What’s New Today
Story #1 is
today’s sign of desperation from the Obama Campaign. #2 is a poll that shows after all the
negative ads on Mr. Romney’s character, the voters don’t see any difference
between Governor Romney and President Obama.
#3 reviews Romney’s speech in Israel.
#4 reviews the hope and change for 2012.
#5 shows that Obama is lying to himself. #6 is a story about voter fraud. #7 is an excellent article explaining while
2004 and 2012 are totally different. #8
looks a sexual predators who are teaching in our schools.
Today’s
Thoughts
If
you watched the opening ceremony of the London
Olympics you were treated to homage to the NHS (Britain’s National Health
Service). Celebrating the NHS is
definitely a left wing dream as in 2009, it was reported that approximately 300 patients died each year of
malnutrition in British hospital wards. Starving their patients to death is
not good medicine.
It appears Obama’s change on gay marriage has allowed
Democrats to play the bigot card. The
problem is the card is overdrawn and doesn’t
work anymore.
A $38.6
billion loan guarantee program that the Obama administration promised would
create or save 65,000 jobs has
created just a few thousand jobs two years after it began, government records
show. The program has directly created 3,545 new, permanent jobs after giving out
almost half the allocated amount, according to Energy Department tallies. Obama doesn’t have a clue.
Richard Miniter writes that Obama canceled the Osama bin Laden “kill”
mission in January 2011, again in
February, and a third time in March. Obama’s close adviser Valerie Jarrett
persuaded him to hold off each time, according to the book.
1. Signs of Desperation
David Axelrod’s anxiety over
Barak Obama’s reelection chances is now on full display. In the latest personal e-mail
from the Obama campaign, Axelrod starts to act paranoid:
You know what's kind of amazing?
That we're not getting blown
away in the face of unprecedented, unlimited spending from super PACs, Mitt
Romney, and all the other shadowy groups trashing Barack Obama nonstop.
Shadowy
groups? Is he hallucinating? Perhaps his boss has reinstituted the Choom Gang
and Axelrod has been puffing away – the donors to Romney’s campaign and
pro-Romney Super PACs has received consistent and brutal scrutiny.
It’s
worth noting the violent language here. For a campaign that whines about
incivility on a regular basis to use the phrase “blown away” is inconsistent,
to say the least.
Axelrod
continues:
In
June, nearly 80 percent of the money Romney and the Republicans raised came
from just 6 percent of the donations they received -- and that's before we
count the super PACs. The other side relies on fewer people giving more, and
with this year's new rules, it's a lot more.
Even
with all that, we're still in a position of strength heading into the final
three months of this race, thanks to grassroots supporters like you. When I
talk to a reporter or go on TV, I'm damn proud to tell people that….
I do believe the left is not only desperate,
but delusional as well.
2. As Obama attacks Romney’s Character, voters see no
difference
Mitt Romney holds thin advantages over President Obama on
leadership, personal values and honesty, according to a new poll for The Hill.
The poll, conducted for The Hill by
Pulse Opinion Research, suggests voters see little difference between the
candidates on character issues that Democrats have cited as key to Obama’s
appeal
.
It found 48 percent of voters consider Romney the stronger leader, compared to
44 percent who favored Obama.
Similarly, 47 percent of likely voters also said Romney most shares their values
while 44 percent picked Obama.
When asked which candidate voters
considered more honest and trustworthy, 46 percent said Romney and 44 percent
said Obama — a result within the poll’s 3 percentage point margin of error.
The results may prompt new questions about the effectiveness of the Obama campaign’s
effort to characterize Romney as a calculating former corporate executive who
has little in common with ordinary voters….
If these factors are equal, what’s a voter to do? Perhaps look at Obama’s record over the past
three years?
3. Romney’s Remarkable Speech in
Jerusalem
Mitt Romney, the all-but-official
Republican presidential nominee, delivered
a stem winder of a speech to the Jerusalem Foundation yesterday, packing
emotional support with frank policy statements. The contrast with Obama could
hardly be more dramatic. Indeed, one could go through the speech and note the
many refutations of Obama. For example, the opening comment that “To step foot into Israel is to step foot
into a nation that began with an ancient promise made in this land” directly
contrasts with Obama’s crabbed statement in Cairo about “the aspiration for a
Jewish homeland [being] rooted in a tragic history.”
Also, in contrast to the nonsensical Obama
administration stance on Jerusalem being Israel’s capital — sneaking into change
captions that mistakenly identified it as that and going through verbal
gymnastics to avoid calling it that — Romney
came out and plainly called Jerusalem “the capital of Israel.”…
… But
of the whole speech, it is the final words that most struck me: “May God bless America, and may He bless
and protect the Nation of Israel.” When last did a politician ask the Lord
to protect another country and not his own?
Comments: (1) Obama and
Romney stand as far apart on Israel as they do on the sources of economic
growth. (2) Over and over again, Romney returned to the moral bonds between
the two countries; yes, there are mutual benefits from our connection, but
ultimately it reflects something higher and greater than any of us. (3) If he
is elected, it will be fascinating to watch to what extent the outlook
expressed today will translate to the workaday policy issues. I expect it will
have a substantial effect.
Romney’s trip to Israel is a success by any measure. Perhaps someday Obama can scout out Israel to
see if he and the family should visit it on vacation.
4. Hope for Change
The presidential campaign remains
very close, but some of the polling information must continue to cause alarm in
the Obama campaign. Sixty-five percent
of respondents in a recent Rasmussen Reports poll felt our nation was on the
"wrong track," and surveys by National Public Radio and ABC
News/Washington Post showed similar results. Sixty-four percent of respondents in a recent CBS News poll thought
President Obama's policies have contributed "some" or "a
lot" to the economic turndown. And as the election gets closer, the
president's approval rating continues to lag below the all-important 50% mark
in almost every survey.
Americans are frustrated over
today's economy and worried about the direction of our country. To some degree
they blame Mr. Obama for the weak economy and his policies for stifling
economic growth. But our nation's
overall dissatisfaction can also be attributed to a disappointment in the way
that this president has governed. The
Obama administration has forced policies either by ramming them through
Congress or implementing them unilaterally when lawmakers refused. And Mr. Obama's politics, contrary to his
promise of postpartisanship, have been the most partisan and cynical we have
seen in a long while. All this is obvious in many matters:
• Taxes. Big tax hikes coming in January will serve as dampers on economic
growth. ObamaCare imposes a new 3.8%
tax on investment income. On top of that, if the Bush tax increases aren't
extended, the top income tax rates will rise to 23.8% from 15% on capital gains
and to 43.4% from 15% on dividends….
…• Energy. The American
people hear Mr. Obama talk about a broad energy strategy, but they see an
administration that has attacked the coal industry with onerous regulations, done little or nothing to assist the
natural gas boom, done what it can to slow down oil production, and wasted money on other initiatives that
please green supporters but don't lower the cost of energy.
• Health care. Although
ObamaCare remains unpopular, the Supreme Court ruling upholding it means that a
17% transfer of our economy from the marketplace to the control of the federal
government is coming unless Congress and a President Romney can stop it. At a
time when our nation needs lower taxes and more flexibility in health-care
decisions, ObamaCare has increased taxes
by hundreds of billions of dollars and allowed government to regulate most of our
health care decisions….
So basically what the American people are seeing is that
things cost more, are taxed more while the results are less than what it used
to be. Obama is toast in November.
5. Obama lies again—this time to himself
Mitt Romney's presidential campaign
has been slamming President Obama for a statement he made about the economy in
a recent speech: "We tried our
plan," Obama said, "and it worked." Taken out of context, it
sounds like he is claiming credit for mending the economy. In context, however, it appears that Obama was referring to the Clinton
years as the time when Democrats tried "our plan" -- a plan that
included raising taxes -- and the economy did well.
As we noted last week, this is a
revisionist view of the Clinton era,
which produced its greatest economic boom only after Clinton cut taxes on
high-income investors and inheritors in 1997. But it's not hard to see why
Romney is playing up Obama's quote. It sounds damning because no one in America
believes that Obama's economic plan has worked in any sense of the word -- not
even the president himself can possibly believe it….
The only things Obama has left are lies and he apparently is
doing what Dr. Goebbels said could happen.
“If you tell a lie often enough, pretty soon you’ll begin to believe it
yourself.”
6. NAACP
Executive sentence for voter Fraud
While NAACP President Benjamin Jealous lashed out at
new state laws requiring photo ID for voting, an NAACP executive sits in prison, sentenced for carrying out a massive
voter fraud scheme.
In a story ignored by the national media, in April a
Tunica County, Miss., jury convicted NAACP official Lessadolla Sowers on 10 counts of fraudulently casting absentee ballots.
Sowers is identified on an NAACP website as a member of the Tunica County NAACP Executive Committee.
Sowers received
a five-year prison term for each of the 10 counts, but Circuit Court Judge
Charles Webster permitted Sowers to serve those terms concurrently, according
to the Tunica Times, the only media outlet to cover the sentencing.
“This crime cuts against the fabric of our free
society,” Judge Webster said.
Sowers was found guilty of voting in the names of
Carrie Collins, Walter Howard, Sheena Shelton, Alberta Pickett, Draper Cotton
and Eddie Davis. She was also convicted of voting in the names of four dead
persons: James L. Young, Dora Price, Dorothy Harris, and David Ross.
In the trial, forensic
scientist Bo Scales testified that Sowers’s DNA was found on the inner seals of
five envelopes containing absentee ballots….
…The NAACP has
had other problems with voter fraud. The NAACP National Voter Fund
registered a dead man to vote in Lake County, Ohio, in 2004. That same year, out of 325 voter registration cards filed
by the NAACP in Cleveland, 48 were flagged as fraudulent.
But the NAACP’s voter fraud record doesn’t approach
that of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. At least 54 individuals employed by or
associated with ACORN have been convicted of voter fraud….
Liberals still
don’t believe voter fraud is a problem.
7. Will 2012 be a repeat of 2004?
…As in 2004, the incumbent has been
running negative ads against the challenger, hoping to disqualify him as Bill
Clinton disqualified Bob Dole in 1996. Many Democrats think that Barack Obama's
attacks on Mitt Romney's business career will have the same effect that they
think the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads had on John Kerry in 2004.
But, as William Galston of the
Brookings Institution, an alumnus of the Clinton White House, writes in The New
Republic, "the evidence in favor of
all these propositions is remarkably thin."
Galston points out that in 2004 no single issue was as prominent as
the economy is this year and that on
most significant issues George W. Bush had a clear edge by the end of the
campaign. He cites polling evidence that the Swift Boat ads hurt Kerry less
than did Bush ads replaying his March
statement that "I did actually vote for the $87 billion before I voted
against it."…
…But there are at least two other
salient differences between 2004 and 2012.
One is that the 2004 election occurred during a period of unusual stability in American
voting behavior.
In the preceding four congressional
elections, Republicans won between 48 and 51 percent of the popular vote for
the House and Democrats won between 46 and 49 percent. In 2004 the parties'
percentages in both the presidential and congressional popular vote were within
the same narrow ranges.
Since then, voting behavior has been much more volatile. In the last three
congressional elections, Republicans' share of the House popular vote has
ranged from 43 to 52 percent and Democrats' share from 45 to 54 percent.
In 2004, only three states cast
their electoral votes for a different party than in 2000, and the margins were
narrow in all cases.
In other words, almost all voters in
2004 were firmly committed to one party or the other. Bush political supremo
Karl Rove was right in saying there were few uncommitted voters and that his
campaign's big task was to turn out the faithful. The Kerry campaign operated
on the same assumption.
But in recent years, lots of American voters, at least by
historical standards, have flipped from one party to the other, and in both
directions.
The conventional wisdom is that we
know with certainty the identity of the dozen or so battleground states. But
the list has changed since 2008.
In 2008, Obama carried Indiana and
lost Missouri by only 3,903 votes. Today, Indiana and Missouri aren't on
anyone's target list.
In contrast, most analysts'
battleground list this year includes Michigan and Wisconsin, which Obama
carried in 2008 with 57 and 56 percent of the vote…
Getting out the base isn’t enough in 2012. There aren’t enough Democrats to reelect
Obama. Most of the polls that have it
tied or Obama slightly ahead have demographics with the Democrats holding a
7-12 percent advantage over Republican voters.
That isn’t going to happen. Right
now Romney is up by approximately 5% with 4-5% undecided. The undecided will break approximately 75%
for Romney which means he’s likely to win by 8% or more.
8. Teacher’s Unions Protect Sexual Predators
By resisting almost any change aimed
at improving our public schools, teachers unions have become a ripe target for
reformers across the ideological spectrum. Even Hollywood, famously sympathetic
to organized labor, has turned on unions with the documentary "Waiting for
'Superman'" (2010) and a feature film, "Won't Back Down," to be
released later this year. But perhaps
most damaging to the unions' credibility is their position on sexual misconduct
involving teachers and students in New York schools, which is even causing
union members to begin to lose faith.
In the last five years in New York City, 97 tenured teachers
or school employees have been charged by the Department of Education with
sexual misconduct. Among the charges substantiated by
the city's special commissioner of investigation—that is, found to have
sufficient merit that an arbitrator's full examination was justified—in the
2011-12 school year:
• An assistant principal at a
Brooklyn high school made explicit sexual remarks to three different girls,
including asking one of them if she would perform oral sex on him.
• A teacher in Queens had a sexual
relationship with a 13-year old girl and sent her inappropriate messages
through email and Facebook.
If this kind of behavior were
happening in any adult workplace in America, there would be zero tolerance. Yet
our public school children are defenseless.
Here's why. Under current New York law, an accusation is first vetted by an
independent investigator. (In New York City, that's the special
commissioner of investigation; elsewhere in the state, it can be an independent
law firm or the local school superintendent.) Then the case goes before an employment arbitrator. The local
teachers union and school district together choose the arbitrators, who in turn
are paid up to $1,400 per day. And therein lies the problem.
For many arbitrators, their livelihood depends on pleasing
the unions (whether the United Federation of
Teachers in New York City, or other local unions). And the unions—believing
that they are helping the cause of teachers by being weak on sexual
predators—prefer suspensions and fines, and not dismissal, for teachers charged
with inappropriate sexual conduct. The effects of this policy are mounting….
There is a major problem with sexual abuse in the public
schools even though you never hear about it. This problem has been estimate by
Carol Shakeshaft as “likely more than
100 times the abuse by [Catholic] priests.”
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