Benghazi

 US denied requests for more security in Benghazi 

“In addition, multiple U.S. federal government officials have confirmed to the Committee that, prior to the September 11 attack, the U.S. mission in Libya made repeated requests for increased security in Benghazi. The mission in Libya, however, was denied these resources by officials in Washington.”

This could be a very telling story for the Obama Administration in what appears to be a dereliction of duty. 

John Stewart looks at Benghazi

And he takes apart the Administration’s story.  And he asks how much it sucks to be the President’s press secretary.

Darrell Issa investigates Benghazi

Ever since the terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, the Obama administration has been stalling, obfuscating and outright lying in order to avoid taking responsibility for the deaths of four Americans, including our ambassador. To a considerable degree, they have gotten away with that strategy. But Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has stepped into the breach. Issa’s committee has been approached by whistle-blowers within the State Department, and the stories they tell about the department’s malfeasance are shocking.

Krauthammer on Benghazi

The mystery here is why would you go out and have our ambassador to the U.N. on five channels create a fairytale about all of this being an outgrowth of demonstration over a video? The answer is you want to cover up — the answer is you want to cover up the security lapses, intelligence lapses, ignoring of the threat. And the fact that one way to put it, if you want to use the phrase of Joe Biden, “Bin Laden dead, al-Qaeda alive.”

Obama supporters trust Romney (Bain Capital) with their money

Some of Bain’s investors include among others, the Ohio Teachers Retirement Fund, Columbia and Harvard Universities, and the Oprah Winfrey and Ford Foundations.  If Romney was such a capitalistic destroyer why would these “good” organizations entrust their money to him? 

How bad is it under Obama?  Really Bad

Economically Obama’s time in office has been a complete disaster.  He says he needs four more years to finish the job.  And finish may be exactly what he is talking about.

How bad is the deficit under Obama?  Really Bad

The fiscal 2012 increase of $1,275,901,078,828.74 exceeded the fiscal 2011 increase $1,228,717,297,665.36 by $47,183,781,163.38

Excuse me, math is not one of my strong subjects but shouldn't the budget deficit be, like, you know, going down every year instead of going up?

Obama’s Dog Siren

Mr. Bring-us-together, never really intended on doing that which is clear from his tone in this speech. 

The most transparent Administration ever is hiding things

At the EPA is appears high level executives have private email accounts they use to shield themselves from FOIA requests. 

Is it time to end Affirmative Action?

We refer to this problem as "mismatch,"a word that largely explains why, even though blacks are more likely to enter college than are whites with similar backgrounds, they will usually get much lower grades, rank toward the bottom of the class, and far more often drop out. Because of mismatch, racial preference policies often stigmatize minorities, reinforce pernicious stereotypes, and undermine the self-confidence of beneficiaries, rather than creating the diverse racial utopias so often advertised in college campus brochures.

Affirmative action in elite schools does more harm than good to the beneficiaries.  It may be similar to taking a novice skier up the mountain figuring they can go down the green slopes rather than teaching them the basics on the bunny hill.  

What the election comes down to

Obama’s campaign still harps on what a mess he inherited.  Bill Clinton told us all that no president, not even he could do better than Obama has done.  Nonsense.  

While it’s true Obama didn’t cause the crisis, he hasn’t fixed it either.  It would be like a fire department that gets to the fires but always seem to have the building burn to the ground justify this by saying, they didn’t start the fire.  We know that.  But they didn’t save the home either which is their job. 

How to tell the truth while you are lying

The report cites a Senate Republican who “admits” that the obstruction “constitutes a ‘new standard’ for President Obama’s nominees.”

The Republican, Mike Lee of Utah, actually made his statement about Obama’s nominees in response to Obama’s recess appointments. Lee said:

Prior to President Obama’s unconstitutional “recess” appointments, I gave his judicial nominees great deference. Both in the Judiciary Committee and on the Senate floor, I have voted in favor of the vast majority of the president’s nominees, including many with whom I fundamentally disagree. But I can do so no more. There is and must be a new standard for the president’s judicial nominations. A standard under which a problematic and controversial nominee such as Mr. Hurwitz cannot receive my support.

This is part of an article titled “Grasping for Accomplishments.”  It is worth it to read it.

 

Biden is right about the Middle Class

Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn upon occasion.  Here are three charts that show how badly the middle class has been hurt in the age of Obama. 

Should you believe Obama’s campaign promises?

To answer this you need only look at his record from 2008.  And the answer is only believe him if you are a fool.

Obama plans to cut Medicare, but campaigns saying he won’t

WOODWARD: Yeah, and, I mean, it's not just his campaign team. It's the president himself. He says, “We're going to reform and strengthen Medicare for the long haul the right way by reducing the cost of health care - everyone would agree with that - not by shifting it onto seniors.” Well, in his own documents, he says, “We have to do this.” When I talked to him, he realized and said very openly that it's irresponsible to not address this.

SCARBOROUGH: Let's play a clip that you were alluding to. Go ahead and roll it.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, JULY 21, 2011: All the Democrats felt that for Democrats to join with Republicans in anything that could be painted as a Medicare cut when there was a huge difference between Democratic and Republican positions on Medicare generally was bad politics. It's an untenable position to say we're not going to do anything on Medicare and Medicaid when that's one of the biggest drivers of our budget deficit.

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Lies, lies, and more lies

What’s New Today

Story #1 tells us of the lies Obama is telling us regarding campaign financing.  #2 looks at Obama’s lies regarding taxation.  #3 is a lie from his staff regarding the solicitor general claiming he never called the mandate a tax.  #4 gives you the 10 reasons the employment numbers are worse than you think.  #5 gives us another sign that the economy is in the tank.  #6 is one person opinion on what SCOTUS’s Obamacare decision actually means.  

Today’s Thoughts

Jobs figures for June were a disappointing 80,000 jobs created.  If you look at the three month rolling total, in February the three previous months had been 670,000 jobs.  In March the number dropped to 570,000 jobs, in April it dropped to 424,000, in May it dropped to 266,000 and this month it dropped to 226,000.  Obama called this month’s numbers a step in the right direction.  I guess it depends on which way you are going.  

Team Obama promised that unemployment today would be 5.6% if we passed the stimulus.  If the labor participation rate had remained the same, unemployment today would be 10.9%.

When Nancy Pelosi said we need to pass Obamacare to see what is in it she was wrong.  We still don’t know.  So far we have 13,000 pages of regulations that have been written since the law passed. 

"We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.”  Ronald Reagan

1.  Lies My President told to Me

President Barack Obama on Thursday claimed he was outspent in his 2004 Senate election race, even though he had almost six times as much money as his opponent. Later in the day, Obama claimed “we were outspent” in the 2008 presidential race, despite out-raising all other candidates.

“I got outspent when I ran [the] first time for Senate,” he claimed as he was ending his heated campaign-trail speech in Maumee, Ohio.

Obama was misleading.

The Federal Election Committee’s website shows that Obama’s campaign claimed $14,807,432 in donations by December 2004.

In contrast, his opponent, Alan Keyes, had only $2,545,325, according to the FEC…

… In a second speech June 5, Obama compounded his misleading claim by declaring that he was outspent in the 2008 presidential race.

“The thing that I want everybody here to understand – each of you personally — is that back in 2008, everybody said we couldn’t do it because we were outspent,” he said during a 4.12 p.m. speech in Sandusky, Ohio.

Obama did not correct the claim, although he immediately revised it, by adding that “we weren’t favored.”

During the 2008 race, Obama raised $779 million. His GOP rival, Sen. John McCain, raised less than half as much, or $347 million….

http://dailycaller.com/2012/07/05/obama-rewrites-history-claims-he-had-less-cash-than-2004-rival/#ixzz1zpoyyv4k

Obama is certainly not very good with numbers.  In fact this coming election he will get a idea of what it really means to be outspent.

2.  More Lies

While we were all debating the cost to our liberty due to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), we were ignoring the cost to our pockets.  If there ever was a reason for bipartisan rage about this law, it should be on the twenty - yes, twenty - hidden new taxes of this law.  Making matters even more relevant is that seven of these taxes are levied on all citizens regardless of income.  Hence, Mr. Obama’s promise not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 is just another falsehood associated with this legislation.

The first, and best known, of these seven taxes that will hit all Americans as a result of Obamacare is the Individual Mandate Tax (no longer concealed as a penalty). This provision will require a couple to pay the higher of a base tax of $1,360 per year, or 2.5% of adjusted growth income starting with lower base tax and rising to this level by 2016.  Individuals will see a base tax of $695 and families a base tax of $2,085 per year by 2016…

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/06/29/Seven-new-taxes

I think I’ll keep this going over time.  Obama is quite adept at stating things that factually aren’t true.

3.  Lies Obama’s campaign told 

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt has claimed that Solicitor General Verrilli never argued that the individual mandate should be upheld under Congress’s taxing authority. He’s lying.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/304842/solicitor-general-called-mandate-tax-noah-glyn

If you are wondering why Obama keeps insisting that the mandate is not a tax even though if it weren’t SCOTUS would have struck down Obamacare, I see two reasons.  First, it exposed Obama’s lie about taxes on people earning less than $250,000 per year.  This tax will fall on ONLY people earning less than $250,000 per year—a lot less.  And second, if it’s a tax the Republicans will be able to use reconciliation to repeal the law. 

4.  10 Reasons the Unemployment is worse than June looks

 Here are 10 reasons why the jobs market is even worse than the headline figures.

1. Unemployment has topped 8% for 41 straight months. Last time above 8% - December 1983.
2. The jobless rate actually makes the labor market look better than it actually is. The rate only counts people who want a job but don't have one. But the labor force participation rate was 63.8% in June, just above near modern-era lows. (It was 66.2% in January 2008 and 67.3% in April 2000). Otherwise, unemployment would be around 11%.
3. The employment-to-population ratio for those aged 25-54 dipped to 75.6% in June, down sharply from 80% in January 2008. Many economists left and right view the core employment ratio as one of the cleanest views of the labor market, because it includes those who have stopped looking for work while excluding the bulge in retirees and young adults in school.
4. Chronic unemployment. The average length of unemployment rose to 39.9 weeks in June, close to recent peak. It was 17.4 weeks at the January 2008 peak and 23.9 weeks in June 2009, when the recession officially ended. Long-term joblessness is particularly bad because skills erode or become obsolete, leading to permanent losses in income…

http://news.investors.com/article/617140/201207060851/10-reasons-jobs-market-worse-than-june-report.htm

Everyone is still stumbling around in the dark with this Administration’s schizophrenic economic policies. 

5.  Another sign the Economy is in the Tank

More workers joined the federal government's disability program in June than got new jobs, according to two new government reports, a clear indicator of how bleak the nation's jobs picture is after three full years of economic recovery.

The economy created just 80,000 jobs in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. But that same month, 85,000 workers left the workforce entirely to enroll in the Social Security Disability Insurance program, according to the Social Security Administration.

The disability ranks have outpaced job growth throughout President Obama's economic recovery. While the economy has created 2.6 million jobs since June 2009, fully 3.1 million workers signed up for disability benefits.

In other words, the number of new disability enrollees has climbed 19% faster than the number of new jobs created during the sluggish recovery.

And the disability ranks will continue to swell. In just the last month, almost 275,000 put in applications for disability benefits. Experts say that more people try to get on disability when jobs are scarce, and changes to eligibility rules enacted back in 1984 have made it far easier to qualify…

http://news.investors.com/article/617233/201207060945/disability-climbs-faster-than-jobs-under-obama.htm

Now if I were a left wing blogger and this was bad news for a Republican President, I would probably project this out in the future to figure out when all Americans would be on disability. 

6.  Obamacare:  The politics of its survival

….Politically Obamacare, as its critics call it, remains highly unpopular. It's possible that the court decision will boost its support, but unlikely.

Most voters want this law repealed. Mitt Romney and the Republicans want to repeal it. Barack Obama and the Democrats want to preserve it. It's not a winning issue for the incumbent.

Constitutionally, many conservatives are unhappy that Chief Justice Roberts and the four justices generally considered liberal voted to uphold the mandate to buy health insurance as a tax, which Congress is clearly empowered to levy.

But the fact remains that a majority of five justices, including Roberts, also declared that Congress' power to regulate commerce does not authorize a mandate to buy a commercial product. This will tend to bar further expansion of the size and scope of the federal government.

Moreover, the Constitution's limits on congressional power have now become, for the first time in seven decades, a political issue. They're likely to remain one for years to come.

This would not have been true had not the constitutional case against the mandate been advanced by Washington lawyer David Rivkin, Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett and many others.

They did not quite prevail in the Supreme Court, but they changed not only the legal but also the political debate in a way almost no one anticipated three years ago.

Unhappy conservatives grumble that Congress can get around the declaration that a mandate is beyond Congress's enumerated powers by labeling it a tax – or just by relying on five justices declaring it one.

But there's usually a political price to pay for increasing taxes. That's why Barack Obama swore up and down that the mandate was not a tax. It's why Democratic congressional leaders did not call it one.

Roberts' decision undercuts such arguments, now and in the future. Members of Congress supporting such legislation will be held responsible, this year and for years to come, for increasing taxes.

And the Constitution's provision that tax bills must be originated in the House of Representatives means that the party controlling the House can effectively block such measures. That will be an argument for Republican congressional candidates for the indefinite future….

http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/government-361759-court-years.html

I’m still in a wait and see mode on this.  There isn’t anything we can do now, but regain the Presidency, the Senate and keep control of the House.  With that combination and the mandate being a tax we can repeal the law.