What’s New Today
Story #1 tells
of how the Obama Administration continues to put Obama in history with other
past presidents. Of course he did that
himself when he placed himself as just under Lincoln, FDR, and LBJ. #2 asks the question how smart is Mr.
Obama. #3 is a new video for Romney (a
very good one). #4 says the way for
Romney to sew this up is to point out, Republicans can govern, while everywhere
Democrats are in power the government is a mess. #5 looks to Wisconsin and wonders what effect
it will have on the National election.
#6 has Elizabeth Warren owning up to registering herself as a minority
professor at both Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania contrary to what
she had earlier claimed. #7 looks at the
contempt that the left has for not just their rivals on the right, but for the
little people below them. #8 reveals the
horse trading Obama did with the Big Pharma regarding Obamacare. #9 looks at media bias.
Today’s Thoughts
A recent survey by CBO shows that the jobs created by the
stimulus may have cost $4.1 million per job. This means the stimulus may have created just
200,000 jobs.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is proposing banning soft drinks that are more than 16
ounces. Welcome to liberal land aka
the nanny state.
Economic
news: Jobless claims rose for the fourth
straight week last week while the economy’s
expansion was revised down from 2.2 percent to 1.9 percent for the first
quarter.
Quote
of the day: "The
man who promised everything is delivering nothing…. Journalists who wept when he won the election
now grind their teeth in despair. ... The
gap between sizzle and steak never seemed so large." Noemie Emery
Presidents are identified in the
history books by their accomplishments, if they have any.
Abraham Lincoln is remembered for
saving the union and ending slavery. Franklin D. Roosevelt crafted the New Deal
in the Great Depression and led the nation in World War II.
Barack Obama is still writing the last chapters of his
presidency, though there's a growing list of reasons why it may well be known
in the end as the "Me Presidency" that is all about him.
Someone recently dug up a number of examples where the White
House staff has been inserting Obama into the biographies of past presidents as part of the White House historical narrative. Among
them:
While Calvin Coolidge was the first chief executive to give
a public radio address, Obama is the first to be on LinkedIn. Really.
FDR presided over the enactment of Social Security, but
Obama is presiding over its preservation.
How about its deepening insolvency?
This is a president who has an
exalted view of himself and he frequently reminds Americans of how truly great
he sees himself. He's fond of the pronoun "I" when describing his
exploits and isn't shy about comparing himself to our greatest presidents.
He told CBS's "60 Minutes", "I would put our
legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against
any president -- with the possible exceptions of [Lyndon] Johnson, FDR, and
Lincoln -- just in terms of what we've gotten
done in modern history."
The article goes on to show how Obama compares himself to Ronald Reagan. He seems to keep missing the obvious analogy….Jimmy Carter.
2. How Smart is Barack Obama?
… Could it be that Mr. Obama's "superior intellect" is a myth created by journalists to mask what may be the thinnest resume of anyone ever elected president? An example of puffery is the description of Mr. Obama as a former "professor of constitutional law." Mr. Obama was a part time instructor at the University of Chicago law school, without the title or status of professor. And, according to blogger Doug Ross, he wasn't very popular with the real professors.
"I spent some time with the
highest tenured faculty member at Chicago Law a few months back," Mr. Ross
wrote in March 2010. "According to
my professor friend, [Obama] had the lowest intellectual capacity in the
building. ... The other professors hated him because he was lazy,
unqualified,"
Mr. Obama's been governing like
someone with a resume too thin for a president. He's "incompetent,"
an "amateur," former President Bill Clinton told Hillary Clinton at a
private gathering with friends, according to a new book by Ed Klein. The
Clintons have vehemently denied his account.
Even Ms. Daum noticed "the gulf
between the brilliant young man who wanted to change the world and the stymied
president who can barely pass a piece of legislation." Mr. Obama is just
too smart to be a good president, she wrote.
Or not smart enough. "The presidency of Barack Obama is a
case study in stupid does," said Bret Stephens of the Wall Street
Journal.
I once had a man who worked for me. He was very likeable and smooth, but as a supervisor he just didn’t have the intellect for it. Over time we began to use his name as a verb which meant you screwed something up. It would be like saying, “You really Obamaed that one.”
3. Latest Romney ad: Soul Mate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Aze9fGhPVU&feature=player_embeddedcan
Look to see Romney’s favorables go up with women and contrast this ad with Obama’s.
4. Republicans Can Govern
How Republicans clean Democrat clocks all over the country? All it will take is a simple message: Republicans can govern. Democrats can't.
Think of all the contrasts available between adroit Republican governors and flailing Democratic ones. For one, the surreal spectacle of Wisconsin Democrats focusing resources on their third election campaign since the 2010 election to defeat Scott Walker's collective bargaining reform, even when that reform is no longer a real issue, shows that Democrats are in election mode every moment of every year.
This difference has shown up elsewhere in state and local government. Rudy Giuliani may not have been a conservative, but as Mayor of New York, he was a courageous and effective leader, which gained him admiration from conservatives. The contrast between Giuliani and Dinkins, the hapless Democrat cipher who preceded him, is stark.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is also not conservative, but he is an honest and courageous executive in the spirit of Giuliani. The contrast between Christie and Jon Corzine, his Democrat predecessor who has managed to mislay one billion dollars of investors’ money, is stunning.
In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina blasted the states around the Gulf of Mexico, Democrat Governor Blanco of Louisiana engaged in crass political maneuvering against her rival Democrat Mayor Negin of New Orleans. Republican Governor Barbour, meanwhile, in neighboring Mississippi, acted decisively and effectively to protect his fellow Mississippians.
Two years ago, when the BP oil spill was threatening the livelihood and safety of Americans, Obama was that nervous skinny man who spouted meaningless rhetoric, while Republican Governor Jindal was the effective executive who inspired Louisianans with his quick actions to minimize the damage…
And
if you look at the states, it generally are very liberal states that are in
terrible shape of their own making.
Tuesday’s Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election is
much more than a local contest between Republican Gov. Scott Walker and his
challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett; it’s the climax of a prolonged
guerrilla war against Walker’s vital reforms….
Despite the left’s apocalyptic warnings, Walker’s reforms have helped turn the state’s ruinous finances around. His rollback of union “rights” — which started the whole mess — isn’t even being discussed anymore. Job creation is up and public education’s finances have been dramatically reformed and stabilized.
Polls show Walker heading into the do-over (he beat Barrett in 2010) with a lead of up to eight points. Sensing defeat, national Democrats have withdrawn support for the recall, infuriating local party functionaries.
But the unions at least want some scalps, if only to discourage those looking to support Walker-style reforms elsewhere. They don’t much care whom they take down: Four more state senators face recall next Tuesday, as does Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch — collateral damage in the ongoing Battle of Wisconsin.
Obama-tested slogans such as the bogus “war on women” and the hate-the-rich meme have popped up on yard signs across Wisconsin, but the local party’s sagging fortunes mirror the president’s. A big Walker win will send an unmistakable message to Washington: Stop spending, and start reforming….
This will be minimized by the national Democrats and hyped by the
Republicans. Does it make a
difference? Probably in Wisconsin as it
shows it is now up for grabs and should be entered as a swing state.
Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren acknowledged
for the first time late Wednesday night that she told Harvard University and
the University of Pennsylvania that she was Native American, but she continued
to insist that race played no role in her recruitment.
“At some point after I was hired by
them, I . . . provided that information to the University of Pennsylvania and
Harvard,’’ she said in a statement issued by her campaign. “My Native American heritage is part of who I am, I’m proud of it and I
have been open about it.’’
Warren’s statement is her first
acknowledgment that she identified herself as Native American to the Ivy League
schools. While she has said she identified herself as a minority in a legal
directory, she has carefully avoided any suggestion during the last month that
she took further actions to promote her purported heritage.
When the issue first surfaced last month, Warren said she
only learned Harvard was claiming her as a minority when she read it in the
Boston Herald….
It appears that Elizabeth Warren speaks with “forked tongue.”
Perhaps she and Ward Churchill were separated at birth.
7. Double Standards and Contempt
Yes, liberals are immoral. The liberal power elite are selfish, hypocritical, arrogant, self-righteous, and, worst of all, destructive of those around them. They are willing to saddle everyone else with rules and regulations that do not apply to them, and with higher taxes that they somehow escape paying. The Buffett Rule might sound like a great idea, but it would never apply to the Buffetts of this world. Or the Kerrys, Kennedys, or any other left-wing billionaire.
Liberal do-gooders are always coming up with lovely schemes for redistributing other people's money and managing other people's lives. The problem is that all of these schemes do more harm than good. Welfare, which redistributes wealth to those who cannot work but also to those who avoid working or underreport income, is funded on the backs of those who actually do work. "Saving the planet" costs jobs but never actually saves anything. Killing fossil fuels increases energy costs and triggers inflation across the board. Yet the liberal elite blithely support every cause that comes along with no consideration of the cost to ordinary people. In doing so, they pad their already inflated sense of self-importance, and at no cost to themselves.
Scratch the surface of the liberal elite, and you will find a monstrous contempt for those "beneath" them. Liberals like Barack Obama live and breathe in a realm of utter disdain for ordinary Americans, including congressmen who hail from what the president likes to call "Palookaville." It is not just that they are out of touch; it is that they despise what is normal and decent. They would no more live in the heartland or send their kids to a public school than they would forego an exemption engineered solely to save them money -- the same tax break for the rich that they publicly decry as soooo unfair. It's no surprise that several prominent liberal Democrats made their fortunes as slum lords and ambulance-chasers. Others just married their money….
A
bit over the top, but not much. There
definitely is a record of creating solutions that make the problem worse and
regulating things that end up hurting normal Americans. Certainly the war on fossil fuels exemplifies
this. It’s designed to possible solve a
problem that doesn’t really exist, but it gives them more power than Caesars in
Ancient Rome had.
8. Obama
traded political actions for public support
The internal memos and e-mails for the first time unveil the industry's plan to finance positive TV ads and supportive groups, along with providing $80 billion in discounts and taxes that were included in the law. The administration has previously denied the existence of a deal involving political support.
The documents were released today by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. They identify price controls under Medicare and drug importation as the key industry concerns, and show that former Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Kindler and his top aides were involved in drawing it up and getting support from other company executives.
“As part of our agreement, PhRMA needs to undertake a very significant public campaign in order to support policies of mutual interest to the industry and the Administration,” according to a July 14, 2009, memo from the PhRMA. “We have included a significant amount for advertising to express appreciation for lawmakers’ positions on health care reform issues.”…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-31/drugmakers-vowed-to-campaign-for-health-law-memos-show.html
Didn’t a former governor of Illinois go to jail for doing something very similar?
On the front page of its Sunday edition, the New York Times gave a big spread to Ann Romney spending lots of time and tons of money on an exotic genre of horse-riding. The clear implication: The Romneys are silly rich, move in rarefied and exotic circles, and are perhaps a tad shady.
Only days earlier, news surfaced that author David Maraniss had unearthed new details about Barack Obama’s prolific, college-age dope-smoking for his new book, “Barack Obama: The Story” — and the Times made it a brief on A15.
No wonder Republicans are livid with the early coverage of the 2012 general election campaign. To them, reporters are scaring up stories to undermine the introduction of Mitt Romney to the general election audience – and once again downplaying ones that could hurt the president.
“The New York Times has given Obama the longest wet kiss in political history, and they have done him a favor again,” former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said. “The New York Times does a huge expose that Ann Romney rides horses. Well, so does my wife, and a few million other people. Watch out for equine performers!”
While this is true and
conservative do complain about it, they don’t whine. Obama and the Democrats tend to whine about
any story that isn’t flattering about them.
