Romney vs Obama Part Two

Colorado Model:  Romney 77% likelihood of popular vote victory

The University of Colorado (CU) prediction renowned for perfect accuracy will predict a popular-vote win for Mitt Romney later this month, Campus Reform has learned.

The poll has accurately predicted every presidential election since it was developed in 1980. It is unique in that it employs factors outside of state economic indicators to predict the next president.

CU Political Science Professor Dr. Michael Berry, who spoke with Campus Reform at length on Tuesday, said there is at least 77 percent chance that Romney will win the popular vote.

MSNBC undecideds go for Romney after the debate

Romney’s record as a businessman seems to be moving people.

Romney:  “We don’t have to settle for this”

Romney kept exposing the Obama record.

Romney exposes an Obama vote as the definition of insanity*

Romney shot back that "if you elect President Obama, you know what you're going to get -- you're 

going to get a repeat of the last four years."

*definition of insanity:  doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

When Obama folded last night

The most single telling moment of Tuesday's debate - and possibly of any of the debates - came early, when Obama attempted to interrupt Romney one time too many. The governor rebuked him, politely but firmly, and Obama simply turned and went back to his stool...

….For a fleeting instant, Americans saw Obama the way that Putin, Jiang, Khamanei, and Jihadis see him. It was not an impressive sight, and it cannot be made up for.

CNN/CBS on who won the Debate

After posting this, I took a couple of hours sleep, woke up and looked at the polls. They present a more mixed impression of the evening than the live event suggested. CNN shows an Obama win overall, but it also has Romney ahead on the economy (18 points) and leadership (3 points).  CBS, again found that Obama won the debate.  But it also reports that Romney leads on the economy by 65 to 34 per cent. The implication is that Obama won on style and Romney on many specifics.

Town-Haul

Jay Homnick thinks Romney’s performance was the best ever in a Presidential debate even better than his hero Ronald Reagan.  For instance:  

First of all, he solved the age-old conflict of how to call a President a liar without seeming impudent. This conundrum had bedeviled challengers since the dawn of time. So many times in the past we have seen the Bob Doles and the McCains of the world let the lie fly by while they are too paralyzed by seemliness to take a swat.

Romney solved this with an inventive linguistic approach. Instead of saying something was wrong, he said the inverse of the inverse, something on the order of "How can this be so?"

Michael Barone on the second debate

Michael’s bottom line, this debate doesn’t change anyone’s mind.

Debate #2:  Scored like a boxing match

This was actually an entertaining and interesting look at last night’s debate.  Here’s the part I found especially insightful.

As a former boxer (1976 Golden Gloves), I thought I recognized what Romney was doing -- he was trying to see what Obama had.  Or maybe he was just nervous, but he gave Obama the first round.  Thereafter, it was all Romney.  Romney attacked Obama and his record with ease and effectiveness -- sticking and moving, sticking and moving.  He challenged him face to face, but with respect for the champ, while Obama clearly had no respect for him.

Romney killed on energy, at one point, asking the President a direct question on drilling, which forced Obama to sit down.  To know the significance of this, watch the moment with the sound off.  It's a standing 8 count.

After Debate #2:  Now what happens?

The core dynamic here is that Romney has proven himself to be a perfectly acceptable alternative to Obama. The silly portrayal of Romney in all those negative ads has been exploded. Obama’s inevitability is gone. The underlying state of the country, which is not at all good, has become the issue. All of that is bad for Obama and very good for Romney.

Does this guarantee victory to Romney? Not necessarily, but the fundamental dynamic of the race now favors the challenger. The core of Obama’s strategy was to distract attention from his record by rendering Romney unacceptable. That strategy has failed. In its absence, all Obama has is the hope of that his base is now large enough to hand him a narrow victory. Not impossible, but unlikely.

I think Mr. Kurtz is correct in his assessment.  And history is on Romney’s side.  Incumbent presidents don’t get reelected with this kind of an economy.

Obama’s Freudian Slip

"The way we're going to create jobs here is not just changing our tax code, but also to double our exports. And we are on pace to double our exports, one of the commitments I made when I was president. That's creating tens of thousands of jobs all across the country."

So Obama is already talking about being president in the past tense. 

What fair and balanced looks like to the left

Crowley interrupted Obama 9 times and Romney 28 times.

It couldn’t be because he was talking too long since Obama talked 10% longer than Romney did.

The Red Telephone Ad:  Hillary was right

Here’s the famous 3 AM ad.  It appears Barack has put that phone on call forwarding to Hillary.

Obamacare:  Now we know what’s in it

Every expansive promise made by the president for his signature legislation has been shown to be smoke and mirrors.  Though touted as healthcare reform (change for the better), the ACA is more accurately described as Obama's Act of Healthcare Exacerbation (change that makes things worse).

A new study by the Pioneer Policy Institute in Massachusetts adds number 10 to the list (below) of reasons why Americans hate the ACA.

Merkel vs Obama

Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday Germany needs to stimulate domestic economic demand and urged opposition parties to stop blocking proposed tax cuts in the upper house of Parliament. Merkel told business leaders Germany should end the automatic progression of workers into ever higher tax brackets due to inflation, which siphons more than 20 billion euros ($26 billion) out of the economy each year. She also renewed her calls for cuts in pension contributions as another way to boost purchasing power.

Apparently she is at odds with BHO’s strategy

Best Bumper Sticker

“I’m not a racist.  I don’t like Biden either.” 

Unemployment.. going up?

What’s new Today 

Story #1 looks at whether the Obama reelection campaign is a well-oiled machine.  #2 looks at what Obama’s biggest problem is.  #3 brings up the question has Obama dropped out of governing or was he ever into governing.  #4 has Gallup estimating unemployment next month at 8.5%.  #5 looks at if there are things Obama could do to reduce the cost of gasoline.  #6 reviews the latest Caro book on LBJ and how he was picked to be the VP. 

Today’s thoughts

The latest Gallup Poll has Romney up by 5 points over Obama.  We can expect the MSM to tell us that polls don’t count and it’s too early to pay any attention to them.

Obama supporters take solace that Romney has faults.  But the faults they cite aren’t likely to derail his candidacy.  As the old joke go as two men are being chased by a bear, the one asks if he thinks they can out run the bear.  The other says, “I don’t have to out run the bear.  I only have to out run you.”   Romney doesn’t have to beat the perfect president.  He has to beat Obama.

It appears that while Romney put his dog on the roof on his car, Obama put dog on the roof of his mouth.  When he lived in Indonesia, he ate dog meat. 

The GSA scandal represents just 17 seconds of deficit spending by the federal government and that’s the real problem.  Government is neither efficient nor effective, it is political.

1.  The Obama Machine:  Jugger Not

The Obama machine has been portrayed as a campaign juggernaut, essentially unstoppable, headed by the smartest president (In Obama's estimation, at least in the top four) ever anointed and run by the cleverest and most ruthless backroom in the history of U.S. politics. Obama, Axelrod, and Plouffe, we are told, really know their stuff. So much so, that many in the media wonder why Romney, presuming he wins the GOP nomination, would even show up in the fall contest.

Axelrod's strategy of targeting identifiable voter groups and then scaring these groups into the Obama camp by creating Republican bogeymen is celebrated on most Sunday talk shows as political genius. Poll after poll is trotted out to show Axelrod's efficacy when it comes to getting his guy back in the Oval Office. The latest carefully crafted tactic, so clever that it could have been hatched only in Axelrod's war room, the "Republican War on Women," was so well-thought out and executed that we are told it resulted in a twenty-point spread of "women" more likely to support Obama than to support Romney. Pure genius.

So well-crafted was the War on Women message that it only took a two-second sound bite by Obama surrogate Hilary Rosen, attacking Ann Romney, for the entire War on Women meme to come completely unraveled. Rosen's comments were spectacularly ignorant, but even if she had not torpedoed Axelrod's latest scheme on national TV, we can be sure that another Obama minion would have scuttled the War on Women at some point…

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/jugger-not.html#ixzz1sNtMVTc1

Obama is going negative because he has to. But it is way too early to do what he’s doing now.  This is going to backfire as his greatest asset, people seem to like him, will be hurt significantly by the strategy. 

2.  Obama’s biggest Problem?  His record

"The choice in this election is between an economy that produces a growing middle class and that gives people a chance to get ahead and their kids a chance to get ahead, and an economy that continues down the road we are on, where a fewer and fewer number of people do very well and everybody else is running faster and faster just to keep pace."

That's Obama advisor David Axelrod on "Fox News Sunday," explaining why people should vote for ... Barack Obama.

Odds are this was simply poor phrasing. But it might not have been, given how desperately the Obama campaign wants to turn back the clock to 2008, when the choice was between hope and change or continuing "down the road we are on."

Regardless of the spin, the simple fact is that Obama is the stay-the-course candidate stuck with a team, a record and an economy ill-suited for a stay-the-course strategy.

That's what gives poignancy to Obama's recently renewed love affair with Ronald Reagan, whom Obama invokes these days as a model of reasonableness and bipartisanship. He even wants to rename the "Buffett rule" the "Reagan rule."

Even before he got the nomination in 2008, Obama said he wanted to be a "transformative" president like Reagan had been.

And last year, Time magazine featured a cover story, "Why Obama [Hearts] Reagan," which in Time's words gave the true story behind "Obama's Reagan Bromance."

There were two key elements to Obama's man-crush. The first was the simple hope that history -- or at least the business cycle -- would repeat itself.

The White House's plan was to run for re-election in 2012 with a soaring economy at its back. After an absolutely bruising recession (that was in some ways worse than the one Obama inherited), Reagan got to ride a surging economy to re-election. America enjoyed 6 percent annual growth in 1984: In three of the four quarters before Election Day, GDP quarterly growth was more than 7 percent, while inflation and unemployment plummeted.

At Obama's back is a dismayingly anemic recovery, constantly threatening to get worse. He wants credit for "creating" 3 million jobs but insists he be held blameless for millions more workers who've left the job market entirely…

http://townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/2012/04/18/obamas_problem_his_record

Obama will not raise a billion dollars for his campaign.  Obama will not get his roaring economy.  Obama will not get his second term.

3.   Boehner on Obama

…The speaker said he was "not optimistic" that anything would get done between now and the election. "The president checked out last Labor Day. All he's done is campaign full time for the last six months. He's not been engaged in the legislative process at all. There have been no efforts at trying to work with Democrats and Republicans to address this issue at all. And it's, it's shameful."

Boehner said he thought this election would be "a referendum on the president's economic policies. They've not only not helped the economy, they've actually made it worse."…

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505271_162-57415624/boehner-obama-checked-out-last-labor-day/?tag=stack

This interpretation of what happened is supported by the Washington Post. 

4. Gallup Adjusted Unemployment should be 8.5% in April

U.S. unemployment, as measured by Gallup on a preliminary basis without seasonal adjustment, declined to 8.2% in mid-April from 8.4% in March. However, the government's likely seasonal adjustment of 0.3 percentage points leads to a Gallup seasonally adjusted U.S. unemployment rate of 8.5% in mid-April, up from 8.1% last month….

http://www.gallup.com/poll/153917/Unemployment-Provides-Mixed-Picture-Mid-April.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_content=morelink&utm_term=Economy%20-%20Jobs%20-%20Underemployment%20-%20Unemployment%20-%20USA

This is not going to help the Obama campaign.  Get ready for the “unexpected increase” from the press.

5.  Lowering the Price of Gasoline

President Obama has claimed that there is no "silver bullet" to reduce gasoline prices. I beg to differ. Any rational business, upon being told that anew competitor is planning to enter into competition with them, will first reduce prices. Why? Well, it's obviously not to match the prices of a potential competitor who isn't even in business yet. The purpose is to demonstrate to the new kid on the block that (a) because of their much higher sales volume, the older business can still function at lower unit prices and (b) if the new kid wants to compete, he will have to sell at these new, lower prices, and suffer the lower operating margins associated with those lower prices.

This is known among the cognoscenti as "raising a barrier to entry." The point of the effort is to make accessing the existing market so expensive, in terms of the newcomer's return on investment and the length of time before the cost of the original investment is recouped, that it discourages new entrants before they even start.

This being true, there would be an immediate and dramatic reduction in the worldwide price of oil if President Obama opened up for serious drilling the American territories both offshore and onshore, as well as the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) and everywhere else where we might conceivably find oil. Within 24 hours after such an announcement, the price of crude would start to drop as current oil-producing countries tried to pre-empt any new activity by making it less attractive financially.

Sadly, we seem to have a president who is so ideologically driven that he abhors even the thought of providing usable economical energy for the people who elected him, even if it will come online only long after he has left the presidency…

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/04/can_the_president_lower_gas_prices.html#ixzz1sNubTvyK

This has already happened during the Bush Presidency.  Here’s another reason it would work.  The price of oil is set as much on what people see as the future supply and demand as the current state of supply and demand.  Tensions in the Middle East raise the price of oil.  Easing of tensions will lower the price of oil.  Future anticipated supply will do the same. 

6.  VP Politics:  Putting LBJ on the ticket

Robert Caro’s new LBJ volume, covering the period 1958–64, is coming out shortly. People who enjoy political-hardball stories will love it. One of the most fascinating parts I’ve encountered is Caro’s account of all the tsuris that surrounded JFK’s putting LBJ on the ticket at the convention in 1960. I grew up with the story most of us did, the one that was put about by Bobby Kennedy and Arthur Schlesinger: that JFK’s offer was strictly pro forma, that LBJ was expected to reject it because he wouldn’t want to step down from being Senate majority leader to the obscurity of the vice presidency, and that when he did in fact accept it the Kennedy team (especially Bobby Kennedy) scrambled to find a way to get rid of a running mate they didn’t really want. Based on his research, Caro tentatively suggests another, somewhat more plausible theory: that Bobby Kennedy was so ferocious in its attempt to derail the LBJ nomination simply because he wasn’t aware that his brother, the nominee, had decided firmly on LBJ, and that JFK had kept Bobby out of the loop precisely because he knew Bobby would be unhappy with the choice.

As Caro explains it, JFK’s decision made perfect sense: The labor-union representatives and other liberals would squawk about having Johnson on the ticket, but if the Kennedy campaign wanted to win in November, they needed Texas.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/296360/putting-lbj-ticket-michael-potemra

Caro is a wonderful writer.  I really enjoyed his first work on LBJ called Paths to Power.  This book might be a great read for the coming election season. 

Obama's future

Obama sets a record

The Obama administration passed another fiscal milestone this week, according to new data released by the Treasury Department. As of the close of business on Oct. 3, the total national debt was $14,837,099,271,196.71—up about $44.8 billion from Sept. 30.

That means that in the less-than-three-years Obama has been in office, the federal debt has increased by $4.212 trillion--more than the total national debt of about $4.1672 trillion accumulated by all 41 U.S. presidents from George Washington through George H.W. Bush combined.

This $4.212-trillion increase in the national debt means that during Obama’s term the federal government has already borrowed about an additional $35,835 for every American household--or $44,980 for every full-time private-sector worker. (According to the Census Bureau there were about 117,538,000 households in the country in 2010, and, according to the BLS, there were about 93,641,000 full-time private-sector workers.)…

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-has-now-increased-debt-more-all-presidents-george-washington-through-george-hw

This was the guy who was going to put on the green eye shade and make the hard spending decisions.  Obama is a disaster. 









ABO (Anybody but Obama) leads Obama



A GENERIC REPUBLICAN NOW HOLDS A SIX-POINT ADVANTAGE OVER PRESIDENT OBAMA in a hypothetical 2012 match-up for the week ending Sunday, October 2.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds the generic Republican earning 47% support, while the president picks up 41% of the vote. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and eight percent (8%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording.)…

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/election_2012/election_2012_presidential_election/generic_presidential_ballot/election_2012_generic_presidential_ballot

Obama has not gotten above 40-45 percent against a generic Republican.  Why is this bad for Obama?  If someone said would you remarry your wife and you answer “I’m undecided,” it wouldn’t bode well for your marriage. 









Lowest Poll yet for Obama

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S DISAPPROVAL RATING HIT AN ALL-TIME HIGH OF 55 PERCENT IN A NEW POLL FROM QUINNIPIAC UNIVERSITY, and in the most troubling poll news for Obama to date, independent voters disapprove of Obama's job performance by a 56-38 margin.

APPROVAL OF OBAMA'S HANDLING OF THE ECONOMY — certain to be the most significant issue in the coming election — HIT ANOTHER RECORD LOW AT 32 PERCENT, WITH 64 PERCENT DISAPPROVING.

Additionally, an overwhelming majority of Americans believe the country is in a recession, with little confidence the economy will recover anytime soon.

A full 43 percent of Americans trust congressional Republicans more on the economy, compared to 41 percent for Obama. The results are a statistical tie — the first time Obama has not led on the issue ever. This is particularly telling given that just 23 percent of Americans approve of congressional Republicans' job performance….



http://www.businessinsider.com/new-poll-has-the-worst-news-yet-for-obama-2011-10#ixzz1a0NTqhoM

BHO keeps dropping and dropping. 









Solyndra:  Administration was considering giving them another loan



Newly released e-mails show the Obama administration’s Energy Department was poised to give Solyndra a second taxpayer loan of $469 million last year, even as the company’s financial situation grew increasingly dire.

The department was still considering providing the second loan guarantee to the solar-panel manufacturer in April and May 2010, at a time when Solyndra’s auditors were already warning that the company was in danger of collapsing….

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/solyndra-e-mails-dept-of-energy-was-poised-to-approve-469-million-for-firm/2011/10/05/gIQA0IvgNL_story.html?hpid=z2

Perhaps green in this case meant the experience level of the people in the Energy Department. 



Elizabeth Warren and liberalism, twisting the ‘social contract’

Elizabeth Warren, Harvard law professor and former Obama administration regulator (for consumer protection), is MODERN LIBERALISM INCARNATE. As she seeks the Senate seat Democrats held for 57 years before 2010, when Republican Scott Brown impertinently won it, she clarifies the liberal project and the stakes of contemporary politics.

THE PROJECT IS TO DILUTE THE CONCEPT OF INDIVIDUALISM, thereby refuting respect for the individual’s zone of sovereignty. THE REGULATORY STATE, LIBERALISM’S INSTRUMENT, CONSTANTLY TRIES TO CONTRACT THAT ZONE — FOR THE INDIVIDUAL’S OWN GOOD, IT SAYS. Warren says:

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.  Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. . . . You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea — God bless, keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

WARREN IS (AS WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY DESCRIBED HARVARD ECONOMIST JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH) A PYROMANIAC IN A FIELD OF STRAW MEN: SHE REFUTES PROPOSITIONS NO ONE ASSERTS. Everyone knows that all striving occurs in a social context, so all attainments are conditioned by their context. This does not, however, entail a collectivist political agenda….

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/elizabeth-warren-and-liberalism-twisting-the-social-contract/2011/10/04/gIQAXi5VOL_story.html

The straw man argument is one used extensively by the left.  Obama is a master at it (he’s always telling us “they say” when what he means is he about to say something, so he can refute it and seem middle of the road.  Warren’s argument about the rich is nonsense.  We all build the roads, but we pay for them based on our usage.  That millionaires is paying his fair share just as you or I are.  Same with the fire and police and education.  We all benefit and we all pay.  Warren seems to think that some should pay more than others for public services because they can.

What I Saw at the Revolution

After spending two days at the epicenter of the Occupy Wall Street campout, I HAVE YET TO ENCOUNTER ANYBODY WITH A SERIOUS PLATFORM, OR TO GLEAN ANY COHERENT SENSE OF WHY THEY ARE THERE. The terminal vagueness which is the hallmark of the demonstration was best articulated by Trey Parker and Matt Stone in 2004’s Team America, in which a disgruntled and effusive Tim Robbins puppet complains that, “the corporations sit there in their… in their corporation buildings, and… and, and see, they’re all corporation-y… and they make money.” This is a sentiment I have heard repeatedly from attendees, almost verbatim. It is always accompanied by derisive gestures toward the skyscrapers towering overhead, whose construction, I am informed without irony by the union members who have now got in on the action, is a source of well-paying union jobs.

When I try to transcend the inchoate vitriol and ask WHAT SHOULD BE DONE ABOUT ALL THE PROBLEMS?, INDIGNATION TURNS QUICKLY TO SILENCE, OR FRUSTRATION — OR BOTH.

In truth, THOSE CAMPED OUT IN ZUCCOTTI PARK ARE RUNNING A COMMUNE MORE THAN A PROTEST. They have established a small communitarian village, which is punctuated by a small cabal of the angry, the insane, and the ignorant. Nothing I have seen is representative of a serious movement, and even less is indicative of any substantive thought….



http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/279373/what-i-saw-revolution-charles-c-w-cooke

The left keeps looking for a movement to counter the TEA Party.  Unfortunately this isn’t it.  The importation of Unions takes it from a grass roots movement to one that is being co-opted by one of the major components of the Democratic Party.  Not surprisingly a few Democrat congressmen have come out in support.  I guess will have to see if there becomes an OWS caucus started in congress.  Probably not. 

This is what a mob looks like

This is what a Mob Looks Like

I am not the first to note the vast differences between the Wall Street protesters and the tea partiers. To name three: The tea partiers have jobs, showers and a point.

NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THE WALL STREET PROTESTERS WANT – AS IS TYPICAL OF MOBS. They say they want Obama re-elected, but claim to hate “Wall Street.” You know, the same Wall Street that gave its largest campaign donation in history to Obama, who, in turn, bailed out the banks and made Goldman Sachs the fourth branch of government.

This would be like opposing fattening, processed foods, but cheering Michael Moore – which the protesters also did this week.

But to me, the most striking difference between the tea partiers and the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd – besides the smell of patchouli – is HOW LIBERAL PROTESTERS MUST CLAIM THEIR EVERY GATHERING IS HISTORIC AND HEROIC.

They chant: “The world is watching!” “This is how democracy looks!” “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for!”

At the risk of acknowledging that I am, in fact, “watching,” THIS IS MOST DEFINITELY NOT HOW DEMOCRACY LOOKS…..

  http://rightwingnews.com/liberals/this-is-what-a-mob-looks-like/

Ann Coulter makes a very good point.  This is how democracy looks.

Texting while Driving:  You were right, it’s dangerous

TEXTING OR EMAILING WHILE DRIVING IS MORE DANGEROUS THAN PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT, ACCORDING TO A NEW STUDY OF THE BEHAVIOR.

"Essentially texting while driving doubles a driver's reaction time," Christine Yager, who led the study at Texas A&M University's Texas Transportation Institute, told Reuters on Wednesday.

"That makes a driver less able to respond to sudden roadway dangers."

For the study, 42 drivers between the ages of 16 and 54 drove on an 11-mile test track course while sending or receiving text messages, and drove it again while focusing completely on the road.

Drivers were asked to stop when they saw a flashing yellow light, and their reaction times were recorded, Yager said.

THE TYPICAL TIME IT TOOK A DRIVER WHO WAS NOT TEXTING TO RESPOND TO THE FLASHING LIGHT WAS ONE TO TWO SECONDS. BUT WHEN THE DRIVER WAS TEXTING, THE REACTION TIME EXTENDED TO THREE TO FOUR SECONDS, AND THE TEXTING MOTORIST WAS 11 TIMES MORE LIKELY TO MISS THE FLASHING LIGHT ALTOGETHER….

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/texting-while-driving-more-dangerous-thought-study-214152197.html

I don’t know what idiot thought it was okay to do this, but there are some.  Of course the Darwin theory says they will be culled out of the herd. 

Obama Scandal Update:  Fast and Furious

So now the FAST AND FURIOUS AFFAIR HAS REACHED STAGE 2 OF THE CLASSIC WASHINGTON SCANDAL: House Republicans have called for a special counsel to investigate Attorney General Eric Holder himself for possible perjury.

Justice Department documents indicate that Holder knew of the operation way back in July 2010 -- far earlier than the “in the last few weeks” that he told congressional investigators under oath last May.

Memos from Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer and others to Holder clearly show the scope, if not the nature, of the disastrous project: “This investigation, initiated in September 2009 . . . involves . . . straw purchasers [who] are responsible for the purchase of 1,500 firearms that were then supplied to Mexican drug cartels.”…

…The heavily redacted memos don’t explicitly implicate ATF and other federal agencies in an illegal scheme, as ATF whistleblowers have alleged. But if there’s a coverup going on, why would they?

AND COVERUP THERE SEEMS TO BE. ON TOP OF STONEWALLING REP. DARRELL ISSA’S HOUSE INVESTIGATION OF THE MESS, JUSTICE HAS FLOATED A SERIES OF CONTRADICTORY EXCUSES:

* There was no such program.

* Even if there were, Holder never knew about it.

* Even if he should have known about it, he might not have read Breuer’s memos.

* Even if he read Breuer’s memos, he misunderstood the simple question: “When did you first know about the program, officially, I believe, called Fast and Furious?”

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/furious_mess_has_justice_in_full_WYXAPQoFlBaBVer5Q47oiO#ixzz1a0aj4Om8

Scandal, poor economy, and protest in the streets against Wall Street.  Obama is toast.