Story Of Obama

Obama Administration Continues to Fail on Energy Policy
by Ben Howe

One would think that one of the primary requirements of energy independence would be having the ability to collect the energy through which one becomes independent by using. Somehow, this logic escapes the Obama administration as evidenced by their “Five-Year Plan.” However, if their goal was to diminish opportunities for energy resources, they’ve done a magnificent job.

It is pretty well established that there is oil in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Arctic. We should drill there until it runs dry and the administration puts forth the appearance that they agree on this point as they have been kind enough to allow additional drilling there. Specifically, they’ve agreed to set up 12 lease auctions in the Gulf and 3 more in the Arctic. Very nice of them but these are known quantities and probably don’t qualify as the savior of energy independence at this point. For that, we’d need to explore new areas. However, true exploration is not on the agenda.

The five-year offshore lease plan focuses on allowing oil and gas development in already-explored areas of the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic, while ruling out lease sales in Atlantic waters, despite pressure from some Virginia officials eager for exploration off state shores.

You would think that with all of the information collected by the Interior Department on these matters that the administration would’ve come to a different conclusion. You would also think that the Interior Department would have collected information. Unfortunately that is not the case, and the Governors of 9 coastal states are not very pleased, sending a letter to the President asking for an explanation for the lack of communication.

…the administration fails to expand adequate access to resource-abundant areas in the Arctic and fails to establish leasing in the Mid- and South-Atlantic. Both of these decisions appear to have been made without proper consultation from the states, as required by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, and without sufficient explanation for the reversal in decision from previous plans.

Furthermore, the administration continues to hide behind “studies” to block further drilling in the Arctic. In a sneaky move, the administration put forth the “possibility of 3 auctions for rights to drill in waters near Alaska.” But this does nothing to stop them from shutting down more areas in order to create “study areas.” This is known to most people as “pandering to environmental whackos” and the letter mentions this as well.

In the Arctic, the proposed plan allows for only three lease sales in the Arctic OCS – one in the Chukchi Sea, one in Beaufort Sea, and one in the Cook Inlet – all of which appear to be postponed by one-year from the date proposed in the draft plan. The final plan further removes millions of acres in the Arctic from leasing in order to form “study areas,” raising the likelihood that these Arctic lease sales may never occur. The Department of the Interior did not reach out to the State of Alaska for input on these decisions, as is legally required.

The letter was signed by Govs. Bobby Jindal (Louisiana), Sean Parnell (Alaska), Rick Perry (Texas), Phil Bryant (Mississippi), Robert Bentley (Alabama), Nikki Haley (South Carolina), & Robert McDonnell (Virginia). You know…basically everyone we like. Full text of the letter here.

So, not to beat a drum to death here but let me take this opportunity to point out yet again what is at stake in this election. We’ve already seen the Keystone Pipeline get derailed. We’ve seen the coal industry destroying MACT Rule, we know about the tyrannical EPA and here we have what appears to be, either through malice or incompetence, a framework which ensures that energy independence will remain out of reach for the United States.

We are on a disastrous energy path that must be altered. There is only one way to alter it.

 

The Obama normal vs. the Romney prosperity
by Newt Gingrich

Dear Fellow Conservative,

By picking Paul Ryan as his vice presidential candidate, Governor Romney may have set the stage for the clearest election choice since William McKinley defeated William Jennings Bryan in 1896.

In 1896 Democrats chose the youngest nominee in history. William Jennings Bryan won the nomination at 36 as a Populist, anti-industrial, anti-urban candidate. Bryan was a brilliant, compelling orator. He called for "grass to grow in the streets" and condemned the emerging industrial, urban America. His demagogic spirit of negative campaigning and class warfare deeply influences the Democratic Party to this day.

McKinley was the calm, sober, well organized advocate of an urban, industrial America. His symbol was the full lunch pail. He developed a deliberate contrast with Bryan's frantic campaigning and emotional speeches by waging a "front porch" campaign. Bryan's campaign literally transported hundreds of thousands of voters by train to McKinley's home in Canton, Ohio in the best organized campaign in American history.

The modern world decisively defeated the divisive, retrograde Bryan campaign. Americans voted for jobs, technological change, and an optimistic future of prosperity and achievement.

Governor Romney has now boldly set the stage for a similar big choice election.

The Ryan vice presidential nomination virtually guarantees that this will be a big issues, big choice election. It creates a stark contrast with the petty, negative, gotcha politics the Obama campaign devolved into during June and July.

Governor Romney's first major decision as a presidential candidate is historic, courageous, and bold. He has clearly decided that the American people deserve a campaign that focuses on facts, outlines proposals, and offers an alternative to Obama's vision for a European-socialist style future. Obama and the entire Left (including much of the elite media) will try to turn this into a referendum on a false, distorted and dishonest version of Paul Ryan's proposals. For example, every effort to frighten seniors over Medicare will collapse if Republicans repeat consistently and intensely that none of the proposals effect anyone over 55. If you hear a Democrat trying to frighten seniors over Medicare you know they are lying. It is that simple.

The actual choice will be much bigger than the budget.

The real choice is between an "Obama normal" and Romney prosperity.

The Obama Normal

Many columnists and analysts of the left write and talk about a "new normal." They would like people to believe that the current economic disaster ( the worst recovery in 75 years) is simply the way things will remain. After all, from their perspective, if it is "normal" then it can't be Obama's fault.

There is no " new normal," however. This is the "Obama normal."

The lasting unemployment, the economy so bad that the work force has been shrinking dramatically, the number of young people who can't repay their student loans because they can't find work--all these are the consequences of terrible government policies imposed by Obama and the left.

Obama can't credibly campaign promising prosperity because he has had four years in office and has the worst economic record of any president in three-quarters of a century.

If Obama knew how to create prosperity he would have done so. And if you want an idea of where the Obama normal is headed, consider what big government, big bureaucracy, and centralized political power have done in Europe. Youth unemployment in Greece hit 54 percent this month.

Compare the extraordinary first term achievements of President Reagan and the strength of the recovery which propelled him to an easy re- election in 1984 with the continuing stagnation, high unemployment, bankrupt cities, and hopelessness of the Obama Presidency.

The Romney Prosperity

The real goal of the Romney Plan for a Stronger Middle Class is to create a generation of full employment and growing take home pay.

The Romney vision for America is very much like that of Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp.

Like those great conservative leaders, Romney believes that if you have a job and you have rising take home pay, you can take care of your family, work as a volunteer in your neighborhood and build a decentralized free society of enormous potential.

The contrast with the Obama model could not be sharper.

Romney believes in a bigger economy, more jobs and take home pay and a smaller government (which is essential to create the environment that allow the economic growth and increased prosperity).

Obama believes in a bigger government creating greater dependency, which inevitably results in fewer jobs, less growth, and as a result less prosperity.

The Obama model is self-fulfilling. By increasing the size of government, it kills jobs.

By increasing the amount of red tape and regulations from Washington bureaucrats, it discourages entrepreneurs.

By waging class warfare and attacking the successful, it disheartens those who might have started a new company or worked a little bit harder.

Having guaranteed dependency the Obama normal then asks people to vote to continue being dependent. Big government becomes an end in itself because under the Obama normal there is no alternative.

The Choice

The remarkable thing about Governor Romney's bold choice of Paul Ryan is that it guarantees this will be the most principled, philosophical and policy driven election of modern times.

Since the left will be doomed to defeat within the facts (after all, the Obama normal is a disaster for average Americans), the left will be forced to engage in the most dishonest, demagogic campaign since William Jennings Bryan in 1896.

The challenge for Romney, Ryan, and the Republicans will be to have the skill, the persistence, and the clarity to trump lies with facts, falsehoods with truth, and desperation with optimism.

This will be an election for the history books.

The choice of the American people will define our country for decades to come.

 

Black Like Us: The Race Clownery of Obama-Biden
by Michelle Malkin

Looks like Vice President Joe Biden has been taking extracurricular Democratic jive-talking lessons. The results of condescending liberals' cynical racial pandering attempts are, as always, seismically cringe-inducing.

At a campaign event in Danville, Va., the gaffetastic veep dropped his g's and picked up a bizarre twang in front of an audience of black voters. Middle-Class Joe swapped his Home Depot apron for an A.M.E. preacher's robe and sermonized about the big, bad GOP.

Romney's "gonna let the big banks once again write their own rules," Biden shouted. "Unnnn-chain Wall Street," he exclaimed with pulpit bravado. "They're gonna put y'all back in chains," the pasty Delaware wheeler-dealer faux-drawled. Extra-emphasis on the "y'all."

Yes, Biden is rattling chains like an extra in "Roots." This is the same politician of pallor who cracked jokes about Indians who work in 7-Elevens and who referred to his now-boss as "clean" and "articulate." Yet, Biden's demagoguery was met with approving hoots and hollers. Or rather, hollas.

Naturally, the defiant Obama campaign backed up Biden and gave a shout-out of its own. Welcome to the new tone -- and the same old slime. Prevaricating spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter (last seen defending the phony, indefensible Romney-killed-a-steelworker's-wife ad run by Obama Super PAC Priorities USA) chimed in after Biden's speech. "We have no problem with those comments," she told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell. Biden "was using a metaphor" with which the president agrees.

Timing matters. Biden's race-baiting came after a weekend clogged with divisive jabs at GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney's announcement of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate.

Democratic Rep. Donna Christensen, the non-voting delegate from the U.S. Virgin Islands to the U.S. House of Representatives, tweeted: "Wait a minute! Are there black people in Va? Guess just not w Romney Ryan! At least not seeing us. We know who's got our back & we have his." Left-wing actress Mia Farrow watched the announcement and derided a "whole bunch of white people." They were joined by countless "progressive" social media users who mocked the GOP's "white guy, white guy 2012!!!" Sirius XM radio host Dave Rubin -- himself the color of discount Charmin toilet paper -- called Romney-Ryan "the whitest ticket since the KKK voted for their box social chairperson."

Gotta love post-racial America!

 

Smoking Gun: Obama Admits He Cut Billions from Medicare to Fund Obamacare
by Guy Benson

We've been having some fun with a clip of David Axelrod angrily denouncing the fact that President Obama gutted Medicare by $700 Billion in order to partially pay for a brand new entitlement program. Axelrod's campaign colleague Stephanie Cutter refuted him on another show, calling the Medicare cuts an "achievement." But pay attention to the argument Axelrod makes here:

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"You're repeating a misstatement by the Republicans. I would call it a lie."

Now let's take a look at another video clip of a very unlikely culprit repeating this precise Republican "lie." I featured this in a post yesterday evening, but I want to make sure it achieves an appropriate level of saturation. From ABC News in 2009:

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TAPPER: “One of the concerns about health care and how you pay for it — one third of the funding comes from cuts to Medicare.”

BARACK OBAMA: “Right.”

TAPPER: “A lot of times, as you know, what happens in Congress is somebody will do something bold and then Congress, close to election season, will undo it.”

OBAMA: “Right.”

TAPPER: “You saw that with the ‘doc fix’.”

OBAMA: “Right.”

TAPPER: “Are you willing to pledge that whatever cuts in Medicare are being made to fund health insurance, one third of it, that you will veto anything that tries to undo that?”

OBAMA: “Yes. I actually have said that it is important for us to make sure this thing is deficit neutral, without tricks. I said I wouldn’t sign a bill that didn’t meet that criteria.”

Brace yourselves, Floridians -- I imagine you're going to see this exchange a quite a lot on your television screens over the next few months. Here we have Obama nonchalantly confirming that his unaffordable and unpopular healthcare transformation relied on hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts. He wasn't slashing $700 Billion out of (current, not future) Medicare to help that program remain solvent, mind you; he was, er, "re-allocating" that money to help construct a brand new entitlement scheme. The purpose of this eye-popping transfer of dollars, he says, was to ensure that Obamacare would not add a dime to the deficit. In the clip, he affirms that he would have vetoed any bill that added to the deficit, and pledged to bend the overall healthcare cost curve down. A few problems:

(1) Obamacare's price tag is almost double what Democrats said it would be over the first full decade of implementation.

(2) Obamacare does add to the deficit, despite the Medicare raid. (Paul Ryan exposed these accounting gimmicks at the healthcare summit)

(3) The national healthcare cost curve has actually been bent up, with costs expanding faster than if Democrats hadn't passed Obamacare at all.

(4) Medicare "as we know it" is still scheduled to become insolvent in 12 years, absent major reforms.

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have a bipartisan plan to save and preserve Medicare. Democrats offer nothing except cuts and rationing. Romney and Ryan plan to repeal the budget-busting, cost-hiking, doctor shortage-intensifiying Obamacare law. This president wants to enshrine it forever, shackling the American people with its consequences. Some liberals are now arguing that Republicans (!) are being disingenuous with their Medicare attacks because Ryan's plan would maintain Obama's cuts. First of all, that's quite a departure from their usual "Republicans = cuts" narrative. Secondly, Yuval Levin explains the difference:

It’s at least a bit odd for Democrats who say Ryan is the devil to defend President Obama’s raid on Medicare by saying Paul Ryan does the same thing — and what’s more, it’s not true. The Ryan budget puts those $700 billion into the Medicare trust fund, to shore up the program’s future and reduce the deficit, rather than spending the money on yet another new entitlement. And Mitt Romney proposes not to make those Obamacare cuts in the first place — keeping the money in Medicare’s operating budget and so leaving the program simply as it is for today’s seniors and starting his premium-support reform for younger Americans when they retire, beginning a decade from now. Both undo Obama’s raid on Medicare, and both support a plan to save Medicare from bankruptcy in the years ahead.

UPDATE - Here's Senator Obama describing the Medicare "funding crisis" and criticizing President Bush's inaction in 2005. Just perfect:

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UPDATE - Some liberals claim Obama's $700 Billion Medicare cut hasn't affected services for seniors at all. This is untrue. The cuts have already slashed the popular Medicare Advantage program for current seniors -- to say nothing of the impending cuts when Medicare Part A goes insolvent in 12 years, or the rationing board's decisions.

 

Obama Is In Over His Head

http://www.dickmorris.com/obama-is-...s&utm_medium=dmreports&utm_campaign=dmreports

 

morris is right.

not only is obama in over his head, his entire staff is.

They are wall street collapsers and academics.

 

Sounds innocuous enough and I want to see that but I can't. Too many things have happened and are happening that suggest that these guys have a plan to alter America towards the Socialistic model that Europe has adopted, and to do so quickly and irrevocably, eg, the 100+ million Americans who now receive aid from the government and would do anything to keep those freebies coming. The situation is grave and we've got to turn the ship around, or else we will soon be Greece or Spain.

 

I agree, but they were not good at getting their agenda accomplished.

Obamacare is a failure.
The states are opting out. It should have been single payer.

Had they spent the money on infrastructure instead and american jobs instead of cronies and overseas workers, our economy would be picking up and Obama would have carte blanche to implement socialism.

His advisors were too stupid to understand you go big govt - anti job during a weak economy.

They did not realize that tax cuts stimulate and economy and tax increases crush it.

They obviously never really read Keynes.

For listening to Krugman over studying Keynes they are fools and in over their heads.

 

Charles Koch: Why We Fight for Economic Freedom
By Charles Koch

Charles Koch, head of Koch Industries, Inc., calls for more economic freedom and more prosperity for all Americans and says big governments “are inherently inefficient and harmful.”

"In 1990, the year before the collapse of the Soviet Union, I attended an economic conference in Moscow.

Like my father during his visits to the U.S.S.R. in the early 1930s, I was astonished and appalled by what I saw.

Simple necessities, such as toilet paper, were in short supply. In fact, there was none at all in the airport bathroom stalls for fear it would be stolen. Visitors using the facilities had to request a portion of tissue from an attendant beforehand.

When I walked into one of Moscow’s giant department stores, there was next to nothing on the shelves. For those shoppers who were lucky enough to find something they actually wanted to buy, the purchase process was maddening and time-consuming.

Although the government provided universal healthcare, I never met anyone who wanted to stay in a Soviet hospital. Medical services might have been “free,” but the quality of care was notoriously poor.

Reality Check

My experiences in the Soviet Union underscore why economic freedom is so important for all of us.

Nations with the greatest degree of economic freedom tend to have citizens who are much better off in every way.

No centralized government, no matter how big, how smart or how powerful, can effectively and efficiently control much of society in a beneficial way. On the contrary, big governments are inherently inefficient and harmful.

And yet, the tendency of our own government here in the U.S. has been to grow bigger and bigger, controlling more and more. This is why America keeps dropping in the annual ranking of economic freedom.

Devil’s Bargain

Citizens who over-rely on their government to do everything not only become dependent on their government, they end up having to do whatever the government demands. In the meantime, their initiative and self-respect are destroyed.

It was President Franklin Roosevelt who said: “Continued dependence on [government support] induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.”

Businesses can become dependents, too. If your struggling car company wants a government bailout, you’ll probably have to build the government’s car – even if it’s a car very few people want to buy.

Repeatedly asking for government help undermines the foundations of society by destroying initiative and responsibility. It is also a fatal blow to efficiency and corrupts the political process.

When everyone gets something for nothing, soon no one will have anything, because no one will be producing anything.

Cronyism

Under the Soviet system, special traffic lanes were set aside for the sole use of officials in their limousines. This worsened driving conditions for everyone else, but those receiving favored treatment didn’t care.

Today, many governments give special treatment to a favored few businesses that eagerly accept those favors. This is the essence of cronyism.

Many businesses with unpopular products or inefficient production find it much easier to curry the favor of a few influential politicians or a government agency than to compete in the open market.

After all, the government can literally guarantee customers and profitability by mandating the use of certain products, subsidizing production or providing protection from more efficient competitors.

Cronyism enables favored companies to reap huge financial rewards, leaving the rest of us – customers and competitors alike – worse off.

One obvious example of this involves wind farms. Most cannot turn a profit without the costly subsidies the government provides. Meanwhile, consumers and taxpayers are forced to pay an average of five times more for wind-generated electricity.

We see far too many legislative proposals that would subsidize one form of energy over another, penalize certain emissions from one industry but not another, or place protective tariffs that hurt consumers.

Legacies

Karl Marx famously said: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

The result of this approach is not equality, but rather a lowering of everyone’s standards to some minimal level.

Some people worry about the disparity of wealth in a system of economic freedom. What they don’t realize is that the same disparity exists in the least-free countries.

The difference is who is better off.

Under economic freedom, it is the people who do the best job of producing products and services that make people’s lives better.

On the other hand, in a system without economic freedom, the wealthiest are the tyrants who make people’s lives miserable.

As a result of this, the income of the poorest in the least-free countries is one-tenth of what it is in the freest.

Elected officials are often asked what they would like as their legacy. I’m never going to run for office, but I can tell you how I would answer that question.

I want my legacy to be greater freedom, greater prosperity and a better way of life for my family, our employees and all Americans. And I wish the same for every nation on earth."

 

Four years ago President Obama ran on a campaign of “hope and change,” promising to be a different kind of politician. Today, however, we bear witness to his and other liberal Democrat campaigns based on frustration and division.

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