Story #1 looks at what Obama’s campaign will be all about. #2 is a short video of Paul Ryan completely dismantling Obama’s claims for a second term. # 3 looks at income inequality as a problem but not of the rich. #4 looks at what seems to be Obama’s war on religion. #5 looks and finds Obama is the most polarizing Politician ever. #6 reminds us that the election in November will not just be for the Presidency but will have a profound affect in the states as well.
1. Obama and the Politics of Envy
There are 1.1 million more unemployed Americans today than when President Obama was sworn into office in 2009. The number of Americans in poverty has risen by 6.4 million.
Unemployment is up 9 percent, the number of food stamp recipients is up 45 percent, and home values are down 13 percent. If Obama were to seek re-election based on his economic record, he would surely lose.
That is why Obama and his political advisers have determined that income inequality, or "fairness" as they call it, is the defining issue of our time.
"In the last few decades, the average income of the top 1 percent has gone up by more than 250 percent to $1.2 million per year," Obama recently said in Osawatomie, Kan.
"Now, this kind of inequality -- a level that we haven't seen since the Great Depression -- hurts us all."
And how does Obama propose to reverse this income inequality? Through something he calls "the Buffett Rule," which would force all Americans making more than $1 million a year to pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes.
Defending this tax hike in Nevada this week, Obama said, "This has nothing to do with envy. It has everything to do with math." Which sounds like a nice line until you realize that Obama is refusing to show his work
When White House press secretary Jay Carney was pressed to provide the numbers on how much revenue Obama's Buffett Rule would raise, he refused. "I'm not going to give you a schedule of how broad individual tax reform would break down and what impact it would have," Carney said. "The president simply believes that as a matter of principle that unfairness ought to be changed."….
I think Obama must think that it would be unfair to judge him on his record. He wants to change the subject. Reread the first two paragraphs because that is what this election is all about.
2. Paul Ryan Completely Dismantles Obama on FNS
“I'm trying to say is he is giving us a future of debt, doubt, and decline.”
You can watch it here: http://nation.foxnews.com/paul-ryan/2012/01/29/fire-paul-ryan-completely-dismantles-obama-fns#ixzz1kwug2R7r
You can watch it here: http://nation.foxnews.com/paul-ryan/2012/01/29/fire-paul-ryan-completely-dismantles-obama-fns#ixzz1kwug2R7r
3. How do we Overcome Income Inequality?
….But the mere existence of income inequality tells us little about what, if anything, should be done about it. First, we must answer some key questions. Who constitutes the prosperous and the poor? Why has inequality increased? Does an unequal income distribution deny poor people the chance to buy what they want? And perhaps most important: How do Americans feel about inequality?
To answer these questions, it is not enough to take a snapshot of our incomes; we must instead have a motion picture of them and of how people move in and out of various income groups over time.
The “rich” in America are not a monolithic, unchanging class. A study by Thomas A. Garrett, economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, found that less than half of people in the top 1 percent in 1996 were still there in 2005. Such mobility is hardly surprising: A business school student, for instance, may have little money and high debts, but nine years later he or she could be earning a big Wall Street salary and bonus…
… We could reduce income inequality by trying to curtail the financial returns of education and the number of women in the workforce — but who would want to do that?
The real income problem in this country is not a question of who is rich, but rather of who is poor. Among the bottom fifth of income earners, many people, especially men, stay there their whole lives. Low education and unwed motherhood only exacerbate poverty, which is particularly acute among racial minorities.
Making the poor more economically mobile has nothing to do with taxing the rich and everything to do with finding and implementing ways to encourage parental marriage, teach the poor marketable skills and induce them to join the legitimate workforce. It is easy to suppose that raising taxes on the rich would provide more money to help the poor. But the problem facing the poor is not too little money, but too few skills and opportunities to advance themselves….
There is the old saying “give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you will feed him for his lifetime.” So while the left is busy handing out fish and advocate taking more from the best fishermen, the right is advocating teaching fishing to everyone.
The decision last week by Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius to reject the appeals of scores of religious leaders and retain a very narrow “religious” exemption from Obamacare’s so-called contraception mandate has ignited an uproar among Catholic leaders, as well it should — because it’s hard to fathom a government dictate more offensive than this one.
Here’s how we got where we are: Obamacare includes within its massive delegation of power to the federal government the authority to define what constitutes “preventive services” that must be covered by all health-insurance plans sold and purchased in the United States, including plans sponsored by employers. Services defined by HHS as preventive for purposes of this provision are required under the new law to be covered by the insurer or employer with no charge to the insurance plan’s enrollees.
Last August, in the course of writing a rule that would determine preventive health services for women, HHS decided that free contraception and sterilization services are a must. As a practical matter, that means all health-insurance plans sold in the United States in the very near future will include full coverage of products that terminate pregnancies, since some products classified by the FDA as contraceptives — and thus covered under the HHS definition — also act as abortifacients. While it is true that many insurance plans cover such products today, that’s mainly been the choice of the insurers and employers sponsoring the plans. HHS has now made such coverage obligatory nationwide, thus forcing tens of millions of pro-life Americans to pay for “services” with their health-insurance premiums that they find morally objectionable. (Grandfathered plans are exempt from this and other Obamacare rules, but the number qualifying for grandfathered status is expected to decline precipitously in the next couple of years.)
Bad as all that is, it gets worse. Not only must Catholics who work for non-Catholic employers pay for such products with their premiums, HHS also wants religious employers to cover such products in their health plans. Knowing that Catholic leaders and others would strongly object to this requirement, HHS included in the regulation issued last August a narrow exemption from this requirement for employers that are basically houses of worship. Much larger religiously affiliated institutions, such as Catholic universities, hospitals, and charitable enterprises, do not fit within the HHS exemption.
This is one of those Liberal dreams which will cost them in November. The Catholic Church is already preaching against this and like the kids lemonade stand that the health authorities shut down because they don’t have a license, this is just plain stupid on the Obama Administration’s part. Plus it violates the March 2010 agreement between Stupak and President Obama that Obama promised to sign an Executive order banning federal funding of abortion through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The link below here is the letter read in thousands of Catholic Churches across the country.
….The Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The Obama Administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply…
http://www.businessinsider.com/here-is-the-anti-obama-administration-letter-that-was-read-to-almost-every-catholic-sitting-in-church-today-2012-1#ixzz1kxvz4Wl3
http://www.businessinsider.com/here-is-the-anti-obama-administration-letter-that-was-read-to-almost-every-catholic-sitting-in-church-today-2012-1#ixzz1kxvz4Wl3
Perhaps we should start comparing Obama to Nero or Diocletian or Galerius (all were famous for the persecution of Christians).
5. Obama the most polarizing President ever
…For 2011, Obama’s third year in office, an average of 80 percent of Democrats approved of the job he was doing in Gallup tracking polls, as compared to 12 percent of Republicans who felt the same way. That’s a 68-point partisan gap, the highest for any president’s third year in office — ever. (The previous high was George W. Bush in 2007, when he had a 59 percent difference in job approval ratings.)
In 2010, the partisan gap between how Obama was viewed by Democrats versus Republicans stood at 68 percent; in 2009, it was 65 percent. Both were the highest marks ever for a president’s second and first years in office, respectively.
What do those numbers tell us? Put simply: that the country is hardening along more and more strict partisan lines….
Or perhaps rather than hardening, the overreach by Obama and the left polarized the country. Remember how Obama told us he would end the partisan bickering? He not only didn’t, he’s made it worse.
6. The 2012 election at the State level
While the Republican nomination contest has understandably been getting most of the attention in recent weeks, other elements of the 2012 election cycle have been coming into focus. After historic gains in state government in 2010, for example, Republicans have a growing number of opportunities to add to their majorities in governorships and state legislatures.
Right now, 29 of the nation’s states have Republican governors. Democrats hold 20 governorships, with one independent (Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island). If you throw in the five territories and commonwealths with governors, the split is 32 Rs, 22 Ds, one I. In presidential years, there are 11 races for governor around the country. Of these, the largest prizes are North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana, and Washington.
North Carolina’s embattled Democratic governor, Bev Perdue, just announced that she won’t run for a second term. Her approval ratings went upside-down within months of her election in 2008, and she never recovered. Her 2008 opponent, former Charlotte mayor Pat McCrory, is a shoo-in for the Republican nomination and would have beaten her easily. Now the Democratic field is wide open. Unless former Clinton aide Erskine Bowles get in and quickly raises a lot of money, McCrory will probably win this race….
…Republicans also have solid chances of capturing Democratic governorships in Montana and New Hampshire. All Republican incumbents appear to be safe. So it is quite possible that on Election Day, the GOP will win at least a 32-17 edge in state governors.
I still remember the liberal pundit declaring after Obama’s election that the battle between the left and the right was over and the left had one. They also spoke of 20 years of liberal dominance. My how time flies.
