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Story Of Obama

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Wow! I can't wait to see the movie. It sounds like it will be very enlightening.

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Wally

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"In actual practice a man has to guard against many things, and most of all against himself."
--- Jesse Livermore

Obama's Economic Plan

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Quote from Yannis:

Obama's Economic Plan

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Quote from RCG Trader:

Yannis you do know you got your ass handed to you in 08. Why come back just to get your head lopped off again?

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Quote from RCG Trader:

Yannis you do know you got your ass handed to you in 08. Why come back just to get your head lopped off again?

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And, Speaking Of Our Fearless Leader...

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But, Of Course, We CAN Look Forward To Better Economic Times

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Re: Story Of Obama

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Quote from Yannis:

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPs_j1EEplI&feature=feedwll&list=WL

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Quote from Yannis:

The last presidential election was a regular transfer of leadership between Repubs and Dems at the 8 yeas mark... Very common, no surprises there. Yet, to his credit, McCain fought a decent fight, but what could he do against the collapsing global economy and the sold-out liberal media playing off the race card. This next election is different as we, Americans, have a real chance to repeat the Carter thing for the good of our country and get out of the economic and class warfare hole Obama pushed us in.

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Another Cute/Terrible One

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The Union Problem

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This Sounds True To Me

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Drive on, Yannis, drive on!!!

After this diatribe, we won't see you for another three years after November

Like Mike Huckabee says: this is my opinion and I welcome yours

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WSJ: Fed Buying 61 Percent of US Debt
Wednesday, 28 Mar 2012 11:08 AM
By Julie Crawshaw and Forrest Jones

"Last year the Fed purchased a stunning 61 percent of the total net Treasury issuance, up from negligible amounts prior to the 2008 financial crisis," Goodman writes.

Goodman also warns that U.S. economy and markets are “at risk for a sharp correction” if conditions aren’t “normalized.”

"This not only creates the false appearance of limitless demand for U.S. debt but also blunts any sense of urgency to reduce supersized budget deficits."

The U.S. government is growing increasingly more dependent on borrowing to finance itself, with net issuance of Treasury securities hitting 8.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on average per annum, more than double levels before the crisis.

Fed intervention in the government debt market makes demand for Treasury bonds appear higher than it really is, as foreign creditors and other investors have fled U.S. government debt instruments and are looking elsewhere until the government makes serious attempts to curb spending and narrow its gaping deficits.

Goodman notes that foreign investors like Japan and China that once scooped up U.S. debt are shunning it. In 2009, such foreign purchases of U.S. debt amounted to 6 percent of GDP and has since falled by over eighty percent to a paltry 0.9 percent.

Without foreign buyers and a shrinking base of U.S. corporate and bank buyers, the Treasury has had to resort to the Federal Reserve itself to make the purchases. The Fed purchasing not only makes up the shortfall, but can keep long term interest rates artificially low.

"The Fed is in effect subsidizing U.S. government spending and borrowing via expansion of its balance sheet and massive purchases of Treasury bonds. This keeps Treasury interest rates abnormally low, camouflaging the true size of the budget deficit," Goodman writes.

"Similarly, the Fed is providing preferential credit to the U.S. government and covering a rapidly widening gap between Treasury's need to borrow and a more limited willingness among market participants to supply Treasury with credit."

Political bickering on both sides of the aisle has prevented politicians from cutting spending and undertaking fiscal reform.

Arguing over the role of tax hikes versus spending cuts hit a fever pitch in 2011, when both sides in Congress waited until the last minute to agree to terms surrounding lifting the government's debt ceiling.

Should fiscal bickering return, expect investors in U.S. debt who are not employed at the Federal Reserve to take note, other experts say.

"If people dig in, the polarization will get worse, and that could be the worst outcome for markets," says Eric Stein, vice president and portfolio manager at Eaton Vance in Boston, according to Reuters.

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To clarify the post above, this is not good... They are printing gobs of money, monetizing the debt, and hiding their disastrous actions... When the dollar collapses and inflation catches up, destroying regular folks' pensions and nest eggs, they will all have different jobs... It will then be time for the big OOPS!

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Quote from Yannis:

To clarify the post above, this is not good... They are monetizing the debt and hiding their disastrous actions... When the dollar collapses and inflation catches up, destroying regular folks' pensions and nest eggs, they will all have different jobs... It will then be time for the big OOPS!

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Path To Prosperity
by Paul Ryan

Dear Friend --

Today, I'm leading the debate for the Fiscal Year 2013 budget, the Path to Prosperity, on the floor of the House of Representatives. The House is also debating President Obama’s budget. So it seems like the perfect time to compare the two plans and highlight the choice of two futures, or #2futures as we say on Twitter.

Obama’s budget has a net spending increase of $1.5 trillion.
The Path to Prosperity cuts $5 trillion in spending.

Obama’s budget increases taxes by $1.9 trillion and further complicates our broken tax code.
The Path to Prosperity prevents the President’s tax hikes and reforms the tax code to make it simple, fair and competitive.

Obama’s budget never balances the budget and adds $11 trillion in debt over the next decade.
The Path to Prosperity reduces deficits to 3 percent of GDP and charts a path to pay off the debt.

Obama’s budget cuts defense by nearly $500 billion and fails to address the sequester.
The Path to Prosperity avoids deep and indiscriminate cuts to defense and prioritizes savings.

Obama’s budget moves full steam ahead with the health care law, allows unaccountable bureaucrats to ration care and fails to save Medicare from bankruptcy.
The Path to Prosperity repeals the health care law, puts health decisions in the hands of patients and doctors and preserves the Medicare guarantee for future generations.
Compare the two plans and it’s not difficult to figure out who is proposing serious solutions to prevent this oncoming debt crisis.

Americans deserves the choice of two futures.
Sincerely,

Congressman Paul Ryan

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Same Principles, Fresh Take

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h8O...detailpage#t=0s

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In March 2007, Jesse Jackson declared his support for then-Senator Barack Obama in the 2008 democratic primaries. Jackson later criticized Obama in 2007 for "acting like he's white."

On July 6, 2008, during an interview with Fox News, a microphone picked up Jackson whispering to fellow guest Dr. Reed Tuckson:"See, Barack's been, ahh, talking down to black people on this faith-based... I want to cut his nuts off."

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Quote from Yannis:

The last presidential election was a regular transfer of leadership between Repubs and Dems at the 8 yeas mark... Very common, no surprises there. Yet, to his credit, McCain fought a decent fight, but what could he do against the collapsing global economy and the sold-out liberal media playing off the race card. This next election is different as we, Americans, have a real chance to repeat the Carter thing for the good of our country and get out of the economic and class warfare hole Obama pushed us in.

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Changing The Vision

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O’s Losing Strategy – It’s All Fear And Envy, No Hope
By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann on April 9, 2012

The shape of President Obama’s re-election strategy is coming clear. The key elements:

1) Don’t run on your record; run as if there were no incumbent

2) Stress class warfare; exploit fear of Republican spending cuts. Harp on the negatives.

3) Hide the negatives about your record in a miasma of general pessimism. (Medicare was broken before we got here; headwinds slowed the economy.)

It’s hard to see how this works. Economic populism has never been able to reach more than about 40 percent of the American electorate. And the only modern incumbent to run away from his record and win was Harry Truman in the aftermath of World War II and the Roosevelt era.

So what are the people around Obama thinking?

They seem to be betting that a decided shift in our political culture in the past decade has transformed class envy and save-government-spending demagoguery into a way to win a majority.

The Democratic Party’s left has long believed in this strategy. In the 1996 Clinton re-election campaign, moderates squared off against economic populists and won the day. The likes of former Labor Secretary Robert Reich pushed populist remedies, but the polling never showed that this rhetoric would suffice to win a majority. (Yes, Clinton used some of their arguments to get elected in 1992 — but he only had to win 43 percent of the vote to prevail, because Ross Perot made it a three-way race.)

Has our culture changed that much since? Are the partisan divisions so entrenched and hatred of the other side so pronounced that a divisive campaign, a la Richard Nixon in 1968, can win? We don’t know yet.

Perhaps Obama’s people have polling that suggests things are different now — that the country is so embittered and divided that sunny optimism and appeals to national unity strike a false note with voters.

Alternately, it may all just be an attempt to revive the 2008 Obama coalition by igniting divisive passions to amplify turnout among his old base.

Note that Obama regularly draws 49 percent to 52 percent of registered voters in national polls against Romney — but does far worse when the poll is limited to the smaller pool of likely voters, trailing Romney 47 percent to 45 percent (Rasmussen) or tied at 47 (Bloomberg).

That gap illustrates Obama’s central problem: turnout.

He won in 2008 because blacks rose from 11 percent of the vote to 14 percent, Latino participation rose from 7 percent to 8.5 percent, and the under-30 voters dramatically increased their turnout as well.

His ratings among African-Americans remain high, but the prospects for a heavy turnout are diminished. And (according to Rasmussen) his approval among Latinos is down to 41 percent and among under-30 voters to 54 percent.

Obama’s appeals to fear, envy and class antagonisms haven’t been working lately. But even if they start to, he’s sacrificing the themes of optimism and hope.

A dour, bitter Obama, lashing out at the rich and peddling fear of the Republicans, can’t compete with a sunny, smiling Mitt Romney. He’s largely stuck talking about who Romney is — an unbecoming attack line that doesn’t inspire faith in a national leader.

Were we France or Italy, perhaps this rhetoric would fall on receptive ears conditioned by years of discord. Here in America? Not yet.

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Quote from PHOENIX TRADING:

If I PM you my address will you sell me some of those hallucinogens you are taking?

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Not About This...

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Obama’s Second-Term Taxes
By Dick Morris on April 10, 2012

If Obama is reelected, the tax increase he and a Democratic Congress would impose on middle- and upper-middle-income Americans would be disastrous. It’s easy to lose sight of his tax plans because he has hidden them in a variety of nooks and crannies, including the Simpson-Bowles Commission Report, the Pelosi budget of 2009 and the various tax proposals advanced by his party. But, should he win, they will all come out of hiding, and together, they will be the principal legislative thrust of his efforts in 2013.

For a couple making $250,000, these tax hikes would add another $3,000 to $4,000 a month in taxes (depending on whether they were self-employed).

For a couple making $150,000, they would add another $1,200 to $1,400 per month.

Let’s all realize that Obama let a massive deficit accumulate precisely because he realized that doing so gave him the leverage he would need to raise taxes and increase, permanently, the size of government in America. Reagan let the deficit pile up so liberals couldn’t spend more money. Obama did so in order to make conservatives vote for higher taxes.

How will he tax us? Let us count the ways:

• Most basic, of course, will be an increase in tax rates. Those paying 33 percent will now pay 36 percent. People paying 35 percent will now pay 40 percent. Most people accept and expect that Obama will raise these brackets if he is reelected. But they don’t realize what else he will do.

• As he advocated in the 2008 campaign, he will eliminate the ceiling on wages that must be taxed for Social Security. Currently, wages are taxed at 6.2 percent (now, temporarily, at 4.2 percent) up to a ceiling about $100,000 per year in income. The ceiling rises with the cost of living. But Obama will eliminate the ceiling and subject all wages to FICA taxation. (In his campaign, he spoke of a “carve-out” for those making between $100,000 and $200,000, where income would be exempt from FICA, but don’t count on it.) For those who are employed, the increase in FICA taxes will mean an effective increase in their tax bracket of 6.2 percentage points. For the self-employed, it will mean a whopping 12.4 percentage point increase, bringing their effective tax rate, if they are in the top bracket, over 52 percent. Obama has refrained from addressing Social Security’s financial problems and will do so until after the election. But his solution will be higher taxes, not curtailed benefits.

• All deductions for mortgage interest, charitable giving and state and local tax payments would likely end for those making more than $250,000.

• Even for those making less than $250,000, the Bowles-Simpson recommendations call for replacing the current tax deduction for mortgage interest, charitable giving and state and local taxes with a tax credit. Usually 8 percent is mentioned as the tax credit level.

So add it up:
Case A
Married couple
Income: $250,000
Home: $300,000 (mortgage interest: $20,000)
Property taxes: $15,000
Self-employed
Basic tax rate: +5% +$12,500
FICA on full income: +$18,600 ($9,300 if employed)
No deduction
Mortgage interest +$ 6,500
Prop Taxes +$5,000
State income tax (9%) +$7,500
Total additional tax: +$50,100 ($40,800 if employed)

Case B
Married couple
Income: $150,000
Home: $200,000 (mortgage interest: $10,000)
Property taxes: $10,000
Self-employed
Basic tax rate: +3% +$ 4,500
FICA on full income +$6,200 ($3,100 if employed)
8% credit, no deduction
Mortgage interest +$ 2,500
Property taxes +$ 2,500
State income tax (6%) +$ 1,500
(calculation replaces deduction at 33% bracket with an 8% credit)
Total additional tax: +$17,200 ($14,100 if employed)

Can we afford Barack Obama for four more years? No way! And don’t say you weren’t warned!

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Obama's Re-election Plan

http://www.dickmorris.com/how-will-...tv-lunch-alert/

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The Great Life
Obverse View

As a child, I hated to be lectured; beat me, sit me in the corner, or make me shovel cow manure, but don't lecture me. Now that I am an adult, or perhaps on my way back to childhood, I hate to hear politicians lecture because I know they are standing on a pile of the manure that I once had to shovel.

Our titular leader is heads and above any President that I can remember during my lifetime in the arena of hypocrisy and twaddle. He lectures us, the common people, on buying smaller, more gas efficient automobiles, inflating our tires to save gas, and in general, cutting back on our use of energy. And then what does he do?

Mr. Obama, over the course of 104 days, made 65 domestic trips; and over the period of 22 days, made six trips to 8 countries. He also took six vacation trips totaling 32 days. Took 196 helicopter trips and squeezed in 29 rounds of left-handed golf. Air Force One costs the taxpayers of this country $181,757.00 per flight hour; this does not consider the cost of Marine One, Secret Service, advance planners, cooks, barbers, physicians, nurses, speech writers, teleprompter technicians, presidential limousine, and a separate plane for the First Lady so that she can arrive early, presumably to fluff the pillows .

The Secret Service purchased two, made in Canada, $1.1 million buses so that the President could visit the Midwest and "meet with the people." The President would fly to an airport on Air Force One, get on one of the buses and do a little one-two hour tour and then fly on to another city. There he would get on the other bus and ride around for one-two hours and repeat the adventure. The buses were leap-frogged on a Boeing C-17 Globemaster to be awaiting the President on arrival at his next stop. This was described as a non-campaign trip so the cost of the buses and all auxiliary expenses were picked up by the taxpayer; the Democratic National Committee did not expend one thin dime on this caricature.

On spring break, the President's 13 year old daughter took a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico with 12 of her friends. They were escorted by a 25 man Secret Service detail and flown to and from Mexico on two jet aircraft. Now I don't care what this President's kids do; this is not about the kid, it is about spending hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of taxpayer dollars on a spring break trip – the kid did not authorize the travel or expenses – BHO did.

Mrs. Obama wore a $500.00 + pair of Lanvin sneakers to do a photo op at a feed the poor food bank. And then there is the $400.00 + lobster lunch at the Waldorf. Now I don't care what Mrs. Obama wears, well I do, but the tennis shoes are the least of her wardrobe malfunctions, and I don't care what she eats. This goes to the hypocrisy of the general lecture we constantly receive about "shared sacrifice." One would have to be very, very rich to find $500 sneakers and $400 lunches sacrificial. I doubt that even the filthy rich could top these obvious lapses in common sense decorum.

Mrs. Obama treats being the First Lady, as her personal American Express Black Card (arguably the most prestigious credit card in the world). I cannot engender respect for the Obamas' because, as people are suffering, losing their homes, their jobs, their retirements, and their dignity, the First Family are arrogantly showing off their life of entitlement – all this as he goes about creating and fomenting class warfare. This is the worse type of rancid elitism and certainly is not an all-inclusive list of their arrogance!

I don't expect any President to fly commercial or stay at the Holiday Inn, but a little acknowledgment of the plight of so many Americans by cutting back on the taxpayer funded fun and games seems to be in order.

Perhaps this reign of excesses and misuse of our nation's highest office will end with one term, and perhaps not; it is difficult to imagine what the Obama's would do during a second term.

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. -- Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903) Perhaps in our case just a majority of voting Americans!

Have a good week. Obverseview@yahoogroups.com.

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Obama's Re-election Plan: Another Take

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Quote from Tsing Tao:

I'm confused, about what do you think he is hallucinating?

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Quote from Yannis:

Not About This...

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Quote from jem:

... I can tell you many of the people with 250 income have a household with at least with one govt worker. Even the teachers wont vote for that. Its frequently a govt worker at 150 and a private worker at 100.

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Obama’s Second-Term Taxes
By Dick Morris on April 10, 2012

If Obama is reelected, the tax increase he and a Democratic Congress would impose on middle- and upper-middle-income Americans would be disastrous...

Can we afford Barack Obama for four more years? No way! And don’t say you weren’t warned!

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Very Scary: Half Pay No Taxes & A Third Don’t Work

http://www.dickmorris.com/half-pay-...tv-lunch-alert/

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American Welfare System In Shambles

I received this email today, edited it just a little bit for readability... Can't vouch for all details, but the reasoning sounds true. Both Gingrich and Romney have been talking about the same phenomenon. They propose to change welfare again, back to how it was redefined in the Chlinton years, under pressure from the Republican Congress. Welfare should be temporary, given out under extreme conditions and handled by the States who receive block grants from the federal Government. Last year, Obama switched out of that system and took us back into the morass we have today, with huge amounts of money given to people seemingly without any control. Plus, the wrong life philosophy is being embedded deep into our economic and social fabric.

This is not to say that we don't need a well crafted, strong social safety net, especially for children and the elderly. BUT, just watch out, think carefully, what another hears is often not what you meant, especially where money and work are concerned.

"An emergency room physician told me that a woman in her late 20's came to the ER today with her 8th pregnancy. She told the first doctor she saw: "My Mama told me that I am the breadwinner for the family." He asked her to explain. She said that she can make babies, and babies get money from the State for the family. It goes like this:

The Grandma calls the Department of Child & Family Services, and states that the unemployed daughter is not capable of caring for all of her kids. DCFS agrees, and tells her the children will need to go into foster care. The Grandma then volunteers to be the foster parent, and receives a check for $1500 per child each month in Illinois. Total yearly income: $144,000 tax-free and nobody has to go to work!

In fact, they get more if there is no husband/father/man in the home! Not to mention free healthcare (Medicaid), plus a monthly card entitling them to free groceries and a voucher for 250 free Obamaphone minutes each month. This does not include WIC and other welfare benefits...that they are "entitled" to. Indeed, Grandma was correct that her fertile daughter is the "breadwinner" for the family.

This is how the liberal politicians spend our tax dollars. When this generous program was invented in the '60s, the Great Society architects forgot to craft an end date... and now we are hopelessly overrun with people who vote only for those who will continue to keep them on the dole.... No wonder our country is broke!

Worse, the Muslims have been paying attention, and by mandating that each Muslim family have eleven children, they will soon replace the voting bloc above and can be running this country within 25 years. Read the above again, until it sinks in, and then ask yourself if your Children, Grandchildren, and Great Grandchildren will survive these severe changes to America!!!

Are You alarmed yet? Is anybody listening? Don't forget to pay your taxes! There are a lot of "breadwinners" depending on you!""

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Buffett Rule's Deceitful Consequences
by Richard W. Rahn - Washington Times, April 16, 2012

Do you think it is more important to have a tax policy that raises the most revenue at the least cost in order to maximize job growth and economic opportunity or to have a tax policy like the Buffett rule, which falsely claims it would make all millionaires pay a higher tax rate than their secretaries?

President Obama released his tax return last week, showing he had an effective rate of a little more than 20 percent of his income, even though he is rich by his own definition. One of major ways the Obamas were able to reduce their tax rate was by giving away 22 percent of their income to charity, which I applaud. But their actions raise several interesting points. The president’s actions illustrate how people have the ability largely to determine their own tax rate both by the amount of money they choose to give away and the types of investments they choose to make.

When we donate money to a charity, church or some other worthy cause, we are allowed a tax deduction, which means the government gets less of our money. The president and many in his party keep telling us that the government needs more money, but if they believe this, why are they taking charitable deductions? I expect the reason is that most of us implicitly believe (for good empirical reasons) that private charities and other tax-exempt groups spend our money more wisely and carefully than the government.

Do a thought experiment. Assume rather than just being able to take a tax deduction for your contributions to qualified nonprofit organizations, you could take a tax credit. That is, you would get a dollar deduction in your income tax liability for each dollar you chose to give away. Assume you make $50,000 a year and after you calculate your tax liability you find you owe $10,000, or 20 percent. But then you have the choice of paying some or all of it to the government or some or all of it to nonprofit organizations. How much would you send to the government and how much to nongovernmental organizations? How much do you think your friends and family would send to organizations other than the government?

The federal government is spending about 24 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Most of it goes for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlement programs. The “discretionary” portion of the budget equals about 9 percent of GDP, with about half going for defense. Until 1930, the federal government normally spent less than 4 percent of GDP, except for the periods during World War I and the Civil War. The Constitution gives the federal government very few tasks for which it is required to spend money — the big item being the “common defense.” Again, up until 1930, the courts forced the federal government to live largely within the confines of the Constitution. Deducting defense spending from the federal budgets before 1930 shows that the federal government lived perfectly well on 2 percent to 3 percent of GDP for the first 140 years of the republic.

What all of this means is that approximately three-quarters of all federal government spending is not required by — and often is contrary to — the Constitution. So we should be asking ourselves: Are there any better and less damaging ways to accomplish what government is claiming to do for us? The answer, of course, is yes. Think tanks and others have produced many serious documents and books about how the private sector can do almost everything better than the public sector.

All of which gets us back to the Buffett millionaires’ surtax. Even the official government scorekeeper, the Congressional Budget Office, says the tax would only bring in a minuscule amount of revenue. Also, private tax economists, using dynamic models rather than government models that fail to account for all the changes in behavior, find the tax would be a big revenue loser. So the president and his allies have largely switched their argument to one of “fairness” and reducing the disparity in income distribution. They are never willing to define why 30 percent or any other number is “fair,” nor are they able to explain why people who work harder and contribute more should be taxed at a higher rate.

Even if the Buffett tax ever passes, it was crafted by members of Congress to hit few of their own. Very rich members of Congress, such as Sens. John F. Kerry and John D. Rockefeller IV, receive much of their income from tax-exempt state and local bonds and from trust funds, which largely avoid the tax. Members of Congress generally are restricted from entrepreneurial activities. So, of course, they have decided to increase the tax on entrepreneurs — the capital gains tax — which is a tax on becoming rich, not a tax on being rich.

Most people, such as students, are relatively poor by government methodology when they are young but rise through the income ranks as they become more productive and experienced and then fall in relative income as they near and enter retirement, even though they may have considerable net wealth. By increasing the tax on capital gains and marginal rates, the government makes it more difficult to move into higher income brackets, thus actually reducing income-class mobility.

Those who support the Buffett millionaires’ surtax as written reveal themselves either to be economically ignorant or to believe the voters are fools who will not see through their destructive games.

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Obama Launches More Realistic 'I Have Big Ideas But We'll See How It Goes' Campaign Slogan
www.theonion.com April 18, 2012

Obama lays out his bold immigration policy, and then lays out the shell of a compromised immigration plan he’ll get if he’s lucky.

CHICAGO—After coming to terms with the limited scope of what he can realistically expect to accomplish as president, Barack Obama announced Wednesday a new, more practical campaign slogan that will serve as the cornerstone for his 2012 reelection bid: "I Have Big Ideas But We'll See How It Goes."

"My fellow citizens, I stand here today to tell you that, if given a second term, I have very big plans for our nation's future," Obama said during a rally at Chicago's Navy Pier. "Ambitious, forward-thinking plans I will have to drastically scale down based on opinion polls, budget considerations, and political roadblocks, but, you know, I'll see what I can do. No promises, though."

"More than likely I'll have to placate political rivals until my bold agenda is a shell of what it once was." Obama added. "And that's what the 'We'll See' campaign is all about. Now let us go boldly forth and compromise our ideals."

Saying he intends to give certain initiatives a shot but that it's not looking very good, Obama cited lasting bipartisanship cooperation in Congress, birth-control coverage for all women, and an affordable college education for every citizen as concrete examples of ridiculous ideas that Americans need to put out of their minds, because, according to the president, "We're not living in a fantasyland here."

Instead, Obama said he hopes to rally voters behind causes like holding teachers accountable for student performances "while remembering tenure provisions that protect terrible educators from getting fired," imposing a surtax on millionaires "unless of course Republicans fight me really hard, which, in that case, what are you going to do," and an economic stimulus bill to fund new infrastructure that "doesn't have a chance in hell of passing but sure would be nice."

"Think of the America within our reach: a nation of entrepreneurs and innovators and dreamers capable of making big plans that will eventually be crushed by acrimonious gridlock," Obama said to smattering applause. "That's the future I see for America, because, let's be honest, that's just how it's always going to be."

"Then again, you never know," Obama continued, "If 50 or 60 key people die, there's a chance some of my policy ideas might at least make it past various Senate and House committees. Fingers crossed."

According to top campaign strategist David Axelrod, the new slogan's message may sideline older themes like hope and change, but it allows Obama to portray himself as the sensible candidate who can think big, back off that thought because it has no chance of actually happening, and then settle for something nowhere near as exciting.

Axelrod said the slogan was chosen after a brainstorming session that saw the coining of such phrases as "Change We Can Believe In If We Critically Redefine The Term," "Hope Within The Boundaries Of Common Sense And Lowered Expectations," and "Look, Any Guy You Vote Into Office Is Going To Face The Same Bullshit Problems Every President—Democrat Or Republican—Has Faced For Decades, So It Might As Well Be Me: Obama 2012."

"'Yes We Can' really resonated with citizens because they needed hope," said Axelrod, who was wearing a 'We'll See' button that depicts a subdued President Obama weighing two options, both of which, Axelrod confirmed, are less than ideal. "'I Have Big Ideas But We'll See How It Goes' resonates because people have been beaten down and know they shouldn't get their hopes up in terms of the country improving."

Many pundits have already condemned the new slogan, saying that while its language may capture the spirit of the political moment, its rhetoric is too optimistic.

"On the one hand, the slogan works because it avoids using overly presumptive words like 'win,' 'tomorrow,' 'future,' or 'better,'" Politico's chief White House correspondent Mike Allen said. "But using a phrase like 'We'll See' is also misleading, because it implies there is a slight possibility that something could happen. Unfortunately, voters need to realize that, at this point, nothing they could ever envision for the future—and I seriously mean nothing—has any chance of ever becoming a reality."

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Romney Campaign Notes that Obama as a Boy Ate Dog Meat*


Much has been made about Mitt Romney, in 1983, putting his family dog Seamus in a kennel on top of his roof and driving from Boston to Canada, with said canine Seamus making his displeasure known in a rather scatological way.

Democrats have signaled they have every intention of making sure the American people — especially dog-lovers — know the tale. In January, senior Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod tweeted a photo of the president and Bo in a car, with the snide observation: “@davidaxelrod: How loving owners transport their dogs.”

The Romney campaign signaled Tuesday night that they are not about to cede any ground when it comes to a candidate’s odd past with man’s best friend.

And the Obama campaign shot back, with a spokesman suggesting the Romney team was attacking a child, since the Obama act in question took place when he was a kid.

The Daily Caller noted that in President Obama’s best-selling memoir, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,” the president recalls being fed dog meat as a young boy in Indonesia with his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro.

“With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy),” the president wrote. “Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share.”

The Quote of the Decade:

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America 's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America 's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that, "the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”
~ Senator Barack H. Obama, March 2006

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Why High Taxes Will Never Soak Rich
by Daniel J. Mitchell - New York Post, April 16, 2012

Whether it’s through the Buffett Rule, higher income-tax rates or double taxation of dividends and capital gains, President Obama often demands that “rich” taxpayers and big corporations send more money to Washington.

But as Americans pay their taxes by today’s deadline, we might note that trying to get more money from upper-income taxpayers is like playing whack-a-mole. So long as tax rates are high, rich people will figure out ways to protect their income.

It doesn’t take a tax genius; any rich person can make a phone call or hit a few computer keys and shift his or her investments to tax-free municipal bonds. It’s not good for the economy when capital gets diverted to help finance the excess spending of Detroit or California, but it’s an effective way of stiff-arming the IRS.

Work, production, saving and investment are how we generate national income, so it doesn't make sense to discourage taxable income with higher tax rates.

Or the rich can play the green-energy scam, getting all sorts of credits to offset their tax liabilities. That’s one way General Electric made lots of money and kept it all for shareholders.

Statists often will respond by arguing that we should reform the tax code. But instead of a flat tax, which would rid us of loopholes and would lower tax rates, they just want to end the loopholes and keep tax rates high — or raise them even higher.

Even if lawmakers abolished the various tax-code distortions, they might still be disappointed. The one sure way for rich people to lower their tax bills is by generating less income.

Here’s a quick economics lesson for the class-warfare crowd: When the government taxes income, it raises the price of work compared to leisure. And because the tax code penalizes capital gains with higher rates, it also raises the price of saving and investment compared to consumption.

Yet work, production, saving and investment are how we generate national income, so it doesn’t make sense to discourage taxable income with higher tax rates.

This isn’t some sort of modern-day revelation. Andrew Mellon, a Treasury secretary during the 1920s, noted that “the history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business.”

Unlike the rest of us, the rich have a great ability to alter the timing, amount and composition of their income. That’s because, according to IRS data, those with more than $1 million of adjusted gross income get only 33 percent of it from wages and salaries. The super-rich (those with income above $10 million) rely on wages and salaries for only 19 percent of their income.

In 1980, when the top tax rate was 70 percent, rich people (those with incomes of more than $200,000) reported about $36 billion of income; the IRS collected about $19 billion of that amount. So what happened when President Ronald Reagan lowered the top tax rate to 28 percent by 1988? Did revenue fall proportionately, to about $8 billion?

Folks on the left thought that would happen, complaining that Reagan’s “tax cuts for the rich” would starve the government of revenue and give upper-income taxpayers a free ride.

But if we look at the 1988 IRS data, rich people paid more than $99 billion to Uncle Sam. That is, because rich taxpayers were willing to earn and report much more income, the government collected five times as much revenue with a lower rate.

To be sure, many other factors helped account for the explosion of taxable income, including inflation, population growth and other pro-growth policies. So we don’t know whether the lower tax rates on the rich caused revenues to merely double, triple or quadruple.

But we do know that the rich paid much more when the tax rate was much lower.

Now Obama wants to run the experiment in reverse. He hasn’t proposed to push the top tax rate up to 70 percent, thank goodness, but the combined effect of his class-warfare policies would mean a big increase in marginal tax rates.

That might be good for workers in China, India or Ireland, because American jobs and investment would migrate to those places. But it’s not the right policy for the United States.

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My brother, a die hard union worker, and one who voted for Obama just sent me this.
Me thinks the president is losing ground fast.

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Quote from CaptainObvious:

My brother, a die hard union worker, and one who voted for Obama just sent me this.
Me thinks the president is losing ground fast.

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Perfect!

Reagan predicted it 30 years in advance..... This is another great video.

Natural and Forced Inequality
by Roger Pilon - The European, April 19, 2012

In modern American politics, complaints about “economic inequality” have long been a staple of the Democratic Party. During the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt perfected the complaint, purporting to speak for the “little guy.” Barack Obama today champions the “middle class,” ironically undercutting the complaint — apparently, the “little guy” has moved up. But the unquestioned premise endures: out of fairness, economic inequality is a problem government must address. Really?

We inherited a much narrower sense of equality. Indeed, it’s the premise of our founding document. The Declaration of Independence, rejecting the political inequalities of the Old World, proclaims that “all Men are created equal.” But in so writing, Jefferson meant simply that we all have equal rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” plus the right to secure those rights — the right of self-rule — through governments whose just powers are grounded in “the consent of the governed.”

If self-rule is to be enjoyed equally, however, government must be limited. It can pursue neither equality of result nor equality even of opportunity through redistributive schemes — not if people are to be free to pursue happiness as they wish, alone or in association with others. We’re born with equal rights — to pursue happiness, not to happiness. What we do with those rights is up to us. We can be industrious, or not; beneficent, or not — indeed, we may be lucky, or not.

That's freedom: nothing more, nothing less.

Our history, the work of mere humans, has reflected that vision imperfectly, of course. With the Constitution's oblique recognition of slavery, made necessary to ensure union, equality got off to a bad start. The Framers knew the institution was inconsistent with their principles. It didn't die naturally, as they'd hoped, but only after a civil war. Segregation followed in the South, until the 1960s, all of which still colors our conception of equality, often for the worse: affirmative action, for example, treats people unequally in the name of equality.

But slowly, that kind of unequal treatment is receding. Not so with the unequal treatment that flowed from the Progressive Era, as instituted by the New Deal, which has increasingly infused American politics with the idea that government's role is not simply to secure our rights and provide certain public goods like infrastructure and clean air, but to provide all manner of private goods, like education, retirement security, health care, and housing, all of which requires massive tax and regulatory redistribution, reducing us ineluctably to dependents on, if not servants of the state.

In fact, a recent Heritage Foundation study found that in the first two years of the Obama administration, dependency on the federal government alone rose 23 %, with 67 million Americans now relying on federal programs. To pay for those, the Bureau of Economic Analysis tells us, total government spending has risen from 27 % of GDP in 1960 to 37 % today.

That in turn requires more taxes — but, under the modern view, not equal taxation. In fact, the Tax Foundation reports that the “1 %” that Obama and the “occupy” crowd have so demonized pay 37 % of federal income taxes, while the share paid by the top 5 % of earners rose from 43 % in 1986 to nearly 60 % in 2008. Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans who pay no or negative federal income taxes has increased from 18.5 % in 1986 to 51 % today. Is that fair? It certainly isn’t the equal treatment that our founding principles plainly require.

But it’s not only equality that suffers when we move from private to public welfare — including the “corporate welfare” that inevitably arises when those best able to work the redistributive system do so. Over time, the set of incentives that such a system establishes saps the moral fiber of a nation. We can live, mostly, with the envy that accompanies natural inequalities. Inequalities created by government are altogether different. The incentive to “get mine” that such unfairness unleashes has brought us, collectively, to borrowing 40% of what we spend and to a federal debt approaching $16 trillion and growing. That will not be reversed by still more collectivism in the name of equality — or fairness. Obama claims that “We’re all in this together.” We’ll see, come November.

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Life, Sweet Life

http://www.dickmorris.com/obamas-la...tv-lunch-alert/

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Two Different Strategies

http://www.dickmorris.com/big-diffe...tv-lunch-alert/

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Euromerica? It’s Our Choice…
Fred Thompson

As the Medicare and Social Security trust fund trustees reminded us again on Monday, the U.S. economy is the most foreseeable catastrophe since the predictions of Nostradamus. “Unsustainable” is the word experts of all stripes most often used to describe our burgeoning welfare state.

At a time when, daily, 10,000 Americans retire, total U.S. debt now exceeds 100% of our GDP. The green- eyeshade boys will tell you that when a country reaches 90%, the country loses growth and their creditors lose sleep. As we get downgraded by the credit agencies and look at trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, remember it’s worse than you think.

Those dire fiscal projections coming out of Washington are – the $15 trillion in debt, the tens of billions in debt service payments we must make, the reduced rate of the growth of government – are actually rosy scenarios. These “upbeat” predictions are based upon optimistic assumptions about such things as economic growth that are widely recognized as unrealistic.

We’ve gotten ourselves into a situation where are even good news is bad news. If the economy bounces back then our current extremely low interest rates will rise. Who is the biggest interest payer on the planet? Uncle Sam. Every 1% rise in interest rates will cost us another $100 billion in interest payments. And you wonder why the Fed is still printing money and keeping rates as low as low as possible for as long as possible.

The most mind numbing thing about all of this is that our European brethren have provided a blue print for what to do to avoid the fiscal economic disaster that befell them: do pretty much the opposite of what our European brethren did.

Recall that most European nations expanded their welfare state – free health care, well-paid pensions, rich unemployment benefits seemingly in perpetuity ¬– on borrowed money that would be unsustainable in the face of economic adversity.

The European Union – now faced with that adversity resulting from the global economic meltdown and the sovereign debt crisis of so many members – came up with what they thought was a dandy idea. They would bail out the governments of Greece, Portugal and others in return for a pledge by the countries in trouble to institute austerity measures to bring down their debt. Not surprisingly, the people of Greece, Portugal as well as France, Spain, Ireland and Italy, to name a few, didn’t like the idea of austerity: Cut spending? Get a job? Work until age 62? The result of that was reflected in elections where incumbents and reformers were thrown out.

Nicolas Sarkozy may well become the first French president in 30 years to fail in his re-election bid. His Socialist opponent is promising the return of old goodies, plus some new goodies, as well. He’ll supposedly pay for it with a 75% tax rate on the millionaires. Sound familiar? The Dutch government, one of the more fiscally responsible in Europe, bit the dust this week, unable to agree on spending cuts. Every day brings new evidence that the bond markets are increasingly convinced that several of these countries are in a death spiral, as their cost of borrowing continues to increase.

Yet, instead of viewing all this as a cautionary tale, the U.S. has embraced European policies that will ultimately result in European results. Those who think “it can’t happen here” should take note: France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain have better (meaning lower) debt to GDP ratios than America, as do Germany and the UK.

The comparison between the EU and the U.S. may not be exact, but the underlying problems of the various EU countries are similar to ours, including a growing elderly population and excessive spending. While U.S. spending as a percentage of our economy is not quite as high as most troubled European countries, which average around 50%, it’s getting there. It’s close to 40% and almost twice as high as the U.S. average has been over the last 40 years. In other words, it’s the direction we’re going in that’s most troublesome.

Actually, the biggest difference of economic significance between the US and the EU is that the dollar is the world’s primary reserve currency. Former Treasury Sec. James Baker recently said that if it was not for the fact that people still want our dollars, compared to other currencies, the U.S. would already be Greece. That’s a pretty low bar right now. It makes us the one eyed man in the land of the blind. While it is true that, unlike some EU countries, the U.S. is in no short-term danger of being unable to pay its bills, bad things could still happen.

For example, the dollar could lose its go-to status. The Chinese, who have been diversifying their holdings away from the dollar, are not the only ones urging this. Japan, Russia and some European leaders, as well as the International Monetary Fund, have all questioned the utility of the dollar’s international dominance.

More likely, the U.S. government will try to inflate its way out of our economic crisis. We are the only country that can print dollars. Of course, our creditors will not sit idly by as this flood of new dollars devalues the ones they are already holding. One wonders if anybody still remembers the consequences of the inflation of the 1970s and the “misery index.”

Can we avoid a European scenario? It can not be done with one election, no matter how good the results. Our political institutions were not set up that way. Stamina will be more important than brilliance or even a pure heart. But so much could be done with just the reform of our entitlement programs and our tax code, along with bringing some certainty to the minds of U.S. business and entrepreneurs we depend on to create economic growth.

We don’t need European austerity, which invariably includes tax increases. We need growth – the only means by which we can avoid devaluation, inflation, and all the problems that such a course would bring. Unfortunately, at a time when we need strong leadership and a consensus, we have a president who is a divider and a demagogue. He is uniquely positioned and qualified to lead us away from the abyss, but he will not do so unless he is persuaded that it will benefit him politically.

However, I believe that we have new leaders on the horizon who have the vision and courage to lead. We’ve always produced such people in times of crisis. But leaders – as we have seen from our European friends’ experiences – cannot save us from ourselves as a people, unless we are willing to follow. If we do “buy in” to such leadership, we can not only save our country, we can establish a proposition that the world needs to see and embrace: that powerful and prosperous democratic societies do not necessarily carry within themselves the seeds of their own demise.

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Credit Taker In Chief

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Lobbyist In Chief

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Failure In Chief

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Cool: Are You Better Off?

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Quote from Yannis:

Lobbyist In Chief

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http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showt...threadid=241299

This Picture Says It All

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Take This Seriously




Obama's Favorite Breakfast: Eggs Rover Easy
Obama's Favorite Soup: Chicken Poodle
Obama's Favorite Burger: Quarter Pounder with Fleas
Obama's Favorite Sandwich: BLT - Bulldog, Lettuce and Tomato
Obama's Favorite Mustard: Greyhound Poupon
Obama's Favorite Yogurt Drink: Mango Lassie
Obama's Favorite Japanese Food: Terrieryaki
Obama's Favorite Vegetable: Collie Flower
Obama's Favorite Snack: Puppyseed Bagels
Obama's Favorite Dessert: Dog Pound Cake

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After all is said and done, Obama has said a whole lot more than he's done...

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Quote from Yannis:

After all is said and done, Obama has said a whole lot more than he's done...

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Wally

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"In actual practice a man has to guard against many things, and most of all against himself."
--- Jesse Livermore

So, I can't be bothered to look at all the stupid videos and I usually don't listen to people who are obvious lunatics as you are, but is there a point to all this? Or did your therapist tell you to do this.

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The future chaos is determined by the current chaos, in a chaotic manner.

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Quote from futurecurrents:

So, I can't be bothered to look at all the stupid videos and I usually don't listen to people who are obvious lunatics as you are, but is there a point to all this? Or did your therapist tell you to do this.

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Very Smart Editorial

This article from a small newspaper in Tawas City, Michigan, is getting nationwide attention. Tawas City is on Lake Huron and has a population of just over 2,000!!

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A Better Life for Julia

http://blog.heritage.org/a-better-life-for-julia/

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Facts That Are Difficult For The Left To Accept
by Colonel Don Myers - USMC (ret.)

From http://governmentgonewild.org/facts...tm_medium=email

Last week we saw more demonstrations by Occupy Wall Street forces throughout the country. The major complaint seems to be the unfairness of the system in the United States where the top one percent have so much more than the 99%. Others report that the top earners are not paying their “fair share” of taxes. The latest figures for tax returns are from 2007 and are as follows:

Wages earners % of Taxes paid

Top 1% ---> 39.5%
Top 5% ---> 61%
Top 10% ---> 72.2%
Top 20% ---> 86%
Top 40% ---> 98.7%

The bottom 40% not only pay no federal income taxes but receive checks from the government because of the earned income tax credit.

The latest figures of job growth was reported this week and the figures are dismal. Businesses and entrepreneurs are sitting on their money because they fear what this government is liable to do in the future. They already know that taxes are going to rise significantly starting in January of next year if Congress does nothing to stop them. The Bush tax cuts expire as does the Social Security tax reduction and the Obamacare taxes start. Those are just the major changes.

The left likes to blame President Bush for all of our current financial problems, but let’s review some of the history. The World Trade Center towers were destroyed by terrorists on 9/11/01 and that caused a significant financial upheaval. After the Bush tax cuts were implemented and took effect, jobs were added for 52 straight months. By January of 2007 unemployment was 4.6%, the GDP was at 3.5%, Social Security had a surplus each year, and 26 million people were on food stamps. While that was going on, we had troops in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting.

I used January of 2007 because the Democrats took over the majority in Congress and held it until 2011. For two of those years the Democrats held the White House, a filibuster proof Senate, and a huge majority in the House of Representatives. The Republicans had absolutely no ability to stop anything that the Democrats wanted to do. That is how we got Obamacare but not before numerous concessions were given to Senators and Representatives in the Democratic Party.

Where are we today? The GDP is at a dismal 1.8%. Unemployment has remained above 8.3% for the longest period since the great depression. Social Security now runs a deficit. Food stamp participation has nearly doubled. The answer we constantly hear is that the rich do not pay their fair share of taxes. The above figures show that that is not true. If the government took everything that millionaires and billionaires owned it would not cover the deficit for this year and it could only be done once. Growing the economy and revamping entitlements are the way out of this mess. The economy grows when tax rates are reduced. It worked when Presidents Kennedy, Reagan, and Bush did it. Look at some of our states and the ones that reduced taxes in order to eliminate deficits. It worked in Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, and New Jersey.

Any time that tax cuts are proposed, the left states that we can not afford it. They assume that when taxes are reduced, then revenues are also reduced. That is the static analysis approach, but what works is the dynamic analysis approach. People change their behavior when taxes are either raised or reduced. That is why people and businesses move when the tax burden becomes too burdensome. Look how the people in the northeast are moving to the south and southwest. It isn’t just because of the weather.

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Where are Jim, Tim and Franklin now?

Just in case you might have wondered how their ineptitude affected their lives after they ruined so many dreams and lives. Here's a quick look into the three former Fannie Mae executives who brought down Wall Street.

Franklin Raines - was a Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Fannie Mae. Raines was forced to retire from his position with Fannie Mae when auditing discovered severe irregularities in Fannie Mae's accounting activities. Raines left with a "golden parachute valued at $240 Million in benefits. The Government filed suit against Raines when the depth of the accounting scandal became clear.

Tim Howard - was the Chief Financial Officer of Fannie Mae. Howard "was a strong internal proponent of using accounting strategies that would ensure a "stable pattern of earnings" at Fannie. Investigations by federal regulators and the company's board of directors since concluded that management did manipulate 1998 earnings to trigger bonuses. Raines and Howard resigned under pressure in late 2004. Howard's Golden Parachute was estimated at $20 Million!

Jim Johnson - A former executive at Lehman Brothers and who was later forced from his position as Fannie Mae CEO. Investigators found that Fannie Mae had hidden a substantial amount of Johnson's 1998 compensation from the public, reporting that it was between $6 million and $7 million when it fact it was $21 million." Johnson is currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from Countrywide while serving as CEO of Fannie Mae. Johnson's Golden Parachute was estimated at $28 Million.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

FRANKLIN RAINES?
Raines works for the Obama Campaign as his Chief Economic Advisor.
TIM HOWARD?
Howard is a Chief Economic Advisor to Obama under Franklin Raines.
JIM JOHNSON?
Johnson was hired as a Senior Obama Finance Advisor and was selected to run Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee.

Kinda makes you sick to your stomach. Our government seems to be rotten to the core! Are we stupid or what?

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Quote from Yannis:


WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

FRANKLIN RAINES?
Raines works for the Obama Campaign as his Chief Economic Advisor.
TIM HOWARD?
Howard is a Chief Economic Advisor to Obama under Franklin Raines.
JIM JOHNSON?
Johnson was hired as a Senior Obama Finance Advisor and was selected to run Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee.

Kinda makes you sick to your stomach. Our government seems to be rotten to the core! Are we stupid or what?

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Here's Another "Forward"...

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But, Let Us Not Forget...

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The Key Issue

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Sacrificial Scams
by Ann Coulter

The real class warfare in this country isn't rich vs. poor, it's government employees vs. we, the taxpayers, who pay their salaries.

Working for the government is supposed to be a trade-off: You can't be fired and don't have to exert yourself, but you will receive smaller remuneration than in the private sector, where layoffs are common (especially in the Obama economy!). Instead, government jobs are safe, secure, pressure-free -- and now, amazingly lucrative!

Whether it's in Wisconsin, Illinois, California or the nation's capital, today's public sector workers expect to do little or no work (I'm not counting partying in Las Vegas as "work"), and then be lavishly compensated. Often, the only heavy lifting they do all week is picking up their paychecks.

When government employees mobbed the state capitol in Wisconsin last year, the upside was: They got to bully people. The downside: Voters finally found out what these public servants were being paid.

Their compensation included not only straight salary, but also lavish overtime benefits, pensions, health care plans, sick days and vacation time (most of which they spent protesting).

The unions thought they could fight back against Gov. Scott Walker's tiny pension rollbacks without anyone finding out the details. Most people saw what public employees were getting and assumed it was a misprint.

Two years ago, seven bus drivers in Madison, Wis., made more than $100,000 a year.

A few years before that, we found out that the city manager of little Bell, Calif. -- per capita annual income $24,800 -- was making $787,637, or including benefits: $1.5 million a year. The chief of police was getting $457,000 a year -- $770,046 counting benefits -- making him the first chief of police to commit highway robbery on the job. The assistant city manager was taking home $376,288 per year, for a total compensation package of $845,960.

All were Democrats, the party of Big Government.

Speaking of which -- whatever happened to that investigation Gov. Jerry Brown was launching into these thieving public servants drawing million-dollar pensions from California taxpayers? The Bell scandal broke during the California gubernatorial race between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown, who was then state attorney general. Brown vowed a no-holds-barred inquiry.

Anyone seen his report yet?

Jerry Brown will demand to see Obama's birth certificate before he will call for a rollback of these undeserved, million-dollar government pensions.

Less than 20 percent of private sector employees get pensions. Most people save their own money for retirement -- for example, through 401(k)s. By contrast, government employees expect to be paid by us for the rest of their lives.

Former representative and amateur home pornographer Anthony Weiner was a member of Congress until he resigned last June in order to spend more time with his hard drive. He will probably end up collecting about a million dollars from his 80 percent taxpayer-funded government pension.

These are the "1 percent" deserving of the public's wrath: We're paying their salaries. We weren't taxed to pay Mitt Romney's salary at Bain Capital. We aren't taxed to pay the salaries of Jamie Dimon or Alex Rodriguez. Anthony Weiner? Him, we pay for.

Government employees expect to live like something out of the czar's court -- and then have us admire them as if they're Rosa Parks.

At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Barack and Michelle Obama both paid heartfelt tributes to themselves for passing up money-grubbing private sector jobs to work in "public service."

In her speech, Michelle boasted that she had "tried to give back to this country."

"... That's why I left a job at a law firm for a career in public service, working to empower young people to volunteer in their communities."

She was hired by the University of Chicago Hospital as soon as her husband became a state senator. When he was elected to the U.S. Senate, her salary nearly tripled, from $121,910 to $316,962 -- and the junior senator from Illinois returned the favor by sending taxpayer dollars the hospital's way.

By Obama's second year in the U.S. Senate, in 2006, Michelle Obama's compensation from "public service" was approximately $375,000 a year -- more than triple the average salary for a lawyer in the United States with 20 years' experience.

(America to the Obamas: "You two have sacrificed enough. Please retire and kick back a little!")

Vice President Joe Biden, long touted as the poorest U.S. senator, took home $248,459 in household income in 2006, including his public school teacher wife's salary, also paid by taxpayers. In 2007, these working poor made $319,853. This puts the couple nearly into the top 1 percent of all earners in the U.S., where the median household income was $48,201 in 2006 and $50,233 in 2007.

A career in "public service" pays well.

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Our Next President

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College Kids, Got To Love 'em!

Obama never saw it coming…..but boy was he pissed after it happened! It is now rumored that Obama has everyone's hands checked before taking pictures with them.

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Thought you would like this one Yannis.....

what's pissing me off are these $3 raffles Obama ( and others on his behalf) are selling.

"Send three dollars to my campaign and you might win a chance to eat dinner with me."

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Quote from nutmeg:

what's pissing me off are these $3 raffles Obama ( and others on his behalf) are selling.

"Send three dollars to my campaign and you might win a chance to eat dinner with me."

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In return for a $5 donation to his reelection campaign, President Barack Obama is offering supporters a chance to participate in a raffle to win a “casual” dinner with him at an unstated location.
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Whaazup wit dat?



"The federal government has determined that raffles are a form of gambling and gaming."

"It is considered unlawful to conduct a raffle for the purpose of profit for an individual or business other than a charitable organization."

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Quote from Max E. Pad:

Thought you would like this one Yannis.....

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Quote from Ricter:

You're pissed off because you don't have $3, or because some people still respect the President of the United States?

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This Is Juicy
From MoneyNews and NewsMax

The New York Times has told its readers not to read Ed Klein's "The Amateur" — despite the fact that Klein is a former New York Times editor!

Any famous person like Barack Obama has former close friends who feel snubbed and are bitter, the Times complained of Klein's book, now a runaway best-seller.

Though Klein interviewed 200 people close to the Obamas, the liberal Christian Science Monitor slammed the book as "short on specifics and sources."

But the Monitor did admit the book offers a look at Obama's "dark side" no other book has so far ventured to do.

The Monitor then dismisses many of "Amateur's" revelations this way:

"Among Klein’s sometimes unsubstantiated claims: Barack and Michelle almost divorced after his crushing Congressional defeat in 2000, an Obama 'friend' unsuccessfully attempted to stop the Rev. Jeremiah Wright from preaching until after the November election with a $150,000 bribe, an 'unusually jealous' Michelle Obama orders women close to her husband watched lest he cheat on her, and Oprah and Michelle have an ongoing feud."

... ...

It's already skyrocketing to the top of the best-seller lists and it's the most explosive book yet about President Barack Obama.

Edward Klein's just released book The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House has created enormous buzz.

In this stunning exposé, best-selling author Edward Klein — a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, former foreign editor of Newsweek, and former editor-in-chief of the New York Times Magazine — pulls back the curtain on one of the most secretive White Houses in history.

...

Edward Klein's blockbuster best-sellers on the Kennedys and Hillary Clinton made huge waves. Now, Klein speaks exclusively with Obama insiders, like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and even Obama's personal physician, who offers a shocking account of his behavior.

...

The Amateur is a reporter’s book, buttressed by nearly 200 interviews, many of them with the insiders who know Obama best. The result is the most important political book of the year. You will never look at Barack Obama the same way again.

Sean Hannity has called this book a must-read for every American.

Donald Trump says: "The Amateur is the best book I’ve read on how Barack Obama is wrecking our country. I urge everyone who cares about America to read Edward Klein’s eye-opening book.”

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Some Lessons Learned

As explained in "Dreams from My Father":

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Quote from Yannis:

This Is Juicy
From MoneyNews and NewsMax

The New York Times has told its readers not to read Ed Klein's "The Amateur" — despite the fact that Klein is a former New York Times editor!

Any famous person like Barack Obama has former close friends who feel snubbed and are bitter, the Times complained of Klein's book, now a runaway best-seller.

Though Klein interviewed 200 people close to the Obamas, the liberal Christian Science Monitor slammed the book as "short on specifics and sources."

But the Monitor did admit the book offers a look at Obama's "dark side" no other book has so far ventured to do.

The Monitor then dismisses many of "Amateur's" revelations this way:

"Among Klein’s sometimes unsubstantiated claims: Barack and Michelle almost divorced after his crushing Congressional defeat in 2000, an Obama 'friend' unsuccessfully attempted to stop the Rev. Jeremiah Wright from preaching until after the November election with a $150,000 bribe, an 'unusually jealous' Michelle Obama orders women close to her husband watched lest he cheat on her, and Oprah and Michelle have an ongoing feud."

... ...

It's already skyrocketing to the top of the best-seller lists and it's the most explosive book yet about President Barack Obama.

Edward Klein's just released book The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House has created enormous buzz.

In this stunning exposé, best-selling author Edward Klein — a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, former foreign editor of Newsweek, and former editor-in-chief of the New York Times Magazine — pulls back the curtain on one of the most secretive White Houses in history.

...

Edward Klein's blockbuster best-sellers on the Kennedys and Hillary Clinton made huge waves. Now, Klein speaks exclusively with Obama insiders, like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and even Obama's personal physician, who offers a shocking account of his behavior.

...

The Amateur is a reporter’s book, buttressed by nearly 200 interviews, many of them with the insiders who know Obama best. The result is the most important political book of the year. You will never look at Barack Obama the same way again.

Sean Hannity has called this book a must-read for every American.

Donald Trump says: "The Amateur is the best book I’ve read on how Barack Obama is wrecking our country. I urge everyone who cares about America to read Edward Klein’s eye-opening book.”

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murray t turtle,nickname,not an alias

Need I Say More?



"President Obama has revealed his new re-election slogan — 'Forward.' That's a good message for Obama. He's telling voters, 'Whatever you do, don't look back at all those campaign promises I made.'" –Jay Leno

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Interesting: Dick's Rebuttals

http://www.dickmorris.com/rebuttal-...al-negative-ad/

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I don't need to read Klein's book. There is nothing he could say that would make me more anti-Obama.

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Quote from Tsing Tao:

I don't need to read Klein's book. There is nothing he could say that would make me more anti-Obama.

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Quote from Tsing Tao:

I don't need to read Klein's book. There is nothing he could say that would make me more anti-Obama.

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Another Ad Rebuttal

http://www.dickmorris.com/the-truth...as-positive-ad/

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Romney To Win Undecideds
By DICK MORRIS

In a survey of 6,000 likely voters, including a special sample of 1,500 swing voters, taken May 5-11, I probed how Obama's attacks on Romney were likely to play in the general election.

As the economy declines and his chances for victory fade, President Obama is resorting to a virtually wall-to-wall negative campaign in a desperate effort to win reelection. It is vital that the Republicans answer these charges as they surface --one by one -- but what rebuttals will work?

Bain Capital

Obama's first broadcast negative ad attacks Romney for cutting jobs at Bain. The polling shows Romney can survive the hit by saying that "sometimes he succeeded in helping companies, and sometimes he failed."� The key is to cite the Wall Street Journal study showing that 22 percent of the companies he helped went broke but 78 percent did fine. When Romney says, "780 is a good batting average in any league!" it rebuts the accusation effectively.

On the other hand, arguments about the need for a high return for investors, Obama's lack of experience at creating jobs or a defense of the economics of outsourcing do not work well.

Outsourcing

Early in the campaign, Obama released a negative ad aimed at criticizing Romney for outsourcing jobs to other countries while at Bain Capital. But when Republicans point out that General Motors, a federally owned company, outsources 160,000 of its 220,000 jobs worldwide, it blunts the criticism and turns it back on Obama.

Medicare, sure to be a key controversy in the election, would have been a big win for Obama were it not for his own Medicare cuts and Romney's repositioning on the issue.

The $500 billion cut the president imposed on Medicare turns off most of the voters who are suspicious of Republican cuts to the program. And when swing voters learn that Romney supports keeping the current Medicare system as an alternative to vouchers if the elderly opt for it, the proposal blunts the president's accusations that the GOP wants to slash the program.

But a key finding is that the GOP can avoid the false choice between slashing benefits and raising taxes on Medicare by focusing on expanding the number of doctors to avoid rationing and allowing lower costs through greater efficiency rather than by restricting coverage. By 52-25, swing voters embrace this option.

Oil-company Profits

From the start of the campaign, Obama has linked Romney to high oil-company profits. This attack is likely to be effective, since most swing voters blame oil companies -- rather than global markets -- for high gasoline prices and support repealing their tax breaks. But when you take the issue beyond mere class warfare and envy, it loses its sting.

The key is for Romney to explain that higher oil-company taxes will "only cut the money they have available for exploration and drilling" and to warn that doing so will "not cut, and might raise, gasoline prices." Swing voters break even on agreeing or disagreeing with this line of argument by 47-46.

To survive this issue, Romney needs to get beyond class warfare and evil oil companies and discuss the pragmatic impact of raising their taxes.

Buffett Rule

Swing voters agree with Obama's proposal that millionaires pay 30 percent of their income in taxes. But when told that Obama himself only pays 20 percent in taxes, it blunts the issue. The second rebuttal is to tell voters that the bill would garner only $70 billion to remedy a $3.7 trillion deficit. After learning this, most swing voters see the president's position as more motivated by getting votes than by cutting the deficit.

There is nothing in Obama's arsenal of negatives that Romney need fear as long as he rebuts each of the charges using the talking points polling suggests.

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Rebuttal To Obama’s Negative Outsourcing Jobs Ad

http://www.dickmorris.com/rebuttal-...urcing-jobs-ad/

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Gallup Poll: Pro-Choice Support Hits All-Time Low
By Henry J. Reske

The number of Americans identifying themselves as pro-choice has hit a record low of 41 percent while those identifying as pro-life now stands at 50 percent, according to a new Gallup poll.

The previous low for the pro-choice label was 42 percent recorded in May 2009, when Gallup also reported 51 percent identifying as pro-life. Gallup has been polling on the question since 1995, when 56 percent said they were pro-choice and 33 percent pro-life. The gap has narrowed over the years to a point where they are relatively close in polls.

The poll result was welcomed by anti-abortion supporters. "There is a growing uneasiness across America regarding the poorly regulated abortion industry and the presence of an abortion mandate and an abortion-inducing drug mandate in the healthcare law. Americans value life, and this poll reflects that," Kristi Hamrick of Americans United for Life told Newsmax.

"Americans are even more pro-life than the growing gulf illustrates in the Gallup poll," she added.

"During the healthcare debates we saw that 7 in 10 Americans — pro-life and pro-choice — did not want to see their tax monies going to subsidize abortion, and we've seen tremendous support for common sense limits on abortion, such as limiting abortion after 20 weeks because of the health risks to women of a late-term procedure and requirements to involve loving adults in the abortion decisions of young girls.

"We also know that when it comes to voting, those motivated to protect life vote 2 to 1 compared to those who want unfettered, unregulated abortion," Hamrick added.

"Americans share AUL's belief that everyone should be welcomed in life and protected in law."

Gallup has found the pro-life position significantly ahead on two occasions, once in May 2009 and again today, the pollsters reported. “It remains to be seen whether the pro-life spike found this month proves temporary, as it did in 2009, or is sustained for some period.”

Gallup, which polled 1,024 adults from May 3 through 6, has found that since 2001 Republicans have consistently reported being pro-life while independents have been closely divided on the issue since 2009.

“Democrats' views on abortion have changed the least over the past 12 years, with roughly 60 percent calling themselves pro-choice and about a third pro-life,” Gallup found.

In reporting the numbers, Gallup noted that abortion has factored into a number of significant news stories in the past year including congressional efforts to end funding for Planned Parenthood and the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer group’s suspension of funding for the group. Additionally, the Obama administration’s attempt to mandate contraceptive coverage in health plans for religious institutions such as Catholic hospitals and colleges also touched on abortion.

“Whether any of these controversies is related to the shift in Americans' identification as pro-choice or pro-life is not clear,” Gallup said.

“However, it is notable that while Americans' labeling of their position has changed, their fundamental views on the issue have not.”

Gallup polling has found that Americans views on the legality of abortion has held steady in the last decade.

“Gallup's longest-running measure of abortion views, established in 1975, asks Americans if abortion should be legal in all circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances, or illegal in all circumstances,” Gallup wrote.

“Since 2001, at least half of Americans have consistently chosen the middle position, saying abortion should be legal under certain circumstances, and the 52 percent saying this today is similar to the 50 percent in May 2011. The 25 percent currently wanting abortion to be legal in all cases and the 20 percent in favor of making it illegal in all cases are similar to last year’s findings.”

Gallup now plans to explore Americans' views on abortion in greater depth later this year, polling on such things as gender, age, and other demographic variables.

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Quote from Yannis:

...
“Gallup's longest-running measure of abortion views, established in 1975, asks Americans if abortion should be legal in all circumstances, legal only under certain circumstances, or illegal in all circumstances,” Gallup wrote.

“Since 2001, at least half of Americans have consistently chosen the middle position, saying abortion should be legal under certain circumstances, and the 52 percent saying this today is similar to the 50 percent in May 2011. The 25 percent currently wanting abortion to be legal in all cases and the 20 percent in favor of making it illegal in all cases are similar to last year’s findings.”...

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Quote from Ricter:

So if you are in the "middle position", are you pro or anti abortion?

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Excellent Video Documentary

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Quote from Yannis:

I imagine it would take a more elaborate questionnaire to answer that. Many groups are against abortion except in case of danger to the mother, incest, rape etc, and other polls have looked into these numbers. I'm one of those who qualify their answer in that way too.

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Figures don't lie: Democrats do
by Ann Coulter

It's been breaking news all over MSNBC, liberal blogs, newspapers and even The Wall Street Journal: "Federal spending under Obama at historic lows ... It's clear that Obama has been the most fiscally moderate president we've had in 60 years." There's even a chart!

I'll pause here to give you a moment to mop up the coffee on your keyboard. Good? OK, moving on ...

This shocker led to around-the-clock smirk fests on MSNBC. As with all bogus social science from the left, liberals hide the numbers and proclaim: It's "science"! This is black and white, inarguable, and why do Republicans refuse to believe facts?

Ed Schultz claimed the chart exposed "the big myth" about Obama's spending: "This chart -- the truth -- very clearly shows the truth undoubtedly." And the truth was, the "growth in spending under President Obama is the slowest out of the last five presidents."

Note that Schultz also said that the "part of the chart representing President Obama's term includes a stimulus package, too." As we shall see, that is a big, fat lie.

Schultz's guest, Reuters columnist David Cay Johnston confirmed: "And clearly, Obama has been incredibly tight-fisted as a president."

Everybody's keyboard OK?

On her show, Rachel Maddow proclaimed: "Factually speaking, spending has leveled off under President Obama. Spending is not skyrocketing under President Obama. Spending is flattening out under President Obama."

In response, three writers from "The Daily Show" said, "We'll never top that line," and quit.

Inasmuch as this is obviously preposterous, I checked with John Lott, one of the nation's premier economists and author of the magnificent new book with Grover Norquist: "Debacle: Obama's War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future." (I'm reviewing it soon, but you should start without me.)

It turns out Rex Nutting, author of the phony Marketwatch chart, attributes all spending during Obama's entire first year, up to Oct. 1, to President Bush.

That's not a joke.

That means, for example, the $825 billion stimulus bill, proposed, lobbied for, signed and spent by Obama, goes in ... Bush's column. (And if we attribute all of Bush's spending for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and No Child Left Behind to William Howard Taft, Bush didn't spend much either.)

Nutting's "analysis" is so dishonest, even The New York Times has ignored it. He includes only the $140 billion of stimulus money spent after Oct. 1, 2009, as Obama's spending. And he's testy about that, grudgingly admitting that Obama "is responsible (along with the Congress) for about $140 billion in extra spending in the 2009 fiscal year from the stimulus bill."

Nutting acts as if it's the height of magnanimity to "attribute that $140 billion in stimulus to Obama and not to Bush ..."

On what possible theory would that be Bush's spending? Hey -- we just found out that Obamacare's going to cost triple the estimate. Let's blame it on Calvin Coolidge!

Nutting's "and not to Bush" line is just a sleight of hand. He's hoping you won't notice that he said "$140 billion" and not "$825 billion," and will be fooled into thinking that he's counting the entire stimulus bill as Obama's spending. (He fooled Ed Schultz!)

The theory is that a new president is stuck with the budget of his predecessor, so the entire 2009 fiscal year should be attributed to Bush.

But Obama didn't come in and live with the budget Bush had approved. He immediately signed off on enormous spending programs that had been specifically rejected by Bush. This included a $410 billion spending bill that Bush had refused to sign before he left office. Obama signed it on March 10, 2009. Bush had been chopping brush in Texas for two months at that point. Marketwatch's Nutting says that's Bush's spending.

Obama also spent the second half of the Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP). These were discretionary funds meant to prevent a market meltdown after Lehman Brothers collapsed. By the end of 2008, it was clear the panic had passed, and Bush announced that he wouldn't need to spend the second half of the TARP money.

But on Jan. 12, 2009, Obama asked Bush to release the remaining TARP funds for Obama to spend as soon as he took office. By Oct. 1, Obama had spent another $200 billion in TARP money. That, too, gets credited to Bush, according to the creative accounting of Rex Nutting.

There are other spending bills that Obama signed in the first quarter of his presidency, bills that would be considered massive under any other president -- such as the $40 billion child health care bill, which extended coverage to immigrants as well as millions of additional Americans. These, too, are called Bush's spending

Frustrated that he can't shift all of Obama's spending to Bush, Nutting also lowballs the spending estimates during the later Obama years. For example, although he claims to be using the White House's numbers, the White House's estimate for 2012 spending is $3.795 trillion. Nutting helpfully knocks that down to $3.63 trillion.

But all those errors pale in comparison to Nutting's counting Obama's nine-month spending binge as Bush's spending.

If liberals will attribute Obama's trillion-dollar stimulus bill to Bush, what won't they do?

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The Election Gamble

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Greatest Movie Line

Most people say the greatest movie line was Clark Gable's delivery to Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

But the greatest, most accurate, and most timely movie line was Bob Hope's from a real oldie with Paulette Goddard and Richard Carlson in regards to a "Zombie".

Enjoy the 24 second clip:

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And This One

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Trump's Super PAC

By now, it's a definite maybe... Go Don, go!

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/tr...omo_code=F006-1

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Incredible Ad By The Catholic Church

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=D9vQt6IXXaM&hd

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JFK vs. Barack Obama
by Blaise Ingoglia, Government Gone Wild!

A couple of days ago marked the birthday of John F. Kennedy. Happy belated Birthday Mr. President. Unfortunately, with the current crop of Democratic Party “leaders” not so happy for people of this nation.

As part of a project that I have been working on I needed to go back and look at some old video footage of John F. Kennedy’s speeches in an effort to gauge his political ideology. In order to show contrast, most people on the right love to compare Obama with Reagan. In my opinion, this is the wrong thing to do. We need to compare Obama with JFK to see that the Democratic Party, and this country, has been hijacked by the left.

Check out some of the quotes from JFK and you tell me if you notice any changes in rhetoric:

“I don’t believe in big government”—Kennedy-Nixon Presidential Debate, 1960

“I believe in the balanced budget”—Kennedy-Nixon Presidential Debate, 1960

Would you ever hear those words come out of the mouth of Obama? Pelosi? Biden? Wasserman-Schultz?

The left continually tell us that today’s Republican Party would never elect Ronald Reagan in a primary. But, would today’s Democratic Party elect John F. Kennedy today as their nominee? Judging by what I have seen and heard from the mouth of JFK himself the answer would be “NO”. The Democratic Party of yesteryear hardly resembles the party of today. They were much more mainstream back then.

The RHINO’s (Republican In Name Only) more resembles what the Democratic Party of JFK in 1960 stood for while the Republican conservatives of today more resemble the ideology of Reagan. We have stopped debating the issues from a center right perspective. We are now debating the issues where the current administration wants it…from far left of center.

Think of the struggle between the two ideologys as a tug of war. We are a center-right country so the ribbon on the rope would start at just “right of the center”. The rope has been pulled so far to the left that the ribbon sits almost atop the people pulling on the left (Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz). In order to for this nation to settle back where it belongs it requires an extremely hard pull to the right so the ribbon goes back to it’s original place of right of center. If we don’t pull hard enough it will settle left of center and to the left that will mean progress. Doesn’t that make some sort of sense?

Why is it that the Democratic Party of today wants the Republican Party to “moderate” its stance? Today, Republicans need to call upon disenfranchised Democrats asking them to moderate their stance by electing more “left of center” people instead of the “leftists” they have today. The problem is that today’s party of Obama, Pelosi and Reid control the campaign cash and this is NOT your father’s Democratic Party of JFK.

There are plenty of things that JFK and Obama agree on, most notably their positions on Medicare and Social Security. Both of these programs, as we know, are bankrupting this nation. In my opinion, JFK would have made some major changes to these programs to save them. Obama and the left have no such interest.

This tug of war will continue from now until election day. Keep pulling. If we don’t this nation will end up in the mud.

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Our Chief Flake

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This Is Serious!

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The story of Obama just got a whole lot uglier this morning. The economy is sinking and apparently he doesn't have a clue as to what needs doing to fix it. We have a clear trend reversal of what was considered to be growth, albeit tepid growth. Now we're back in the downward death spiral. Looks like I'll be buying Mav lunch, cause Obama is done.

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Quote from CaptainObvious:

The economy is sinking and apparently he doesn't have a clue as to what needs doing to fix it.

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Quote from nutmeg:

Greenspan said we don't have a plan B.

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Quote from Scataphagos:

Surely we can't call what Odumbo is doing, "Plan A"..

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One of the ugly things that's going to happen is the torrent of liberal spin and personal attacks that's going to be unleashed... They won't be trying to solve the problem, just convince people that (a) it's not their fault and (b) the other side is the devil

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Happy here and now!

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Quote from Yannis:

One of the ugly things that's going to happen is the torrent of liberal spin and personal attacks that's going to be unleashed... They won't be trying to solve the problem, just convince people that (a) it's not their fault and (b) the other side is the devil

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Quote from Grandluxe:

Isn't Plan A just a re-interpretation of the Mugabe Plan ?

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On Jobs, Obama Is Running Away From Reality
by Chairman Reince Priebus, RedState.com

Today’s extremely troubling jobs report is yet another sad reminder that President Obama’s policies simply are not working—and that we need a president who understands the economy.

Last night on CNN former President Bill Clinton praised Mitt Romney’s “sterling” career in the private sector. This morning Steny Hoyer echoed that sentiment, underscoring the importance of the private sector in growing our economy. While Mitt Romney’s sterling record demonstrates that he knows what it takes to fix our economy, today’s jobs report shows that President Obama’s record is irreparably tarnished.

In short, President Obama has failed to live up to the promise of his candidacy. In 2009, he and his team promised an unemployment rate below 6 percent by 2012. We’re far from it.

And now, President Obama talks about the economy as though he has not been president for the last three years.

“It is absolutely critical,” he said Wednesday, to make sure the economy is “moving full speed ahead.”

Yes, it is. But Obama has spent the last three years holding us back. The president yells, “Forward!” even as he moves backward.

For the weak economy, we can thank Obama’s weak leadership. Instead of pursuing policies that would help job creators put Americans back to work, he’s burdened them with ObamaCare, regulations, and continued threats of higher taxes.

But don’t take my word for it.

Listen to former Congressman Artur Davis, a 2008 Obama National Co-Chair who this week left the Democrat Party: “I have regularly criticized an agenda that would punish businesses and job creators with more taxes just as they are trying to thrive again.”

Not only has President Obama presided over a devastating economy, but he also refuses to hold himself accountable for it. In 2009, however, he was singing a different tune. If he didn’t have the economy fixed “in three years,” he promised, his presidency would be a “one-term proposition.”

It’s been three years, but instead of accepting responsibility, the president casts blame elsewhere—ATMs, earthquakes, airport kiosks, and “bad luck,” among other scapegoats.

In May, he issued Congress a “to-do list,” his latest attempt to distract from his own incomplete task: job creation. And today, the president is in Minnesota to talk about the post-it size list.

While he will go to the trouble of traveling to Minnesota to speak about this political prop, he apparently has not gone to the trouble of looping in members of his own party on Capitol Hill. Democrat Senators Mary Landrieu, Bob Casey, and Carl Levin admitted to Roll Call they don’t even know what’s on it.

If he has not taken the time to inform his friends at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, President Obama must not be too serious about his little list.

No, he’s more concerned about another to-do list: his list of campaign fundraisers. Today, he will attend six of them. He has already attended far more fundraisers for his re-election than his predecessors, 147 in total.

Even as he passes the buck, Obama is happy to rake in the bucks. The promises for his first term ignored, he’s thinking exclusively about a second term.

But unemployed Americans are still worried about the present. As today’s jobs report makes clear, far too many Americans are out of work, without enough work, or giving up on looking for work altogether.

President Obama is working hard to keep his job. It’s just a shame he’s not working as hard to ensure unemployed Americans can find jobs for themselves.

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President Romney going to be on CNBC in about 5-10 mins time.

Failure Upon Failure

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Another Obama Song

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Quote from Yannis:

This Is Serious!

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One good thing about being President - When you make a cold call no one hangs up on you.

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Wally

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"In actual practice a man has to guard against many things, and most of all against himself."
--- Jesse Livermore

The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House
By Ed Lasky

Edward Klein's new book on Barack Obama, The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House, is a withering portrayal of a radical adrift, in over his head, drowning in his own incompetency -- while being weighed down by a small circle of "advisers" who are compounding the problem of the Amateur in the White House.

Klein's book begins with a talisman-like quote uttered by Barack Obama when his recently appointed Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner tried to boost Obama's ego by telling him, "Your legacy is going to be preventing the second Great Depression." To which Barack Obama responded, "That's not enough for me."

As all of America knows by now, Obama has aggressively sought to "fundamentally transform" America -- one of the few promises he has kept from the days of 2008. Five trillion dollars of borrowing, ObamaCare passed over the objections of the majority of Americans through legislative legerdemain and special deals made with resistant politicians, failed stimulus, green programs failing left and right as taxpayers are left holding the bag, a recovery that is the most anemic on record, an America that has been sundered by the man who promises to unite us, America weaker abroad and at home -- yes, America has been fundamentally transformed. Mission Accomplished.

But how and why did Obama succeed in such a catastrophic way? That is the question that Klein successfully answers in his extremely readable and enjoyable book, with enough spicy details to satisfy the craving of anyone interested in how President Obama and those closest to him have driven us to the condition we find ourselves in as we approach November.

One of the motifs that runs throughout the book is Barack Obama's sheer level of incompetency. He has the fatal conceit of many politicians: an overweening ego. That may be a prerequisite for politicians and leaders, but when it is unleavened by a willingness to consider the views of others, it becomes a fatal conceit. And Obama has that trait in abundance.

…

Obama doesn't know how to be president. He doesn't know how the world works. He's incompetent. He's...he's...Barack Obama's an amateur.

But Klein does not rest there. He delves into associates from Obama's career in Cook County politics, his stint as a state senator, and his rise to the United States Senate. There is a common pattern: Obama likes to campaign, but once he is elected and actually starts working, his interest flags, and he starts looking for the next "big thing" -- electorally speaking. He had few if any accomplishments or professional standing in any of his previous positions. Even when he served as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, he avoided any encounters with other faculty who enjoyed discussing the law. His reluctance to engage them is revealing in and of itself, suggesting he had a reason for his lack of confidence.

His disdain toward working with others is manifest. He has gained a reputation over the last few years as being cold and distant, refusing to engage, as have other presidents, in the give-and-take of politics, in the social niceties that help grease the wheels in Washington. Liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen recently advised him to read Robert Caro's newest volume on the life of Lyndon Johnson as a primer on how to be president. Johnson, of course, was a master at pulling levers of power, but he also knew how to persuade individual politicians on both sides of the aisle to work with him on legislation. But, of course, LBJ also had the common touch and, having risen from humble beginnings, never considered it beneath him to work with those underneath him. Not so Barack Obama. He complained to foreign leaders that he had to waste time talking with "congressmen from Palookaville." At another time, he switched locales and said he was tired of dealing with people from "Podunk."

His campaign trail comments regarding small-town America as being populated by "bitter" people who cling to guns and Bibles was not a one-off. They are reflective of his views.

But the high and the mighty also come in for the Obama treatment. Klein reveals dismay among former Obama supporters who feel they have been mistreated, maligned, and thrown under the bus. Obama's most generous early donors have been all but ignored; early mentors in the black business community have been sidelined if not completely ditched; people don't hear from him or his staff unless a fundraiser is coming up. But there is more: Caroline Kennedy is angry at the way she and her family were used for campaign purposes in 2008 and then summarily dismissed and stored away like so many movie props have been (the latter is my description).

…

A few have survived the winnowing process, of course. There is Michelle, who might be described as the living and real-life descendant of Lady Macbeth. The book provides some history of the early days between Barack and Michelle: marked by some tempests, yet also marked by Michelle's overwhelming push for Barack to win power and wealth. Insiders are reluctant to tangle with the First Lady, and with good reason. Michelle, like her husband, has a proclivity to blame others for her husband's failures. Former Press Secretary Robert Gibbs felt her sting when it was revealed that Michelle had complained about life in the White House to the then-first lady of France, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Gibbs acted to control the damage by arranging for the Élysée Palace to issue a denial.

But the response did not come quickly enough for Michelle, and she arranged for Valerie Jarrett -- close to the Obamas for years, and who has an omnipresence in the White House that makes the unelected and unconfirmed czar issue seem trivial -- to deliver a stern rebuke to Gibbs, who counter-attacked. Anyone heard from Robert Gibbs lately?

The role of Valerie Jarrett has prompted much speculation. As Edward Klein notes, she has a mouthful of a title -- senior adviser and assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement -- that "doesn't begin to do justice to her unrivaled status in the White House." Valerie Jarrett apparently has a role in most major decisions: she often appears in meetings the president has with major political leaders from Capitol Hill and with foreign leaders as well. She often stays behind to have private discussions with the president. Obama admitted that he ran every decision by her.

That is worrying since, as Klein notes, Jarrett's own career is not one that would prepare her to assume such a prominent role. Hers is no rags-to-riches story that would give her the "chops" to have such a Svengali-like influence over the president of the United States. She was blessed with a wonderful set of advantages -- descended from a highly regarded political family in Chicago. Jarrett was a force to be reckoned with in the Daley administration and then capitalized on her political connections to land a job heading up a real estate company in Chicago where she oversaw, among other developments, properties that under her company's management degenerated into slums. Business leaders are aghast that she has such a powerful role in the White House. A donor is quoted as saying that not only is Valerie Jarrett a liability, but others in the White House concur with his views. Jarrett has butted heads with Rahm Emanuel, who felt that it was wrong to focus on passing ObamaCare when the economy and jobs should have been higher priorities.

Who won that match? Rahm returned to Chicago and became mayor in 2009.

The roles of Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett cannot be overstated. They are symptomatic of a larger problem in the White House decision-making process (one that I noted in "How Obama Makes Decisions").

Barack Obama, to a greater extent than any modern president, refuses to listen to the views of others or consult with experts and advisers outside his own tight and constricted circle from Cook County. There are many revelations of his faulty decision making uncovered by Klein. Indeed, one of Jarrett's roles is to shield Obama from dealing with people who don't agree with him or who may say something that deflates his ego.

…

On issue after issue, President Obama remains his insular self, refusing to seek counsel or input from others with more experience.

Critics believe he has made a mess of foreign policy precisely because not only does he have a dearth of experience in this area, but because, under our system, foreign policy is one of the few areas where a president enjoys almost unlimited power. Thus, he is free to formulate his own agenda regardless of the views of others and the damage these policies cause.

…

Klein concludes the book with doubt that Obama could ever change his approach toward governing and suspicion that his agenda is to impose a vast redistribution scheme upon America that has worked so well in the decaying and disintegrating European Union. He wonders if Republicans are up to the task of pointing out to the public the truth about Obama's agenda, given the overwhelming media bias in favor of Barack Obama.

Klein's book could serve as a roadmap for Republicans.

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The Whupping in Wisconsin: Seven Key Conclusions
by Erick Erickson

Hey, we should do this again — one more recall in Wisconsin. Fourth time's the charm. Right? Right?



“Now I know what MSNBC means by lean forward. I leaned forward as I was viewing, watching for signs of possible coronaries live on TV.”

Last night in Wisconsin, Democracy died because Republicans spent a bunch of money and Wisconsin saw record voter turnout levels across the state where they decisively sided with the incumbent Republican Governor against the ongoing childish assault on representative democracy by leftists unhappy with the hand the voters dealt them in 2010. Or something like that.

Remember, the left was perfectly fine with money in politics when they thought Barack Obama was going to raise $1 billion with which he would bludgeon the GOP. Now that it is not happening, money in politics is again evil. It is no coincidence that the left seized on this talking point even before the polls closed. They think it sells well. But it doesn’t. Remember in 2010, they tried to claim the Chamber of Commerce was spending foreign money to help the GOP? Lot of good it did them then.

These are also the same people who once told us the Wisconsin recall was a harbinger of GOP overreach and voter retaliation would ensue. Suddenly, the recall means nothing according to these same people. The Chairwoman of the Democratic Party once called last night a “dry run” for the general election. Heh.

Last night in Wisconsin, despite a disastrous run of exit polling, made more difficult by the dynamics of a recall election, Scott Walker handily beat Tom Barrett. What exit polls suggested would be a close race turned into a romp. The left has resorted to screaming about money in politics. What they cannot reconcile is that, most likely, were Barack Obama and MItt Romney on the ballot tonight as well as the Walker v. Barrett race, Barack Obama would have won despite all the GOP money pouring in.

I maintain that special elections mean very little to general elections. The flawed exit polls were flawed because people who vote in recall elections vote in different ways from general elections. There was a massive union vote in Wisconsin last night. We can conclude that Scott Walker winning big with a big union turnout means even private sector union members hate public sector unions. But we should be careful not to over conclude things based on Wisconsin.

Republicans around the country should take note of that. While I maintain recalls and special elections are not really good indicators of anything beyond the dynamics of those races, there are a few things Wisconsin tells us that do bode ill for President Obama and that are easy to conclude.

The first thing we can conclude is that defense of public sector unions is now a non-starter even in the birthplace of American progressive politics. Union voters voted for Scott Walker. Republicans have a new battle tested issue that sells well even in blue states.

The second thing we can conclude is that the same winning coalition of disaffected independent voters, tea party activists, and Republicans held together in Wisconsin to keep Scott Walker. More importantly, and perhaps most importantly, the demographic shift that saw the Democrats lose their hold over the rustbelt in 2010 has continued to the Democrats’ disadvantage. Couple that shift away from the Democrats with the Republicans’ new found strengths in Appalachia and the Democrats who like to claim Republicans cannot win in New England will have an even harder time winning in the heartland. Both in North Carolina with gay marriage and in Wisconsin with the recall, a real silent majority stood up to be counted and heard.

For all the Democrats’ talk about their growing strength in the west, it is still going to take several decades for them to make up the votes lost in the rust belt and Appalachia. Wisconsin’s recall election shows that the demographic trends against the Democrats are starting to lock in, including losing blue collar white voters and even a number of private sector union workers. As my friend Dan Gainor pointed out on twitter, Scott Walker won by a larger margin last night than Barack Obama did against John McCain nationally. Nonetheless, some in the media would have you believe Walker only barely got by.

The third thing we can conclude from Wisconsin is that the Republican Party’s use of technology in its GOTV efforts really paid off. We should be thanking the Democrats for giving us an opportunity for a live test of our new GOTV tools and ground game. Scott Walker’s thumping of Tom Barrett showed the GOP, in a blue state, has the ability to pinpoint voters and get their voters to the polls. 2012 will be the first truly technology driven Presidential campaign, run on iPads and iPhones. The Democrats handed the GOP a marvelous gift of a recall that went on and on and on. By the time everyone got to the gubernatorial recall, the GOP had its GOTV tweaked perfectly.

It exceeded expectations.

The fourth thing we can conclude from Wisconsin is that Barack Obama is extremely nervous. He would not campaign for Tom Barrett. Only on election day did he tweet out his support for Barrett in 140 characters. Barack Obama has batted 1000 in seeing those candidates with whom he campaigns for statewide office go down in flames. Despite their bold prognostications that Wisconsin does not matter and all is well and Obama was just too busy, the Democrats know that they poured in a lot of resources only to lose Wisconsin while giving the GOP multiple recall votes to get their GOTV right. It should speak volumes to Democrats everywhere that Bill Clinton was happy to go campaign for Tom Barrett in a state Barack Obama’s campaign considers a swing state, but Barack Obama was not willing to get tied to a loss there. Remember when James Carville said Barack Obama needed to borrow one of Hillary’s . . .

The fifth thing we can conclude is that exit polling does not work well for recall elections. Consider that voters were evenly split going into the polls on whether they supported Scott Walker’s reforms or not. Likewise, roughly two-thirds of voters either were or were related to union members, which was a bit higher than in 2010. The presuppositions were therefore that this would be close. It’s not so much that the exit polling was wrong, as it was that the presuppositions that went into formulating the exits and, more importantly, into interpreting the exit polling was wrong. The presuppositions the media makes headed into November desperately need to be recalibrated. The media is still operating on FDR Coalition presuppositions in their formulation of and analysis of exit polling data.

The sixth thing we can conclude from Wisconsin is that Barack Obama is still the favorite there, but, while I hate to be repetitive, the Democrats’ continued recall efforts have made the state much more competitive for the GOP in that state.

The seventh thing we can conclude from Wisconsin is that MSNBC is consistently the most entertaining news network in America when things go badly for the left. They may think Fox is in the tank for the GOP, but Fox anchors don’t cry when the GOP loses. I was actually concerned that Ed Schultz might have a medical episode on live television last night. It was . . . surreal. Now I know what MSNBC means by lean forward. I leaned forward as I was viewing, watching for signs of possible coronaries live on TV.

Here’s one thing I don’t think we can easily conclude, but I would take away from Wisconsin. Anger does not win elections. In November, the GOP should be happy warriors, not angry. Let the left be angry. One of the things the left did in Wisconsin that has not been well reported is send mailers to voters documenting their neighbors’ voting history. Thing about that. A leftwing group sent tail pieces to voters trying to shame them into voting by revealing how much or how little they choose to participate in the democratic process. How many voters turned out to vote mad as hell at the left for stooping to this level?

Lastly, I hope the GOP in Washington, which is often afraid of its own shadow is watching this. In Wisconsin, the Republican Governor was willing to pick a fight on a core Democrat issue, stick to his guns, and go through a recall process. And he won. Sometimes, Messrs. Boehner and McConnell, you don’t have to compromise. You can stick to your guns and still win.

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And Now, Back To Important Things

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Yuck, I dont think i could think of a better example of a condescending, limousine liberal, who knows absolutely nothing than that high society type, obnoxious bitch on this video. She is one of those people who would probably scoff at someone for using the wrong fork for their salad.

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Quote from Yannis:

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Bill Clinton: US in ‘Recession,’ Needs Tax-Cut Extension
Newsmax.com:

Former President Bill Clinton said on Tuesday that the U.S. is already in a recession and urged Congress to extend all the tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year.

The nation’s 42nd president told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” that current economic conditions in the U.S. constituted a "recession" and said plans to cut the deficit threaten to sink the country further into debt.

"What I think we need to do is find some way to avoid the fiscal cliff, to avoid doing anything that would contract the economy now, and then deal with what's necessary in the long term debt-reduction plans as soon as they can, which presumably would be after the election," Clinton said in a taped interview.

"They will probably have to put everything off until early next year," he added.

"That's probably the best thing to do right now. But the Republicans don't want to do that unless [President Barack Obama] agrees to extend the tax cuts permanently, including for upper-income people — and I don't think the president should do that."

But the Arkansas Democrat did say that Congress would be best off agreeing, at least for the immediate term, to extend all the tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of the year, including the so-called Bush tax cuts named after Clinton's successor, Republican George W. Bush.

Democrats have attacked the broad-based cuts, saying they were skewed toward upper-income earners.

But Obama countered with the proposed “Buffett Rule,” which would have imposed a surtax on millionaires. The rule was ultimately defeated.

On the nation’s current tax structure in general, Clinton defended it, saying the system wouldn't look so bad if the economy was performing better. He also told CNBC that it was reasonable to expect top earners to pay more taxes.

Clinton, like the president, blamed much of the nation’s economic woes on the foreign-debt crisis and politics. “This European thing that's having a bigger impact than people know," he said, and then added, "The thing that cost jobs here has been the Congress's policies."

Clinton has found himself in a difficult spot lately, as reports have re-emerged about his occasional ambivalence toward President Obama. He recently praised GOP challenger Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital, which further underscored their differences.

Obama is "on stronger ground" when he challenges Romney's record as governor of Massachusetts, not as a businessman at Bain, Clinton told CNBC.

"There's a company not doing well, that's failing, and you buy it and have to impose some economies there and cutbacks because you're trying to turn it around so it can thrive in the economy,” he said. “Whether you succeed or fail, that's a good thing to do.”

"If you go in and buy a company and intentionally load it up with debt, loot its assets and the people lose their jobs and retirements . . . that's a bad thing."

"So to make a judgment on that, you have to know a lot of facts about every case," Clinton said. "I just think we'd all be a lot better off if we talk about we have two people running for the president. What would they do?"

Clinton remains very popular with the American public. As president, he had an average approval rating of 55 percent during his two terms, according to Gallup. Clinton made no election predictions, but said it would be important for Obama to draw clear lines among voters.

"The most important thing in this election is what will President Obama do and what will Gov. Romney do with the economy and how will they deal with people who disagree with them," Clinton said. "Will they be divide and conquer, or would they be, 'let's bring everyone together'?"

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Clinton is the only person in the US who can get away with his editorials on Obama and Romney. Clinton is the first black president, he has good standing in the AA community. Anyone else and we'd have outrage, talking trash about Obama.

I'm not sure what Clinton's motive is but for the moment I think he misses the spotlight and Obama has willingly handed off this campaign to Clinton.

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Quote from nutmeg:

...I'm not sure what Clinton's motive is ...

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Obama's long job recession is unprecedented
by Newt Gingrich

Compare the Obama employment numbers for May with Ronald Reagan in the same month of his first term or with Mitt Romney at the end of his four years as governor of Massachusetts and you will see why the president is in such deep trouble with the American people.

On Friday, we learned that the economy added just 69,000 jobs in May -- disappointing by any standard and absolutely unprecedented this far into the "recovery." The numbers meant that all but a tiny fraction of the nearly 13 million Americans officially counted as unemployed continued in a state of personal crisis last month, unable to find jobs in the Obama economy. We know that millions more have simply stopped looking for work.

Americans haven't experienced such severe and prolonged unemployment in generations.

One chart from Calculated Risk shows how alarming today's employment situation is. Not only has this recession meant the most staggering job losses since WWII, but the recovery has also been excruciatingly slow:



While the other deepest recessions regained in two years or less about as many jobs as had been lost, we are now more than four years into the current crisis and still nowhere close to such a recovery. The Congressional Budget Office predicted earlier this year that unemployment would remain above 8 percent until 2014.

What the charts and statistics don't show is the immeasurable human cost of this extended unemployment. It's hard even to comprehend just how many 12.7 million people are. The largest stadium in the United States is at the University of Michigan, with a capacity of 110,000 people. It would take 115 Michigan Stadiums to seat everyone counted as officially unemployed in America. And if they all stood shoulder-to-shoulder, they'd stretch 4,000 miles -- the distance from New York City to Berlin.

Nearly half have been unable to find a job for 6 months or more. Some have been struggling for more than a year.

So many of the costs have been unseen -- putting enormous strain not only on their personal finances, and on their ability to save for retirement or their children's education, but also on their health, their self-esteem, and their families.

Two more years of high unemployment is a status quo we can't afford to accept. We can do better than this.

Yet with the economy faltering and these millions out of work, President Obama has nothing to offer. He has no plan to help get the economy growing again. He has no ideas to create jobs. His initiatives are largely rhetorical.

His model for job-creation has been miserably inadequate from the start, because it relied on the government to fund particular projects and companies -- regardless of their merit. That model can succeed in spending a lot of money, but with 12.7 million people out of work, it's far too narrow to make a dent in the unemployment problem.

There are only so many green energy companies to throw taxpayer money at. There are only so many bridges to visit for a photo op.

But in addition to a jobs plan and economic stimulus that did nothing to create jobs or stimulate the economy, nearly all of the President's other policy initiatives have actively hindered recovery and killed jobs. His health care law raised costs for businesses to hire new employees and introduced uncertainty about the costs they faced for current employees. His financial reform thrust a heavy burden onto community banks which fund small businesses, drying up a primary source of capital. And in addition to the legislation, he's spent much of his presidency campaigning to raise taxes on job-creators. These are not the efforts of a president whose primary concern is getting the millions of unemployed Americans back to work as soon as possible.

Now that his bureaucratic model of job creation has failed, the president appears to have given up, hoping to run out the clock talking about divisive irrelevancies until after the election. That's tragic, because we do know how to solve these problems. We've done it before, by unleashing the American people from an overbearing government to let the free economy do what it does best: grow and create jobs.

This was the Reagan plan, and it worked. As Callista and I explain in our documentary, Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous with Destiny, Reagan took office in 1981 facing the hangover of the Carter years -- a bad economy, an energy crisis, and runaway inflation. He responded by cutting income taxes across the board, offering major relief to job creators. When he took office, the highest income bracket was taxed at a rate of 70 percent. Within two years, it was down to 50 percent. By the end of his administration, it was just 28 percent.

The result was rapid job growth. In 1983, the economy added nearly 3.5 million jobs. While under President Obama the economy added only 69,000 jobs in May, there were more than 300,000 created during the same month of the Reagan administration.

In fact, at this point in his term, the economy under Ronald Reagan had grown by more than 3 million jobs.

If the president had followed this proven playbook instead of forcing through a health care law that most Americans opposed and attacking job creators, the charts above might look very different.

Almost certainly, millions more Americans would have jobs. If economic recovery under Obama were even average, 4.3 million more Americans would be working today. We'd be well on our way to full employment.

And if President Obama had matched the unemployment rate Mitt Romney achieved in Massachusetts, 5.2 million more Americans would have jobs, with unemployment at just 4.7 percent. That would be full employment.

That's why the most recent weak jobs report is more than disappointing. For a president who has ignored the lessons of history and given up on the American people, it should be disqualifying.

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Gingrich is a partisan hack. The above article is a joke. The economy is shit because of the financial crisis and Bush and cos reckless "management", coupled with a worldwide recession and high foreign debt due to stupid wars and tax breaks. Period. It would be better if the pubs weren't saboteurs and obstructionists.

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Of course Gingrich is partisan. So is Obama and his gang. Hack? Who among those guys isn't?

Four years ago, the financial world was shaking and the libs cried out "it is Bush's fault" despite the fact that the trouble started globally and after the Dems took over the Congress early 2007 and pushed cheap loans to anyone who could fog a mirror. Now a similar situation is emerging and the libs are crying out again "it's not Obama's fault and if you don't agree you are a racist..."

Eleven years ago all Americans cried out "defend our country" and Bush had the backbone to act and take out our enemies... Now the libs are saying 'it was a stupid war..." and never mention the fact that Obama has followed exactly Bush's strategy but with his ineptitude and tendency to second guess our generals in the field, has tripled our casualties in Afghanistan. Again the libs are trying to deceive the country. What else is new?

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Obama's Unhappy Left Flank
By DICK MORRIS

While Republican attacks on Obama over the economy are multiplying, the president's real troubles might be the other end of the spectrum, among his natural supporters on the left. There, dissatisfaction, disillusionment and concerns about whether he is up to the job dog him.

Obama's poor showing in West Virginia, Kentucky and Arkansas offer quantitative evidence of Democratic discontent with the president, and focus groups and polling offer qualitative evidence. Polls of registered voters show an Obama lead of up to 4 points, while those of likely voters show an equivalent lead for Romney. Obama cannot get his people to the polls. He can't make registered voters who support him into likely voters. The Democratic discontent with Obama is taking its toll on the turnout of his base.

The biggest disappointment with Obama is his failure to achieve anything with the Republican Congress. The president's advisers assume you can either blame the Democrats or the Republicans for the failure of Washington to achieve anything. But the fact is that you can also blame all incumbents, particularly the one in the White House.

Democrats are impatient with Obama's failure to get anything done and intolerant of his inability to force Republicans to pass his legislation. While one side of this double-edged sword blames the GOP for ideological intransigence, the other sees in Obama a politician not able to produce and not up to the job. With books recounting how uninvolved Obama is in the legislative process (quite the contrary of the image of LBJ we see in the Caro biography), the negative view of the president among his normal supporters only grows worse.

To liberals already antagonized by the fact that Gitmo is still open, that it took so long to pull out of Iraq, that we are still in Afghanistan and that Obama might have been so incompetent in drafting his healthcare law that it is unconstitutional, the president's failures with Congress could become the last straw.

Now we face a summer of new confrontation in Washington and, likely, new gridlock. Because, inexplicably, Obama raised the debt limit too little to put the matter off until into 2013, he now has to go about raising it again. Democratic demands for a "clean" debt-limit increase devoid of spending cuts have failed to stir any interest among House Republicans. So it's back to the old debate. Republicans will press for spending cuts. Democrats will only accept smaller cuts, and only if they are accompanied by tax increases on the wealthy. Republicans won't buy any tax increase, so more gridlock will eventuate.

In addition, GOP concerns about the impact of the defense sequester cuts and their efforts to reduce military spending cuts are likely to add to the partisan divisions and gridlock.

This situation is a win-win for the Republicans.

If gridlock develops, the president will be the main casualty. The sense that he is, on the one hand, too weak and, on the other hand, too partisan and negative, will grow and alienate liberal and Democratic voters, further depressing their turnout.

House Republicans, as a group, will suffer too. But they don't run as a group. They run as individuals and can skirt the blame for inaction in Washington as they campaign.

But, for Obama, more gridlock will only deepen the sense that he is not up to the job of leading America.

And if Obama compromises -- that is to say, surrenders -- to GOP demands for cuts, the resulting image of weakness, centrism and lack of conviction will hurt him just as surely as his approval of the Bush tax cuts hurt him with his base in the lame-duck session of 2010.

Either way, the events of the summer do not bode well for the president.

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Quote from Yannis:



Four years ago, the financial world was shaking and the libs cried out "it is Bush's fault" despite the fact that the trouble started globally and after the Dems took over the Congress early 2007 and pushed cheap loans to anyone who could fog a mirror.

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The future chaos is determined by the current chaos, in a chaotic manner.

Further Proof That The Obama Gang Is Clueless

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Obama Joined Third Party in 1990s
NewsMax

President Barack Obama was a member of the far left New Party and also signed a “contract” promising to publicly support and associate himself with the New Party while in office, according to a published report.

Citing recently obtained evidence from the updated records of Illinois ACORN at the Wisconsin Historical Society, an article appearing in the National Review Online pointed to a document trail that “definitively establishes” Obama’s membership in the organization.

“Barack Obama, candidate for State Senate in the 13th Legislative District, gave a statement to the membership and answered questions. He signed the New Party “Candidate Contract” and requested an endorsement from the New Party.

He also joined the New Party,” the publication reported, quoting minutes of a Jan. 11, 1996 meeting of the New Party’s Chicago chapter.

Moreover, the publication reported that a roster of the Chicago chapter of the New Party from early 1997 listed Obama as a member and referenced the Jan. 11, 1996 joining date.

The publication also noted that in Obama’s third debate with then GOP presidential nominee John McCain, the Democrat maintained that his only involvement with ACORN came when he represented the group in a lawsuit over the National Voter Registration Act.

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Very True

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Obama press conference: “The private sector is doing fine.”
by John Hayward

President Obama called a “surprise” press conference for 10:15 AM on Friday morning, to discuss the economy. He showed up 25 minutes late. People who habitually show up late for work really cut into productivity.

It was all more of the same, with not a single new idea to be found. Obama blamed George Bush for his woes within 10 seconds, whining about the impossible challenges he inherited. Someone unfamiliar with the 2008 campaign who watched this speech would assume Barack Obama was chosen at random from a list of unwilling victims to be held captive in the Oval Office for four years. It is very difficult to understand why he would want to be re-elected for such a miserable, futile job, or why any American would want to re-elect him.

The theme of this press conference was the terrible economic “headwinds,” which not even our super-genius President can overcome. Of course, that’s mostly due to obstructionist Republicans, who refused to pass Obama’s second pork-encrusted $500 billion “stimulus” bill. Why, those ingrates are still asking what happened to all the money from the first trillion-dollar Obama stimulus! And they’ve been pestering Democrats by throwing no less than thirty realistic, market-oriented, pro-growth bills on their desks, when any fool can see that proper economic stimulus involves hiring unions to build junk we don’t need, so the enriched unions can use their taxpayer loot to hire the rest of us as servants.

There wasn’t one single free-market idea in Obama’s speech. It was all about taking and giving, not earning and growing. Obama seems incapable of understanding that central planners can never deal with those “headwinds,” but millions of private-sector entrepreneurs can find ways to tack around them and create wealth. Socialists are chained to an immobile wheel at the helm of a rusting ship filled with prisoners, dragging everyone beneath the waves while they wail about the unfairness of blaming them for disaster, because they don’t see how anyone could have done any better. They never even see the small, nimble capitalist craft flying across the waves all around them. Headwinds are a constant source of complaint for those who don’t know how to sail.

As one might expect, there was more pleading for big deficit spending on “infrastructure,” particularly “roads and bridges,” even though Obama already spent a ton of our children’s money on them in 2009. This has always seemed like a strange argument from Obama, because he also thinks the Little People drive too much, and consume too many fossil fuels. Why is he so obsessed with building more roads for our planet-raping cars? (The answer, of course, is that those roads are built by his labor union allies, and Obamanomics is all about looting taxpayers to line the right pockets.)

Obama is so utterly out of touch that at one point, he told a reporter “the private sector is doing fine.” That is a simply astonishing comment to make, just a week after the latest disastrous job report chronicled Obama’s three years of workforce collapse and economic stagnation. If he’s not going to do anything productive, he could at least stop blocking pipelines and sending regulators out to “crucify” the free market.



Much of Obama’s presentation amounted to telling Europe they need to plunge further into debt to keep the Euro afloat, so they can rescue Obama by purchasing American goods. Absolutely no one in Europe was waiting for financial advice from President Downgrade, but he spend so much time rambling on about the need for European bailouts that the audience grew uncomfortable. Maybe the true purpose of this press conference was to audition for a job with the European Union after he gets bounced out of the Oval Office in November.

It was very clear from this speech that Barack Obama doesn’t think he has done anything wrong, and has no intention – or, indeed, capability – to develop a more vibrant, market-oriented, fiscally responsible program. He wants to go back to the drawing board, when we urgently need to smash that drawing board into tiny pieces. How is anyone supposed to be “inspired” by a disconnected bureaucrat rambling on about the same failed strategies, over and over again, unmoved by all evidence of their failure?

This is a compelling argument to replace him with someone else. Today’s Obama press conference was a tremendous campaign ad for Mitt Romney, who respects the power of the free market, and cares enough about his job to show up on time.

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Where No (Reasonable) Man Has Gone Before!

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Quote from Yannis:

Where No (Reasonable) Man Has Gone Before!

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Quote from Ricter:

Actually, the debt has been worse.

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And, Of Course, There's Is This Other Little Issue...

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Quote from Tsing Tao:

Really? When?

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But, Of Course, Obama Has Good Friends

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Quote from Ricter:

1950.

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Quote from Yannis:

I said "Reasonable" not "Democrat"

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Quote from Ricter:

So you're saying our participation in WWII was unreasonable?

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Quote from Ricter:

1950.

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Quote from Ricter:

....

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Obama vs. Romney on Public School Jobs
by Andrew J. Coulson

In a high-profile presser on the economy last Friday, President Obama’s central proposal was to hire more public employees. Then, in his weekly address, he argued that hiring more public school teachers would allow the U.S. to educate its way to prosperity. His Republican presidential rival, Governor Romney, has recommended precisely the opposite: reducing the size of government to boost private sector job growth–and he, too, mentions public school teachers. So… who’s right?

First, let’s look at public school employment and student enrollment over time.



As the chart makes clear, enrollment is only up 8.5% since 1970, whereas employment is up 96.2%. In other words, the public school workforce has grown 11 times faster than enrollment over the past 40 years. What difference does that make in economic terms? If we went back to the staff-to-student ratio we had in 1970, we’d be saving… $210 billion… annually.

Wait a minute, though! Research by economist Rick Hanushek and others has found that improved student achievement boosts economic growth. So if the 2.9 million extra public school employees we’ve hired since 1970 have improved achievement substantially, we might well be coming out ahead economically. So let’s look at those numbers…

Uh oh. Despite hiring nearly 3 million more people and spending a resulting $210 billion more every year, achievement near the end of high school has stagnated in math and reading and actually declined slightly in science since 1970. This chart also shows the cost of sending a student all the way through the K-12 system–the total cost per pupil of each graduating class from 1970 to the present. As you can see, on a per pupil basis, a K-12 education has gone from about $55,000 to about $150,000 in real, inflation-adjusted terms.

The implications of these charts are tragic: the public school monopoly is warehousing 3 million people in jobs that appear to have done nothing to improve student learning. Our K-12 government school system simply does not know how to harness the skills of our education workforce, and so is preventing these people from contributing to our economy while consuming massive quantities of tax dollars. So what would hiring even more people into that system do for our economy…

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Quote from Yannis:

Obama vs. Romney on Public School Jobs
by Andrew J. Coulson

In a high-profile presser on the economy last Friday, President Obama’s central proposal was to hire more public employees. Then, in his weekly address, he argued that hiring more public school teachers would allow the U.S. to educate its way to prosperity. His Republican presidential rival, Governor Romney, has recommended precisely the opposite: reducing the size of government to boost private sector job growth–and he, too, mentions public school teachers. So… who’s right?

First, let’s look at public school employment and student enrollment over time.



As the chart makes clear, enrollment is only up 8.5% since 1970, whereas employment is up 96.2%. In other words, the public school workforce has grown 11 times faster than enrollment over the past 40 years. What difference does that make in economic terms? If we went back to the staff-to-student ratio we had in 1970, we’d be saving… $210 billion… annually.

Wait a minute, though! Research by economist Rick Hanushek and others has found that improved student achievement boosts economic growth. So if the 2.9 million extra public school employees we’ve hired since 1970 have improved achievement substantially, we might well be coming out ahead economically. So let’s look at those numbers…

Uh oh. Despite hiring nearly 3 million more people and spending a resulting $210 billion more every year, achievement near the end of high school has stagnated in math and reading and actually declined slightly in science since 1970. This chart also shows the cost of sending a student all the way through the K-12 system–the total cost per pupil of each graduating class from 1970 to the present. As you can see, on a per pupil basis, a K-12 education has gone from about $55,000 to about $150,000 in real, inflation-adjusted terms.

The implications of these charts are tragic: the public school monopoly is warehousing 3 million people in jobs that appear to have done nothing to improve student learning. Our K-12 government school system simply does not know how to harness the skills of our education workforce, and so is preventing these people from contributing to our economy while consuming massive quantities of tax dollars. So what would hiring even more people into that system do for our economy…

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That looks alright, what's the problem?

Clearly our education system is mismanaged. Main culprit the fact that you cannot motivate people who belong to strong unions, and cannot fire the bad ones to make room for the good ones.

We need to take steps to privatize the whole system.

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Quote from Yannis:

That looks alright, what's the problem?

Clearly our education system is mismanaged. Main culprit the fact that you cannot motivate people who belong to strong unions, and cannot fire the bad ones to make room for the good ones.

We need to take steps to privatize the whole system.

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Quote from Ricter:

No problem, just the observation that many nations, achieving better educational outcomes than we are, are paying their teachers more. In spite of our "strong unions".

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Quote from Ricter:

Actually, the debt has been worse.

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Quote from Tsing Tao:

Just curious, but can you show me a source that says the debt was worse in 1950 than it is now?

Because I'm going to have to go out on a limb and say you're full of crap.

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Obama’s Coming Taxes

http://www.dickmorris.com/obamas-co...tv-lunch-alert/

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A Las Vegas "odds maker" opines on why Obama will get "killed" by Romney in November
by Wayne Allyn Root

Most political predictions are made by biased pollsters, pundits, or prognosticators who are either rooting for Republicans or Democrats. I am neither. I am a former Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee, and a well-known Vegas oddsmaker with one of the most accurate records of predicting political races.

But as an oddsmaker with a pretty remarkable track record of picking political races, I play no favorites. I simply use common sense to call them as I see them. Back in late December I released my New Years Predictions. I predicted back then- before a single GOP primary had been held, with Romney trailing for months to almost every GOP competitor from Rick Perry to Herman Cain to Newt- that Romney would easily rout his competition to win the GOP nomination by a landslide. I also predicted that the Presidential race between Obama and Romney would be very close until election day. But that on election day Romney would win by a landslide similar to Reagan-Carter in 1980.
Understanding history, today I am even more convinced of a resounding Romney victory. 32 years ago at this moment in time, Reagan was losing by 9 points to Carter. Romney is right now running even in polls. So why do most pollsters give Obama the edge?

First, most pollsters are missing one ingredient- common sense. Here is my gut instinct. Not one American who voted for McCain 4 years ago will switch to Obama. Not one in all the land. But many millions of people who voted for an unknown Obama 4 years ago are angry, disillusioned, turned off, or scared about the future. Voters know Obama now- and that is a bad harbinger.

Now to an analysis of the voting blocks that matter in U.S. politics:
*Black voters. Obama has nowhere to go but down among this group. His endorsement of gay marriage has alienated many black church-going Christians. He may get 88% of their vote instead of the 96% he got in 2008. This is not good news for Obama.

*Hispanic voters. Obama has nowhere to go but down among this group. If Romney picks Rubio as his VP running-mate the GOP may pick up an extra 10% to 15% of Hispanic voters (plus lock down Florida). This is not good news for Obama.

*Jewish voters. Obama has been weak in his support of Israel. Many Jewish voters and big donors are angry and disappointed. I predict Obama's Jewish support drops from 78% in 2008 to the low 60’s. This is not good news for Obama.

*Youth voters. Obama’s biggest and most enthusiastic believers from 4 years ago have graduated into a job market from hell. Young people are disillusioned, frightened, and broke- a bad combination. The enthusiasm is long gone. Turnout will be much lower among young voters, as will actual voting percentages. This not good news for Obama.

*Catholic voters. Obama won a majority of Catholics in 2008. That won’t happen again. Out of desperation to please women, Obama went to war with the Catholic Church over contraception. Now he is being sued by the Catholic Church. Majority lost. This is not good news for Obama.

*Small Business owners.Because I ran for Vice President last time around, and I'm a small businessman myself, I know literally thousands of small business owners. At least 40% of them in my circle of friends, fans and supporters voted for Obama 4 years ago to “give someone different a chance.” I warned them that he would pursue a war on capitalism and demonize anyone who owned a business...that he’d support unions over the private sector in a big way...that he'd overwhelm the economy with spending and debt. My friends didn’t listen. Four years later, I can't find one person in my circle of small business owner friends voting for Obama. Not one. This is not good news for Obama.

*Blue collar working class whites. Do I need to say a thing? White working class voters are about as happy with Obama as Boston Red Sox fans feel about the New York Yankees. This is not good news for Obama.

*Suburban moms. The issue isn’t contraception…it’s having a job to pay for contraception. Obama’s economy frightens these moms. They are worried about putting food on the table. They fear for their children’s future. This is not good news for Obama.

*Military Veterans. McCain won this group by 10 points. Romney is winning by 24 points. The more our military vets got to see of Obama, the more they disliked him. This is not good news for Obama.
Add it up. Is there one major group where Obama has gained since 2008? Will anyone in America wake up on election day saying “I didn’t vote for Obama 4 years ago. But he’s done such a fantastic job, I can’t wait to vote for him today.” Does anyone feel that a vote for Obama makes their job more secure?
Forget the polls. My gut instincts as a Vegas oddsmaker and common sense small businessman tell me this will be a historic landslide and a world-class repudiation of Obama’s radical and risky socialist agenda. It's Reagan-Carter all over again.

But I’ll give Obama credit for one thing- he is living proof that familiarity breeds contempt.

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Obama’s Public Sector Full Employment Plan
by:Ann Coulter

Last week, President Obama said "the private sector is doing fine." This was not reassuring to those of us who suspect the Democrats haven't the first idea what "private sector" means.

He did not help matters by becoming lachrymose over the suffering of public sector employees: "Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government. ... And so, if Republicans want to be helpful, if they really want to move forward and put people back to work, what they should be thinking about is, how do we help state and local governments ..."

When Democrats say the public sector is suffering, they mean public sector employees have half the unemployment rate of the rest of the country -- 4.2 percent compared to 8.2 percent.

Obama's monumentally idiotic statement has led his media defenders to recycle Mitt Romney's alleged "gaffe" from several months ago, when he said: "I like being able to fire people who provide services to me."

But that was not a gaffe at all -- except as deceptively edited by the media to end after the word "people." (Only Donald Trump enjoys firing people, and by the way, people love watching Donald Trump fire people.)

Far from a gaffe, Romney's actual sentence is the key to understanding the nation's health care crisis -- which happens to be exactly what he was talking about.

Nearly every product you can think of has gotten better and cheaper in the last 20 years because of market competition: cell phones, television sets, computers, food delivery, airline tickets (constrained by the cost of fuel), express mail, and on and on.

There aren't a lot of restaurants serving lousy food or dog walkers who lose your dog because they'd go out of business pretty fast if they provided rotten services. They're not the only game in town.

But you know what is the only game in town? The government, including putatively private businesses that are heavily regulated by the government. Only with the government do we continuously get worse service for a higher price.

Take away the ability to fire people, and you have airport security, public schools, Veterans Administration hospitals, the Postal Service, General Motors and Pinch Sulzberger, New York Times family scion.

Health insurers may technically be private companies, but they are required by law to cover a slew of services, making them an extension of monopolistic government. (Similarly, the old AT&T was a "private" company, but in reality it was just a government-run monopolistic phone company providing no choice, poor service, little innovation and obscenely high prices.)

In most states, you can't choose a health insurance plan that doesn't cover gambling and sex addictions, psychological counseling, speech therapy and prenatal care -- even if you plan on never having children.

Health insurance companies don't need to compete for your business -- they're all offering the same product, anyway. Moreover, because of government regulation concerning how health insurance is taxed, most people aren't choosing their insurers. Their employers are.

As a result, insurance companies have become outrageously unresponsive to both patients and doctors. Insurance companies need only concern themselves with satisfying government regulators and corporate purchasers. Meanwhile, doctors have to please only the insurance companies, which don't particularly care how patients are treated, as long as it's cheap.

This is a third-party-payer problem, or as the proverb goes, "He who pays the piper calls the tune." All third-party-payer systems are disasters. The customer is trapped, forced to pay for something he doesn't want, with no one to complain to and no possibility of taking his business elsewhere.

An example frequent travelers will recognize are the online discount hotel brokers. These can be great -- unless you arrive at a hotel and there's no WiFi, or there's massive construction going on, or your room isn't available until four hours after check-in time. But you've already paid the full price to the booking company.

If you had paid for the room yourself, you could walk away and find another hotel. (Even if you used a credit card, you can reverse the charges because, again, credit card companies would go out of business if they didn't refuse payment for scams.) But if you booked through a third party, the hotel tells you, "Sorry, take it up with Expedia."

Ironically, Romney is proposing that all Americans have the same ability he has to hire and fire insurance companies and doctors. The rich already can do this. Why can't the rest of us? We hire -- and fire -- our own appliance stores, pet groomers, restaurants, hairdressers and computer companies. Why not health providers?

And why are the media so desperate to avoid that conversation?

We need a free market in health insurance, which Congress could accomplish with a one-page bill stating, "There shall be interstate commerce in health insurance." Once we were allowed to purchase health insurance across states lines -- prohibited by law today -- everyone would be buying insurance from companies based in states such as Utah, which have the fewest mandates about what health insurers must cover.

Insurance companies would be responsive to us, the people buying their services, and not the government or corporations. Most people would choose to buy insurance only for what insurance is intended for -- catastrophes -- while paying for regular checkups themselves, the same way we pay for our own cell phones, computers, baby sitters, manicures and everything else that's been getting better and cheaper, unlike all government-regulated services.

Doctors would then have to be responsive to us, not to our insurance companies. Nothing improves the quality of a service like being able to fire the people providing it. The media don't want you to think about that, so they edit Romney's remark and call it a "gaffe."

For better service right now, for example, the American people need to fire Barack Obama and hire Mitt Romney.

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"When Democrats say the public sector is suffering, they mean public sector employees have half the unemployment rate of the rest of the country -- 4.2 percent compared to 8.2 percent."

What does this mean?

Liberal and Incompetent
by Gov. Bobby Jindal

A few weeks back I found myself at the scene of the crime… campaigning in Wisconsin with Governor Walker. One thing was abundantly clear, and if you spent any time helping out Governor Walker in his campaign, you can attest to this — The radical left has taken over the Democrat Party.

Last Tuesday in Wisconsin, the silent majority was very loud. Call it the Cheesehead Rebellion. I suppose you could say that the people have spoken, but the truth is they spoke a year and half ago and this entire recall election was nothing more than a case of sour grapes from the radical left that has taken over the once proud Democrat Party. Let’s remember what happened here. The hard left launched this recall because Scott Walker had the audacity to act in the best interests of the people of Wisconsin.

Governor Walker inherited a fiscal mess from the previous Democrat Governor, with a fiscal shortfall of over $3 billion, so he fixed the problem and balanced the budget without raising taxes. Indeed, property taxes will actually now go down. And now, Wisconsin is adding jobs for the first time in quite a while and the unemployment rate is lower than it has been since 2008. But again, let’s remember WHY the radical left launched this recall…Here’s the frightening policy that Scott instituted…which is what caused all the fuss…are you ready for it?…it’s very scary…here it goes….

In order to eliminate the budget deficit and avoid having to layoff teachers….Governor Walker asked the public employee union members to pay a small portion into their own retirement plans and medical insurance, just like most folks in the private sector already do. That’s it. That’s what prompted the Democrat legislators to flee the state and hide in Illinois, that’s what prompted them to put Wisconsin through this civil war, which by the way, cost the taxpayers about 18 million dollars.

And here’s the kicker – the Democrat candidate, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett did NOT EVEN campaign on the issue of collective bargaining. He didn’t run TV ads on it, he didn’t run radio ads on it, it was nowhere to be found. So the very reason for the recall was absent from the actual recall. Why is that? Very simple – the people of Wisconsin agree with the conservative reforms of Governor Walker.

The truth is — Governor Walker’s conservative reforms are reasonable, they are sound policy, they are fair, and they are working. That’s the entire story.

Where was the President?

On Tuesday, election night, I was scheduled to go on FOX News to talk about the election. They had me scheduled for about an hour after the polls would close. So of course, I figured I would be put in the unenviable position of talking about the election prior to the returns being at all conclusive. Well…as it turns out….the race was called 49 minutes after the polls closed.

What was supposed to be a long night at the Walker headquarters in Wisconsin … actually turned into a long night at the Obama headquarters in Chicago. As we all knew would happen, the White House immediately declared that the Wisconsin recall election results don’t matter. In fact, they said that early in the day on Tuesday. Apparently, when Democrats win elections it is a big deal, but when Republicans win it doesn’t matter.

But the big head-scratcher is the President’s absence in this recall election. Why did he not come to Wisconsin to save the day at the end? Was this not an important election? Remember – President Obama carried Wisconsin by 14%! Surely he had enough capital built up that he could spend some for the cause?

Did the President not go to Wisconsin because he was afraid he might not be an asset? Did the President not go to Wisconsin because he knows a majority of voters favor Governor Walker’s reforms? Did the President not go to Wisconsin because he was afraid of hurting himself by backing a loser?

There is a lesson about leadership in here. Scott Walker was faced with some tough choices, and he did not shrink from them. He stood tall, he took decisive action, and his state is better off for it. Scott was not lacking in courage. The President, however, he shrunk from the challenge, he elected to stay away for fear of losing. This is not what leaders do. The President would have done well to show the courage to engage in the fight. He did not. Again…there is a lesson in leadership here. Leaders do not run from a fight.

The bottom-line takeaway from the Cheesehead Rebellion is this — Conservative reform ideas work in the real world. We’ve found this over and over in Louisiana, and we are now finding it in Wisconsin. Next, we need to elect Governor Romney and get about the business of rebuilding America and ending this left wing experiment otherwise known as the Obama Presidency.

LIBERALISM AND INCOMPETENCE

It is of course well understood by now that I’m not a fan of the Obama Administration. Let me take just a moment to be very clear on why this is. The Obama Administration is the nexus of Liberalism and Incompetence…and this is a deadly combination.

The liberalism part is widely understood and easily documented. After running a clever campaign in 2008 where he positioned himself as a centrist, President Obama has been the most liberal president since Jimmy Carter. He jammed through a government takeover of health care that has never enjoyed the support of a majority of Americans, not on even one single day. It is bad policy and it is unpopular and he jammed it through anyway. It cost the Democrats control of the House, but President Obama considers that a small price to pay.

This Administration lurches America every day toward a model of government that is patterned after European style socialist policies. Here’s the real problem – I suspect that many in the Obama Administration don’t really believe in private enterprise. At best, they see business as something to be endured so that it can provide tax money for government programs.

Indeed, the President had to quickly retract his recent comment that the private sector was doing fine, despite lagging economic growth, stagnant wages and continued record high unemployment rates. The problem is that the private sector is so foreign to our President that he would need a passport to go there and a translator to understand what is happening.

We scoff at the notion of redistribution of wealth as if it is a nutty and discredited socialist notion. But that’s not the way they see it. They see “redistribution of wealth” as a pejorative term for exactly what they believe in. They of course don’t call it “redistribution of wealth,” they call it “taking care of people,” they call it “progress,” they call it “government.”

While the liberalism of the Obama Administration is widely understood, the incompetence of it remains a bit of an untold story. A few weeks back, I made the comment that prior to being President, Obama had never run anything, that in fact he had never even run a lemonade stand. That’s a fun line, and folks were entertained by it. But, here’s the problem: it’s not a joke, it’s the truth.

We put a guy in the White House who has no experience running anything. In that sense, the joke’s on us. But again, it’s not a joke. America simply cannot afford another four years of on-the-job training. There may have been times in our country’s history where having an untested leader in the White House would have been fine, but this is certainly not one of those times. Yes, President Obama needs to go because his liberal policies are wrong and bad for America. But it’s worse than that; it’s basic incompetence. He is also the most incompetent president since Jimmy Carter.

Politicians are like the boy who cried wolf; they always say the sky is falling, a wolf is coming, the end is near, etc. It’s been said so much that people don’t believe it. But the truth is that America is the proverbial frog in the pot, it’s coming to a boil, but we think it’s cozy and relaxing. This time, however, the sky IS falling, and the wolf of debt and bankruptcy really IS at the door. We simply have to win this election.

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Happy here and now!

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Quote from Ricter:

"When Democrats say the public sector is suffering, they mean public sector employees have half the unemployment rate of the rest of the country -- 4.2 percent compared to 8.2 percent."

What does this mean?

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Another Good One

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And This One

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Rendell to Newsmax: Hillary Might Have Made a Better President
By David A. Patten

In a comment that may deepen the divide between President Barack Obama and the more centrist faction of his party, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell speculated to Newsmax in an exclusive interview Thursday that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton might have made a better president than Barack Obama due to her previous White House experience.

Aside from the Clinton comment, Rendell insisted that President Obama had “done admirably” under very difficult circumstances. He added that the Obama campaign was wrong to think that when centrist Democrats dish out criticism they are being disloyal. We’re not,” he said simply.

Rendell, author of the new book “A Nation of Wusses: How America’s Leaders Lost the Guts to Make Us Great,” has never been one to pull punches. He recently told Buzzfeed he found the tone of the Obama campaign’s attacks on Bain Capital “very disappointing.”

Rendell’s remark that Hillary might have made a better president was part of a Newsmax.TV interview on Thursday, after the president made his speech promoting his economic policies.

“Look,” Rendell said, when asked if he ever regretted Obama’s 2008 victory over Clinton, “I think Barack Obama took the worst set of problems any American president had been given, and has done admirable. Do I think Hillary would have done as well? Sure. But she would have been encumbered with the same set of problems. Might she have done better? She had a little bit more experience.

“Sen. Obama was a legislator all his life. Sen. Clinton had a little bit of experience in the executive branch when she was with her husband. So she might have done things a little differently, but again, with those overwhelming problems, who knows?”

Rendell added that he worked tirelessly on Clinton’s campaign: “I believe Hillary Clinton would have made a great president in 2008, and, as you know, I worked my heart out for her. In the last month and a half of the campaign I was almost the last spokesperson she had; in fact, one reporter called me the last of the Mohicans. But her job as secretary of state has convinced me, and I think also has convinced millions of Americans, that she would have been a lights-out president.”

Leading Democrats outside the president’s tightly held inner circle have complained in recent weeks that they have little choice but to take their criticisms public because the president’s team in the White House does not always appear to welcome outside input.

Rendell said recent statements by former President Bill Clinton and Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker, which appeared to challenge the Obama campaign’s underlying assumptions, actually lend Obama’s Democratic surrogates the credibility they need to effectively support the president later in the campaign.

“I guarantee you that Bill Clinton in October, when it counts, when the rubber meets the road . . . will be the best salesperson for the Obama re-elect that you can find,” Rendell said.

He added that the Obama campaign does not always appear to understand that: “The Obama campaign sometimes takes the position that if we say anything critical we’re being disloyal. We’re not. We’re being realistic. And I think, as a result, we’re much better persuaders, much better advocates for the president’s re-election.”

Rendell balanced his remarks by supporting the president on several key issues, including his handling of the economy.

“Obviously when you’re in charge, you have to bear some of the burden,” he said. “But I think Americans should remember that the day President Obama was sworn in, we lost almost 800,000 jobs in one month. And the next month, before he had a chance to have any of his policies, we lost 750,000 jobs.

“Well, the last 27 months we gained private sector jobs. Now the last two or three months, the gains were not good. But they were still gains; they were still on the plus side.”

He credited the controversial financial and auto bailouts for helping to turn around the economy.

In “A Nation of Wusses: How America’s Leaders Lost the Guts to Make Us Great,” Rendell makes the case that leaders on both sides of the aisle have let the American people down by not being candid with them about the realities the nation faces.

“Too many of our leaders are afraid to deal honestly with our people,” Rendell said.

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Happy here and now!

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Quote from Yannis:

To me it means that, sadly, their focus is their constituencies, not the entire nation. They say that the Dem party is a big tent, meaning that, if you're in it you're in luck, and if you're out of it it's your problem.

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The Independent Payment Advisory Board: PPACA's Anti-Constitutional and Authoritarian Super-Legislature
by Diane Cohen and Michael F. Cannon

When a member of Congress introduces legislation, the Constitution requires that legislative proposal to secure the approval of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the president (unless Congress overrides a presidential veto) before it can become law. In all cases, either chamber of Congress may block it.

In 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) created the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB. When the unelected government officials on this board submit a legislative proposal to Congress, it automatically becomes law: PPACA requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to implement it. Blocking an IPAB "proposal" requires at a minimum that the House and the Senate and the president agree on a substitute. The Board's edicts therefore can become law without congressional action, congressional approval, meaningful congressional oversight, or being subject to a presidential veto. Citizens will have no power to challenge IPAB's edicts in court.

Worse, PPACA forbids Congress from repealing IPAB outside of a seven-month window in the year 2017, and even then requires a three-fifths majority in both chambers. A heretofore unreported feature of PPACA dictates that if Congress misses that repeal window, PPACA prohibits Congress from ever altering an IPAB "proposal." By restricting lawmaking powers of future Congresses, PPACA thus attempts to amend the Constitution by statute.

IPAB's unelected members will have effectively unfettered power to impose taxes and ration care for all Americans, whether the government pays their medical bills or not. In some circumstances, just one political party or even one individual would have full command of IPAB's lawmaking powers. IPAB truly is independent, but in the worst sense of the word. It wields power independent of Congress, independent of the president, independent of the judiciary, and independent of the will of the people.

The creation of IPAB is an admission that the federal government's efforts to plan America's health care sector have failed. It is proof of the axiom that government control of the economy threatens democracy.

IPAB may be the most anti-constitutional measure ever to pass Congress, and it is therefore tempting to dismiss IPAB as an absurdity that the body politic will soon reject. Until that occurs, IPAB will potentially empower just one unelected government official to impose any tax or regulation, to appropriate funds, and to wield other lawmaking powers.

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Obama Leaks Top Secret Info To Score Political Gains

http://www.dickmorris.com/obama-lea...tv-lunch-alert/

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Good News And Bad News

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Good Old Debbie

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This research (and there's a lot of it) destroys Coulter's nonsense claim:

http://mediamatters.org/research/201206100006

"Public-Sector Job Losses Have Been Severe And Unusual"

Sorry R, I wouldn't believe anything this combative liberal bulldog, Media Matters, says...

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Quote from Yannis:

Sorry R, I wouldn't believe anything this combative liberal bulldog, Media Matters, says...

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That's what the other side says, among others... more credible imo.

Private vs. Public Employment
By Nicole Gelinas, contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal

We hear a good deal lately about how state and local governments, thanks to balanced-budget requirements, are slashing the number of workers they have, thus exacerbating the recession recovery.

The bigger problem, though, is that state and local governments do not have the strong private work forces they need to support public employment.

Private employment today is barely what it was in January 2000 — less than eight-tenths higher. We had 110 million workers back then, and we have 111 million today.

Yet the state-government workforce is still 6.5 percent higher than it was back then, and the local government workforce is nearly 8 percent higher, despite cutbacks in the past few years.

Moreover, state and local governments started their recessions later than the rest of us did, adding jobs through late 2008 even as everyone else cut back.

The problem is not that state and local governments are cutting back; that phenomenon is a symptom.

The problem is that the private workforce is not growing sufficiently, either to absorb laid-off government workers or to pay for the ones still working.

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Ricter: I really don't think that conservatives have all truth and liberals are always wrong... I see them as two different, often opposing philosophies, that's all. As stated before, I'm a conservative-leaning Independent.

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Quote from Yannis:

That's what the other side says, among others... more credible imo.

Private vs. Public Employment
By Nicole Gelinas, contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal

We hear a good deal lately about how state and local governments, thanks to balanced-budget requirements, are slashing the number of workers they have, thus exacerbating the recession recovery.

The bigger problem, though, is that state and local governments do not have the strong private work forces they need to support public employment.

Private employment today is barely what it was in January 2000 — less than eight-tenths higher. We had 110 million workers back then, and we have 111 million today.

Yet the state-government workforce is still 6.5 percent higher than it was back then, and the local government workforce is nearly 8 percent higher, despite cutbacks in the past few years.

Moreover, state and local governments started their recessions later than the rest of us did, adding jobs through late 2008 even as everyone else cut back.

The problem is not that state and local governments are cutting back; that phenomenon is a symptom.

The problem is that the private workforce is not growing sufficiently, either to absorb laid-off government workers or to pay for the ones still working.

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Vulgarians On The Loose!
by:Ann Coulter

A Michigan legislator, Lisa Brown, gave a speech in the statehouse last week that would have made her right at home in a women's studies course at a local community college, but a wacko in a group of actual legislators.

She commented on a pending abortion bill by first announcing that she was Jewish, kept kosher, described her various sets of plates, and then saying that Jewish law makes abortion mandatory to save the life of the mother.

This had absolutely nothing to do with the bill being considered, but it may explain why there are no Jewish Tim Tebows.

Then she said: "I have not asked you to adopt and adhere to my religious beliefs. Why are you asking me to adopt yours?"

Her smashing crescendo was: "And finally Mr. Speaker, I'm flattered that you're all so interested in my vagina, but 'no' means 'no'!"

It's not clear where Rep. Brown got the idea that the Republican caucus was planning on date-raping her, but I think there's been a terrible misunderstanding. The bill under consideration merely ensured the safety of women having abortions -- and, in a small way, the safety of the fetus, whom the U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited legislatures from protecting directly.

Thus, the bill addressed insurance and inspections of abortion clinics, and included a requirement that the abortionist confirm that the woman having the abortion was not being pressured by a third party to do so.

I have not polled all the Republicans in the Michigan statehouse yet, but the ones I've spoken to assure me that Rep. Brown's vagina played a very small role in their deliberations. It's odd that she seems to think she's the object of so much Republican male fantasy.

Why must a certain type of woman always start shouting about her vagina whenever the topic of abortion comes up?

Do what you want with your vagina. Pro-lifers just want to stop babies from being killed. It would be as though a slaveholder complained that Republicans wanted to regulate his anus by abolishing slavery and taking away his right to crap on his slaves.

For making inappropriate remarks during a legislative session, Brown was prohibited from making floor speeches for one day. Being an hysterical drama queen who believes the Michigan Legislature was thinking about her and her vagina, Rep. Brown responded to the sanction by claiming she had been "silenced." A vulgarian gets a one-day penalty, and suddenly she's Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Rep. Brown was not being silenced. She was being admonished for a crazy display of narcissism utterly irrelevant to the bill under discussion. I would never in a million years silence a woman because of her views on abortion, but I'd vote for a month of silence from this self-dramatizing freak.

The media are in full smirk mode, not at Rep. Brown's perversely self-referential speech positing that Republican legislators wanted to date-rape her, but at Republican bluenoses, whom they seem to think are shocked by the word "vagina."

Hey, does anyone else remember way back into the distant past three months ago when liberals were ablaze with indignation because Rush Limbaugh used the "s-word" to describe Sandra Fluke, another drama queen, who was demanding taxpayers pay for her contraception? That word had liberals fainting like Victorian virgins.

In a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, 75 Democrats in Congress called the language used by Limbaugh "sexually charged," "patently offensive," "obscene and indecent," and called on Republican leaders to condemn it. The president of the United States even called Fluke to see if she was OK after having been called ... the "s-word"!

But now, lo these many weeks later, you can't find a liberal female who isn't screaming "vagina." Thousands of beastly women appeared near the Michigan statehouse on Monday -- as well as every show, every hour on MSNBC that night -- to shout "vagina!"

On one of the 800 TV shows Rep. Brown did this week -- which, ironically, were the exact same shows that had featured Fluke describing her trauma at having been called the "s-word" -- MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell gushed about the advances society has made since the days when women did not prattle about their vaginas in public. He said: "It's easy, I think, for some of our audience tonight who are in their 30s or 20s to not be able to even comprehend what that world was like."

Rep. Brown somberly agreed, saying, "We have all, as women, come a long way."

Another guest, Eve Ensler, authoress of "The Vagina Monologues," talked about the magic of thousands of women shouting "vagina" in public: "Many young women came up to thank both of us for giving them voice, for allowing them to be authentic, for allowing them to love their bodies, for allowing them to feel agency over their bodies and their rights, to know that they have choices, that what they decide to do with the reproductive decisions or abortion decisions or whatever they decide is their choice. It's their body."

That is, unless your little body hasn't been born yet, in which case, liberals think it can be torn to shreds and dumped in the garbage -- a point they argue by shouting "vagina" and claiming Republican legislators want to date-rape them.

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Obama’s Blatant Disregard for the Constitution is Appalling
by Rep. Michele Bachmann

In order to become President, Barack Obama had to swear to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. But three years later, I am disgusted with the disregard that the President continues to show to our Constitution. Has he forgotten about the separation of executive, judicial and legislative branches found in our founding document? Our founders gave us a system of checks and balances so that one person could never seize more power than was provided in the Constitution.

President Obama’s actions demonstrate that he thinks he’s above the law. When he doesn’t get his way, he creates new policies to his liking.

Under Obamacare, an even playing field doesn’t exist for businesses. And President Obama must have recognized that, because he ordered his Health and Human Services Secretary to provide waivers from the healthcare overhaul. Unions, universities and restaurants in Nancy Pelosi’s district received waivers so that they didn’t have to comply with the law.

Then we have the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Passed in 1996, DOMA is a federal law that defines marriage as being between one man and one woman. But earlier this spring, the administration said it will no longer defend the constitutionally of DOMA. So even though this law is on the books – passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton – President Obama just thinks we should ignore it.

Last week Obama threw the Constitution out the window again. Even through Congress disagreed, the President was happy to circumvent the Constitution in order to protect younger illegal immigrants from deportation and hand them work permits. He stands resolute in this position despite the fact that, a year prior, the President said this about immigration: “Some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own.” He continued, “That’s not how our system works. That’s not how our democracy functions. That’s not how our Constitution is written.”

Today, President Obama invoked executive privilege so Attorney General Eric Holder wouldn’t have to turn over documents on Fast and Furious. That is not what executive privilege was intended for!

Where will the madness end? When will the President stop blatantly disregarding the Constitution?

Sadly, I don’t think this President cares that he is ignoring the laws of our land. Nor, does he plan to curb his agenda. In fact, I expect things to only grow worse under this President. Thanks to an open mic in March, President Obama was caught telling Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he will have “more flexibility” in his second term.

The future of our country depends on making sure that the executive head of our nation knows he is subject to our laws and that he is under the Constitution.

Mr. President, I urge you, stop your autocratic reign; drop everything you are doing and read the Constitution. You will be well-served to remember the document that you swore to preserve, protect and defend.

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No Dream Deal…
by Fred Thompson

For a long time, Friday afternoon has been a favorite time for presidents to release embarrassing or politically harmful information. That way, fewer people hear about it at the time, and by Monday morning other news often drowns it out. Now we can add the abrogation of immigration laws to the list of Friday releases. (Tune in next Friday to see whether the IRS has decided not to require you to pay your taxes. This “never mind” attitude toward the law could become quite popular.)

However, in last Friday’s case, there was no danger that Obama’s target audience would miss the story. Hispanic groups, along with Senate Democratic leaders Harry Reid and Dick Durbin, increasingly nervous about the election, had been pressuring Obama for months to circumvent Congress and change immigration policy unilaterally. So President Obama seized the opportunity and declared that people between the ages of 16 and 30 who are here illegally, were brought to the U.S. before the age of 16, are in school or the military, and have not committed a felony would not be deported. (For the first time in American history, not committing a felony gives you privileged status.)

In fact, this group can now apply for work permits.

Obama’s presidential campaign, not known for its subtlety, then immediately sent out a fundraising letter to the Hispanic community.

From a policy standpoint, serious arguments can be made for and against prosecuting people who were brought here by their parents. There are undoubtedly many sympathetic cases, but on the other hand, laws are often passed, at least in part, to deter future actions. Is the president encouraging future parents to break the law, while adding 800,000 new job applicants in a down economy?

These are proper issues for congressional debate. The fact that Congress has not yet passed an immigration bill that suits Obama does not authorize him to circumvent the normal legislative process. Article I of the Constitution makes it clear that Congress makes the laws.

Attention should be given, not just to the policy issue, but also to how President Obama pulled this off. What he did gives us some idea as to how he would govern in a second term, when he would not have to fear the voters again and could concentrate on those to whom he wants to be an historic hero.
By unilaterally changing immigration policy to incorporate most of the DREAM Act, President Obama cut a clever, opportunistic path through the thickets of legality and politics in order to maximize his policy change for supporters, while at the same time minimizing the change for opponents.

Obama acknowledged a year ago that he did not have the legal authority to do this by himself. “I can’t,” he said. “There are laws on the books that I have to enforce.” So one year later, after much political pressure, he does it. Legally, what changed? Incredibly, President Obama’s own people say: Nothing changed.
Most people thought President Obama was putting the new policy in place by executive order, because this is the way new policies within a president’s purview are put into effect. But no president had ever used an executive order to take laws off the books. President Obama’s lawyers had obviously told him he didn’t have the authority to do that by executive order. One would think that our constitutional-law-professor president would have known this.

So, Obama did not use an executive order. He simply directed the Department of Homeland Security to “reprioritize its enforcement policy” to, in effect, put everyone else ahead of the DREAM group when it comes to deporting illegal immigrants. This way he avoids the unprecedented use of an executive order that might even be struck down in court, but achieves his goal of a big splash one week before he makes a speech to a Hispanic group in Florida, a swing state.

Obama representatives acknowledge to his critics that this big deal to the Hispanic community is actually less than meets the eye. They point out that the enforcement provision and the work-permit provision are only a two-year window — they are not permanent. The next president can change them — without even a stroke of the pen, since there is no executive order in place. Meanwhile, though, Obama officials emphasize that people will be processed on a “case-by-case basis.” This is code for: “Everyone familiar with the issue knows that it will take the immigration service, with its tremendous backlog, years to process 800,000 people.”

So the folks Obama will be speaking to in Florida will be getting neither the solution that many of them think they are getting, nor the result that the president strongly implied in his Friday statement.

Hispanic leaders know better, but they will pocket this “victory” and worry about the rest later. Odds are that next week President Obama will be greeted in Orlando as another “Great Emancipator.” The Hispanic voters he’ll be speaking to don’t realize that, with Obama, everything is about getting past the next election.

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Obama’s Strategy Emerges
By Dick Morris

The battle of Barack Obama is ending in his defeat. A sagging economy, a likely setback on ObamaCare and sliding job approval are foreclosing the possibility that the president can be reelected on his record in office.

So the battle of Mitt Romney is beginning. It is evident to Obama’s people that only through a negative campaign can they hope to win the election. Their strategy in attacking Romney is becoming clear.

It begins with an understanding of the fact that Romney’s major attribute in the minds of the voters and his leading defect are two sides of the same coin. On one side, voters see him as a businessman with vast experience. In a war, they turn to a general. In a deep recession, they turn to a businessman with a record of job creation. But the other side of the coin is that voters feel that Romney is too rich to understand the problems of the average person. They worry that he lives on another planet and doesn’t grasp what is going on in their lives.

Whether or not he can overcome the negative is wrapped up in how people see his tenure at Bain Capital. Does it indicate that Romney is a job creator or a dealmaker? Is he a creature of Wall Street or Main Street? Are his skills at saving businesses, or just at making money from them?

The perception of his Bain career is far more important to the Romney candidacy than his record as governor of Massachusetts or his various flip-flops on issues. Bain goes the core of his key credential, his business experience. Lose it and he loses everything.

If Obama can win the battle of Bain, he can go from there to paint Republican budget-cutting plans as the product of a party whose nominee either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the plight of the average person. He can depict GOP refusal to raise taxes on the rich as a pander to its backers. And then he can take the campaign to the safe haven of all Democrats: Medicare and Social Security.

But if Obama loses the battle of Bain, his attacks on the Republican Party will miss the mark (or miss the Mitt). The House Republicans (as a unit, not as individuals) might be seen as heartless or rigid or dogmatic, but Romney doesn’t sit in the House. Unlike Dole in 1996, he is not responsible for the positions his party takes in Congress. Nor has he ever embraced voucher alternatives to Medicare without also stressing the ongoing availability of the current system into the indefinite future.

Even if Obama scores against the Republican Party as an institution, Romney himself will be seen as an expert who knows his stuff and quietly creates jobs while the politicians fight. If the Republican nominee’s image is deeply rooted in his successes at Bain, he cannot be characterized as a rich guy making deals and raking in millions. Nor can he be vulnerable to Democratic charges of arrogance and ignorance of the problems of Main Street.

Obama opened the battle of Bain with a two-week foray of negative ads depicting a steelworker who had lost his job, pension and, apparently, his hope as well. It was a moving ad that cries out for rebuttal. The Romney campaign must put ads on the screen that show the opposite of the Obama negative — the success stories of Bain and the ways in which Romney’s skill, intellect, dedication and hard work produced some jobs and saved others for average American workers.

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The Negative Effects of Minimum Wage Laws
by Mark Wilson

The federal government has imposed a minimum wage since 1938, and nearly all the states impose their own minimum wages. These laws prevent employers from paying wages below a mandated level. While the aim is to help workers, decades of economic research show that minimum wages usually end up harming workers and the broader economy. Minimum wages particularly stifle job opportunities for low-skill workers, youth, and minorities, which are the groups that policymakers are often trying to help with these policies.

There is no "free lunch" when the government mandates a minimum wage. If the government requires that certain workers be paid higher wages, then businesses make adjustments to pay for the added costs, such as reducing hiring, cutting employee work hours, reducing benefits, and charging higher prices. Some policymakers may believe that companies simply absorb the costs of minimum wage increases through reduced profits, but that's rarely the case. Instead, businesses rationally respond to such mandates by cutting employment and making other decisions to maintain their net earnings. These behavioral responses usually offset the positive labor market results that policymakers are hoping for...

Some federal and state policymakers are currently considering increases in minimum wages, but such policy changes would be particularly damaging in today's sluggish economy. Instead, federal and state governments should focus on policies that generate faster economic growth, which would generate rising wages and more opportunities for all workers.

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Quote from Yannis:

The Negative Effects of Minimum Wage Laws
by Mark Wilson

The federal government has imposed a minimum wage since 1938, and nearly all the states impose their own minimum wages. These laws prevent employers from paying wages below a mandated level. While the aim is to help workers, decades of economic research show that minimum wages usually end up harming workers and the broader economy. Minimum wages particularly stifle job opportunities for low-skill workers, youth, and minorities, which are the groups that policymakers are often trying to help with these policies.

There is no "free lunch" when the government mandates a minimum wage. If the government requires that certain workers be paid higher wages, then businesses make adjustments to pay for the added costs, such as reducing hiring, cutting employee work hours, reducing benefits, and charging higher prices. Some policymakers may believe that companies simply absorb the costs of minimum wage increases through reduced profits, but that's rarely the case. Instead, businesses rationally respond to such mandates by cutting employment and making other decisions to maintain their net earnings. These behavioral responses usually offset the positive labor market results that policymakers are hoping for...

Some federal and state policymakers are currently considering increases in minimum wages, but such policy changes would be particularly damaging in today's sluggish economy. Instead, federal and state governments should focus on policies that generate faster economic growth, which would generate rising wages and more opportunities for all workers.

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Quote from PiggyBank:

This is the not so common sense that conservatives need to push...

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Quote from Yannis:

Good points. In addition, here's two other ideas:

1. Introduce a "learner's/trainee's" min wage below the regular amount, that employers of unskilled labor can pay for, say, the first couple years of one's employment. in this way, young people can enter the workforce and learn a trade so to speak, even if that's only how to be there every day to polish shoes of answer the phone.

2. Abolish large parts of welfare and replace it with workfare - where the government subsidizes your pay at pre-screened businesses to give you time to pick up new skills and re-enter the workforce on your own. Same for unemployment assistance if you choose to or if your skills belong to one of the at-risk categories. At the same time, restrict government unemployment assistance to 6 months or so. Essentially, stop giving out large sums of money for nothing in return.

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Quote from PiggyBank:

Those seem like positions that could find compromise.. possibly. However they are drops in the bucket as a % of total govt spending.

To add to your second point i think it might be less costly and more beneficial to the recipients of govt aid if they had an option to be relocated to an area where there is work. For example people are always making the argument for illegal mexican immigrants that they do work no American will do.. well what if people on the govt dole were offered those same jobs? Since they obviously don't have any $ the govt would have to relocate them but that one time cost might be less than providing near perpetual assistance. that could theoretically kill 3 birds with one stone, lower unemployment, less illegal immigrants, less govt aid.

Also, to amend my previous post, the absolute WORST thing a govt can do is entitle people to unsustainable benefits and then 'borrow' money from the entitlement funds and spend it on other shit. silly me, that is the most blatantly asinine thing that could ever be done. Forcibly taking money from its citizens and then giving it to other countries as 'aid' is pretty stupid too.

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Austerity Works
by Michael D. Tanner

As Greece, and now Spain and Italy, struggle with the crushing burden of debt brought on by the modern welfare state, perhaps we should shift our gaze some 1,200 miles north to see how austerity can actually work.

Exhibit #1 is Estonia. This small Baltic nation recently had a spate of notoriety when its president, Toomas Ilves, got into a Twitter debate with Paul Krugman over the country's austerity policies. Krugman sneered at Estonia as the "poster child for austerity defenders," remarking of the nation's recovery from recession, "this is what passes for economic triumph?" In return, President Ilves criticized Krugman as "smug, overbearing, and patronizing."

Twitter-borne tit-for-tat aside, here are the facts: Estonia had been one of the showcases for free-market economic policies and had been growing steadily until the 2008 economic crisis burst a debt-fueled property bubble, shut off credit flows, and curbed export demand, plunging the country into a severe economic downturn.

However, instead of increasing government spending in hopes of stimulating the economy, as Krugman has urged, the Estonians rejected Keynesianism in favor of genuine austerity. Among other measures, the Estonian government cut public-sector wages by 10 percent, gradually raised the retirement age from 61 to 65 by 2026, reduced eligibility for health benefits, and liberalized the country's labormarket, making it easier for businesses to hire and fire workers.

Estonia did unfortunately enact a small increase in its value-added tax, but it deliberately kept taxes low on businesses, investors, and entrepreneurs, refusing to make changes to its flat 21 percent income tax. In fact, the government has put in place plans to reduce the income tax to 20 percent by 2015.

Cutting government spending, reducing taxes, and liberalizing labor markets brings more economic growth, increased employment, less debt, and more prosperity.

Today, Estonia is actually running a budget surplus. Its national debt is 6 percent of GDP. By comparison, Greece's is 159 percent of GDP. Ours is 102 percent.

Economic growth has been a robust 7.6 percent, the best in the EU. And, although the unemployment rate remains too high, at 11.7 percent, that is down from 19 percent during the worst of the recession. It's hard to see how a Krugman-style stimulus would have done much better.

Next door, Latvia has also embarked on a successful austerity program. In 2008, facing a deep recession — the worst in Europe, with a 24 percent drop in GDP from 2007 to 2009 — and a run on the country's largest bank, Latvia turned to Europe for a €7.5 billion bailout. But unlike Greece and other countries that seem to look at such assistance as a form of permanent welfare payment, Latvia used the EU loan as an opportunity to make the painful government reforms necessary to restore long-term economic health.

Latvia embarked on the toughest budget cuts in Europe. Half of all government-run agencies were eliminated, the number of public employees was reduced by a third, and public-sector wages were slashed by an average of 25 percent.

The third Baltic country, Lithuania, also dramatically cut government spending — as much as 30 percent in nominal terms — including reductions in public-sector wages of 20 to 30 percent and pension cuts of as much as 11 percent. Unfortunately, Lithuania may have undermined the effects of those cuts by also raising taxes, including a significant hike in corporate taxes. Still, Lithuania is expected to see its economy grow by 2.2 percent this year.

Krugman and others do have a point in saying that the Baltic countries benefit from strong trade opportunities with neighbors such as Sweden and Finland that have growing economies. And it is true that, while their recoveries have been strong, none of the Baltic countries is expected to fully return to pre-recession levels of prosperity until 2014 at the earliest. On the other hand, when are Greece, Spain, or for that matter the United States — none of which has done much if anything to reduce government spending — likely to return to pre-recession growth?

If the Baltics are not a sufficient example of the value of cutting government, we can look a bit to the west, to Switzerland. Switzerland's constitution includes provisions that limit the country's ability both to run debt (the growth in government spending can be no higher than average revenue growth, calculated over a multi-year period) and to increasetaxes (taxes can be increased only by a double-majority referendum, meaning that a majority of voters in a majority of cantons would have to approve the increase).

As a result, total government spending in Switzerland at all levels of government is just 34 percent of GDP, compared to an average of 52 percent in the EU, and more than 41 percent in the United States. Switzerland's national debt is just 41 percent of GDP and shrinking at a time when other European countries are becoming more insolvent. Switzerland's economic growth has not yet returned to pre-recession levels, but it is better than the growth in, say, Greece or Spain. And its unemployment rate is just 3.1 percent, the lowest in Europe.

If that's not enough evidence, we can just look to our own neighbor Canada. The Canadian federal government has been reducing spending in real terms since the 1990s. As a result, federal spending as a share of GDP has fallen from 22 percent in 1995 to just 15.9 percent today. Compare that to the United States, where the federal government spends 24 percent of GDP, roughly half again as much. And, while Canadian provincial governments spend appreciably more than do most U.S. states, total government spending at all levels in Canada has declined from 53 percent in the 1990s to just 42 percent today — still far too high, but clearly moving in the right direction.

Canada has also cut taxes. Corporate tax rates at the federal level were slashed from 29 percent in 2000 to 15 percent today, less than half the U.S. federal rate. Capital-gains taxes were also cut, as were, to a lesser degree, income taxes.

When Canada — led for so long by the ultra-liberal Pierre Trudeau — has smaller government and lower taxes than the U.S., something is seriously out of whack.

As a result of these changes, Canada's national debt is now less than 34 percent of GDP. Its budget deficit this year will be just 3.5 percent of GDP, while ours will be 8.3 percent. Canada's economy will grow at 2.6 percent this year — a modest rate but faster than ours — and its unemployment rate is 7.3 percent, again better than ours.

All these countries are following the successful examples set by other nations such as Chile, Ireland, and New Zealand in the 1980s and '90s, and Slovakia from 2000 to 2003.

Of course, none of these examples is perfect, and cuts in government spending will not, by themselves, cure all ills. These countries often benefited from circumstances aside from fiscal discipline. Still, the evidence is there. Cutting government spending, reducing taxes, and liberalizing labor markets brings more economic growth, increased employment, less debt, and more prosperity. The opposite is also true: Bigger government and higher taxes result in more economic misery — see Greece, Spain, etc.

As the United States looks to its future, it is time to decide which path we will follow.

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A Scary Development, Getting Worse And Worse

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Quote from Yannis:

Austerity Works
by Michael D. Tanner
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Quote from Ricter:

Government spending as a percent of GDP by country:
(Tax revenue as a percent of GDP is included.)

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Hey R: See how GGW's Blaise Ingoglia does it in his presentation? Clear premise, few key numbers, big message... He's good, learn from him! I wish I could do this - I share his concern but I can't explain it as well, and so I just post his stuff here

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Quote from Yannis:

OK, so, if I understand this right, we are doing better than Zimbabwe but not as well as Albania... Yeah, that's key, very important, I'll remember that... What's your point again?

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June: Obama's Disastrous Month
By DICK MORRIS

If Obama loses by the landslide I have been predicting -- and he will -- his undoing started in June.

At the end of 2011, Obama's approval ratings rarely rose above 45% and occasionally dropped as low as 40% in the daily tracking polls of both Gallup (registered voters) and Rasmussen (likely voters). But, as 2012 dawned, his approval gradually rose to 49-50 percent on the strength of a perception of economic recovery. Monthly job creation solidly above 200,000 and dropping first time unemployment claims fueled the heady sense that we were emerging from the Great Recession at last.

But, as we noted in Take Back America and Revolt!, debt implosion crises are often characterized by false dawns - periods where the data looks up and people come to believe the recovery is, at last, underway. But the optimism fades as does the recovery. The only way out is to cut spending and borrowing so the world's panic at the high levels of global indebtedness can be eased.

By April and May, it became clear that there was no recovery underway as the monthly total of new jobs dipped first below 200,000 and then below even 100,000. Unemployment rose to 8.2% and the data from the first quarter indicated a growth rate of only 1.9 percent, well below the 3 percent pace at which the GDP had been growing in the last quarter of 2011.

Voters didn't need the statistics to remind them that the economy was not in recovery. Foreclosures, layoffs, and long-term unemployment told the story in their own daily lives.

So, in June, Obama's job approval fell back to its 2011 levels of 45 percent or less. Romney opened up a lead in Gallup's daily tracking of registered voters and his lead among Rasmussen's sample of likely voters grew to 48-43.

Obama's verbal gaffes ("the private sector is doing fine") and his ongoing battles with Congress which have led to the potential of a contempt citation helped spur his drop in the polls. The Scott Walker victory in Wisconsin gave those who were watching with open minds a foretaste of the dimensions of the coming GOP landslide.

Now, Obama faces a double hit: a possible Congressional contempt citation for his Attorney-General and the looming Supreme Court decision on Obamacare. And then will come June's likely dismal jobs report which will be released at the end of next week.

More disturbing for Obama is that his June swoon happened despite spending at least $50 million and likely much more on paid advertising during May and June. He threw his best punch - an attack on Romney's record at Bain Capital - and got nothing for it.

Even conventional observers are now noting the chances for a Republican victory. We'll see and hear more of that as the summer progresses.

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Obama's Economy

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Patchwork tax policy and coming Taxmageddon
Impending rate hikes will explode Americans’ annual liabilities
By Herman Cain

One of the worst habits of our political class is to piece together patchwork economic maneuvers in lieu of solid, stable policies that lay the groundwork for long-term prosperity. Nowhere is this inclination more troubling, or more damaging to our economic well-being, than in the area of taxes.

And as a result, we are staring down the barrel of the most massive tax increase in the history of this nation – a series of scheduled rate hikes that will explode Americans’ annual tax liabilities to the tune of nearly $500 billion. This will be the result of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts expiring, plus the expiration of the temporary payroll tax cut President Obama put in place in 2010 and later extended, and the onset of many of the tax increases associated with Obamacare (assuming the Supreme Court has allowed these parts of the law to stand).

How serious is this? A new report from the American Council for Capital Formation estimates that the combination of the Bush tax cut expiration and other scheduled measures will cause the economy to lose $855 billion from the gross domestic product. If you think the meager 2 percent growth we’ve been having lately is bad – and it is – what do you think will happen when the economy recedes by 5 or 6 percent in 2013?

The economy will lose 1 million jobs next year, and up to 3 million in 2014. Consumer spending will decrease by $1 trillion. The so-called Great Recession will hardly be remembered in the history books if this monstrosity is allowed to kick in.

This horrible outcome is not set in stone. There is every chance that Congress and President Obama will take action to forestall this massive tax increase. They faced the expiration of the Bush tax cuts in 2010, and they came up with a last-minute deal to extend them to the end of this year.

But the likely issue is not whether they will do something. Rather, it is whether what they do will make any sense. Their recent history, particularly the last-minute 2010 deal, does not inspire confidence.

For one thing, President Obama has shown little interest in extending the Bush tax cuts, at least for the so-called rich, which he defines as people who make more than $250,000 a year – a definition that includes most small-business owners.

For another thing, Congress can never seem to agree on a long-term vision for how to shape and maintain our tax code. Even in 2001 and 2003, when Republicans controlled the House, the Senate and the White House, they couldn’t muster enough votes to pass the Bush tax cuts on a permanent basis. The tax cut with the original 2010 sunset date was a typical Washington compromise that made no sense policy-wise, but represented the kind of political compromise that allowed the bill to pass.

When the 2010 expiration was looming, Congress and the president did nothing until after the midterm elections – and then the Democrats would only agree to a two-year extension in exchange for another 99-week extension of unemployment benefits. So we found ourselves with yet another temporary patchwork policy, accepted by one side as the price for the patchwork policy the other one wanted.

This kind of policy-making serves as a serious drag on economic growth and job creation. The business community is reluctant to commit capital over the long term because it has no idea what tomorrow’s policy might be. The most likely scenario for the end of this year is yet another assortment of temporary measures.

One of the reasons my 9-9-9 plan for replacing the tax code resonated with voters is that it’s simple and straightforward. It’s designed to raise revenue efficiently without stunting economic growth, and it’s not riddled with complexities that give politicians the opportunity to engage in endless tinkering.

Because they make tax policy in this way, we face a cataclysmic tax increase and economic meltdown at the end of this year. They must act to stop it, but it’s not enough that they merely do something. They need to stop patching up the tax code with duct tape and design a new one that’s simple, straightforward and growth-friendly. I have no expectation that this will ever happen with Barack Obama in the White House – but that’s a problem the American people can solve in November.

Once they do, they have to demand that Republicans don’t once again blow the chance to fix the tax code for real. When they feel the heat, they will see the light.

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Obama’s Ground Game Fantasy

http://www.dickmorris.com/obamas-gr...tv-lunch-alert/

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At super PAC fundraiser, Condoleezza Rice knocks Obama for immigration move and predicts Romney victory
By Chris Moody, Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON-- As a former Secretary of State and National Security adviser, it's not every day Condoleezza Rice chooses to talk domestic policy over foreign issues. And as a scholar with a Ph.D. in political science, it's not every day that she chooses to talk politics over policy.

But on Monday night during a super PAC fundraiser at the Capitol Hill Club, a private hangout for Republicans only steps from the House office buildings, Rice wasn't shy about diving into both.

Rice, whose post-Bush years have been spent mostly at Stanford University, is making her voice heard in political circles again. Just days after reportedly bringing down the house with a powerful speech at a Utah retreat with Republicans donors for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, Rice flew to Washington to headline a fundraiser for ShePAC, a new super PAC that supports conservative female candidates. The appearance was notably her very first DC fundraiser for a political outside group, complete with a private foreign policy briefing with sitting female lawmakers and Republican House and Senate candidates from across the country.

While Rice spoke to the candidates on the third floor of the club, about 150 ShePAC supporters waited in a reception room downstairs, noshing on a spread of roast beef, glazed ham, sweet potato puffs and watermelon soup while bartenders poured glasses of whiskey, vodka and wine in the back.

Introduced as "the smartest woman in the world," Rice emerged from a side kitchen to address the group.

Over the course of about 10 minutes at the lectern, she focused her speech on a need for domestic reforms and called for a change in executive leadership.

"This is a truly consequential election. This is perhaps a turning point for the country. I'm very often asked to speak about the foreign policy aspects and there are some key important foreign policy issues before us," Rice said before briefly listing a series of challenges abroad. "There are many foreign policy issues on the agenda, but we are not going to address any of those international challenges unless we get it right at home. And it's not right at home right now, and the American people know it."

She went on to tell her own story of a child who grew up in the segregated South whose parents encouraged her to seek an education. Rice lamented what she sees as changing attitudes about opportunities for success in the United States and--without calling him by name--criticized President Barack Obama for announcing that his administration would selectively enforce immigration laws.

"Americans who come here from other places to be a part of that belief that you can come from humble circumstances and do great things, which is why we need an immigration policy that works," Rice said. "But, by the way, we need one that the Congress and the president work out together, and we need to do something about access to education."

Rice, whose name is increasingly coming up as a possible candidate to become Romney's running mate, ended her talk with a shout-out to the former Massachusetts governor.

"America has a way of making the impossible seem inevitable in retrospect, and we're going to do it again," she said. "We're going to strengthen ourselves, our democracy at home, we're going to strengthen our economy, we're going to do it with great leadership like the people in this room and like Governor Mitt Romney, who will be a terrific president."

When she finished, Rice promptly exited through a side door without talking to reporters waiting nearby. As she walked toward a vehicle waiting in an alley, an aide said she would not be answering questions because she had a scheduled appearance on Fox News later that night and wanted any new comments to be exclusive to the network.

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Obama is the best at border security:

"According to the most recent year-end reports from Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol apprehensions fell to 340,252 in 2011 -- a 53 percent drop since 2008, when nearly 724,000 border-crossers were nabbed.

"At the same time, the number of border agents hit a high of 21,444, according to CBP. Most agents -- 18,500 -- now are on the Southwest border. There were about 10,000 agents total in 2004.

"Even with fewer targets, patrols in the Southwest dramatically boosted the amounts of drugs, guns and cash seized over the last three years compared to 2006 through 2008. Seventy-four percent more money, 41 percent more drugs, and 159 percent more weapons, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

"And, in spite of the crime allegations, DHS said that according to 2010 FBI reports, violent crimes in the Southwest border states dropped by an average of 40 percent in the last two decades. Since 2008, crime rates have fallen in each Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas.

"Part of the reason for that progress is funding for border security, which Congress has consistently boosted, most recently in 2010, passing a bill by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that sent $600 million to border enforcement.

"Another factor driving down illegal immigration is the poor economy. Migration from Mexico has recently reversed, with more Mexican immigrants leaving the United States. Record deportations under Obama, whose administration shipped nearly 400,000 undocumented immigrants out of the country last year including many with criminal records, also is a factor."

Obama's Failed Presidency
By DICK MORRIS

Particularly if the Supreme Court invalidates the individual mandate at the heart of the ObamaCare law, this president's tenure is increasingly going to be seen as an unmitigated failure.

The economy is in a shambles and getting worse. The national debt is bloated. The stimulus didn't work. His healthcare reform law, his signature program, might be unconstitutional. He tied the nation up for a year and a half, and lost his party's House majority and much of its margin in the Senate, to pass and defend a law that was so poorly written, it could get thrown out by the court. He might be cited for contempt of Congress. He hasn't delivered on his environmental commitments. Cap-and-trade is a dead letter. Gov. Scott Walker's victory in Wisconsin makes a mockery of Obama's pledge to strengthen organized labor during his term. American popularity around the globe is lower than it was under Bush, and both Iran and North Korea are more threatening.

What's left?

Any even vaguely objective observer has to agree that Obama has failed. The parties still disagree on whose fault the failure was and what the remedy is, but there can be no doubt that he has utterly failed.

Spurred by this record of failure, the case against Obama is rapidly becoming non-ideological and even nonpartisan. Throughout his tenure, he has been under fire from the right for his liberal programs, big spending and grow-government tendencies. But now, the center and the left are chiming in, criticizing his competence, leadership, strength, experience and wisdom. He is coming to be seen as an amateur, not ready for prime time, prematurely elected president before he could acquire a real understanding of how the process works.

His speeches, once inspirational, now sound hollow. His tone, once uplifting, now is partisan and harsh. His demeanor was once unruffled and his voice calming. These days he often appears rattled and off balance. He ran a relatively gaffe-free campaign in 2008 (the encounter with Joe the Plumber excepted). But in 2012, he can't seem to do anything right. He attracted vast amounts of money in piling up a 2-to-1 financial advantage over McCain. But this year, he admits he will be outspent.

In a sense, Barack Obama has morphed into Jimmy Carter. Looking back at the 1980 election, we are tempted to see it in hindsight as the triumph of conservatism as Reagan swept to power. But, in fact, Reagan was careful not to run as an ideologue lest he be impaled like Goldwater was in 1964. Rather, Jimmy Carter lost the election more than Reagan won it. It was the Republican's question, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" and his calculation of the misery index (combining unemployment and inflation) that brought Carter down.

Carter, himself, was not a leftist in 1980. He had been a moderate as president. His liberalism was still in the future. He was beaten not because he strayed too far left, but because he couldn't get out of his own way. The American public came to see him in much the same terms that they now use to describe Obama: In over his head, hasn't a clue, can't get anything done.

To win, Obama needs a phenomenal turnout among downscale voters. He's not going to get it. There is no enthusiasm for him among his base. Nobody can be inspired by his record of failure. Democrats are increasingly voting with their feet, staying home during his coming convention and distancing themselves from the top of the ticket. And few voters are sufficiently scared of Mitt Romney to come out to vote for a president who hasn't done anything right.

Six months ago, when I predicted that 2012 would be a Republican landslide, few agreed with me. Now I'm getting more company.

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"Dick Morris' Crackpot Predictions If Obama Gets Re-Elected
Posted by Ellen 38.20pc on March 27, 2012 · Flag

How crazy is Dick Morris? So crazy that even Sean Hannity refused to buy into his Glenn-Beck-like fantasy of socialism, European rule and other cataclysms should Republican Doomsday occur and President Obama get re-elected.

Among other Doomsday scenarios, Morris predicted: He (Obama) will eliminate the private health insurance industry... make the United States a vassal state to a globalist entity... sign away our royalties of offshore oil drilling..."

Hannity listened without comment or probing for more until, finally, he put a stop to Morris' talk.

Morris has got to have an inlaw in a high place at Fox. How else to explain his continued presence there? He's been reprimanded for ethical lapses, made a series of outlandish predictions and analyses, and used Fox News airtime to further his personal vendetta against Hillary Clinton.

By the way, less than a year ago, Morris told Hannity, "I don’t think Obama has a prayer of getting re-elected."

Video via Media Matters."

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Quote from Ricter:

...Video via Media Matters."

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Obama’s “Victory” Will Defeat Him

http://www.dickmorris.com/obamas-vi...tv-lunch-alert/

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From The RNC

Today, the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare. While this may come as a devastating blow to the millions of Americans who rallied against the government's infringement on their health care and basic freedoms - the fight's not over. It has just begun.

We can't afford Obamacare.

Obamacare hurts the economy, limits Americans' choice in health care, and interferes with the doctor-patient relationship. Hidden among the 2,700 pages of Obamacare crafted behind closed doors is a web of new government rules and regulations liberals disguised as cost cutting measures. In reality, health care costs continue to rise, and Obamacare will cost taxpayers trillions in new federal spending.

America needs real health care reform, and that means repealing Obamacare.

We need market-based solutions that give patients more choice, not less. The answer to rising health care costs is not, and never will be, Big Government. We must protect Americans' access to the care they need, from the doctor they choose, at a lower cost. We must enact commonsense, step-by-step reforms based on the free market and not dictated by government bureaucrats.

Without a change of leadership, Americans will continue to suffer.

Today's Supreme Court decision sets the stakes for the November election. Now, the only way to save the country from Obamacare's budget-busting government takeover of our health care and intrusion on our basic freedoms is to elect Republicans who understand the economy, respect free enterprise, and can provide the leadership we need.

There's still much more to do - the stakes are too high. On November 6, we must elect Mitt Romney and Republican candidates and put America on the path toward a brighter economic future and successful health care reform.

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Gingrich: Obamacare Repeal 'Defining Issue of Fall Campaign'
By Martin Gould and John Bachman

The Supreme Court ruling in favor of President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul will do little to reduce the uncertainty that is preventing employers filling job openings, former GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich predicted.

Instead that doubt will continue at least until November when voters will decide whether to install a Republican president and Congress that would repeal the law, he said in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV.

Speaking from Italy, the former House speaker said, “Unless the Congress repeals it, it’s going to be law. And unless Obama is defeated for president, it’s going to be law.

“So that guarantees that the uncertainty continues at least until November.

“It also means that those businesses that have refused to hire people because of their fear of the cost of the mandates are going to continue to refuse to hire people.”

But Gingrich said he was hopeful that Democratic senators facing elections in November will put pressure on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to put the issue to a vote this summer. The GOP-controlled House has already scheduled a vote for the second week of July.

“You’ll see pressure in the Senate,” he said. “You’ll see Sen. Reid on behalf of the Democrats trying to block a vote in the Senate.

He named Sens. Bill Nelson of Florida and Jon Tester of Montana as two who are up before voters who will now be “in the hot seat” over a vote.

“The voters are going to have their attention focused, once again, on Obamacare,” he said.

“People were sort of assuming the Supreme Court would solve the problem for them and now it’s put back in the lap of the American people and of their legislative and presidential leadership.

“There was a pretty in-depth Pew poll about a week ago that said that clearly, the Republican version of what this bill is about, has been winning and it’s clear the American people are increasingly opposed, by about a 20 point margin, something like 56 to 36 in favor of repeal of the act.

“When people actually calculate how big a tax the mandate is, the whole reason Obama didn’t want to consider it a tax, is that the bill will become tremendously unpopular.

“People realize that this is a giant government-imposed tax and future Congresses could raise that tax and make it even higher.

“When those numbers come out in the next two or three days you will see an even deeper opposition to Obamacare,” he predicted.

Gingrich said that Chief Justice John Roberts’ reason for siding with the liberals on the bench was “the worst possible grounds for Obama.”

“I’m very surprised that he came down like this. I had not contemplated the tax solution because Obama had been so adamant that it was not a tax.

“This ruling could go down as a major mistake by Roberts or as an extraordinarily clever move and we won’t know for a long time which it is. He clearly has upheld the law, which must make Obama and his supporters happy, but on the other hand, he’s upheld the law on the worst possible grounds for them.”

Gingrich said Roberts had “placed before the country a firm, clear choice. If you want the largest tax increase in history, keep Obamacare. If you want to repeal the largest tax increase in history, repeal Obamacare.

“Now it’s appropriately up to the elected legislators and the elected president and this will … become the defining issues of the fall campaign.”

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Congress: ‘It’s Not a Tax.’ SCOTUS: ‘Yes It Is.’
by Michael F. Cannon

The Supreme Court ruled that ObamaCare’s individual mandate is not constitutional under the Commerce Power, which was how Congress framed the mandate to avoid a political backlash from calling it a tax. Congress and the president swore up and down that the mandate was not a tax. Yet the Court upheld the mandate as a valid use of that disavowed taxing power. What Congress said the individual mandate is, the Court said is not constitutional. What Congress said the mandate is not, the Court ruled is constitutional. Everybody got that?

Where does that leave us?
1.The Supreme Court just enacted a law that Congress never would have passed.
2.The Court just told Congress it is okay to lie to the people to avoid political accountability.

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Obama's Pyrrhic Victory
By DICK MORRIS

Today, Barack Obama won the battle, but will lose the war. The Supreme Court decision makes Obamacare the central issue in the 2012 election, just like it was in the 2010 election. And we know how that turned out.

The Court has sustained the individual mandate. That imposes on us a mandate: To defeat Obama and take the Senate. Now that is the only way we can kill this horrible law.

Public opinion has rejected this law for two years now by about the same margin: 40% support; 55% oppose. While the Court decision may give the law a short term positive bump, the underlying reality of the costs of the program and the increases in everyone's health insurance rates it is already triggering will eliminate any near term gain. Ultimately, it will still be 40-55 against the law.

Right now, presidential polls show Romney and Obama both in the mid-40s. The single most unpopular thing Obama has done is the health care law. Now it is going to be the lynchpin issue. It means that the election itself will increasingly be polarized around opinions of the health care law - a fifteen point loser for the Democrats.

In a real sense, the Supreme Court did not let Obama off the hook by striking down the law. Now he will have to defend it during the election.

Remember what this law does. It requires everyone to spend upwards of 7 percent of their income on health insurance or pay a fine of several thousand dollars. Neither is an attractive alternative for the young and the poor who are the president's political base. And, with the expansion of Medicaid rejected by the Court, the government will not be there to help them.

In 2010, Democrats running for Congress (most of whom lost) did not even attempt to defend Obamacare. They put as much distance between themselves and the law as they could. But now, neither Obama nor his Senate and House candidates will have that option since the Supreme Court has kicked the football back into political play.

The rejection of the Medicaid expansion is huge. This mandate - which would have quadrupled the Medicaid population in some states (like Texas) would have forced all states to pass income taxes and required those with them already to raise them substantially. It required coverage of about a quarter of the country under Medicaid, something the states cannot afford. Some saw it as a way to equalize the north and the south in taxes, eliminating the competitive advantage the south has long enjoyed.

As an American, I would have rather seen the individual mandate thrown out. As a partisan, I'm thrilled that we still have the issue to beat Obama with.

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Rebuttal To Obama’s Negative Ad On Romney’s Record As Governor

http://www.dickmorris.com/rebuttal-...rd-as-governor/

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"Obama Approval Ratings Rise Tracks Increasing Consumer Confidence

"WASHINGTON -- On Thursday, the Gallup Daily tracking poll marked a symbolic milestone. For the first time in more than a month and only the third time since last July, Gallup reported an approval rating for President Barack Obama (49 percent) that was slightly higher than his disapproval rating (46 percent).

"On Friday, the Rasmussen Reports automated tracking survey marked a similar landmark. It showed Obama's approval rating at 50 percent or greater nationwide for the fifth consecutive day, a popularity not matched on the Rasmussen poll since January 2011.

"The two daily tracking surveys are not alone. National telephone polls released in the past week by Fox News, ABC News and the Washington Post, Ipsos/Reuters, and the Democratic Party-affiliated Public Policy Polling (also sponsored by the website DailyKos and the Service Employees International Union) have all found increases in Obama's approval rating since October. Most of the increases range between 4 and 6 percentage points; the Ipsos/Reuters survey found a smaller rise.



"The improvement since the fall has also been evident in state polls, including such likely battlegrounds in the general presidential election as Ohio, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Virginia.

"Given the recent upward blip in the two national daily-tracking polls, some have looked for explanations in the events of the past week, particularly last Friday's Labor Department report of a rising employment rate. While positive economic news is the most likely reason for Obama's improving job rating, the upward trend in his ratings did not begin in February. In fact, most of the surveys have tracked a gradual increase in Obama's ratings that began in late October.

"The HuffPost Pollster chart, based on all available public polls, shows a slow, steady rise of roughly five percentage points in the president's job approval rating since it hit its all-time low in early October."

Obamacare Becomes Obamatax

http://www.dickmorris.com/obamacare...tv-lunch-alert/

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ObamaCare's Now a Bigger Mess
by Michael D. Tanner

If the new health care law wasn't enough of a mess before last week's Supreme Court decision, that ruling actually added another layer of cost, complexity and political contentiousness to the bill.

By striking down part of the law that required states to expand their Medicaid programs, the court tossed a very hot potato into the laps of state lawmakers everywhere.

ObamaCare required states to increase eligibility for Medicaid to 133 percent of the poverty line, or roughly $30,000 per year for a family of four. The expansion would also make childless single men (a notoriously high-cost group) eligible for Medicaid for the first time. In all, about 40 percent of all the people projected to gain coverage under ObamaCare would do so via Medicaid.

But this imposed real costs on states. For example, the Medicaid expansion would cost New Jersey taxpayers roughly $35 billion over 10 years, and New Yorkers as much as $52 billion.

Not surprisingly, many states balked — and now the high court has agreed: Congress can't strip all Medicaid funds from states that refuse the expansion, as the ObamaCare law threatened.

So what will state legislators do now?

If they agree to expand their Medicaid programs anyway, they'll be choosing to pile new costs on their state budgets and new taxes on their constituents.

And if a state doesn't expand its Medicaid program, most of those who would've been eligible for Medicaid will now become eligible for subsidies through ObamaCare's health-insurance exchanges. And those subsidies are paid in full by the feds.

Thus, New York, for example, would shift most of that $52 billion in new costs back to the federal government.

Of course, if states do shift those costs back to the feds, that will cause the federal cost of ObamaCare to skyrocket. If every state were to refuse to expand its Medicaid program, the feds would save roughly $130 billion in their share of Medicaid costs in 2014, but would have to pay $230 billion more in new exchange-based subsidies — for a net added cost of $100 billion. And that's just for the first year.

Remember, this is a law that already will cost as much as $2.7 trillion from 2014 to 2024, and will add more than $823 billion to the federal deficit — estimates that assumed state taxpayers would be picking up some Medicaid costs. How will Congress react if billions or perhaps trillions of dollars in new costs are added to the federal budget?

Here's another complicating factor: Most states have not yet set up an exchange. Many, especially ones with Republican governors or legislatures, may refuse altogether. By most estimates, as few as 15 states are likely to have exchanges in operation by the 2014 deadline.

ObamaCare gives the feds the authority to step in, setting up and operating an exchange in any state that doesn't set up its own — but there is reason to doubt that they have resources to do so in so many states.

Anyway, federal subsidies are available only through exchanges that the states set up. The feds can't offer subsidies through a federally run exchange.

Thus, if states neither expanded Medicaid nor set up exchanges, that would effectively block most of ObamaCare's new entitlement spending.

One last wrinkle: It is those subsidies that trigger the penalty under ObamaCare for employers who fail to provide workers with insurance. So states that don't set up exchanges could also escape the "employer mandate."

That is, ObamaCare requires employers with 50 or more workers to provide health insurance or pay a fine...er, tax. But that tax only kicks in if at least one employee qualifies for subsidies under the exchange. Since subsidies can only be provided via a state-authorized exchange, a state that refuses to set one up could end up blocking the employer mandate altogether. At the very least, expect some employers to sue on this point, leading to yet another Supreme Court challenge.

And if, as expected, ObamaCare drives up the cost of insurance, many employers could end up dropping their current health insurance. So the end result of all this could be even more uninsured than before the law passed.

In short, the Supreme Court's ruling not only guaranteed that ObamaCare will be an issue in this fall's federal elections; it dumped a mess in the laps of governors and state legislators, too.

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Support for Obamacare skyrocketing:

"Republicans Start to Panic as ObamaCare Reaches 50% Approval

"By: Jason Easley - July 2nd, 2012

http://www.politicususa.com/republi...0-approval.html

"According to a new CNN poll, Americans are still divided on ObamaCare. Fifty percent of those surveyed agreeing with the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the law, while 49% disagreed. This represents a two point increase from a Reuters/Ipsos poll released yesterday that found that 48% support the Affordable Care Act. Support for the ACA has increased from 34% in the fall of 2011 to 43% before the Supreme Court decision to 50% supporting the court’s decision today.

"Republicans quickly tried to turn their Supreme Court defeat into political ammunition by reviving many of the same attacks they used against the ACA in 2009 and 2010. GOP congressional leaders like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner revived their government takeover of healthcare talking points and called for immediate repeal of the law, but a funny thing is happening on the way back in time to 2010.

"Support for the law, and the decision that ruled the law constitutional, is growing. Instead of emptily repeating the Republican cries for repeal, the media has been asking the GOP exactly what they intend to replace ObamaCare with.

"When pressured by Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday on what he was going to do about the uninsured if he repealed the ACA, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell got flustered and stated that the uninsured in America aren’t an issue. As bad as McConnell’s performance was, he was outdone by Speaker of the House John Boehner. Speaker Boehner was left clinging to his general talking points about common sense reform as CBS’s Norah O’Donnell continued to pressure him to specifically state what parts of the ACA he would keep, and which parts he would repeal.

"Boehner was so broken by the whole experience that a few times during the interview he actually raised his voice and yelled his answers at O’Donnell. Evidence of the GOP backtracking on the ACA can be found in the fact that when pressed Boehner and McConnell both admitted that there are good points in the law that should not be repealed.

"The Republican answer to the ACA is repeal and replace, but things quickly fall apart when they asked the question, replace with what? The fact that the ACA has gone from being widely unpopular to a virtual 50/50 split in the days since the Supreme Court decision is a major problem for the GOP, and odds are that the law is going to continue to grow in popularity as insured Americans begin to receive their share of the $1.1 billion in insurance premium rebates.

"Time and political momentum are working against those who are advocating for repeal. There was panic in Boehner and McConnell’s interviews, and that panic will only grow if the public continues to get comfortable with “ObamaCare.”

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Quote from Ricter:

Support for Obamacare skyrocketing: "Republicans Start to Panic as ObamaCare Reaches 50% Approval ...

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The Real Truth

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Quote from Yannis:

From one of the most worthless, untrustworthy liberal rags of all time... www.politicususa.com

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Quote from Ricter: Kill the messenger?

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Another Real Truth

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Quote from Yannis:

Don't trust this ^^%%$$## messenger

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The Roberts Opinion
by Fred Thompson

In 2005 I was asked by the Bush administration to assist Judge John Roberts during the Senate confirmation process for his nomination as chief justice of the United States. Over several pressure-packed days, and throughout the confirmation process, I felt I got to know him fairly well. I found him to be one of the most brilliant, thoughtful, and humorous people I’d ever met. Those qualities don’t always go together. It was clear he was going to be a major right-of-center voice on the Supreme Court for decades to come. So it is with a great deal of personal interest that I have considered his opinion in Sebelius and the commentary that has followed.

The Antithesis Of John Roberts
The chief justice is a good man, whose record over the whole of his career will probably be a good one, perhaps even a great one. However, I do not agree with this opinion. I believe the dissent got it right. I am well aware of the fact that a conscientious judge must sometimes rule in a manner that he personally disagrees with. But the majority opinion appears to be a result looking for a rationale, which is the antithesis of what I ever thought would be the approach of John Roberts. One of his new admirers described his opinion as “incoherent but brilliant.” That’s the most depressing thing I have read in a long time.

There is rampant speculation as to why Justice Roberts rendered the opinion he did. To many on the left it is believed that he was looking out for the Supreme Court as an institution. Liberals made it clear well in advance that if the Court struck Obamacare down they would attack the Court as politicized and illegitimate. They now say that the chief justice “put the country first” by the “clever” means of rejecting the government’s central Commerce Clause argument and instead achieving the same result by relying upon the federal government’s power to tax, an argument that was seen as peripheral at best by all the lower courts that had considered the issue of constitutionality. The same is true with regard to the litigants.

A Misguided View Of The Role Of The Court
Some on the right say that Roberts has actually hurt Obama’s chances for reelection; that he has undermined Obama’s constitutional rationale (the Commerce Clause), restricted his ability to pay for ObamaCare (giving states the right to reject the Medicaid provisions), and hung a big tax albatross around his neck during an election year (holding that the mandate penalty is a tax).

There may be some truth to all or part of this speculation. The problem is that none of these considerations are an appropriate basis for deciding a lawsuit. Cases are still supposed to be decided upon the law and the facts before the court. This may seem a mundane point in a discussion involving institutional and national salvation, but it’s true nevertheless. An umpire does not concern himself with the outcome of the game as he is calling balls and strikes.

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The States Resist Obamacare
by Michael D. Tanner

One of the few bright spots in the Supreme Court’s ruling on Obamacare was its 7–2 decision striking down the Obama administration’s attempt to blackmail states into going along with a massive and costly expansion of Medicaid. Barely a day later, Florida governor Rick Scott announced that his state would not expand Medicaid eligibility to 133 percent of the poverty level, which comes out to roughly $30,000 per year for a family of four, or allow single, childless men to participate in the program. Earlier, Scott had rejected another key component of Obamacare, refusing to establish a state insurance exchange. He had even returned grants and other funding that the previous governor had received to help implement the legislation.

Scott was quickly joined by at least six other GOP governors in rejecting the Medicaid expansion, including governors Branstad (Iowa), Brownback (Kansas), Haley (South Carolina), Heineman (Nebraska), Jindal (Louisiana), and, not surprisingly, Scott Walker (Wisconsin). At least seven other governors, including Bentley (Alabama), Bryant (Mississippi), Daniels (Indiana), Deal (Georgia), Fallin (Oklahoma), McDonnell (Virginia), Perry (Texas), and Jay Nixon (Missouri), a Democrat, had previously made statements suggesting that they were unlikely to expand their programs. Nevada had earlier passed regulations paving the way to participate in the expansion, but Governor Sandoval has since indicated he may reconsider.

In rejecting Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, these governors will be saving their state taxpayers billions of dollars. Initially, the federal government would have provided additional funding to cover the expansion, but those additional funds would have been phased down, starting in 2017. Eventually state taxpayers would have had to pick up much of the extra cost. For example, over ten years, the Medicaid expansion would have cost taxpayers in states such as Florida, Kansas, and Texas more than $20 billion each, while in New Jersey, for example, the expansion could cost as much as $35 billion. (In fairness, a few states such as California do emerge as net winners under the expansion formula, but they are clearly the exception, and there are plenty of other reasons why they should resist participating.)

On the other hand, if a state does not expand its Medicaid program, most of those who would have been eligible for Medicaid will now become eligible for subsidies through Obamacare’s health-insurance exchanges. Those subsidies are paid in full by the federal government. That much should be an easy call for any fiscally responsible governor, although the reasons to forgo the exchanges and the subsidies they entail are strong as well.

Beyond the Medicaid expansion, at least four governors have joined Governor Scott in explicitly refusing to set up a state-based insurance exchange: Jindal, Perry, and Walker, as well as Democratic New Hampshire governor John Lynch. Perhaps as many as 35 other states have simply not taken the actions necessary to establish exchanges. That may be less explicit a revolt, but it has the same result.

Of course, if states refuse to set up an exchange, Obamacare gives the federal government the authority to step in and operate an exchange itself in those states. But there is reason to doubt that the federal government has either the ability or the money to do so. Congress has not appropriated any funding for this purpose and seems unlikely to do so.

More important, as my colleague Michael Cannon has discovered, a little-discussed provision of Obamacare makes federal subsidies for insurance available only through those exchanges that the states set up themselves. So, while the federal government does have the power to create exchanges in states that refuse to do so, it cannot offer subsidies through those federally run exchanges.

Moreover, it is those subsidies that actually trigger the penalty under Obamacare for employers who fail to provide workers with insurance. Obamacare requires employers with 50 or more workers to provide health insurance or pay a tax, but only if at least one employee qualifies for subsidies under the exchange. Therefore, if subsidies can be provided only through a state-authorized exchange, a state could potentially block the employer mandate altogether, simply by refusing to establish an exchange.

The Obama administration and the IRS, unsurprisingly, have claimed that they have the right to unilaterally rewrite the law, yet again, to close this loophole. But, at the very least, this would be open to legal challenge. And perhaps next time the Supreme Court will get it right.

So, by refusing to go along with Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and by blocking state-run exchanges, governors are not just saving state taxpayers money. They are potentially reducing future federal spending by as much as $1.5 trillion over the next ten years.

While congressional Republicans have been reduced to taking symbolic repeal votes, and Mitt Romney struggles to determine whether or not the individual mandate is a tax, governors — and state legislators — have become the real heroes of the fight against Obamacare.

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Happy here and now!

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The Supreme Court's decision to uphold most of President Barack Obama's health care law will come home to roost for most taxpayers in about 2½ years, when they'll have to start providing proof on their tax returns that they have health insurance.

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Moreover, it is those subsidies that actually trigger the penalty under Obamacare for employers who fail to provide workers with insurance. Obamacare requires employers with 50 or more workers to provide health insurance or pay a tax, but only if at least one employee qualifies for subsidies under the exchange. Therefore, if subsidies can be provided only through a state-authorized exchange, a state could potentially block the employer mandate altogether, simply by refusing to establish an exchange.
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this is an interesting angle. Obamacare will hollow out liberal states even further.

States which refuse to set up exchanges will eventually have businesses move out of the liberal states to their states.

__________________
"From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

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Quote from Yannis:

WSJ: Fed Buying 61 Percent of US Debt
Wednesday, 28 Mar 2012 11:08 AM
By Julie Crawshaw and Forrest Jones

"Last year the Fed purchased a stunning 61 percent of the total net Treasury issuance, up from negligible amounts prior to the 2008 financial crisis," Goodman writes.

Goodman also warns that U.S. economy and markets are “at risk for a sharp correction” if conditions aren’t “normalized.”

"This not only creates the false appearance of limitless demand for U.S. debt but also blunts any sense of urgency to reduce supersized budget deficits."

The U.S. government is growing increasingly more dependent on borrowing to finance itself, with net issuance of Treasury securities hitting 8.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on average per annum, more than double levels before the crisis.

Fed intervention in the government debt market makes demand for Treasury bonds appear higher than it really is, as foreign creditors and other investors have fled U.S. government debt instruments and are looking elsewhere until the government makes serious attempts to curb spending and narrow its gaping deficits.

Goodman notes that foreign investors like Japan and China that once scooped up U.S. debt are shunning it. In 2009, such foreign purchases of U.S. debt amounted to 6 percent of GDP and has since falled by over eighty percent to a paltry 0.9 percent.

Without foreign buyers and a shrinking base of U.S. corporate and bank buyers, the Treasury has had to resort to the Federal Reserve itself to make the purchases. The Fed purchasing not only makes up the shortfall, but can keep long term interest rates artificially low.

"The Fed is in effect subsidizing U.S. government spending and borrowing via expansion of its balance sheet and massive purchases of Treasury bonds. This keeps Treasury interest rates abnormally low, camouflaging the true size of the budget deficit," Goodman writes.

"Similarly, the Fed is providing preferential credit to the U.S. government and covering a rapidly widening gap between Treasury's need to borrow and a more limited willingness among market participants to supply Treasury with credit."

Political bickering on both sides of the aisle has prevented politicians from cutting spending and undertaking fiscal reform.

Arguing over the role of tax hikes versus spending cuts hit a fever pitch in 2011, when both sides in Congress waited until the last minute to agree to terms surrounding lifting the government's debt ceiling.

Should fiscal bickering return, expect investors in U.S. debt who are not employed at the Federal Reserve to take note, other experts say.

"If people dig in, the polarization will get worse, and that could be the worst outcome for markets," says Eric Stein, vice president and portfolio manager at Eaton Vance in Boston, according to Reuters.

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Quote from jem:

...
States which refuse to set up exchanges will eventually have businesses move out of the liberal states to their states.

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Quote from Yannis:

Obama’s “Victory” Will Defeat Him

http://www.dickmorris.com/obamas-vi...tv-lunch-alert/

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Quote from piezoe:

..., and employees moving from the Southern braindrain states to the Northern "Libtard" states can flip the bird to the employers as they pass each other with their U-Hauls on opposite sides of the highway.

Don't count on any of this nonsense coming true folks. Now that the Court majority has ruled that the mandate is actually a choice and the penalty is actually a tax there are easy ways to get around this apparent discrepancy between the Federally run and State run insurance exchanges without having to get new legislation passed.

Y'all are sour grape bad losers.

I didn't get what I wanted with this crazy Romney-Roberts-Obamacare deal, but at least I know when I'm licked. Congratulations to the winners, I say.

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__________________
"From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

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Quote from jem:

I completely disagree. No sour grapes here. Just reporting what will happen to hack legislation even more hacked up by Roberts and the court. If they just amend the law a bit... suits will be triggered.

We know that there will be plenty of states saying no to obamacare. And we know the SCOTUS just supported states rights already.

Basically the law will have to be changed to single payer. Which is what it should have been from the beginning. IMO leftist won and they should have done it correctly the first time.

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Quote from jem:

I completely disagree. No sour grapes here. Just reporting what will happen to hack legislation even more hacked up by Roberts and the court. If they just amend the law a bit... suits will be triggered.

We know that there will be plenty of states saying no to obamacare. And we know the SCOTUS just supported states rights already.

Basically the law will have to be changed to single payer. Which is what it should have been from the beginning. IMO leftist won and they should have done it correctly the first time.

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Quote from piezoe:

The reason the "lefty, libtard, commie, socialists" couldn't do it right was not because they didn't try, it's because the the crackpot, nut case, fundamentalist, fascist, corporatist, Republiscums, forced them to crap on their own legislation to get anything at all passed. ^*

But one thing is certain, no governor that turns down federal money for their State will get re-elected. All the talk is nothing but hot air. When offered the bucks, they'll take them, then claim they were forced to...or use some other lie to justify going back on their word.
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^*Thought it might help get my point across if I borrowed some of your language. Hope you don't mind.

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"From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

His real story;

Dreams from his real father http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jrr...player_embedded

From the book;


What are the true origins of Obama's life and politics?

At age 18, Barack Obama admittedly arrived at Occidental College a committed revolutionary Marxist. What was the source of Obama's foundation in Marxism? Throughout his 2008 Presidential campaign and term in office, questions have been raised regarding Barack Obama's family background, economic philosophy, and fundamental political ideology. Dreams from My Real Father is the alternative Barack Obama "autobiography," offering a divergent theory of what may have shaped our 44th President's life and politics.

In Dreams from My Real Father, Barack Obama is portrayed by a voiceover actor who chronicles Barack Obama's life journey in socialism, from birth through his election to the Presidency. The film begins by presenting the case that Barack Obama's real father was Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist Party USA propagandist who likely shaped Obama's world view during his formative years. Barack Obama sold himself to America as the multi-cultural ideal, a man who stood above politics. Was the goat herding Kenyan father only a fairy tale to obscure a Marxist agenda, irreconcilable with American values?

This fascinating narrative is based in part on 2 years of research, interviews, newly unearthed footage and photos, and the writings of Davis and Obama himself. Dreams from My Real Father weaves together the proven facts with reasoned logic and speculation in an attempt to fill-in the obvious gaps in Obama's history. Is this the story Barack Obama should have told, revealing his true agenda for "fundamentally transforming America?" Director Joel Gilbert concludes, "The 'Birthers' have been on a fool's errand. To understand Obama's plans for America, the question is not 'Where's the Birth Certificate?,' the question is 'Who is the real father?'"

a porno mom hooks up with a very sexual socialist for one explosive mix - obama


The pictures in the book are shocking, a must read!

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Quote from piezoe:

Actually there is nothing unusual here with regard to the Fed buying bonds, but of course the amount of the purchases have been large...

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Happy here and now!

Priebus: Obama ‘Living in Fantasy Land’ on Economy
By Amy Woods

President Barack Obama is acting like he’s not in office as he campaigns around the country asking Americans whether they are satisfied with the status quo, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said on “Fox News Sunday.”

The fact of the matter is, Priebus told host John Roberts, there are half a million more people unemployed today than there were prior to Obama’s election.

“If they kept their promises, there would be eight and a half million more people employed today then there would be four years ago,” he said. “The fact of the matter is, this president can’t fulfill a promise. They’re living in fantasy land.”

Last week’s jobs report brought dismal news for the third consecutive month — a stagnant 8.2-percent unemployment rate.

“Mitt Romney has to win for the sake of the very idea of America,” Priebus said. “Mitt Romney has to win for liberty and freedom, and we have to put an end to this Barack Obama presidency before it puts an end to our way of life in America.”

He called Obama the “fundraiser-in-chief” and said his presidency has been “divisive” and his campaigning “nasty” and “negative.”

“Mitt Romney’s legacy is success in business, making promises and keeping promises, and that’s something that this president would only dream of being able to campaign on through November,” Priebus said.

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Words Of Wisdom

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No matter which side you are on, here is a second opinion:

The American Medical Association has weighed in on Obama's new health care package. The Allergists were in favor of scratching it, but the Dermatologists advised not to make any rash moves. The Gastroenterologists had sort of a gut feeling about it, but the Neurologists thought the Administration had a lot of nerve. Meanwhile, Obstetricians felt certain everyone was laboring under a misconception, while the Ophthalmologists considered the idea shortsighted. Pathologists yelled, "Over my dead body!" while the Pediatricians said, "Oh, grow up!" The Psychiatrists thought the whole idea was madness, while the Radiologists could see right through it. Surgeons decided to wash their hands of the whole thing and the Internists claimed it would indeed be a bitter pill to swallow. The Plastic Surgeons opined that this proposal would "put a whole new face on the matter". The Podiatrists thought it was a step forward, but the Urologists were pissed off at the whole idea. Anesthesiologists thought the whole idea was a gas, and those lofty Cardiologists didn't have the heart to say no. In the end, the Proctologists won out, leaving the entire decision up to the assholes in Washington...

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Roberts' ruling isn't final
by Sen. Rand Paul

In the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision, can you still argue that the Constitution does not support ObamaCare? The liberal blogosphere apparently thinks the constitutional debate is over. I wonder whether they would have had that opinion the day after the Dred Scott decision.

While it is clear to anyone who was awake in high school civics class that the Supreme Court has the power to declare whether a law is valid under the Constitution, that power is not a pronouncement set in stone.

Think of how our country would look now had the Supreme Court not changed its view of what is constitutional. Think of 1857, when the court handed down the outrageous Dred Scott decision, which said African Americans were not citizens. Think of the "separate but equal" doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson, which the court later repudiated in Brown v. Board of Education.

I have a similar opinion on Roe v. Wade. Constitutional scholars such as professor Robert George of Princeton still dispute the constitutionality of Roe: "The Supreme Court's decision to invalidate state laws prohibiting or restricting abortion lacks any basis in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution."

The clause that the court majority used to justify the constitutionality of ObamaCare is one that has been subject to debate over the years.

Hamilton and Madison argued over it. Madison maintained that the powers to tax and spend were limited by the powers enumerated in the Constitution. Because what purpose is there to enumerated powers if a general power — the power to tax — could eclipse them?

In U.S. v. Butler (1936), an earlier Justice Roberts (Owen) got it right when he wrote: "The (tax) invades the reserved rights of the states. (The tax) is a statutory plan to regulate and control … a matter beyond the powers delegated to the federal government. … (The tax is) but (a) means to an unconstitutional end."

Sounds like ObamaCare to me. I'm starting to like the first Justice Roberts more than the current Justice Roberts.

__________________
Happy here and now!

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Quote from Yannis:

No matter which side you are on, here is a second opinion:

The American Medical Association has weighed in on Obama's new health care package. The Allergists were in favor of scratching it, but the Dermatologists advised not to make any rash moves. The Gastroenterologists had sort of a gut feeling about it, but the Neurologists thought the Administration had a lot of nerve. Meanwhile, Obstetricians felt certain everyone was laboring under a misconception, while the Ophthalmologists considered the idea shortsighted. Pathologists yelled, "Over my dead body!" while the Pediatricians said, "Oh, grow up!" The Psychiatrists thought the whole idea was madness, while the Radiologists could see right through it. Surgeons decided to wash their hands of the whole thing and the Internists claimed it would indeed be a bitter pill to swallow. The Plastic Surgeons opined that this proposal would "put a whole new face on the matter". The Podiatrists thought it was a step forward, but the Urologists were pissed off at the whole idea. Anesthesiologists thought the whole idea was a gas, and those lofty Cardiologists didn't have the heart to say no. In the end, the Proctologists won out, leaving the entire decision up to the assholes in Washington...

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__________________
"From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

Obama's tax hikes for the 'rich' plan is a disaster
By Phil Kerpen

On the heels of the widespread exposure of President Obama’s health care law as a massive middle-class tax hike, his decision to bring back his infamous plan for “tax hikes on the rich” is an economic and political disaster.

The Wall Street Journal recently analyzed the impact of Obama’s health care mandate tax and concluded: “It is now undeniable that Mr. Obama has imposed the largest tax increase in history on the middle class.” So middle-class voters with serious economic anxiety will be understandably skeptical about the president’s latest promise that his next round of tax hikes will spare them.

Moreover, Obama’s claim that a partisan stalemate is to blame for impending tax hikes obscures the fact that when Democrats controlled every lever of power in Washington, they did nothing to cancel the tax hikes, instead focusing almost exclusively on a health care bill that piled even more taxes on the middle class.

Consider the case of Americans who built up value in a home their entire lives and never made more than a modest annual income. They will be “rich” according to Obama in the one year they sell that home – and subject to a hefty tax hike with the new health care surtax on capital gains taking the tax above the exempt amount from 15 percent now to 23.8 percent next year.

That hefty increase in capital gains and the even bigger, near tripling of the dividend tax from 15 percent to 43.3 will trigger a massive stock market sell-off that will wallop the retirement accounts of people of all income levels. Economist Don Luskin has estimated that allowing these provisions to expire as Obama today proposed will cause a 30 percent collapse in the stock market – bad news for every American hoping to retire or already living out of a retirement account.

The stock market impact and the direct impact of higher taxes on small businesses will hurt the employment prospects of millions of Americans in an already sputtering economy. Bloomberg News recently reported: “President Barack Obama’s plan to raise tax rates for the top 2 percent of U.S. households would mean higher taxes on 53 percent of business income reported on individual returns, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.”

Such a huge tax hike on small businesses – who comprise the overwhelmingly majority of upper-income individual tax filers – will negatively impact not just business owners but every worker on the margin of being hired or laid off.

Obama didn’t mention it Monday, but one of the “tax hikes on the rich” he has favored, and presumably would include in his plan, is to allowing the death tax to jump from its current 35 percent rate above $5 million to a confiscatory 55 percent rate on everything above $1 million -- this will put a lot of family businesses and farms out of business.

Many Americans would consider accepting these tax hikes, even with all the economic pain they would bring, if they actually believed they would be used to balance the budget. But Obama has done nothing to cut federal spending, and when Democrats controlled the House and had a supermajority in the Senate Obama used it to dramatically increase spending even faster than he raised taxes. Every dollar of his new tax hike is therefore almost certain to be spent on more wasteful spending.

The bottom line is: the smart economic and political play with the American electorate was to declare that there would be no more tax hikes this year, period. Now we have to watch another Washington game of chicken with the USeconomy teetering in the balance. Obama has failed another test of leadership.

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Happy here and now!

The truth about Obama's tax cut extension plan
By John Lott

Politics, not economics, is driving President Obama's election year strategy to force a battle over his efforts to raise income taxes. So much of Obama's speech Monday focused on his political opponents and the difference between those whom he claims support the middle class and those who support what Obama continually called "the wealthy."

For an administration that last week blamed Fox News for the class warfare rhetoric, Obama's talk today sure contained a lot of such rhetoric.

But contrast Obama's position with that of other prominent Democrats. Just last month, his former chief economic advisor Larry Summers told MSNBC: "The real risk to this economy is on the side of slow down, certainly not on the side of overheating, and that means we've got to make sure that we don't take gasoline out of the tank at the end of this year that's gotta be the top priority." Former Democratic President Bill Clinton made a similar claim warning against tax increases because it is better to "avoid doing anything that would contract the economy now." Under Obama administration pressure both quickly retracted their statements.

Obama seem oblivious to Summers' and Clinton's concerns about the poorly performing economy. In recent statements Obama has claimed: "The private sector is doing fine" and the latest job numbers really are "a step in the right direction."

Yet, Summers' and Clinton are right to be concerned.

The economy is very weak. Indeed, this is the weakest recovery ever, with the economy growing at less than two percent. Job growth averaged just 75,000 jobs a month over the last three months and doesn't come close to keeping up with the 210,000 average monthly net increase in working age workers. Thirty-seven months into the recovery and jobs have increased by only 1.7 percent. During the average recovery since 1970, job growth has been 7.3% and it has been even faster after severe recessions.Unfortunately, Obama's policies are bad economics. According to Obama, letting those earning over $250,000 a year keep more of their money doesn't help the economy. He claims it does little for demand.

This Keynesian argument is based on the notion that poorer people spend more of their money than do wealthier ones. It is the same logic that has had Democrats advocating more unemployment insurance benefits. As former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) explained: "it injects demand into the economy and is job creating. It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name. Because again it is money that is needed for families to survive and it is spent." It is also a constant theme of in Obama's campaign talks.

The claim that some people are engaged in "spending" their money while others are "saving" it really assumes that saving is the equivalent of burying one's money in a hole in the backyard. In reality, everyone's money is spent.

Say you put your paycheck in the bank. Some of it you spend on your mortgage or rent and some on car payments and food. But the rest of the money doesn't just sit there gathering dust. The bank either lends out the money for others to spend or it buys bonds.

President Obama kept pointing out Monday that he has cut taxes. But he doesn't understand that the way that he cut taxes actually discouraged work for one simple reason: he increased marginal tax rates. Obama's tax cuts increase marginal tax rates because he phases out deductions and credits as people make more income. You get the earned income tax credit or the college tuition credit but as you earn more money more of those credits are taken away from you. Those lost tax benefits are on top of the unchanged official marginal tax brackets. Average tax rates went down, but marginal tax rates went up.

The president said he wants “an economy where work pays off.” But if you actually want to give me an incentive to work more it is the marginal tax rate that matters. The solution is obvious: let people keep more of each additional dollar they earn.

Hopefully, most people understand that cutting tax rates, not increasing unemployment insurance payments, are what stimulates the economy.

It isn't just our individual income tax rates, which both individuals and many small business pay, that are a mess. With the highest marginal corporate income tax rates in the world, our tax policies not only discourage investments by Americans, they also discourage investments by foreigners. These are investments that would increase worker productivity and increase wages.

A favorite phrase employed by Obama over the last few months has been used to accuse Republicans of wanting a “top down” economy. It is a good phrase, as voters probably understand the perils of having everything controlled by some central bureaucrat. Yet, companies don’t dictate to consumers what they will buy. Obama, with his massive government health care bureaucracy that is going to approve what surgeries we can receive, is the ultimate “top down” central planner.

President Obama's class warfare rhetoric may be good politics. Monday he pointed to the polls that he claimed supported his desire to increase taxes on "the wealthy." But if the desire is to grow the economy, his policies are bad economics.

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The Hill Poll: Majority of voters believe Obama has changed country for worse
by Sheldon Alberts

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.

Conducted for The Hill by Pulse Opinion Research, the poll comes in the wake of last month’s Supreme Court decision that upheld the primary elements of Obama’s signature healthcare legislation.

It found 68 percent of likely voters — regardless of whether they approve or disapprove of Obama — believe the president has substantially transformed the country since his 2009 inauguration.

The feeling that Obama has changed the country for the worse is strongest among Republicans, at 91 percent, compared to 71 percent of Democrats who support Obama’s brand of change.

Strikingly, 1-in-5 Democrats say they feel Obama has changed the United States for the worse.

Compared to the sentiment about Obama’s impact, fewer people see presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney as a candidate who will change the country dramatically if elected.

Still, 50 percent of people think Romney will bring a “significant” level of change — a finding that may reflect the desire among anti-Obama voters for a reversal of the president’s policies.

Debate about Obama’s first-term legacy has intensified since the Supreme Court ruled the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate to be constitutional.

The healthcare legislation, once fully implemented, would usher in the most sweeping changes to the nation’s social safety net since the 1960s.

To Obama’s supporters, the ruling was a validation of his 2008 campaign theme of “change we can believe in.” At that time, Obama hinted at his ambitions to become a transformative president in the mold of Ronald Reagan.

“I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it,” he told the Reno Gazette-Journal in January 2008.

Beyond the healthcare law, Obama won passage of the Dodd-Frank financial industry reforms, generally viewed as the biggest Wall Street regulatory changes since the 1930s.

In the absence of major immigration legislation, Obama recently eased deportation rules for young illegal immigrants brought to the country as children.

Obama’s ambitions for big change fell short in other areas. He has been unable to pass climate change legislation or repeal the Bush-era tax rates.

On social issues, Obama recently became the first president to endorse gay marriage.

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.

Among centrists, views are evenly split on how Obama has changed the country — with 40 percent saying the United States is better today and 42 percent saying it is worse off. Eighty percent of liberals think Obama has changed the country for the better.

There is a marked difference of opinion along racial lines, with just 29 percent of whites saying Obama has changed the country for the better compared to 92 percent of blacks.

The poll was conducted among 1,000 likely voters on July 5 and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Here's the data: http://thehill.com/images/stories/n...tabs_july_9.pdf

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This is fricken crazy economics... from the kerpen article above.
I can not believe the dems are attacking capital formation in this economy.


"Consider the case of Americans who built up value in a home their entire lives and never made more than a modest annual income. They will be “rich” according to Obama in the one year they sell that home – and subject to a hefty tax hike with the new health care surtax on capital gains taking the tax above the exempt amount from 15 percent now to 23.8 percent next year.

That hefty increase in capital gains and the even bigger, near tripling of the dividend tax from 15 percent to 43.3 will trigger a massive stock market sell-off that will wallop the retirement accounts of people of all income levels. Economist Don Luskin has estimated that allowing these provisions to expire as Obama today proposed will cause a 30 percent collapse in the stock market – bad news for every American hoping to retire or already living out of a retirement account."

__________________
"From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

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Quote from jem: This is fricken crazy economics... from the kerpen article above. I can not believe the dems are attacking capital formation in this economy...

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Obamacare In The Polls

http://www.dickmorris.com/obamas-po...tv-lunch-alert/

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The States Resist Obamacare
by Michael D. Tanner

One of the few bright spots in the Supreme Court’s ruling on Obamacare was its 7–2 decision striking down the Obama administration’s attempt to blackmail states into going along with a massive and costly expansion of Medicaid. Barely a day later, Florida governor Rick Scott announced that his state would not expand Medicaid eligibility to 133 percent of the poverty level, which comes out to roughly $30,000 per year for a family of four, or allow single, childless men to participate in the program. Earlier, Scott had rejected another key component of Obamacare, refusing to establish a state insurance exchange. He had even returned grants and other funding that the previous governor had received to help implement the legislation.

Scott was quickly joined by at least six other GOP governors in rejecting the Medicaid expansion, including governors Branstad (Iowa), Brownback (Kansas), Haley (South Carolina), Heineman (Nebraska), Jindal (Louisiana), and, not surprisingly, Scott Walker (Wisconsin). At least seven other governors, including Bentley (Alabama), Bryant (Mississippi), Daniels (Indiana), Deal (Georgia), Fallin (Oklahoma), McDonnell (Virginia), Perry (Texas), and Jay Nixon (Missouri), a Democrat, had previously made statements suggesting that they were unlikely to expand their programs. Nevada had earlier passed regulations paving the way to participate in the expansion, but Governor Sandoval has since indicated he may reconsider.

In rejecting Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, these governors will be saving their state taxpayers billions of dollars. Initially, the federal government would have provided additional funding to cover the expansion, but those additional funds would have been phased down, starting in 2017. Eventually state taxpayers would have had to pick up much of the extra cost. For example, over ten years, the Medicaid expansion would have cost taxpayers in states such as Florida, Kansas, and Texas more than $20 billion each, while in New Jersey, for example, the expansion could cost as much as $35 billion. (In fairness, a few states such as California do emerge as net winners under the expansion formula, but they are clearly the exception, and there are plenty of other reasons why they should resist participating.)

On the other hand, if a state does not expand its Medicaid program, most of those who would have been eligible for Medicaid will now become eligible for subsidies through Obamacare’s health-insurance exchanges. Those subsidies are paid in full by the federal government. That much should be an easy call for any fiscally responsible governor, although the reasons to forgo the exchanges and the subsidies they entail are strong as well.

Beyond the Medicaid expansion, at least four governors have joined Governor Scott in explicitly refusing to set up a state-based insurance exchange: Jindal, Perry, and Walker, as well as Democratic New Hampshire governor John Lynch. Perhaps as many as 35 other states have simply not taken the actions necessary to establish exchanges. That may be less explicit a revolt, but it has the same result.

Of course, if states refuse to set up an exchange, Obamacare gives the federal government the authority to step in and operate an exchange itself in those states. But there is reason to doubt that the federal government has either the ability or the money to do so. Congress has not appropriated any funding for this purpose and seems unlikely to do so.

More important, as my colleague Michael Cannon has discovered, a little-discussed provision of Obamacare makes federal subsidies for insurance available only through those exchanges that the states set up themselves. So, while the federal government does have the power to create exchanges in states that refuse to do so, it cannot offer subsidies through those federally run exchanges.

Moreover, it is those subsidies that actually trigger the penalty under Obamacare for employers who fail to provide workers with insurance. Obamacare requires employers with 50 or more workers to provide health insurance or pay a tax, but only if at least one employee qualifies for subsidies under the exchange. Therefore, if subsidies can be provided only through a state-authorized exchange, a state could potentially block the employer mandate altogether, simply by refusing to establish an exchange.

The Obama administration and the IRS, unsurprisingly, have claimed that they have the right to unilaterally rewrite the law, yet again, to close this loophole. But, at the very least, this would be open to legal challenge. And perhaps next time the Supreme Court will get it right.

So, by refusing to go along with Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and by blocking state-run exchanges, governors are not just saving state taxpayers money. They are potentially reducing future federal spending by as much as $1.5 trillion over the next ten years.

While congressional Republicans have been reduced to taking symbolic repeal votes, and Mitt Romney struggles to determine whether or not the individual mandate is a tax, governors — and state legislators — have become the real heroes of the fight against Obamacare.

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Happy here and now!

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Quote from Yannis:

Frankly, the only way I can explain it is to remember that Obama is a Socialist/Marxist or worse. Why so many seemingly reasonable people support him I can't understand. Frankly, this situation remind me of the old story of the Pied Piper: when his extravagant dreams of spectacular success do not materialize, this talented in speech but inexperienced and incompetent in action politician decided to lure the country to disaster...

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The future chaos is determined by the current chaos, in a chaotic manner.

America Has Too Many Teachers
by Andrew J. Coulson

President Obama said last month that America can educate its way to prosperity if Congress sends money to states to prevent public school layoffs and "rehire even more teachers." Mitt Romney was having none of it, invoking "the message of Wisconsin" and arguing that the solution to our economic woes is to cut the size of government and shift resources to the private sector. Mr. Romney later stated that he wasn't calling for a reduction in the teacher force—but perhaps there would be some wisdom in doing just that.

Since 1970, the public school workforce has roughly doubled—to 6.4 million from 3.3 million—and two-thirds of those new hires are teachers or teachers' aides. Over the same period, enrollment rose by a tepid 8.5%. Employment has thus grown 11 times faster than enrollment. If we returned to the student-to-staff ratio of 1970, American taxpayers would save about $210 billion annually in personnel costs.

Or would they? Stanford economist Eric Hanushek has shown that better-educated students contribute substantially to economic growth. If U.S. students could catch up to the mathematics performance of their Canadian counterparts, he has found, it would add roughly $70 trillion to the U.S. economy over the next 80 years. So if the additional three million public-school employees we've hired have helped students learn, the nation may be better off economically.

To find out if that's true, we can look at the "long-term trends" of 17-year-olds on the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress. These tests, first administered four decades ago, show stagnation in reading and math and a decline in science. Scores for black and Hispanic students have improved somewhat, but the scores of white students (still the majority) are flat overall, and large demographic gaps persist. Graduation rates have also stagnated or fallen. So a doubling in staff size and more than a doubling in cost have done little to improve academic outcomes.

Nor can the explosive growth in public-school hiring be attributed to federal spending on special education. According to the latest Census Bureau data, special ed teachers make up barely 5% of the K-12 work force.

The implication of these facts is clear: America's public schools have warehoused three million people in jobs that do little to improve student achievement—people who would be working productively in the private sector if that extra $210 billion were not taxed out of the economy each year.

We have already tried President Obama's education solution over a time period and on a scale that he could not hope to replicate today. And it has proven an expensive and tragic failure.

To avoid Greece's fate we must create new, productive private-sector jobs to replace our unproductive government ones. Even as a tiny, mostly nonprofit niche, American private education is substantially more efficient than its public sector, producing higher graduation rates and similar or better student achievement at roughly a third lower cost than public schools (even after controlling for differences in student and family characteristics).

By making it easier for families to access independent schools, we can do what the president's policies cannot: drive prosperity through educational improvement. More than 20 private-school choice programs already exist around the nation. Last month, New Hampshire legislators voted to override their governor's veto and enact tax credits for businesses that donate to K-12 scholarship organizations. Mr. Romney has supported such state programs. President Obama opposes them.

While America may have too many teachers, the greater problem is that our state schools have squandered their talents on a mass scale. The good news is that a solution is taking root in many states.

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Mitt Romney's Secret Weapon - If He Can Bring Himself to Use It
by Jim Powell

By upholding Obamacare, Chief Justice John Roberts has given Mitt Romney a significant opportunity in the election campaign. But he could blow it if he doesn’t use a “secret weapon.”

The Supreme Court decision assures that Obamacare will be among the top campaign issues, and polls continue to suggest that a majority of voters don’t like it.

Roberts offered what might become known as trans-gender justice (first it’s one thing, then it’s another) that seems to have outraged many independents as well as Republicans who want to uphold the Constitution, not sanction arbitrary power. Roberts’ decision could spur a higher turnout among voters critical of Obamacare.

Roberts ruled that the Obamacare mandate is simultaneously a “penalty” and a “tax,” an unprecedented claim apparently first advanced by the Obama administration’s lawyer during oral arguments last March. As a New York Times headline put it, “The Health Mandate Is Not A Tax, Except When It Is.”

The idea could have come straight out of Alice in Wonderland. “If I had a world of my own,” Alice thought, “everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary-wise; what it is wouldn’t be, and what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?”

In their dissenting opinion, justices Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito wrote that Roberts conjured “a creature never hitherto seen: A penalty for constitutional purposes that is also a tax for constitutional purposes. Of course, in many cases what was a regulatory mandate enforced by a penalty could have been imposed as a tax upon permissible action; or what was imposed as a tax upon permissible action could have been a regulatory mandate enforced by a penalty. But we know of no case, and the Government cites none, in which the imposition was, for constitutional purposes, both.”

Roberts didn’t review the law as he found it. He arbitrarily rewrote the law, performing a legislative function. The law described the mandate as a penalty, not a tax. Obamacare was never sold as a tax. Members of Congress didn’t pass it as a tax. The administration hoped the law would be constitutional on the basis of the ever-expanding Commerce Clause. Roberts upheld Obamacare by asserting an unlimited taxing power.

As a tax, the mandate violates Obama’s solemn vow never to sign a middle class tax hike. “If you are a family making less than $250,000,” he promised during the 2008 campaign, “you will not see your taxes go up. Not your capital gains tax, not your payroll tax, not your income tax. No tax!” Many voters will get tax bills rather than health care freebies, and they could become angry when they realize they elected the Wizard of Oz.

Romney’s options? He has repeatedly critiqued Obamacare, and he has vowed to start repealing it on day one of his administration, if he wins the election.

Romney will have to go beyond his critiques of Obamacare, however, and offer a simple alternative with specifics. Ronald Reagan campaigned successfully with just three key points. The simpler Romney’s proposed program, the more people will be able to remember it and support it. Romney will go nowhere with a health care plan as bulky as his 59-point jobs plan.

Romney’s health care plan should offer everyone more choices and provide incentives for people to be concerned about costs, like consumers of other services. Health insurance must belong to individuals and be portable, rather than tied to employers via business expense tax deductions. Romney’s plan should foster competition, not a witches’ brew of extortion and regulatory breaks that marked the Obama administration’s back-room dealings with Big Pharma. Certainly consumers should be free to buy health insurance across state lines. It should be legal to buy inexpensive health insurance policies offering the most basic coverage. People shouldn’t be forced to pay higher premiums that subsidize other people’s risks, some of which (like smoking and obesity) are affected by lifestyle choices. It doesn’t make sense to try helping the minority without health insurance by adopting a system (Obamacare) that would cause millions of people to lose health insurance coverage they want to keep.

In addition to questions about Romney’s plan, many people wonder whether the Republican Party has the resolve to repeal Obamacare.

During the 1960s, there was talk about repealing Medicare, but obviously nothing came of that. Republican President Richard Nixon actually expanded Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits. Reagan promised to abolish the Department of Education (which didn’t educate anyone) and the Department of Energy (which didn’t produce any energy), but those bureaucracies are still around — with bigger budgets than ever. Republican President George W. Bush ushered in a new Medicare entitlement, the prescription drug program. When President Obama announced his plan to help pay for Obamacare by cutting $500 billion from Medicare, Republicans rushed to defend Medicare — the entitlement that’s going broke the fastest.

The most important issue for Romney is skepticism about his resolve, since the government-run health care plan he promoted in Massachusetts was a model for Obamacare. Romney has steadfastly defended Romneycare. He has strained credibility by insisting that government-run health care is okay for a state but not for the federal government.

Government-run health care, whether at the state or federal level, tends to have similar problems. When government taxes the general population, then channels some of the proceeds into a particular sector, this can drive up costs in that sector. State health care subsidies (as in Massachusetts) generate upward pressure on health care costs there, and federal health care subsidies generate upward pressure on health care costs across the country. Governments commonly try to control costs by introducing price controls that make it harder to provide health care. This is why many doctors stop accepting Medicare or Medicaid patients. In addition, there are rationing boards that determine who will be permitted to get various procedures and medications — and who will be denied. Elderly patients are most likely to be denied.

Since Roberts issued his decision, the president has been busy reminding everybody that Obamacare, including the mandate, was based on Romneycare.

What is Romney going to say when he debates Obama? The president will have an opportunity to ask how Romney could seriously criticize Obamacare, since he never disavowed Romneycare.

The public is likely to become increasingly confused as Romney critiques Obamacare while continuing to suggest that Romneycare is doing fine.

As long as Romney declines to acknowledge that Romneycare was a mistake, Obama will be able to keep him on the defensive.….

Romney’s mistake with government-run health care in Massachusetts is a policy mistake, not something serious like a moral shortcoming. In any case, voters have forgiven many moral shortcomings. Clinton’s supporters didn’t abandon him because of his Oval Office escapades, even after he was impeached. The press remained spellbound by John F. Kennedy, despite his hyper-womanizing. Grover Cleveland was accused of fathering an illegitimate child, and his opponents coined what seemed to be a devastating slogan, “Ma! Ma! Where’s my pa?” But Cleveland displayed courageous candor. He acknowledged that he had an affair with the woman in question and that it’s possible he was the child’s father. Well, Cleveland won the election, which led to a second slogan gleefully answering the first one. The entire string became: “Ma! Ma! Where’s my pa? Gone to the White House! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

What voters don’t like is blatant lying. Nixon, of course, is Exhibit A. With his back room scheming and his claims of Executive Privilege, he engineered the Watergate cover-up to hide incriminating evidence. The cover-up turned out to be worse than the botched burglary at the Democratic National Committee offices. The ensuing scandal was not unlike the situation Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder finds himself in now for refusing to provide documents –now hidden behind Executive Privilege — about the administration’s botched “Fast and Furious” scheme that channeled semi-automatic weapons to Mexican drug lords and resulted in the death of a U.S. border patrol agent

So it’s difficult to understand why Romney stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that Romneycare was a mistake. Maybe he fears Obama will hammer him relentlessly for his candor. He might be called a flip-flopper (again). But since most voters seem to dislike Obamacare, they must dislike Romneycare, too. Far from being antagonized by Romney’s candor, the anti-Obamacare and anti-Romneycare majority would probably congratulate Romney for coming home at last, after his time in the wilderness.

People don’t typically pile on a person who acknowledges his mistakes. People tend to be forgiving, because everyone makes mistakes. People admire candor and humility.

It takes a strong person to publicly acknowledge his mistakes, and a Romney moment of candor could dramatically display his strength and enhance his personal appeal. He would show himself to be human, vulnerable and bold. Such candor could electrify his campaign and improve prospects for replacing Obamacare with commonsense health care reforms.

If Romney is ever going to make such a bold move, now is the time, amidst the groundswell of outrage at the administration’s high pressure tactics that intimidated the chief justice and threaten our future.

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Romney’s Fundraising Success

http://www.dickmorris.com/romneys-f...tv-lunch-alert/

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"Consumer credit jumped $17.1 billion in May for the largest increase in what has been a strong year for this series. The news is especially good given a giant $8.0 billion jump in revolving credit which is by far the strongest gain of the recovery. Consumer willingness to use credit cards could give a boost to what have been sluggish retail sales in recent months. Nonrevolving credit, which is being driven higher by strong demand for student loans including in the latest month, rose $9.1 billion ."

The President’s $8 Billion Coincidence

http://my.brainshark.com/The-Presid...dence-356086344

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The Audacity to Lie
by Newt Gingrich

...The audacity of deliberate dishonesty in the Obama administration's reaction to the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare is unlike anything we have seen in American history.

A majority of the Court agreed the Commerce Clause could not be used to justify Obamacare, as many on the left had argued. The decision stated that police powers were reserved to the states. In other words, if the case for the law rested only on the claim that the individual mandate was a penalty, authorized under the Commerce Clause, then Obamacare would be unconstitutional.

Chief Justice Roberts' decision, however, pivoted and -- with the votes of the four liberal members of the Court -- ruled that Obamacare was constitutional precisely because it was not a penalty but was instead a tax.

Chief Justice Roberts had in effect saved Obamacare by establishing a trap which might destroy it.

Obamacare was already opposed by 60 percent of the American people according to most polls before the Court ruling.

Since advocates of Obamacare must concede their project is a massive tax increase in addition to bad policy, it should become excruciating to sustain politically even though the Court upheld its constitutionality. The Chief Justice virtually set the stage for this rejection when he wrote:

"The Government argues that if the commerce power does not support the mandate, we should nonetheless uphold it as an exercise of Congress's power to tax. According to the Government, even if Congress lacks the power to direct individuals to buy insurance, the only effect of the individual mandate is to raise taxes on those who do not do so, and thus the law may be upheld as a tax...The Government asks us to interpret the mandate as imposing a tax, if it would otherwise violate the Constitution."

Saddled with such unpopular policies and with a Presidential election looming only four months away, President Obama and his allies have just one recourse left: to lie, to manipulate, and to rewrite history.

In fact, the White House's deceitful response to the Court's ruling was so audacious that it brought back memories of President Obama's book title, "The Audacity of Hope," and his campaign manager's memoir, "The Audacity to Win."

Before the Democrats rammed the unpopular bill through Congress, President Obama argued vociferously that the individual mandate in the bill was not a tax. When in an interview with the president, George Stephanopoulos used the word "tax," President Obama interrupted him, saying, "No. That's not true, George ... Nobody considers that a tax increase ... You can't just make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase."

Once his administration had succeeded in passing the legislation, President Obama promptly sent his Justice Department and his Solicitor General's to court to defend the law as a legitimate use of the Congress's authority to tax. Indeed, his administration's brief for the Supreme Court case contains long passages arguing that the mandate is a tax.

Because few people pay attention to details spelled out in the form of legal briefs, they thought they could get away with this duplicity.

But now that the Court has declared for everyone to see that Obamacare contains a massive tax increase, the gap between what the president told Americans when he was trying to sell us the law and what we have today is glaring.

Faced with a threat that could destroy his presidency and the Democratic lock on the Senate, Obama's campaign has reverted to the audacity to lie on a grand scale.

The Obama team's position is very straightforward. If the truth will defeat them then the truth has to disappear.

The consistency and boldness of their dishonesty has rattled even their supporters in the elite media. Under repeated questions and even attacks the Obama team comes back with the same dishonest mantra. Every question which cites a Supreme Court reference to a tax is met by an immediate use of the word penalty. With enormous discipline the Obama team and its Democratic Party surrogates have erased the word tax from their vocabulary.

According to the Obama team there is no tax in Obamacare. It is a penalty.

So we now have the dishonesty of an Obama administration which knows its biggest achievement would have been declared unconstitutional if it were a penalty but, now that the Court has decided it is a tax, goes back to claiming it is a penalty.

The Democratic consultants know that "penalty" is a much less dangerous word than tax. Therefore they decided on a "big lie" strategy.

If referring to the Obamacare "tax" would lead to a political disaster in four months then there had to be a coordinated and disciplined effort to replace the word tax with the word penalty. The president led the way and his White House and campaign spokespersons and surrogates promptly rushed out to reinforce the message.

Other Democrats rapidly fell in line and talk shows were filled with Obama surrogates robotically repeating the "big lie" campaign.

If President Obama and his team succeed, the entire Supreme Court decision will have been rewritten in the news media by sheer mendacious repetition.

This is a level of systematic dishonesty worthy of Orwell's "1984" or of Pravda at the peak of the Soviet Empire. Uncomfortable facts become nonexistent. "Necessary" falsehoods become the new truth.

It is the opposite of the fundamental honesty needed for self government....

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Why Long-Term Unemployment Has Doubled under President Obama
by Jim Powell

The media has focused on prolonged unemployment over 8 percent, while generally downplaying a shocker: the soaring number of people unemployed for more than 6 months.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, back in January 2009 when Barack Obama was sworn in, there were 2.6 million people unemployed for more than 6 months. By June 2012, the ranks of the long-term jobless soared more than 100 percent to 5.3 million.

President Obama has promoted long-term unemployment by adopting policies that make it harder and more expensive for employers to hire people. He has relentlessly pushed for higher taxes, higher energy costs, compulsory unionism and, of course, Obamacare. One doesn't need a Harvard degree to figure out that when government makes hiring more difficult and expensive, there's likely to be less of it.

Obama's policy of extending and re-extending unemployment benefits is another culprit. Many academic studies show how unemployment benefits undermine the urgency of finding a job. People can afford to be more picky, and as a result they're out of work longer. But the longer they're out of work, the more out of touch they're likely to be and the harder to find a another job.

From an employer's point of view, it's always difficult to determine whether a job seeker will be able to do what he or she is supposed to. Calling references often doesn't reveal much, since an employer might be sued for making candid comments about a former employee's performance. An employer might be willing to confirm only that a particular individual was an employee at the firm. Moreover, many washouts have had glowing resumes. It's no wonder employers seem to feel more comfortable making an offer to somebody who has a job rather than somebody who lost a job.

As extended unemployment benefits finally expired, large numbers of out-of-work people have applied for Social Security disability benefits.

Stephen Goss, Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration acknowledged that "when people become unemployed, they seek a way to continue having income. So, we had an increase in the number of applications and the number of people receiving benefits."

The Social Security Administration reported that in May 2012, the latest period for which statistics are available, more than 10 million people were receiving disability benefits at an annual rate of about $130 billion. These people, incidentally, aren't counted among the unemployed — another way the unemployment rate under-states the severity of our current crisis.

Reportedly many of the applications for disability benefits have been based on claimed mental illness. It's difficult to independently verify such claims. Even when a claim is about a physical condition, there is no medical test for pain — doctors must rely on what patients report. During the last calendar year, there were 2.9 million applications, and about 35 percent were awarded benefits.

To the extent that disability benefits create incentives to exaggerate real or imagined problems like mental illness, they're surely making people even less employable than they were before.

In addition, by signing up for extended unemployment benefits and disability benefits, large numbers of people have created a forbidding "hole" in their resume. Many employers might wonder whether an applicant with such a hole was in prison during the unexplained time. If an applicant doesn't volunteer a convincing explanation, an employer might be reluctant to ask, since the result could be an anti-discrimination lawsuit.

No surprise, then, that disability benefits are a factor reducing participation in the labor market. MIT economist David H. Autor pointed out that "the program provides strong incentives to applicants and beneficiaries to remain out of the labor force permanently."

The surge of disability claims has caused financial problems for the government, too. According to Autor, "the program's expenditures on cash transfers and medical benefits — exceeding $1,500 per U.S. household — are extremely high and growing unsustainably."

The 2012 annual report of Social Security trustees acknowledged as much: "The Disability Insurance (DI) program satisfies neither the long-range test nor the short-range test [of solvency]. The Trustees project trust fund exhaustion in 2016, two years earlier than projected last year."

The issue isn't whether some people need a helping hand. The issue is how government programs create perverse incentives that multiply rather than solving problems.

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Quote from Yannis:

Why Long-Term Unemployment Has Doubled under President Obama
by Jim Powell

The media has focused on prolonged unemployment over 8 percent, while generally downplaying a shocker: the soaring number of people unemployed for more than 6 months.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, back in January 2009 when Barack Obama was sworn in, there were 2.6 million people unemployed for more than 6 months. By June 2012, the ranks of the long-term jobless soared more than 100 percent to 5.3 million.

President Obama has promoted long-term unemployment by adopting policies that make it harder and more expensive for employers to hire people...

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Quote from Ricter:

BS.

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Not only that, but we know from other sources that the number of people drawing disability has grown tremendously the last few years, although the workplace has become a lot safer - indicating that it's now much easier to qualify. Therefore, although official unemployment is shown at 8.2%, implying that 91.8% of American workers are employed, the real picture is much, nuch worse, especially if you count in the underemployed, discouraged/stopped looking, forced into early/poorer retirement, etc etc.

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Quote from Yannis:

Not only that, but we know from other sources that the number of people drawing disability has grown tremendously the last few years, although the workplace has become a lot safer - indicating that it's now much easier to qualify. Therefore, although official unemployment is shown at 8.2%, implying that 91.8% of American workers are employed, the real picture is much, nuch worse.

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Quote from Yannis:

Not only that, but we know from other sources that the number of people drawing disability has grown tremendously the last few years, although the workplace has become a lot safer - indicating that it's now much easier to qualify.

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Quote from Ricter:

That, or the desire to qualify is much greater...

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Quote from Yannis:

Counting the "disabled" workers, 3.3 million in 1992 to 8.7 million today, despite all the new regulations and oversight that has improved the safety of the workplace tremendously... I smell a scam, people see it as easy money, get a papercut and collect a few months worth of free money.

But the main point is that last month Obama touted the paltry 80,000 new jobs created, but never mentioned that (we need at least 150,000 new jobs per month to keep up with population growth and that) in that same month 85,000 workers left to disability... In my book, that's -5,000 workers doing the work, since employers need to backfill those jobs ---> it's a negative number, the guy's killing this economy, or, if you prefer, this economy is suffering greatly on his stupid, inexperienced, incompetent watch.

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Brave Romney Addressing The NAACP

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The Democratic Party Addressing The Needs Of The African American Community

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Rule of the Blob
By U.S. Senator Jim DeMint

What did last Friday’s jobs numbers mean? The same thing they meant last month, and in the months and months before that: President Obama’s economic policies are too big to succeed.

Million-, billion- and trillion-dollar plans that were pitched as targeted, thoughtful measures to alleviate unemployment and foreclosure have congealed into an all-encompassing mass of new laws, mandates and regulations that ooze over everything. This might be great fun for the government officials who create the rules, but not for the entrepreneurs trying to create jobs.

The Obama administration has put us under rule of the Blob -- the bureaucracy has become indescribable, indestructible, and it seems like nothing can stop it from engulfing us all. Politicians assure us every expansion of the state will create jobs. Yet three years and several trillion dollars later, the only jobs being created seem to be in Washington, home to four of the nation’s five wealthiest counties despite creating almost nothing of actual economic value.

Instead of jobs, we got the Blob.

The federal government does create jobs, sort of, but not the ones it claims. The only jobs Obamanomics creates are for government employees to administer the rules, trial lawyers to sue perceived violators, compliance lawyers to get companies up to code, environmentalists to conduct impact studies, union bosses, executives of companies favored with grants, subsidies and loan guarantees, and Wall Street bankers to buy and sell all our debt.

There are three big problems with this. First, these jobs don’t add value to the economy. They don’t manufacture or build or innovate or create their own wealth -- they just siphon wealth from others.

Second, the money Washington uses to create these special interest windfalls kills many more jobs.

And third, these special interest jobs cannot survive without government handouts, so they either become a permanent drag on the economy or, like so many of the president’s green-energy gambles, they eventually fail, losing both jobs and taxpayer money in the process.

The unemployment rate has been at 8 percent or higher for the last 41 consecutive months -- almost the entire time Obama has been in office. That’s not counting the desperate millions who have part-time jobs but want full-time work, or those who have dropped out of the labor force completely.

The Associated Press’s economics writer Paul Wiseman has calculated that the economy has lost 5 million jobs since the Great Recession officially ended three years ago.

The 80,000 jobs added last month did not come anywhere close to keeping up with population growth, so even modest gains are actually big losses. Historic proportions of the unemployed have been out of work for at least six months. Indeed, more Americans went on disability in June than obtained new jobs.

We’re living in an economic horror movie. And, there’s no telling what the Blob will do next.

No one knows what tax rates will be next year. Nobody knows what the rules governing ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, carbon emissions or even monetary policy will be. Nobody knows what will happen with Europe, our own debt crisis, or where another round of handouts, carve-outs, or bailouts will take the Blob.

Business have two options: hide from the Blob and hope it passes them by, or become a special interest itself and try to get rich off the Blob. This is no way to run an economy, and no way to create jobs.

In the 1958 movie classic, Steve McQueen saves the day by discovering “The Blob” can be only defeated by freezing it. That could be America’s last resort against Washington today: if we can somehow freeze the government, we might free the economy.

Less Blob means more jobs.

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Quote from Yannis:

Rule of the Blob
By U.S. Senator Jim DeMint

What did last Friday’s jobs numbers mean? The same thing they meant last month, and in the months and months before that: President Obama’s economic policies are too big to succeed.

Million-, billion- and trillion-dollar plans that were pitched as targeted, thoughtful measures to alleviate unemployment and foreclosure have congealed into an all-encompassing mass of new laws, mandates and regulations that ooze over everything. This might be great fun for the government officials who create the rules, but not for the entrepreneurs trying to create jobs.

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Quote from Ricter:

... Over 600k public sector jobs have been lost during this recession.)

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Quote from Yannis:

Given their traditionally abysmal productivity, we can certainly do without a

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Obama: Tax 'the Rich'
by Michael D. Tanner

Here’s a big surprise: President Obama wants to raise taxes on “the wealthy.”

By some counts, this represents the 25th time the president has rolled out this proposal — something to keep in mind the next time he warns against “refighting the battles of the past” over something like repealing Obamacare. Regardless, repetition hasn’t done anything to improve either the policy or the president’s truthfulness in describing it.

First, the president’s definition of wealthy is a little shaky. It turns out that the “millionaires” he refers to in his speeches are actually individuals earning $200,000 per year and couples earning $250,000 — about 2.5 million Americans. While $250,000 is a lot of money in many areas of the country, in high-cost regions such as New York City that earning category would include a teacher with 22 years of service married to a police captain. The president’s definition of “rich” would also include some 750,000 independent and small businesses that do not pay income taxes as businesses; instead, their taxes are paid through the owners’ individual tax returns. We are not exactly talking Warren Buffett here

Moreover, many Americans earning less than $200,000 are likely to suffer collateral damage from this tax increase. For example, the president’s proposed tax hike on capital gains is likely to reduce the value of 401(k) funds that millions of middle-income Americans rely on for retirement. And the business taxes will drive up the prices of goods and services, not to mention costing jobs. Given current unemployment rates, it seems especially hard to think of any reason why raising taxes on small businesses would be a good policy.

All this would come, of course, on top of the Obamacare tax increases, which will start hitting in the next two years. A large part of those tax hikes will also fall directly or indirectly on the middle class.

The president’s argument that this tax hike is about fairness is also more than a bit specious. Wealthy Americans already pay a disproportionate share of federal income taxes. The top 1 percent earn 16 percent of all income in the United States, but pay 36.7 percent of all federal income taxes. In fact, the 400 richest Americans together pay nearly as much in federal income taxes as do the 50 percent of taxpayers at the low end of the scale.

The current tax code is already highly progressive. The wealthy pay a far higher effective tax rate. After all deductions and exemptions are included, the rich pay roughly 24 percent of their income in taxes, compared to 11 percent on average for all taxpayers. The rich, it would seem, already pay more than their “fair share.”

Of course, one might ask in general what is fair about taking wealth away from those who have earned it through their own industriousness and hard work and spreading it around to others who didn’t earn it.

Finally, the president is disingenuous in suggesting that revenue from the higher taxes would be used to bring down the deficit and balance the budget.

Balancing the budget isn’t rocket science. All that is required is for revenues to grow faster than spending. According to the Congressional Budget Office’s alternative budget scenario, revenues will grow over the next several years, as a result of such natural factors as population growth and a return to more normal levels of economic activity, from their current 15.8 percent of GDP to 18.5 percent of GDP by 2022 — even if the Bush tax cuts are extended in their entirety. Even without a tax hike, the government will have a lot more money.

In fact, it will have so much more money that it isn’t even necessary to cut spending in order to balance the budget. If spending were simply held constant in inflation-adjusted terms, a growing economy would reduce federal spending to 18.3 percent of GDP by 2022. Thus, we could balance the budget with no tax increase whatsoever.

Yet President Obama is seeking an additional $3.9 trillion in new taxes over ten years, above the projected revenue growth discussed above, and these new taxes still wouldn’t balance the budget.

Why not?

Because the president wants to increase spending even faster than he wants to increase taxes. President Obama’s proposed tax hike would raise roughly $65 billion in 2013. At the same time, the president proposes to increase spending next year by $202 billion. The tax hike would pay for only 32 percent of the proposed new spending. Or put it another way: Over ten years, the new taxes would cover roughly half of the $1.6 trillion in new subsidies and Medicaid spending under Obamacare.

That means that not a penny of Obama’s proposed tax increase would, in fact, go toward reducing the budget deficit, let alone paying down the debt. Rather, every cent of the tax hike would go toward paying for increased federal spending.

And it is that spending, and the bigger and more intrusive government it represents, that is the real burden on the economy and the American people. President Obama’s tax hike is just a symptom of the big-government disease.

In short, the president’s plan amounts to nothing more than the same old tax-and-spend tune that we have heard so many times before. It is a plan that hasn’t improved with age.

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Clueless In Chief

President Obama walks into the Bank of America one morning while in downtown Washington, D.C., and says to a cashier, "Good morning Ma'am, could you please cash this check for me?"
Cashier: "It would be my pleasure sir. Could you please show me your ID?"
Obama: "Truthfully, I did not bring my ID with me, as I didn't think there was any need to. I am President Barrack Hussein Obama, the president of the United States.”
Cashier: "Yes sir, I know who you are, but with all the Government regulations, monitoring of the banks because of imposters and forgers, etc., I must insist on seeing ID."
Obama: "Just ask anyone here at the bank who I am and they will tell you. Everybody knows who I am."
Cashier: "I am sorry, but these are government and bank rules and I must follow them."
Obama: "I am urging you please to cash this check."
Cashier: "Look, this is what we can do: One day Tiger Woods came into the bank without ID. To prove he was Tiger Woods, he pulled out his putting iron and made a beautiful shot across the bank lobby into a cup. With that shot we knew him to be Tiger Woods and we cashed his check."
"Another time, Andre Agassi came in without ID. He pulled out his tennis racquet and served an ace shot directly into the center of our bank logo 90 feet away. With that spectacular shot, we cashed his check. So, what can you do to prove that it is you, and only you?"
Obama stood there thinking, and thinking. Finally he says,
"Honestly, nothing comes to mind. I can't think of a single thing I can do."
Cashier: "Will that be large or small bills, Mr. President?"

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America Has Too Many Teachers
by Andrew J. Coulson

President Obama said last month that America can educate its way to prosperity if Congress sends money to states to prevent public school layoffs and "rehire even more teachers." Mitt Romney was having none of it, invoking "the message of Wisconsin" and arguing that the solution to our economic woes is to cut the size of government and shift resources to the private sector. Mr. Romney later stated that he wasn't calling for a reduction in the teacher force—but perhaps there would be some wisdom in doing just that.

Since 1970, the public school workforce has roughly doubled—to 6.4 million from 3.3 million—and two-thirds of those new hires are teachers or teachers' aides. Over the same period, enrollment rose by a tepid 8.5%. Employment has thus grown 11 times faster than enrollment. If we returned to the student-to-staff ratio of 1970, American taxpayers would save about $210 billion annually in personnel costs.

Or would they? Stanford economist Eric Hanushek has shown that better-educated students contribute substantially to economic growth. If U.S. students could catch up to the mathematics performance of their Canadian counterparts, he has found, it would add roughly $70 trillion to the U.S. economy over the next 80 years. So if the additional three million public-school employees we've hired have helped students learn, the nation may be better off economically.

To find out if that's true, we can look at the "long-term trends" of 17-year-olds on the federal National Assessment of Educational Progress. These tests, first administered four decades ago, show stagnation in reading and math and a decline in science. Scores for black and Hispanic students have improved somewhat, but the scores of white students (still the majority) are flat overall, and large demographic gaps persist. Graduation rates have also stagnated or fallen. So a doubling in staff size and more than a doubling in cost have done little to improve academic outcomes.

Nor can the explosive growth in public-school hiring be attributed to federal spending on special education. According to the latest Census Bureau data, special ed teachers make up barely 5% of the K-12 work force.

The implication of these facts is clear: America's public schools have warehoused three million people in jobs that do little to improve student achievement—people who would be working productively in the private sector if that extra $210 billion were not taxed out of the economy each year.

We have already tried President Obama's education solution over a time period and on a scale that he could not hope to replicate today. And it has proven an expensive and tragic failure.

To avoid Greece's fate we must create new, productive private-sector jobs to replace our unproductive government ones. Even as a tiny, mostly nonprofit niche, American private education is substantially more efficient than its public sector, producing higher graduation rates and similar or better student achievement at roughly a third lower cost than public schools (even after controlling for differences in student and family characteristics).

By making it easier for families to access independent schools, we can do what the president's policies cannot: drive prosperity through educational improvement. More than 20 private-school choice programs already exist around the nation. Last month, New Hampshire legislators voted to override their governor's veto and enact tax credits for businesses that donate to K-12 scholarship organizations. Mr. Romney has supported such state programs. President Obama opposes them.

While America may have too many teachers, the greater problem is that our state schools have squandered their talents on a mass scale. The good news is that a solution is taking root in many states.

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Obama V. Clinton On Taxes
By Dick Morris

President Obama is trying to re-write history when he says that his tax program is the same as Bill Clinton supported “when 23 million jobs were created.”

It’s not that way at all. Clinton’s 1993 increase of personal income taxes on the top bracket to 39.6% had a very negative effect on the economy. It was only after Clinton’s 1997 cut the capital gains tax – the opposite of what Obama proposes – that job growth really piled up.

When Clinton took office he did all the wrong things. He raised taxes sharply, hiking the top bracket from 35% to 39.6% and raised taxes on gasoline. The result was that the economy, which had been recovering, staggered. GDP growth dropped to 0.7% in Clinton’s first quarter (down from 4.3% in Bush’s last quarter) and stayed around 2% for the rest of 1993. Personal income rose 6.3% in 1992 under Bush but slowed to 4.1% under Clinton in 1993.

The tax increases Clinton passed failed to generate the revenue he had expected. The tax paradox set in. Martin Feldstein, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, summed it up in his Wall Street Journal article, “What the ’93 Tax Increase Really Did,” published on October 26, 1995. He said taxpayers reduced their incomes when they saw the tax hikes coming. Feldstein writes that “the Treasury lost two-thirds of the extra revenue that would have been collected if taxpayers had not changed their behavior.” Because of Clinton’s tax hikes, real personal income fell by $25 billion. High income taxpayers, facing the prospect of a tax increase reported 8.5% less taxable income in 1993 than they would have if their tax rates had not changed. The tax paradox!

Then Clinton got wiped out in the Congressional elections of 1994, losing control of the Senate and the House – the first time the Republicans had run the House in forty years!

Clinton suddenly saw the error of his ways and began to hold down spending and push for a tax cut. In 1997, he and the Republican Congress combined to cut capital gains taxes from 28% (the rate to which Bush had increased it) to 20%. The result was electrifying! Real wage growth was 6.5% in the four years after the tax cut compared to minuscule wage growth of 0.8% over the four years after Clinton’s tax increase!

And the tax paradox was again evident: lower rates produced higher revenues! In 1996, the year before the capital gains cut, the tax collected revenues of only $66 billion. In the four years after the cut, they averaged $100 billion a year. But, what was more important was the surge in economic activity that the capital gains tax cut generated. In 1996, before the tax cut, there were $261 billion in capital gains in America. In the three years after the cut, capital gains rose to an average of $440 billion. The increased tax collections and the greater economic activity were such that they pushed the budget into a surplus for the first time since the 1950s.

These facts may be “inconvenient truths” for Obama to face but they are the facts!

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Quote from Yannis:

Obama V. Clinton On Taxes
By Dick Morris

President Obama is trying to re-write history when he says that his tax program is the same as Bill Clinton supported “when 23 million jobs were created.”

It’s not that way at all. Clinton’s 1993 increase of personal income taxes on the top bracket to 39.6% had a very negative effect on the economy.

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Notice the steep drop at the far right in 2007 as soon as the Dems took over Congress, compared to the fierce upwards move when the Repubs took over Congress in 1994 and forced Clinton to behave rationally

Btw, I believe Clinton was a very good president with all his faults, eg, what seemed like total lack of integrity.

But, you know me: ABO, baby!

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Very interesting website: http://obamaisntworking.com

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Quote from Yannis:

Notice the steep drop at the far right in 2007 as soon as the Dems took over Congress, compared to the fierce upwards move when the Repubs took over Congress in 1994 and forced Clinton to behave rationally

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The Welfare Work Requirement: Obama Obliterates Clinton’s Best Achievement
By Herman Cain

President Obama likes to blame everything on George W. Bush, but apparently he does not discriminate. This week, Obama obliterated one of the best things Bill Clinton ever did.

Conservatives don’t look back fondly at the Clinton years, and for good reason, although he looks decent compared to what we have today. But you have to give credit where it’s due: Clinton did some good things, and one of the best – at the prodding of Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress to be sure – was the signing of the 1996 welfare reform act.

The bill “ended warfare as we know it” as Clinton liked to say, and introduced stringent requirements that able-bodied welfare recipients either work or spend time preparing for work. It was a good idea and it reversed the expansion of the welfare rolls for the first time in decades. The key was that states were not allowed to waive the work requirements. Congress wrote this section of the law very carefully because they knew that some state bureaucrats would try to do just that.

Now the work requirement is gone, not because new legislation was passed to remove it, but because Obama once again decided the law does not apply to him.

On Thursday, the Obama Administration issued a directive allowing states to waive the work requirement – and only the work requirement. The directive explains: “The Secretary (Kathleen Sebelius) is interested in using her authority to approve waiver demonstrations to challenge states to engage in a new round of innovation that seeks to find more effective mechanisms for helping families succeed in employment.”

In fact, Sebelius has no authority to grant such waivers. The bill makes that very clear by limiting the allowance of waivers to one section only, and it very explicitly excludes the work requirement from that section. This was not an accident. The power of the bill, and of the whole idea, was that it would only succeed if the work requirement was mandatory for all states and for all recipients.

And there’s no need for the Obama Administration to “find more effective mechanisms.” Welfare reform has been a roaring success.

Of course, that depends how you define success. It only took four years after the bill had eliminated the old Aid for Families with Dependent Children program, and replaced it with the new Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program, for poverty to plummet while welfare caseloads were cut in half, according to a report from the Heritage Foundation.

So why would Obama get rid of the work requirements? I can think of two reasons – one ideological and the other political.

The ideological reason is that liberals hated welfare reform from day one. They predicted it would push millions more children into poverty. When it did exactly the opposite, their hatred was not abated in the slightest. They are convinced that the only way for people to get by is the reliability of a check from the government, and to them, the notion that you would replace this security blanket with this strange thing called a job is simply absurd.

The political reason is cynical but simple. People who depend on the government to be their primary benefactor vote Democratic, and if their dependence is permanent, then they vote Democratic for life. Even if these folks don’t vote, expanding the welfare rolls will allow for the expansion of the programs all across the country – and the newly hired welfare bureaucrats will vote Democratic, because their subsistence is dependent on the government as well.

Ronald Reagan liked to say that he defined compassion not by how many people we help, but by how many people no longer need our help. Obviously, and not surprisingly, Barack Obama’s view is exactly the opposite. The more people who depend on government largesse, and the easier it is for them to get it and keep getting it, the more job security he creates – for himself.

And he’s even willing to grant waivers that the law expressly forbids in order to make it happen.

I wonder what Bill Clinton thinks about what Obama did to one of his most positive achievements. After all, Clinton (who was re-elected the same year he signed welfare reform) worked with a Republican Congress to pass this bill, to cut the capital gains tax and to balance the budget for several years running.

Now the first Democratic president to follow him is undoing all of the above, or trying to. It’s almost enough to make you wonder, when Clinton walks into that voting booth in November and closes the curtain behind him . . . what he will really do.

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More Truthful/Informative Than The Liberal Media

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Single Women Switch To Romney

http://www.dickmorris.com/single-wo...paign=dmreports

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Quote from Yannis:

America Has Too Many Teachers
by Andrew J. Coulson
...
Even as a tiny, mostly nonprofit niche, American private education is substantially more efficient than its public sector, producing higher graduation rates and similar or better student achievement at roughly a third lower cost than public schools (even after controlling for differences in student and family characteristics).
...

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Quote from piezoe:



In my opinion the message to children by the time they reach junior high age should not be: "You can achieve anything," but rather the truthful positive message, "You can likely do many things well, but it will take hard work and dedication. Overtime you will discover and naturally gravitate toward those things that you can succeed at, and your success will be your own reward. We will do our best to help you reach the goals you set for yourself."

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There is truth in your cynical comment. My hope would be that by revitalizing our public schools through a return to tracking and a change in the focus of responsibility we might be able to return to effective public schools and a better educated population overall. A good education gives one the best chance of breaking out of the peasant class.

It is inefficient in the extreme to maintain too parallel school systems with public money (vouchers). We need one good school system rather than two school systems, one good and the other bad but expensive. Those that are concerned with efficient use of tax dollars should think about that!

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Quote from piezoe:

It could be that the rise in the number of private schools is a backdoor way of re-introducing "tracking" into secondary education. Tracking in public schools essentially ended with the advent of Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society". Some people believe that this was harmful to educational outcomes. I am one of those who believe this. I don't think it is smart to force square pegs into round holes. I believe tracking was best for everyone in the long run, not just college bound students, because it recognizes that we are not all alike in our innate physical and intellectual capacities.

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Quote from Ricter:

Nice message. Could we also add, "yes, because you were born into the peasant class, even if you work hard the other guy working hard but starting with an elite class birth will undoubtedly exceed you...

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Quote from Yannis:

Sorry, but that's BS. How about the kid who was born poor but to a loving family vs the kid who's rich but with no emotional support or ever being able to relate to his parents? How about the poor but healthy kid, vs the rich kid born with a deficient heart? How can we tell who's more fortunate in life? Can the State do anything about that, really?

Give kids the same opportunity without trying to get into specifics and let them compete and create their own reality. Life is tough for all of us in its own way.

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Quote from Ricter:

"The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet."

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Quote from Yannis:

Agree. But who's swift and strong in life? Not the richest among us. At any rate, the State doesn't know it and can't really find out. Or else, the State tries to get too much power... the Obama phenomenon.

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Just a bit a annecdotal evidence.

I grew up in greenwich.

some my really wealthy friends got sent off to boarding schools for high school.

They left good athletes with good grades.
They came back with phds in bongs.
They were like wtf why are my parents sending me off to these schools to be bored out of my mind.

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"From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

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Quote from Yannis:

...
whenever I state my core beliefs on this, liberals go crazy... For example:

* Replace state funding of education with a solid/well run voucher system.
* Do away with/buy back pension/health care obligations of the state.
* No tenure system.
* Make all schools for profit, let them compete for customers, take care of special cases, inner city challenges etc through loan and tax incentives.
* No federal or state support of any kind for state or private institutions that do not support a politically balanced philosophy and practice.
* Faith based education to be protected and encouraged, let them operate on their own terms.
* Stop this nonsense about special support of student loans: those who borrowed $100,000 to get a BA in geography from a private college are now asking their peers, who took three jobs to complete a BS in Engineering without loans, to pay for their folly... Or, those who borrowed $200,000 to get a JD from Harvard and then got a job that pays that much per year and more, are getting a break in interest rates at the expense of the taxpayer... How's that fair?

Oh well.

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Quote from piezoe:

...You are proposing to turn education on its head where the goal becomes not to educate but to make the most money from the education business as possible without regard to the results, to make traditional liberal arts education accessible mainly to the well to do, to open the door to all manner of political influence and political control of what is taught, to blur the lines between religion and government, to make job training rather than education the primary function of our schools, and to virtually eliminate any consideration of academic standards...

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Quote from Yannis:

...
whenever I state my core beliefs on this, liberals go crazy... For example:

* Replace state funding of education with a solid/well run voucher system.
How does that actually fund education? Where does the initial money come from?


* Do away with/buy back pension/health care obligations of the state.

Break contracts, doesn't sound too business like. Sure, negotiate things better going forward, but if you made an agreement to pay your employees based on healtcare etc, and then you screwed up and lost money, so you think it's right to steal their money to cover your losses?

* No tenure system.
Sure, just hire new people who will work for no money and no insurance and no retirement. Those are the smart people you want to teach your kids?

* Make all schools for profit, let them compete for customers, take care of special cases, inner city challenges etc through loan and tax incentives.

So everyone goes to ITT, what about K-12? and how will you take care of those challenges ?

* No federal or state support of any kind for state or private institutions that do not support a politically balanced philosophy and practice.
* Faith based education to be protected and encouraged, let them operate on their own terms.

And I suppose you should determine what is a politically balanced philosophy, right ? Might get a few objections there.

And whose Faith should be encouraged? Muslims, Catholics? Yeah, that supports the Constitution.


* Stop this nonsense about special support of student loans: those who borrowed $100,000 to get a BA in geography from a private college are now asking their peers, who took three jobs to complete a BS in Engineering without loans, to pay for their folly... Or, those who borrowed $200,000 to get a JD from Harvard and then got a job that pays that much per year and more, are getting a break in interest rates at the expense of the taxpayer... How's that fair?

Well, that last one is simple. Discourage anything that doesn't agree with your bias bent on the Universe, how's that fair.

Dick Morris to Newsmax: Rubio Is the ‘Only Choice That Makes Sense’
By Paul Scicchitano

With The New York Times reporting that Mitt Romney has made a decision and could announce his running mate as early as this week, political guru and best-selling author Dick Morris tells Newsmax.TV that he is convinced Florida Sen. Marco Rubio will get the nod, but not necessarily before the Republican National Convention.

“It’s the only choice that makes sense,” insisted the Fox News analyst in an exclusive interview on Monday. “It would be a mistake to announce it this week, or next, or next. He should save it for the convention because the key question is how many people will watch the convention? We need that suspense to be hanging in the air. But in an effort to kill the suspense, I believe that it will be Rubio, and I believe that he decided that a while ago.”

In a wide-ranging interview, Morris also said:

• President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could try to pull an “end-run” around the Second Amendment and Congress by approving a United Nations treaty on international arms sales that restricts gun ownership by private citizens.

• Egypt is likely to become a worse ally to the U.S. than Pakistan despite receiving $1.3 billion each year in military foreign aid.

• Bain Capital is an “overwhelming success story” for Gov. Romney and the Republican challenger must start making that case to the American people.

• Republicans are likely to pick up 11 seats in the Senate, which would give the GOP an all-important majority.

Speculation about Romney’s running mate has become an ongoing guessing game for political journalists with the Drudge Report pointing to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as the front-runner, and The Times suggesting that former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman stand out among the hopefuls.

“I wrote a book called “Condi vs. Hillary” in which I urged her to run for president. She’d be a great president. But it would be a mistake to put Condoleezza Rice on the ticket because it would permit Obama to run against the Iraq war again, and it would bring that whole range of issues into focus,” explained Morris. “That cost us the ’08 election and we don’t want to re-litigate that.”

The author of the new book: “Screwed!: How Foreign Countries Are Ripping America Off and Plundering Our Economy — and How Our Leaders Help Them Do It,” Morris said that while both Portman and Rubio were elected to the Senate at the same time, Rubio can help deliver something that Republicans need — not only in this election, but for years to come.

“I think he brings charisma, strong conservative values, Florida, and a very good handle on the Latino vote which will probably help us carry Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada,” observed Morris. “Plus, the future of the nation is the Latino vote, and if the Republican Party loses the Latino vote by 2-1 all down the line, we’ll never win another national election.”

While Latinos only make up 8 or 9 percent of today’s electorate, “in 10 years, they’re going to be 18 or 20 percent,” Morris predicted.

Rubio would also help counter the president’s recent public pronouncement that he will not enforce immigration laws in the case of children of illegal immigrants.

“What we have to understand for the election is that this is a crucial issue with the Latino vote, and that we need to get back with the Latino vote and nominating Rubio as vice president is the best way to do that,” said Morris.

While treaties require approval from two-thirds of the Senate to become law in the U.S., Morris said that Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could try to pull an “end-run” around the Second Amendment and Congress by approving a United Nations treaty on international arms sales that restricts gun ownership by private citizens.

“The shocking thing is it won’t have to pass the Senate. Under the Vienna Convention, which the United States had signed and ratified, once Hillary Clinton signs this treaty — which she’s going to do on July 27 unless we can stop her — that treaty remains in effect until a subsequent president renounces it,” declared Morris. “If Obama’s re-elected, he won’t. And (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid will probably never bring this treaty up for a vote. We’ll be bound by it simply by Hillary’s signature, unless President Romney can renounce it.”

On Sunday, Clinton’s motorcade was pelted by tomatoes and shoes in Egypt, which benefits from $1.3 billion in military foreign aid each year from the U.S.

Morris, a former political advisor to President Bill Clinton, sees Egypt becoming much more like Pakistan in the future than the reliable ally of years past.

“In fact, probably worse than Pakistan because it will overtly oppose the United States,” he charged. “We have to realize that the United States Congress cut off aid to Egypt. It ruled that there should be no more aid unless Congress released the funds. And then Hillary Clinton unilaterally released the funds despite the congressional prohibition on doing so. So she deserves all the tomatoes she gets thrown at her, but they should be throwing flowers instead.”

As the election winds down to the final months, Morris believes that Romney must do a better job defending his record as CEO of Bain Capital, a record that has come under increasing fire from the Obama campaign.

“The important thing to know about Bain Capital is that it was an overwhelming success story. And Romney needs to be pointing that out more,” he said.

“There is a company for example, named Steel Dynamic. It was failing; falling apart . . . He got the investors. He lined it up. He switched the company’s focus and now it’s the fifth-largest steel maker in the United States — 6,500 jobs. The average salary is $85,000. We need to put those kinds of stories in front of the American people.”

A Romney victory in November is only part of the equation for Republicans if they are to break the Washington gridlock.

“Oh we’ve got to take the Senate. Yes, if you leave the Senate in Democratic hands, you’re just going to have a 2-1 gridlock as opposed to a 1-2 gridlock,” he said. “It doesn’t help you much. You need all three pushing in the same direction, and I think we are going to win the Senate.”

Morris predicted Republican senatorial wins in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Virginia.

In addition, he predicts that the GOP will be competitive in New Jersey, Nevada, Maine, and Massachusetts.

Technically, Republicans need to win only four seats to take control of the Senate — and only three if Romney is elected president.

“We need to win a lot more than four seats because we need to win a lot more than nominal control,” Morris added. “We need to get up into the mid 50s so that it really isn’t feasible for the Democrats to stall us without 60 votes if we fall short of 60 votes.”

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Happy here and now!

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Quote from piezoe:

There is truth in your cynical comment. My hope would be that by revitalizing our public schools through a return to tracking and a change in the focus of responsibility we might be able to return to effective public schools and a better educated population overall. A good education gives one the best chance of breaking out of the peasant class.

It is inefficient in the extreme to maintain too parallel school systems with public money (vouchers). We need one good school system rather than two school systems, one good and the other bad but expensive. Those that are concerned with efficient use of tax dollars should think about that!

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Quote from tomdavis:

The problems with public schools are extremely complex and difficult to solve. My wife and I have two school-age children and have been studying these problems for several years now.

Problem #1 -- Bad Parents: Too many parents are uninvolved in their kids' lives and educations. They're either unavailable (some practically invisible), and/or don't value eduction enough to make it their highest priority. The other type of bad parent is one who's involved in their kid's life, but in the all the wrong ways. Usually that means they're more interested in being their child's friend rather than doing their job and being their child's parent.

Problem #2 -- Bad Teachers: There are many good teachers in public schools. Unfortunately there are even more mediocre and incompetent teachers. In California, it's nearly impossible to get rid of bad teachers.

Problem #3 -- Bad Administrators: School systems are packed full of useless, politically-protected adminstrators, most of whom do little more than consume resources that could otherwise be used to educate children.

When you combine all 3 of the above problems, you get the mess we currently have in California.

The only solution we could find was to put our children in a private school.

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Obama’s Elizabeth Warren Moment
by Aaron Ross Powell

Our president’s channeling Elizabeth Warren. Speaking in Roanoke, Obama hit all her government’s-the-reason-we-have-nice things notes. “I’m going to reduce the deficit in a balanced way,” he said. “We’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts. We can make another trillion or trillion-two, and what we then do is ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more.”

Why should the wealthy–who already pay quite a lot, mind you–pay a little bit more?

Because [the wealthy] want to give something back. They know they didn’t–look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. … I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something–there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.

About this, Obama’s right. Lots of very smart people aren’t rich. (I’ll assume that’s what the president means by “successful” and roll with it, while remaining totally aware that there are myriad ways to define “success” that don’t involve accumulated wealth.) Lots of hardworking people aren’t rich, either. Which means getting rich, while often involving both smarts and hard work, depends on other things, too. Such as background, family, networks, opportunities, and just plain luck.

Back to Obama:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.

Again, true. Every successful person in this county benefited from the help of someone. None of us are capable of getting far at all entirely on our own.

The confusion for Obama and his fellow progressives comes in locating that “someone.” Because for Obama, “someone” isn’t friends, family, colleagues. It’s government.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

At some fundamental level, Obama simply doesn’t understand that “we” are not the state. For him, acting together simply is the same thing as legislating, regulating, and taxing. That’s why he can say with a straight face such inanities as his fire service line above. He appears unable to comprehend voluntary, cooperative, non-governmental coordination. The government doesn’t run bookstores, but we don’t each have our own Barnes & Noble or Amazon.com.

And while he’s right that there are some things we probably can’t do without government (or, at least, can’t do as efficiently without government), that class of activities is vanishingly small when compared to all the things Obama wants government to do–and wants you and me to pay for.

The argument against paying more taxes or creating more federal programs is not that we all should keep our money even if it means accomplishing nothing and having no nice things. Rather it’s that if we kept our money and had fewer federal programs, we’d accomplish more and have more nice things. Without the state stifling innovation, hindering entrepreneurs, wasting resources, and crowding out private action, we would get even more done together.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we haven’t each gained something from Obama’s welfare/warfare state. But the fact that we have doesn’t do much to support the president’s call for higher taxes. After all, even an abusive parent can give birthday presents.

There’s a certain class of argument that sounds utterly convincing to those already convinced–and entirely preposterous to those not. Obama’s remarks exemplify it. In order for his argument to get off the ground, Obama has to assume the truth of his conclusions. He asks us to believe that it is only through government that good things happen. He asks to us accept that we’d be helpless without Washington’s officiousness.

Obama wants us to think that we, as free citizens striving to better our own lives and our world, are incapable of the task.

The president hasn’t made an argument so much as he’s demonstrated a failure of the imagination–and a lack of faith in the American people.

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Happy here and now!

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Quote from tomdavis:

The problems with public schools are extremely complex and difficult to solve. My wife and I have two school-age children and have been studying these problems for several years now.

Problem #1 -- Bad Parents: Too many parents are uninvolved in their kids' lives and educations. They're either unavailable (some practically invisible), and/or don't value education enough to make it their highest priority. The other type of bad parent is one who's involved in their kid's life, but in the all the wrong ways. Usually that means they're more interested in being their child's friend rather than doing their job and being their child's parent.

Problem #2 -- Bad Teachers: There are many good teachers in public schools. Unfortunately there are even more mediocre and incompetent teachers. In California, it's nearly impossible to get rid of bad teachers.

Problem #3 -- Bad Administrators: School systems are packed full of useless, politically-protected adminstrators, most of whom do little more than consume resources that could otherwise be used to educate children.

When you combine all 3 of the above problems, you get the mess we currently have in California.

The only solution we could find was to enroll our children in a private school.

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Quote from Yannis:

That's not what I say at all. Reread my original post. Don't distort my words and meaning.

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Business Community Fumes Over Obama ‘You Didn’t Build That’ Insult
by Patrick Hobin

President Barack Obama’s remarks in a Roanoke speech last week in which he tied the infrastructure of government to individual business success is drawing fire from business groups, who have joined Mitt Romney and conservatives in outrage over the remarks, Fox News reported.

In a speech to supporters in Roanoke, Va., on Friday, Obama said, “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said the remarks "reflect just how unqualified he is to lead us to a real economic recovery.”

"They are also insulting to the hardworking entrepreneurs, small-business owners, and job creators who are the backbone of our economy," she said in an e-mail, Fox News reported.

The Heritage Foundation posted on its blog that the remarks were a “slap in the face to hard-working Americans and conveyed Obama’s belief that it takes a village — a heavily subsidized village — to create that venture you’re profiting from.”

David Chavern, chief operating officer of the Chamber of Commerce, said the business owners should not be denigrated but applauded.

"We should applaud the risk-takers and the dreamers who are willing to stand out from the crowd," Chavern said in a Chamber blog. "Rather than denigrate what these people have done, we need to encourage more people to be like them."

The National Federation of Independent Business said the president's "unfortunate remarks over the weekend show an utter lack of understanding and appreciation for the people who take a huge personal risk and work endless hours to start a business and create jobs," Fox News reported.

"I'm sure every small-business owner who took a second mortgage on their home, maxed out their credit cards or borrowed money from their own retirement savings to start their business disagrees strongly with President Obama's claim. They know that hard work does matter," the group said.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt defended the comment.

"As President Obama said, those who start businesses succeed because of their individual initiative — their drive, hard work, and creativity," LaBolt said in a statement, reported by Fox News. "But there are critical actions we must take to support businesses and encourage new ones — that means we need the best infrastructure, a good education system, and affordable, domestic sources of clean energy. Those are investments we make not as individuals, but as Americans, and our nation as a whole benefits from them."

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Quote from Yannis:



In a speech to supporters in Roanoke, Va., on Friday, Obama said, “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business. you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

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Quote from Ricter:

Actually, that is true.

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It depends on whether one see the edited tape on Fox News or the whole thing.

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The future chaos is determined by the current chaos, in a chaotic manner.

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Quote from Yannis:

It depends on whether his "that" refers to the business you have or to the roads you use to get to your business. .

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Quote from Ricter:

Actually, that is true.

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Let's look at some other sources. For example, here's the relevant text as posted on the liberal rag "Think Progress"

http://thinkprogress.org/media/2012...sses/?mobile=nc

"...conservatives have seized on new fodder for the narrative that Obama is secretly out to destroy small businesses. Fox and Friends on Monday morning aired a clip from an Obama campaign speech in Roanoke, Virginia, in which he says, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else did that...”"

The same key sentence discussed on Fox News:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...ole-in-success/

"..."If you've got a business, you didn't build that," Obama said. "Somebody else made that happen."

It's pretty clear to me and millions of others that the man is saying that if you have built a business you are not its real creator but someone else is (presumably the government or whatever else a hard core liberal would say...)

We can argue till the cows come home that he didn't mean this or that or the other thing, that he's being misunderstood, he hesitated, there was a pause... Yeah, right. We know this guy by now, he's a clueless, incompetent, government-is-the-answer-to- everything socialist or worse, who's out to change/reconfigure the country to his liking a la "spread the wealth around..." with Joe the plumber, etc etc

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"I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.

Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

<"that" meaning roads and bridges>

The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."


Much ado about, at worst, some awkward wording, and the statement is essentially true.

Of course most righties have difficulty with reading comprehension and are very suggestible, so they see it differently. And they saw it on Fox News or some other righty source where it was given no context and they left off the last two sentences.

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The future chaos is determined by the current chaos, in a chaotic manner.

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Quote from futurecurrents:

"I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.

Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

<"that" meaning roads and bridges>

The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."


Much ado about, at worst, some awkward wording, and the statement is essentially true.

Of course most righties have difficulty with reading comprehension and are very suggestible, so they see it differently. And they saw it on Fox News or some other righty source where it was given no context and they left off the last two sentences.

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Quote from futurecurrents:



The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."

[/B]

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Chance favors the prepared mind. (Pasteur)

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Quote from futurecurrents:

"...Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen...

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Quote from Mercor:

".. Where do you draw the line? At what point is the tax structure progressive enough?
Top 50% pay 100%????
Top 20% pay 40%????

The liberals never will define this number.

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Liberals will insist on higher taxes for the more successful taxpayers until there's no one who makes more or less than the average. Then they will shift all their attention on increasing the power of the State. That's the communist ideal: everybody is equal (=the same) and the government owns everything for its bureaucrats to apportion the goods as they see fit. You think we defeated that idea in the 80s with the collapse of the Soviet Union? Think again. And don't forget that China is coming, perhaps sooner than expected.

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Quote from Yannis:

You can spin it any way you want, but in correct English, which Obama speaks well, the "that" in question is attributed to the last noun in his sentence, which is "business". The man is contemptuous of free enterprise and amall business in particular, and he shows it every chance he gets.

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The future chaos is determined by the current chaos, in a chaotic manner.

Two Videoclips, 26 Years Apart

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Quote from Yannis:

Liberals will insist on higher taxes for the more successful taxpayers until there's no one who makes more or less than the average. Then they will shift all their attention on increasing the power of the State. That's the communist ideal: everybody is equal (=the same) and the government owns everything for its bureaucrats to apportion the goods as they see fit.

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Quote from Scataphagos:

CORRECTAMUNDO! ...

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Quote from Mercor:

All of us should be thankful that public service employees did the job they were payed to do.
What is Obama inferring?
What you posted here is Obama's argument to say that all the successful people owe the State more money. Where do you draw the line? At what point is the tax structure progressive enough?
Top 50% pay 100%????
Top 20% pay 40%????

The liberals never will define this number.

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I don't know what numbers you are quoting. But I do know that the top 1% pays 39% of our federal income taxes, while the bottom 49% pays no federal income tax, etc etc. That looks like our tax code is very progressive.

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Quote from Yannis:

I don't know what numbers you are quoting. But I do know that the top 1% pays 39% of our federal income taxes, while the bottom 49% pays no federal income tax, etc etc. That looks like our tax code is very progressive.

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Quote from piezoe:

Though I think it is best for you to do your own research, I'll go as far as giving you the average effective rate for the top 1 %, saving you the trouble of looking it up. It is 15%.

Also please read my posts more carefully. You'll note that I used the term "effective tax rate". The effective tax rate is the rate computed from what is paid relative to reported taxable income. It is not a rate obtained from an IRS table pertaining to a particular bracket of income.

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Quote from Yannis:

Is that a Marco Rubio word?

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Quote from Yannis:

I don't know what numbers you are quoting. But I do know that the top 1% pays 39% of our federal income taxes..."

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Quote from piezoe:

Though I think it is best for you to do your own research, I'll go as far as giving you the average effective rate for the top 1 %, saving you the trouble of looking it up. It is 15%.

Also please read my posts more carefully. You'll note that I used the term "effective tax rate". The effective tax rate is the rate computed from what is paid relative to reported taxable income. It is not a rate obtained from an IRS table pertaining to a particular bracket of income.

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Happy here and now!

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Quote from Scataphagos:

We should all give this some thought.

IOW... 1% of the population pays the majority of the bills... yet because of their size, has virtually "no vote".

And the 49% who pay ZERO income tax has a POWERFUL vote... mostly voting themselves benefits at the expense of others (through their proxy scum-bag, greedy, self-serving, ass-kissing politicos.)

Is THAT the principle upon which American greatness was built?

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Quote from futurecurrents:

Obama is centrist. You're a right-wing nutjob. That's why you can't understand why reasonable people support him.


The Economist Asks
Is Barack Obama a centrist?

10537 votes 67% say yes 33 % no.

Voting opened on Nov 3rd 2011

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Speaking of Obama's supporters...

'Buyers Remorse' Leaves Obama Campaign Struggling for Campaign Funds
Newsmax

Barack Obama was the first presidential candidate to raise more than $100 million in a month and in 2008 was the first to forgo public money for his campaign. Now, he faces the very real threat of being the first president to be outspent by a challenger.

Obama, who four years ago broke just about every fundraising record for a presidential hopeful, has now been forced to look his supporters in the eye and confess he might not keep pace with Republican Mitt Romney. It's a sobering realization for his campaign, which had imagined an unlimited budget for ads, offices and mail.

"I will be the first president in modern history to be outspent in his re-election campaign," Obama wrote to supporters recently.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Conservatives just two years ago feared Obama would raise and spend a billion dollars in the 2012 campaign. Now, there is a real possibility that Romney and his official partners at the Republican National Committee could overtake Obama in total spending.

How did Obama go from fundraising juggernaut to money chaser in just four years?

In the early days of the 2007 primaries, he used fundraising success to puncture Hillary Rodham Clinton's aura of inevitability. Obama surpassed Clinton's primary fundraising in the first two quarters of that year — $25 million to Clinton's $20 million from January to April, and $31 million to Clinton's $21 million in the three months that followed.

The numbers shocked observers and inspired supporters to give even more to the fresh-faced, first-term senator from Illinois. But now that magic seems elusive.

"They bought into hope and change and they're not getting it. There's some buyers' remorse," said Greg Mueller, a Republican strategist who is a veteran of Pat Buchanan's presidential campaigns.

Then, the potential was so great that Obama became the first modern candidate to bypass the public financing available to presidential candidates, and the spending limits that come with it, since the system was created in 1976 in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

At the same time, Obama shunned independent groups that sought to help his campaign and told supporters not to give to them. In his mind, he simply didn't need them and urged allies to shut down independent efforts to attack rival John McCain. He preferred to level criticism of his choosing, on his own terms.

But two years later, midterm elections yielded defeats for Democrats who lost their majority in the House. Early fundraising reports in 2011 showed the Republican independent groups were awash in cash, and Obama relented. With an economy that hasn't recovered quickly enough for voters, he opted to accept whatever help he can find, giving the go-ahead for outside groups to raise and spend cash on his behalf. His top advisers now are helping the groups he once abhorred, but he sounds unhappy about it.

"In the next four months ... there's going to be more money spent than we've ever seen before. Folks writing $10 million checks to try to beat me, running ads with scary voices," Obama lamented at a fundraiser Tuesday in Texas.

Part of the about-face was fueled by the Republican primaries. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson donated $20 million to an independent group that, for a time, kept former House Speaker Newt Gingrich afloat. Adelson now is backing a pro-Romney group with at least another $10 million.

Like Obama's official campaign and its partners at the Democratic National Committee, outside groups on the Democratic side are at an admitted disadvantage.

"There's no doubt that Romney's campaign and the super PACs supporting him will outspend the president's campaign and the super PACs on our side," said Bill Burton, a former Obama aide who is now running an independent pro-Obama group. "There's more money on the Republican side."

Obama demonized Wall Street bankers and they responded by closing their wallets. He also has called on wealthier Americans to pay more in taxes — hardly an inspiration to donate, his advisers concede. For some of his most liberal supporters, he has not done enough to promote stronger unions or tougher environmental laws.

And, unlike four years ago, Obama is not campaigning as an optimistic vessel of hope and change.

Obama and his allied DNC committees raised $71 million in June, short of Romney's and Republicans' $106 million. Romney's June haul was just the second time in history that an American campaign and its partner committees passed the $100 million mark, and signals the 2012 GOP presidential fundraising could break Obama's 2008 record of $745 million. The reports also mark a second consecutive month Obama trailed his rival.

"We had our best fundraising month yet, and we still fell about $35 million short," campaign chief operating officer Ann Marie Habershaw told supporters in an email that asked for as little as $3 to help.

That's not to say Obama is broke or even certain to be outspent. And if he is, it's unlikely to become a determining factor in the election. While campaigns need money to pay staff, finance travel and buy television ads, money alone does not win elections when both candidates are financially competitive.

From the days when Obama and Romney formally announced their campaigns, Obama and his affiliated party groups have raised $552.5 million, compared with Romney's $394.9 million. The nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation broke down the numbers and noted that Romney would need to bring in $39.5 million more than Obama each month to exceed his total.

That leaves a steep climb for Romney, but not an impossible one. Conservatives who were skeptical of Romney now are rallying behind the GOP nominee after a topsy-turvy primary season that saw their favored candidates come up short. Polling shows Republicans eager to vote Obama out of office.

Romney's vice presidential selection in the coming weeks will create additional buzz and likely unleash a fundraising wave for the final months of the campaign.

Never before has an incumbent president failed to outraise a challenger, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a campaign finance watchdog. In Obama's record-setting 2008 campaign, he made history in September by raising $150 million.

Now, it's Romney's turn to try to shatter that record — and for Obama to defend his.

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Lawmakers Seize on Report Detailing Impact of Cuts
Newsmax

Republicans and Democrats seized on a new report estimating that automatic budget cuts will cost the economy 2 million jobs to level election-year charges that underscored the deep political divide over how to avert the looming crisis.

Roughly five months until the across-the-board reductions kick in, the Aerospace Industries Association unveiled a new report Tuesday that warned of jobs losses, billions in losses to the economy and a blow to wages from the $1.2 trillion, 10-year cuts in defense and domestic programs. The trade group that represents manufacturers, New Hampshire's two senators and the mayors of Phoenix and San Diego cited the report in arguing that it was imperative that Congress act before the November election to avoid the cuts.

But the chasm between the two parties remains. President Barack Obama and Democrats want tax increases on high wage earners to be part of any alternative to the cuts, known in Washington as sequestration. Republicans reject that idea, contending that it would be reckless to raise taxes as the economy struggles to recover and arguing that the president is shirking his duty as commander in chief.

"Ignoring the reality of the sequester, on top of the demands by the president and his party to hike taxes, will result in fewer jobs, higher taxes on small businesses and working families, and compromise the ability of the United States to defend itself at home and abroad. This sort of so-called leadership is unacceptable," said a statement from the office of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.

The report by Dr. Stephen Fuller of George Mason University and Chmura Economics and Analytics estimated that the cuts would reduce the nation's gross domestic product by $215 billion next year while consumer confidence would plummet. The analysis is similar to other cautionary reports that have emerged in recent months from independent organizations that analyze federal spending. All the reports carry a degree of uncertainty since the government hasn't spelled out where it would make the cuts.

Marion Blakey, president and chief executive officer of the Aerospace Industries Association, told a news conference that the cuts would result in an employment "Armageddon" and stands as a "genuine catastrophe waiting to happen," with the potential of 175,000 jobs losses per month next year.

Not far from where she spoke, a countdown clock marked the days, hours and minutes to the automatic cuts on Jan. 2 — 168 days.

Republican Sens. Kelly Ayotte and Jeanne Shaheen, both members of the Armed Services Committee, agreed that it was imperative that Congress move swiftly before the November election to avert the cuts, but they offered variations on a solution.

Ayotte favored a one-year, stop-gap effort to come up with $109 billion in cuts, giving lawmakers more time to produce a long-term solution that involves closing tax loopholes. Shaheen said a far-reaching solution is needed now that deals with all issues, including spending, entitlement programs and taxes, although she signaled a willingness to consider a short-term plan.

"We do need to do a large agreement that deals fundamentally with the drivers of our debt, which would include a tax reform model that would simplify and lower rates with looking at deficit reduction, entitlement reform, all of it together," Ayotte said. "But I don't see that happening realistically before the election."

Shaheen said, "You can't get there unless revenue is on the table. ... You got to put aside these sacred cows or you're not going to get a deal."

The report comes amid a cacophony of election-year demands and partisan backbiting over how to avert the impending cuts that will only grow louder in the coming weeks.

Former Vice President and onetime Defense Secretary Dick Cheney was meeting with Senate and House Republicans Tuesday to discuss the cuts. The House is scheduled to vote this week on legislation forcing the Obama administration to explain how it will impose the automatic cuts. Top officials from major defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, EADS, Pratt and Whitney and Williams-Pyro are slated to testify before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday as they clamor for Congress to avoid the cuts.

Then, on Aug. 1, Jeffrey Zients, acting head of the Office of Management and Budget, and Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter will be questioned by the panel on how the administration plans to make $55 billion in defense cuts next year.

Unless Obama and congressional Republicans and Democrats can agree on a plan to stave off the cuts, the military will face a reduction of $492 billion over a decade, with a $55 billion cut beginning in January, three months into the fiscal year. Domestic programs also would be reduced by $492 billion over 10 years.

The automatic cuts are the result of the failure last year of a bipartisan congressional panel to come up with a plan to cut the deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The panel had been created in the hard-fought budget law passed last summer that reduced government spending while raising the nation's borrowing authority. Decisions on across-the-board reductions, the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts and another effort to increase the country's borrowing authority are part of a packed congressional agenda after the November elections.

Using the issue as leverage, Democrats have signaled they are willing to allow the automatic cuts if Republicans continue to rebuff calls to raise taxes on those Americans making more than $250,000 a year.

Based on analyses by the Congressional Research Service and other data, the report estimated that the automatic cuts would translate into a 1.5 percentage point increase in unemployment, which now stands at 8.2 percent in a sluggish economic recovery.

The report estimated a loss of 1.09 million jobs from the defense cuts next year, with almost 70 percent from manufacturing and professional and business service jobs. Cuts in domestic spending would result in 1.05 million jobs lost, the report estimated.

"The federal agencies haven't said what they would cut back," Fuller said in an interview on the domestic cuts. "They don't have too many choices because most of their budget is payroll, where the Defense Department has more choices because most of its budget isn't payroll."

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Quote from Yannis:

Lawmakers Seize on Report Detailing Impact of Cuts
Newsmax

Republicans and Democrats seized on a new report estimating that automatic budget cuts will cost the economy 2 million jobs to level election-year charges that underscored the deep political divide over how to avert the looming crisis...

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Quote from Ricter:

Ahh, more proof austerity is not expansionary, good find! It's a pleasure to have the Keynesian Republicans on board with this.

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Please do keep the Charts coming, it helps me with the people I work for. So many just spout out crapola they hear on Fox or Rush and don't even think anymore.