Thursday, May 31, 2012

Obama's moving date 1/20/2013


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 



1.  Obama’s Self Evaluation

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." 

http://townhall.com/columnists/donaldlambro/2012/05/30/obama_a_legend_in_his_own_mind/page/full/

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. 

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/05/25/obama_is_not_that_bright_114271.html

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. 

5.  Wisconsin the end game

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….

The Democrats finally have their wish: the chance to unseat a sitting governor — not for any malfeasance, but for implementing his campaign promises. They’re likely to regret it.

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.


6.  Elizabeth Warren:  I told Harvard I was Native American 


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 themThey 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

Drugmakers led by Pfizer Inc. agreed to run a “very significant public campaign” bankrolling political support for the 2010 health-care law, including TV ads, while the Obama administration promised to block provisions opposed by drugmakers, documents released by Republicans show. 

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? 



9.  Bias in the Media

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.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Solutions and problems


What’s New Today

Story #1 looks to conventional energy to pull America out of the current economic malaise.  #2 tells of the Consumer confidence index dropping for the third straight month.  It does not bode well of Obama.  #3 tells why one conservative thinks Obama will lose.  #4 relates that the man who seconded President Obama in 2008 is leaving the Democratic Party and going Republican.  #5 shows how the Democratic strategy analysts are kidding themselves as more and more of their assumptions prove false.  #6 perhaps give some hope to the Democrats.  It seems Obama is a scrapper and willing to claw and fight til the end.  I highly recommend you read #7.  It tells the truth that if the Republicans “compromise” with the Democrats, they become part of the problem which is why the Democrats keep calling for them to compromise. 


Today’s Thoughts

Obama and the Democrats seem intent on following California over the cliff rather than any of the states that are actually recovering.  You would think they would be smarter than that.

It appears the smartest man in the world (well at least the smartest President ever) has upset Poland by referring to Polish Death Camps when they were actually German Death Camps in occupied Poland.  I guess history along with economics isn’t BHO’s strong suit.  

Obamacare is partial paid for by stealing money from Medicare.  How does that work?  The Medicare trustees must assume that physician reimbursements under Medicaid will drop to 55% of private health insurance by 2086, while physicians serving Medicare patients "would eventually fall to 26% of private health insurance levels."  It isn’t going to happen and Obamacare isn’t going to do any of the things Obama promised it would.  

Although the number is small, the percentage of Americans turning in their passports has increased by 338% since Barack Obama has become President


1.  The Path to Prosperity and the Presidency

Energy, the lifeblood of the economy, is the Achilles heel of President Barack Obama.  Mitt Romney can win the November election if he concentrates his campaign on a sensible energy policy.
Mr. Romney will have to make a case not merely against Mr. Obama's failings but also for why he has the better plan to restore prosperity. (WSJ  4-26-12)

... optimistic conservative vision that can inspire the party faithful, appeal to swing voters and set out a governing agenda should he win in November...  

As a presumed candidate for the U.S. presidency, Romney should spell out now a coherent policy of low-cost and secure energy that would boost the U.S. economy, ensure jobs and prosperity, and raise people up from poverty.  Fundamentally, he and his surrogates must educate and inspire the public.

He should pledge specific goals: lower gasoline prices, cheaper household electricity, cheaper fertilizer for farmers and lower food prices for everybody, cheaper transport fuels for aviation and for the trucking industry, lower raw material costs for the chemical industry.  He should also indicate the kind of people who would be part of his team, who would fill the crucial posts and carry out these policies.  His running mate should have a record of endorsing these goals….


This is the magic bullet for the economy and one that Obama can’t take because he is religiously against fossil fuels at least any that are drilled in America.  America is sitting on great wealth just waiting for us to be sensible and use it. 


2.  No Confidence in Obamanomics

Consumer confidence took a "surprise" tumble in May, as home prices hit 10-year lows. Tell us again why economists keep calling bad economic news about Obama's so-called recovery "unexpected"?

Analysts had predicted the Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index would climb to 70 in May. Instead it dropped more than four points to 64.9, the biggest drop since last fall.

It's the latest in another round of disappointing numbers. Just a few weeks ago, new jobs came in "unexpectedly" low. And before that, GDP data disappointed.

Underperforming economic indicators have been so common under Obama that the only mystery is why the experts keep getting caught off guard.

In the case of the Consumer Confidence Index, the current number — bad as it is — doesn't even tell the whole story.

First, it's worth noting the index has fallen for three months. Even if it had hit forecasts, it would still be well below 90, which signals a healthy economy…


It’s unexpected because the MSM really wants Obamanomics to work.  It is the triumph of hope over experience. 



3.  Obama will lose in November

It is time to call the 2012 election.  President Obama cannot win.  He will likely lose big, in a very lopsided election.  Pundits will claim to be surprised when the outcome becomes apparent.  They should not be, as the signs of such a result are everywhere, despite the mainstream media's attempts to suppress them.

There are numerous reasons why Obama will lose.  Incompetence, likeability, and duplicity are a few.  Obama has alienated too many in the electorate, including large numbers who supported him the first time.  In 2012, many will vote against him or (even better) just stay home….

….Why Obama Will Lose the Election

Why Obama will lose this next election is less difficult to understand than how he won the first time.  Barack Obama was a fluke, an unlikely candidate with no demonstrated experience in anything other than reading a teleprompter and sounding good.

He was pushed to his party's nomination as a result of the media.  His election was a quirk, rather than something earned.  Any Democrat who gained the nomination was likely ensured the presidency.  Bush fatigue and the hapless John McCain made that almost certain.

Obama will lose the next election because his greatest asset, his unknownness, exists no longer.  Voter imagination can no longer be manipulated in the presence of facts.  Quite simply, Obama will not be re-elected because too many people now know him.  His biggest attribute has been taken away.

What people got was nothing like what they were promised or imagined.  What was a blank slate upon which to imagine an Obama presidency now is a full-blown portrait filled with failure, warts, and scars.
Obama's track record is abysmal. Floyd and Mary Beth Brown discussed four of Obama's failures:
  • Obama's 825 billion dollar stimulus failed to keep unemployment below 8 percent as promised. Since President Obama's stimulus passed, America has lost 1.1 million jobs. If you count people who have become discouraged and are no longer seeking jobs, some economists believe that real unemployment rate is above twenty percent.
  • Obama called his health care package one of his major accomplishments. He told CBS' Steve Kroft he was "putting in place a system in which we're going to start lowering health care costs." Yet it has failed to make health insurance more affordable. According to the fact watchdog website FactCheck.org, ObamaCare is actually making health care "less affordable." Workers paid an average of $132 more for family coverage just this year.
  • Obama predicted his investments in green energy would create 5 million jobs, but the Wall Street Journal reports: "The green jobs subsidy story gets more embarrassing by the day. Three years ago President Obama promised that by the end of the decade, America would have five million green jobs, but so far, some $90 billion in government spending has delivered very few."
  • Obama pledged to cut the deficit in half, saying: "And that's why today I'm pledging to cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office." Even if every part of Obama's deficit reduction proposal was enacted, the deficit at the end of his first term would still be $1.33 trillion, more than twice what he promised….

This is an excellent article with a lot more specifics telling you why Obama will lose big.  The one thing the author didn’t mention that I feel with also hurt Obama is his going so negative so soon.  That will hurt the last thing he had going for him, people like him.  After six months of bashing Romney, blaming Bush, and telling transparent lies, he will lose that as well.  


4.  Democrat who seconded Obama’s nomination in 2008 Switches Parties

The former Alabama congressman (Artur Davis), an early Barack Obama endorser who lost a bid for governor last year, announces online that he's leaving the Democratic Party and changing his registration to a different state:

If I were to run, it would be as a Republican. And I am in the process of changing my voter registration from Alabama to Virginia, a development which likely does represent a closing of one chapter and perhaps the opening of another.

As to the horse-race question that animated parts of the blogosphere, it is true that people whose judgment I value have asked me to weigh the prospect of running in one of the Northern Virginia congressional districts in 2014 or 2016, or alternatively, for a seat in the Virginia legislature in 2015. If that sounds imprecise, it’s a function of how uncertain political opportunities can be—and if that sounds expedient, never lose sight of the fact that politics is not wishfulness, it’s the execution of a long, draining process to win votes and help and relationships while your adversaries are working just as hard to tear down the ground you build. …

On the specifics, I have regularly criticized an agenda that would punish businesses and job creators with more taxes just as they are trying to thrive again. I have taken issue with an administration that has lapsed into a bloc by bloc appeal to group grievances when the country is already too fractured: frankly, the symbolism of Barack Obama winning has not given us the substance of a united country. You have also seen me write that faith institutions should not be compelled to violate their teachings because faith is a freedom, too. You’ve read that in my view, the law can’t continue to favor one race over another in offering hard-earned slots in colleges: America has changed, and we are now diverse enough that we don’t need to accommodate a racial spoils system. And you know from these pages that I still think the way we have gone about mending the flaws in our healthcare system is the wrong way—it goes further than we need and costs more than we can bear.

Alex Isenstadt has more here.  Davis's move is not surprising, given the trajectory of his activities and public comments over the last year, but it is still remarkable for a politician who gave a seconding speech to nominate Barack Obama at the 2008 Democratic convention.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/05/artur-davis-is-now-a-virginia-republican-124788.html

Watch for the signs, omens, things that tell you which way the political winds are blowing and you will see it is an ill wind if you are a democrat.


5.  Are Obama Aides Fooling Themselves?

“Axelrod is endeavoring not to panic. So reads a sentence in John Heilemann’s exhaustive article on Barack Obama's campaign in this week's New York magazine….

Heilemann's article is well-sourced. It's based on interviews with David Axelrod, the former White House aide now back in Chicago, David Plouffe, the 2008 manager now in the White House, and Jim Messina, the current campaign manager.

The picture Heilemann draws is of campaign managers whose assumptions have been proved wrong and who seem to be fooling themselves about what will work in the campaign.
One assumption that has been proved wrong is that the Obama campaign would raise $1 billion and that, as in 2008, far more money would be spent for Democrats than Republicans.

Heilemann reports the campaign managers' alibis. Obama has given donors "shabby treatment," he writes. This of a president who has attended more fundraisers than his four predecessors combined.
As for the Obama-authorized super-PAC being $90 million short of its $100 million goal, well, it was late getting started and some money givers don't like negative ads.

A more plausible explanation is that big Democratic donors don't trust the political judgment of super-PAC head Bill Burton -- who was passed over for promotion to White House press secretary -- the way big Republican donors trust Karl Rove.

Here's another: A lot of people like the way Obama has governed less than they liked the idea of Obama governing.

A second assumption is that the Obama managers "see Romney as a walking, talking bull's-eye" and have "contempt for his skills as a political performer."

You can find some basis for this in Romney's performance in the primaries. But you can also find evidence to the contrary. In my own experience as a political consultant, I found it dangerous to assume your opponents will screw up. Sometimes they don't.

As for fooling themselves, I have to wonder whether the Obama people were spoofing Heilemann at points. He quotes Plouffe as saying. "Let's be clear what [Romney] would do as president," and then summarizes: "Potentially abortion will be criminalized. Women will be denied contraceptive services. He's far right on immigration. He supports efforts to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage."

These claims don't seem sustainable to me. No one seriously thinks there's any likelihood of criminalizing abortion or banning contraception. Romney brushed off that last one in a debate.
Nor is there any chance an anti-same-sex marriage amendment would get the two-thirds it needs in Congress to go to the states. Opposing legalization of illegal immigrants is not a clear vote-loser particularly now that, the Pew Hispanic Center reports, a million have left the country….

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/are-obamas-campaign-aides-fooling-themselves/568146#

There is a lot of information out there that is very discouraging if you are an Obama supporter.  The MSM tries to cover it up or minimize its importance, but it’s there and it spells doom for Obama and the Democrats in November.

6.  Desperately seeking votes

…John Heilemann, co-author of a definitive work on the 2008 election called Game Change, writes in a new piece in New York magazine that for “anyone still starry-eyed about Obama” the 2012 campaign will disabuse them of that notion:

The months ahead will provide a bracing revelation about what he truly is: not a savior, not a saint, not a man above the fray, but a brass-knuckled, pipe-hitting, red-in-tooth-and-claw brawler determined to do what is necessary to stay in power — in other words, a politician.

If the mainstream-media journalists who spent so little time in 2008 looking into the Daley machine that Barack Obama sprang from want to do more due diligence this time, they could start with a closer look at Eric Whitaker and the rest of Obama’s inner circle. It’s probably a much richer mine of stories than any investigation of Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital days or Ann Romney’s obsession with expensive horses is likely to provide.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/301250/chicago-way-john-fund?pg=2

Tooth and nail is the way the group will fight, but they are kidding themselves. 


7.  The Truth about Spending

….But all of these numbers are a sideshow: Republicans in Washington helped create the problem, and Romney should concede the point.

Focused on fighting a war, Bush -- never a tightwad to begin with -- handed the keys to the Treasury to Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert, and they spent enough money to burn a wet mule. On Bush's watch, education spending more than doubled, the government enacted the biggest expansion in entitlements since the Great Society (Medicare Part D), and we created a vast new government agency (the Department of Homeland Security).

And yet, to listen to Obama and his allies, the Bush years were a time of "market fundamentalism" and government inaction. That's in part because when it comes to domestic policy, Democrats will always want to spend more than Republicans, so Republicans are always branded as mean-spiritedly frugal by comparison.

Nearly every problem with spending and debt associated with the Bush years was made far worse under Obama. The man campaigned as an outsider who was going to change course before we went over a fiscal cliff. Instead, when he got behind the wheel, as it were, he hit the gas instead of the brakes -- and yet has the temerity to claim that all of the forward momentum is Bush's fault.

Worse, the current obsession with "compromise" in Washington boils down to the argument that Republicans should revert back to being part of the problem, enabling Obama to "invest" even more money in his pet schemes.

Romney is under no obligation to defend the Republican performance during the Bush years. Indeed, if he's serious about fixing what's wrong with Washington, he has an obligation not to defend it. This is an argument that the Tea Party -- which famously dealt Obama's party a shellacking in 2010 -- and independents alike are entirely open to. Voters don't want a president to rein in runaway Democratic spending; they want one to rein in runaway Washington spending.

Let Obama play the partisan blame game. He's the partisan insider this time. The role of bipartisan outsider is Romney's for the taking.


A well thought out article regarding spending.  I especially liked the part that compromise would make Republicans part of the problem.  That is very true. 



Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Second terms and other Republican Nightmares




What’s New Today

Story #1 looks at what a second Obama term would be like.  #2 looks at taxmageddon and what happens early next year.  #3 lays out Obama’s campaign strategy for 2012.  #4 looks at the Democrats and meaningful work.  Isn’t all work meaningful?  #5 Van Jones sees the Tea Party was wanting to destroy America. 

Today’s Thought

Mitt Romney has clinched the nomination for the Republican Party.  

It appears using ultra sounds to identify girls to be aborted has come to the USA.  I guess there is a war on women. 



1.  If you think Obama’s first term was bad…

Before being elected in 2008, Barack Obama said: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." That belief has turned out to be wholly accurate. America has been greatly transformed by all areas of this administration's policy goals and actions.

The most significant policy change during President Obama's first term was his health-care "reform," the movement of 17% of our economy from the marketplace of ideas and physician-patient decision-making to control and management by the federal government. The Supreme Court is now considering ObamaCare are constitutional, and is expected to decide by the end of June.

ObamaCare is a huge governmental mandate, the impact of which we are just beginning to feel. If the Supreme Court upholds the law, full government control of health care will start next year, with the new ObamaCare taxes on investment income. The individual mandates and other rules and regulations will begin in 2014. If the court upholds ObamaCare and Mr. Obama is re-elected in November, the scope and size of our government's control over health care will increase dramatically.

A second Obama term would guarantee no repeal or significant repair of ObamaCare for at least four more years, allowing it to push its tentacles into every aspect of our health care. It will give the health and human services secretary free rein in her decisions about new mandates and about which organizations or entities can be granted exemptions from them. This would give her and the president a new way to reward favored special interests.

The second negative policy impact of the president's first term is the large and unsustainable increase in federal spending and debt. Annual spending increased from $3 trillion in 2008 to $3.5 trillion in 2010, and the Obama plan is to grow it to $5.5 trillion a year less than a decade from now. Deficits averaging $1.3 trillion a year have been the rule so far, and that thinking—and perhaps worse—would be with us for a second Obama term.

Mr. Obama's first term commenced with an $800 billion "stimulus" giveaway to the favored constituencies of the liberal left. Then the excessive spending that created the deficits continued. The president's recent budgets have been so far from the mainstream that Congress, including Democrats, has had little interest in supporting them. If Mr. Obama is re-elected and no longer constrained in his policy proposals by the need to keep independents in his camp, there will be continued squandering of the nation's fiscal resources. All of this will lead to even more burdens on individuals, families and businesses, not to mention future generations….


Everything is there for a huge defeat for Obama and the Democrats, but we can’t be complacent because the cost is too dear.


2. Obama brings on 'Taxmageddon'

'Taxmageddon' isn't only about the half-trillion-dollar blow to the economy that arrives in 2013 on the end of the Bush-Obama tax rates. Several of the Affordable Care Act's worst tax increases kick in too, such as the new excise tax on medical devices.

The 2.3% levy applies to the sale of everything from cardiac defibrillators to artificial joints to MRI scanners. The device tax is supposed to raise $28.5 billion from 2013 to 2022, and it is especially harmful because it applies to gross sales, not profits. Companies at make-or-break margins could be taxed out of existence, especially in an intensely competitive industry where four of five businesses are start-ups or midsized.

As even the liberal papoose Elizabeth Warren recently put it, the device tax "disproportionately impacts the small companies with the narrowest financial margins and the broadest innovative potential."…


Obama promised he would fundamentally change America and this is just one of the ways he will do 
it. 


3. What Negative will look like this year

…The president begs to differ. In 2008, the junior senator from Illinois won in a landslide by fashioning a potent “coalition of the ascendant,” as Teixeira and Halpin call it, in which the components were minorities (especially Latinos), socially liberal college-educated whites (especially women), and young voters. This time around, Obama will seek to do the same thing again, only more so. The growth of those segments of the electorate and the president’s strength with them have his team brimming with confidence that ­demographics will trump economics in November—and in the process create a template for Democratic dominance at the presidential level for years to come.

But if the Obama 2012 strategy in this regard is all about the amplification of 2008, in terms of message it will represent a striking deviation. Though the Obamans certainly hit John McCain hard four years ago—running more negative ads than any campaign in history—what they intend to do to Romney is more savage. They will pummel him for being a vulture-vampire capitalist at Bain Capital. They will pound him for being a miserable failure as the governor of Massachusetts. They will mash him for being a water-carrier for Paul Ryan’s Social Darwinist fiscal program. They will maul him for being a combination of Jerry Falwell, Joe Arpaio, and John Galt on a range of issues that strike deep chords with the Obama coalition. “We’re gonna say, ‘Let’s be clear what he would do as president,’ ” Plouffe explains. “Potentially abortion will be criminalized. Women will be denied contraceptive services. He’s far right on immigration. He supports efforts to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriage.”

The Obama effort at disqualifying Romney will go beyond painting him as excessively conservative, however. It will aim to cast him as an avatar of revanchism. “He’s the fifties, he is retro, he is backward, and we are forward—that’s the basic construct,” says a top Obama strategist. “If you’re a woman, you’re Hispanic, you’re young, or you’ve gotten left out, you look at Romney and say, ‘This fucking guy is gonna take us back to the way it always was, and guess what? I’ve never been part of that.’ ”…


Makes you understand why he chose “Forward” as his campaign slogan.  And this strategy might work except for one thing.  Reality.  This isn’t 2008 and a negative campaign like this is going to turn voters off and he will lose ground, not gain it. 

4. Meaningful work and other Educational Deadends

“Education” is a word that covers a lot of very different things, from vital, life-saving medical skills to frivolous courses to absolutely counterproductive courses that fill people with a sense of grievance and entitlement, without giving them either the skills to earn a living or a realistic understanding of the world required for a citizen in a free society.

The lack of realism among many highly educated people has been demonstrated in many ways.
When I saw signs in Yellowstone National Park warning visitors not to get too close to a buffalo, I realized that this was a warning that no illiterate farmer of a bygone century would have needed. No one would have had to tell him not to mess with a huge animal that literally weighs a ton, and can charge at you at 30 miles an hour.

No one would have had to tell that illiterate farmer’s daughter not to stand by the side of a highway, trying to hitch a ride with strangers, as too many college girls have done, sometimes with results that ranged all the way up to their death.

The dangers that a lack of realism can bring to many educated people are completely overshadowed by the dangers to a whole society created by the unrealistic views of the world promoted in many educational institutions.

It was painful, for example, to see an internationally renowned scholar say that what low-income young people needed was “meaningful work.” But this is a notion common among educated elites, regardless of how counterproductive its consequences may be for society at large, and for low-income youngsters especially.

What is “meaningful work”?...

http://rightwingnews.com/column-2/meaningful-work/

What young people need is work.  There is meaning in all work not the least being independence and a sense of accomplishment.

5. Van Jones says TEA Party wants to destroy America

President Obama's former green czar, Van Jones, described the Tea Party as a group of "so-called patriots" who are trying to destroy America last weekend at a campaign on behalf of the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in the Wisconsin recall election.

"At this point in this struggle, it's the so-called patriots who are the ones who are smashing down every American institution," Jones said last weekend in Milwaukee. "It's the so-called patriots, the ones who come out here with their Tea Party and the flags and call themselves patriots -- they're the ones that are smashing down our unions, smashing down public education, smashing down every American institution that we built, and our parents built, and our grandparents built to make this country great."

Jones added that the Tea Party is trying to "take a wrecking ball -- and paint it red, white, and blue -- and smash down all the things our parents did for us."…

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/van-jonestea-party-full-so-called-patriots/563496

Extremism is in the eye of the beholder.  Van Jones is an extremist.