy, his Executive Order is good only as long as he remains president, which may be only a matter of months after this year's election. People cannot plan their lives on the basis of laws that can suddenly appear, and then suddenly disappear, in less than a year. To come forward today and claim the protection of the Obama Executive Order is to declare publicly and officially that your parents entered the country illegally. How that may be viewed by some later administration is anybody's guess. Employers likewise cannot rely on policies that may be here today and gone tomorrow, whether these are temporary tax rates designed to look good at election time or temporary immigration policies that can backfire later if employers get accused of hiring illegal immigrants. Why hire someone, and invest time and money in training them, if you may be forced to fire them before a year has passed? Kicking the can down the road is one of the favorite exercises in Washington. But neither in the economy nor in their personal lives can people make plans and commitments on the basis of government policies that suddenly appear and suddenly disappear. Like so many other Obama ploys, his immigration ploy is not meant to help the country, but to help Obama. This is all about getting the Hispanic vote this November. The principle involved — keeping children from being hurt by actions over which they had no control — is one already advanced by Senator Marco Rubio, who may well end up as Governor Romney's vice-presidential running mate. The Obama Executive Order, which suddenly popped up like a rabbit out of a magician's hat, steals some of Senator Rubio's thunder, so it is clever politics. But clever politics is what has gotten this country into so much trouble, not only as regards immigration but also as regards the economy and the dangerous international situation. When the new, and perhaps short-lived, immigration policy is looked at in terms of how it can be administered, it makes even less sense. While this policy is rationalized in terms of children, those who invoke it are likely to do so as adults. How do you check someone's claim that he was brought into the country illegally when he was a child? If Obama gets reelected, it is very unlikely that illegal immigrants will really have to prove anything. The administration can simply choose not to enforce that provision, as so many other immigration laws are unenforced in the Obama administration. If Obama does not get reelected, then it may not matter anyway, when his Executive Order can be gone after he is gone. Ultimately, it does not matter what immigration policy this country has, if it cannot control its own borders. Whoever wants to come, and who has the chutzpah, will come. And the fact that they come across the Mexican border does not mean that they are all Mexicans. They can just as easily be terrorists from the Middle East. Only after the border is controlled can any immigration policy matter be seriously considered, and options weighed through the normal Constitutional process of Congressional hearings, debate and legislation, rather than by Presidential short-cuts. Not only is border control fundamental, what is also fundamental is the principle that immigration policy does not exist to accommodate foreigners but to protect Americans — and the American culture that has made this the world's richest, freest and most powerful nation for more than a century. No nation can absorb unlimited numbers of people from another culture without jeopardizing its own culture. In the 19th and early 20th century, America could absorb millions of immigrants who came here to become Americans. But the situation is entirely different today, when group separatism, resentment and polarization are being promoted by both the education system and politicians.
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Post by Ritty77 on Jun 25, 2012 19:19:27 GMT -5
I think Romney's going to pick Tim Pawlenty as veep. Ready to step in to the job, if needed. No glaring Bush ties. Wouldn't hurt to grab Minnesota.
Portman, too much Bush for the electorate, I think.
Rubio, not ready to be President. Plus, he may not be eligible.
Ryan, not ready to be President.
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Post by philunderwood on Jul 9, 2012 6:03:28 GMT -5
www.nationalreview.com/articles/304935/obama-s-goose-cooked-larry-kudlowLarry Kudlow Obama needed a filet mignon in the June employment report. Instead he got a rubber chicken. Only 80,000 new jobs were created last month, way below Wall Street expectations. It’s the fourth consecutive monthly disappointment. For a few months last winter, jobs were rising at an average of 225,000 a month. But that has sloped way down to only 75,000. The unemployment rate continues at 8.2 percent, which is the forty-first straight month above 8 percent. The U6 unemployment rate, which includes discouraged workers, is just under 15 percent. As voters finalize their election impressions this summer, all of this is bad news for the Chicago incumbent. At a campaign stop in Ohio on Friday, Obama actually said we’re still “heading in the right direction.” Is he kidding? As a stagnant GDP drops below 2 percent, employment falters, retail sales decline, and the ISM index for manufacturing drops below 50 (signaling contraction)? No objective observer can deny that the economy is headed in the wrong direction. I don’t like playing the pessimist, but the numbers are the numbers. This is exactly what former Clinton advisers James Carville, Doug Schoen, and Stanley Greenberg have been warning Obama about. People just don’t believe the economy is getting better. So he’s gotta change his message. But what change? Taxing rich people won’t create jobs. Neither will bashing Bain Capital. Obama is surrounded by leftist campaign advisers. And it’s hard to see them shifting gears to something constructive like making a summer deal to extend the Bush tax cuts for a year, or heaven forbid backing off the 20-some-odd tax hikes embodied in Obamacare. In other words, Obama’s goose may already be cooked. The Joint Economic Committee (JEC), spearheaded by Texas congressman Kevin Brady, put out a report saying that the Obama recovery now ranks dead last in modern times. That’s a real milestone in the post-WWII era. It’s ten out of ten for both jobs and economic growth. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, real GDP has expanded only 6.7 percent over the eleven-quarter recovery since the recession ended. The Reagan recovery at the same stage had increased by 17.6 percent. The Clinton recovery by 8.7 percent. As for jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the number of private-sector jobs has grown by only 4.1 percent since the cyclical low point. Reagan’s record was 10.7 percent. So much for Obamanomics. Didn’t work. Still isn’t working. As the JEC put it, spending stimulus, housing bailouts, auto bailouts, financial bailouts, cash for clunkers, cash for caulkers, and $5 trillion in deficit spending left the Obama recovery dead last in modern times. Whatever happened to the great boom of the ’80s and ’90s, when the animal spirits were strong and the American economy wasn’t held hostage by Europe or China? In an odd twist, both Obama and his top economist Alan Krueger blame “problems built up over decades.” Does that mean they blame Clinton? Reagan? For nearly 25 years — during those bad old decades — the economy increased 3.3 percent annually. Unemployment dropped from 11 percent to 6 percent to 5 percent to below 4 percent. Obama would swoon for numbers like that. But those statistics come from the era when big government was over, when pro-market forces stopped the expansion of Leviathan, and when marginal tax rates were slashed to grow the economy. Now the question is, with Obama’s economic goose cooked, does Mitt Romney have what it takes to win the election and provide a pro-growth economic model that will restore prosperity at home and America’s number-one position around the world? Some powerful figures — including Rupert Murdoch, Jack Welch, and even my brothers and sisters at the Wall Street Journal editorial page — have taken shots at Romney in recent days. But I am more optimistic. In response to his critics on the day of the bad June jobs report, Romney talked about expanding energy resources, approving the Keystone pipeline, cutting taxes, and increasing trade with Latin America. He reaffirmed his intention to cut federal spending and eliminate programs. Basically, Romney is promising a return to free-market, supply-side policies on taxes, trade, regulation, and spending. Hopefully he will embrace a sound and stable dollar as well. I still believe Romney is the most underrated politician in America today, and that he’s the most conservative Republican standard-bearer since Ronald Reagan. In other words, he’s some real filet mignon. – Larry Kudlow, NRO’s economics editor, is host of CNBC’s The Kudlow Report and author of the daily web log, Kudlow’s Money Politic$
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Post by philunderwood on Jul 10, 2012 7:47:47 GMT -5
www.qando.net/?tag=the-hillPoll: Majority feel Obama changed country for the worse Published July 9, 2012 | By Bruce McQuain I continue to hear the left bravely or blindly asserting that Obama’s fine and will pull off re-election with relative ease. I even hear that on the right from some. My political gut says no. It’ll be close. No one is really that enamored with Mitt Romney. However, in the end, it will be Romney. Why do I speak with such apparent certainty? Well, as I’ve mentioned in the past, there are certain types of polls I keep an eye on. They could be characterized as “temperature” polls I guess as in taking the temperature of the nation. Direction of the country is one I like to watch. Here’s another for example: Two-thirds of likely voters say President Obama has kept his 2008 campaign promise to change America — but it’s changed for the worse, according to a sizable majority. A new poll for The Hill found 56 percent of likely voters believe Obama’s first term has transformed the nation in a negative way, compared to 35 percent who believe the country has changed for the better under his leadership. The results signal broad voter unease with the direction the nation has taken under Obama’s leadership and present a major challenge for the incumbent Democrat as he seeks reelection this fall. Two points. One the poll is of “likely voters” which is a much stronger and accurate demographic than “registered voters”. Secondly, the 35% of satisfied likely voters pretty much mirrors the percentage of Democrats in the US. What that says to me is independents are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the president. That’s not good news for the Obama campaign. Then there is enthusiasm, something we talk about because it is an intangible that is critical to any election. It is critical to any GOTV effort. Those that are more enthusiastic about the election for whatever reason (love their candidate, don’t like the other candidate, etc.) are more likely to make the effort to vote and be receptive to a GOTV effort. That too seems to be running against Obama: Independent of voter opinions about how the country has changed, The Hill Poll found an overwhelming majority of voters — 89 percent — view the choice between Obama and Romney as important in terms of the future impact on the country. Almost half (47 percent) say they are paying more attention to this year’s election than the 2008 vote. Republicans are generally paying more attention than Democrats — 56 percent to 44 percent — to the 2012 campaign compared to 2008. The Hill, which conducted the poll, wants you to believe that independents, which they also identify as “centrists”, are pretty evenly split over the two candidates. But their 56/35 finding doesn’t support that assertion. People are not happy with the current situation in the country (with good reason) and for the most part think 4 years is enough time to change it if a president is capable of doing so. It hasn’t happened. In fact, for at least 14.9% of the working population it has gotten worse (as reflected in the U6 unemployment/underemployment number). That’s a huge number. What Obama doesn’t have going for him this time is a ground swell of naiveté that bought into the nebulous “hope and change” mantra. He most likely won’t have the youth turnout he had (enthusiasm down badly). He very likely won’t have the squishy Republican vote (the Peggy Noonan vote) he had last time. The “white guilt” vote has, for the most part, been assuaged. A black president was elected and got his chance. Add those in with his loss of the independent or swing voters, and the margins become very thin. Obviously the swing states, as usual, will determine the outcome. But even in the swing states, the margins are razor thin (with Romney leading in many), and that, again, is not a good sign for an incumbent four months out. This particular temperature check seems to bolster the political gut feeling (a collection of such temperature checks and other rumblings here and there) that this is an incumbent in deep trouble and probably doesn’t yet know the extent of it. When emphasis is turned on to his record, my guess is the numbers get worse … for him. Stay tuned. ~McQ
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Post by Ritty77 on Jul 16, 2012 21:07:06 GMT -5
"There's no other way to explain this.
He was indoctrinated as a child. His father was a communist. His mother was a leftist. He was sent to prep and Ivy League schools where his contempt for the country was reinforced. He moved to Chicago. It was the home of the radical-left movement. He hooks up to Ayers and Dohrn and Rashid Khalidi. He learns the ruthlessness of Cook County politics. This is what we have as a president: A radical ideologue, a ruthless politician who despises the country and the way it was founded and the way in which it became great.
He hates it."
--Rush Limbaugh
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Post by Ritty77 on Jul 24, 2012 21:08:29 GMT -5
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Post by philunderwood on Jul 31, 2012 6:31:25 GMT -5
Big Lies in Politics By Thomas Sowell www.JewishWorldReview.com | It was either Adolf Hitler or his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, who said that the people will believe any lie, if it is big enough and told often enough, loud enough. Although the Nazis were defeated in World War II, this part of their philosophy survives triumphantly to this day among politicians, and nowhere more so than during election years. Perhaps the biggest lie of this election year, and the one likely to be repeated the most often, is that the income of "the rich" is going up, while other people's incomes are going down. If you listen to Barack Obama, you are bound to hear this lie repeatedly. But the government's own Congressional Budget Office has just published a report whose statistics flatly contradict this claim. The CBO report shows that, while the average household income fell 12 percent between 2007 and 2009, the average for the lower four-fifths fell by 5 percent or less, while the average income for households in the top fifth fell 18 percent. For households in the "top one percent" that seems to fascinate so many people, income fell by 36 percent in those same years. Why are these data so different from other data that are widely cited, showing the top brackets improving their positions more so than anyone else? The answer is that the data cited by the Congressional Budget Office are based on Internal Revenue Service statistics for specific individuals and specific households over time. The IRS can follow individuals and households because it can identify the same people over time from their Social Security numbers. Most other data, including census data, are based on compiling statistics in a succession of time periods, without the ability to tell if the actual people in each income bracket are the same from one time period to the next. The turnover of people is substantial in all brackets — and is huge in the top one percent. Most people in that bracket are there for only one year in a decade. All sorts of statements are made in politics and in the media as if that "top one percent" is an enduring class of people, rather than an ever-changing collection of individuals who have a spike in their income in a particular year, for one reason or another. Turnover in other income brackets is also substantial. There is nothing mysterious about this. Most people start out at the bottom, in entry-level jobs, and their incomes rise over time as they acquire more skills and experience. Politicians and media talking heads love to refer to people who are in the bottom 20 percent in income in a given year as "the poor." But, following the same individuals for 10 or 15 years usually shows the great majority of those individuals moving into higher income brackets. The number who reach all the way to the top 20 percent greatly exceeds the number still stuck in the bottom 20 percent over the years. But such mundane facts cannot compete for attention with the moral melodramas conjured up in politics and the media when they discuss "the rich" and "the poor." There are people who are genuinely rich and genuinely poor, in the sense of having very high or very low incomes for most, if not all, of their lives. But "the rich" and "the poor" in this sense are unlikely to add up to even ten percent of the population. Ironically, those who make the most noise about income disparities or poverty contribute greatly to policies that promote both. The welfare state enables millions of people to meet their needs with little or no income-earning work on their part. Most of the economic resources used by people in the bottom 20 percent come from sources other than their own incomes. There are veritable armies of middle-class people who make their livings transferring resources, in a variety of ways, from those who created those resources to those who live off them. These transferrers are in both government and private social welfare institutions. They have every incentive to promote dependency, from which they benefit both professionally and psychically, and to imagine that they are creating social benefits. For different reasons, both politicians and the media have incentives to spread misconceptions with statistics. So long as we keep buying it, they will keep selling it.
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Post by Ritty77 on Aug 2, 2012 20:30:31 GMT -5
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