Don't you wish it were over?

AAA Holloween

Why the Republicans need to take the Senate

But if it’s big and bold that voters want, House Republicans have passed it. What stands in their way are Senate Democrats. One reason the Reagan policy revolution became law in 1981 is because Republicans scared enough Democrats into cooperating by picking up a net gain of 12 Senate seats in 1980 to gain control 53-46.

If voters want to break the gridlock of the past two years and start addressing the country’s urgent fiscal and economic problems, they’re going to have to elect a Republican Senate as well as Mr. Romney.

Libertarians should vote for Mitt Romney

Libertarians generally vote with the Republicans with reservations.  But Mitt Romney appears to be the candidate of their dreams.  Socially moderate to liberal and fiscally conservative, this may be the libertarians first chance to actually have a candidate of their choice.

Are women moving towards Romney or away from Obama?

I have a suspicion that most women are not charmed by the “war on women” campaign that is meant to win them over — and that many women are repelled by it.

Battleground poll model sees a Romney win

The bipartisan Battleground Poll, in its “vote election model,” is projecting that Mitt Romney will defeat President Obama 52 percent to 47 percent. The poll also found that Romney has an even greater advantage among middle class voters, 52 percent to 45 percent.

While Obama can close the gap with a strong voter turnout effort, “reports from the field would indicate that not to be the case, and Mitt Romney may well be heading to a decisive victory,” says pollster Ed Goeas.

Should Romney win by 5 percentage points, it would increase Republican chances of gaining control of the Senate. His coattails would help elect GOP Senate candidates in Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. “Republicans are now certain to hold the House,” Goeas said, “regardless of how the presidential race turns out.”

This sounds about right to me. 

Obama cancels Florida speech to monitor Sandy

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has just announced that President Obama has canceled his campaign event in Orlando,Florida, and will return to the White House to monitor Hurricane Sandy.

Too bad he didn’t find it necessary to do this when four Americans were fighting for the lives in Benghazi and he actually could have done something.  I don’t think he can calm a hurricane. 

Democrats pour nails in lot where Tea Party Rally was going being held

Before the event could get under way, though, organizers say a truck affixed with "Obama" stickers drove through the parking lot and dumped quantities of nails.

"We went outside and picked up what we could," said Lou D'Abbraccio, holding a cup filled with nails. "But this was just wrong."

Lora Halberstadt, a Tea party member, said the group did call the Racine Police Department to file a report.

Seems like dirty tricks are the only things the Democrats know how to do right now.  It will be fitting if Wisconsin ends up going for Romney.  

Des Moines Register endorses Romney

This is the first Republican they’ve endorsed in 40 years.  So far 1 newspaper that endorsed John McCain in 2008 has endorsed Barack Obama while 9 major newspapers who endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 have endorsed Mitt Romney

Time to hit the Panic Button

The first storm-front is the expanding campaign battleground. I've long noted that which states become competitive towards the end of the race can tell you a lot about the state of the campaign. In 2008, when "red" states like Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina and Montana suddenly became competitive, it was a clear sign that Obama had a huge momentum advantage. This year, however, it is "blue" states becoming competitive. In the final week, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota are emerging as new battleground states. If Romney's position is improving in states like these, its a good sign that he slated to win states like Florida, Colorado, Virginia and Ohio. 

Even if Obama still has the edge in these newly competitive states, the fact that the campaign will have to spend resources to shore them up says a lot about the campaign's weak position. 

The second storm-front is the increased convergence of the polls in the direction of Romney.

Would Obama incite Civil Unrest to try to win?

Is President Obama willing to incite civil unrest to win re-election?  As we have all been encouraged to wear our dog-whistle decoders these days, one can hardly be blamed for wondering.  Worse yet, we know the answer.  He is already doing it.

If you don’t vote for Obama, you’re a racist

So what else is new?  It appears Obama will lose 67% of the white vote (racism) while Romney will lose 90% of the black vote (not racism).  But I must be racist to point that out.

In the meantime it appears a lot of Chicago blacks may be racists

Not all is well in the black political community.  “The liberal agenda is not the black agenda, it’s not the family agenda, it’s not the American agenda.”

Why Obama is toast

It comes down to two points.  Number one, Romney is winning independents from 12-20 percent.  To overcome this, the Democrats need to have a turnout advantage of at least what they had in 2008.  Number two, Republicans are more motivated to vote this election than are Democrats eliminating the possibility of that.  

Crony Capitalism:  Another Obama scandal

A July 2009 document prepared by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) titled “Treasury Talking Points re: Delphi” shows coordination between high-level players inside the PBGC and Treasury Department. The document was an attachment to a July 7, 2009 email from PBGC’s Joseph House to Treasury’s Matthew Feldman, Oren Haker and Paul Nathanson.

The talking points show that the PBGC thought the “[v]ast majority of individual’s [sic] covered by Delphi [pension] Plans” were “career GM ‘brethren’ distinguishable only by the 1999 spin-out” of Delphi from its former parent company, General Motors.

Only those “brethren” who wereunion members, however, saw their pensions preserved in the 2009 auto bailout. Nonunion Delphi retirees lost theirs.

Who’s looking out for you?  Obama, but only if you are a union member. 

Best Halloween Costume ever

The parents of this wheelchair-bound child did a fantastic job building a pretend ice cream truck for the boy’s big holiday coming up next week

Going down

Gallup: New Low for the President

President Obama's job approval rating is at a new low, averaging 40% in July 26-28 Gallup Daily tracking. His prior low rating of 41% occurred several times, the last of which was in April. As recently as June 7, Obama had 50% job approval.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/148739/Obama-Approval-Drops-New-Low.aspx

Next stop: the thirties!

Obama, the Debt, and How He Lost the 2012 Election

…WHAT OBAMA WANTED WAS A PERSONAL TRIUMPH, a vindication of his status as the American Augustus. A clear road to 2012 with no more budgetary debates and crises. The utter humiliation of the GOP, which would be forced to swallow new taxes, leaving them with one less issue next year. An under-the-table legitimization of his "policies" (I think that's the word I'm groping for), which could then be touted as successes despite the damage they have left behind. THE REESTABLISHMENT OF BARACK OBAMA AS A POLITICAL DEMIGOD. And before we overlook it, another few hundred billion to toss to his political allies.

What has he got? HE'S GOT AS CLEAR A DEFEAT AS ANY PRESIDENT HAS EVER SUFFERED. A PARTY IN TOTAL DISARRAY. A SET OF EMBARRASSED AND ANGRY SUBORDINATES. AN ECONOMIC POLICY THAT'S GOING DOWN FOR THE THIRD TIME. A GOP heading into 2012 with a momentum comparable to that of Patton tearing into the Palatinate. And one final thing: the long-overdue public revelation of a fatally flawed and inadequate personality.

This is where voting "present" brings you at last. He's tried this before, on the occasion of the September 15 financial crash, right in the middle of the 2008 campaign. It will be recalled that John McCain put his campaign on hold and headed for Washington to do what was necessary. Whatever might be thought of McCain, and however good or poor his reasons at the time, it was the act of a man to whom duty was more important than career. And Obama? Well, Obama always comes first, doesn't he? He just turned his back and kept on going. He knew he couldn't lose, whichever way things broke.
He obviously thought the same thing now. But times have changed. People have seen Barack Obama, have taken in his oddities, his narcissism, his ignorance, his lack of quality. They are unwilling to cut him any more slack. They know what a president looks like, good or bad, popular or not, and THEY NO LONGER SEE A PRESIDENT IN BARACK OBAMA. Is it possible to imagine Reagan, FDR, Truman, or either of the Bushes pulling the kind of tricks that Obama has in recent days?...

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/07/obama_seems_to_be_taking_his_defeat_in_the_2012_election_rather_well.html

If I were a Hillary supporter, I would be really dismayed.

No One Loves a Loser

….MR. OBAMA SEEMED BRILLIANT AT POLITICS WHEN HE FIRST EMERGED IN 2004. He understood the nation's longing for unity. We're not divided into red states and blue, he said, we're Big Purple, we can solve our problems together. FOUR YEARS LATER HE READ THE LAY OF THE LAND PERFECTLY—REALLY, PERFECTLY. The nation and the Democratic Party were tired of the Clinton machine. He came from nowhere and dismantled it. It was breathtaking. He went into the 2008 general election with a miraculously unified party and took down another machine, bundling up all the accrued resentment of eight years with one message: "YOU KNOW THE TWO LOSING WARS AND THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE WE'VE BEEN DEALING WITH? I WON'T DO THAT. I'M NOT BUSH."

The fact is, HE'S GOOD AT DISMANTLING. HE'S GOOD AT CRITIQUING. He's good at not being the last guy, the one you didn't like. BUT HE'S NOT GOOD AT BUILDING, CREATING, CALLING INTO BEING. HE WAS GOOD AT SUMMONING HOPE, BUT HE'S NOT GOOD AT DIRECTING IT AND TURNING IT INTO SOMETHING CONCRETE THAT ANSWERS A BROAD PUBLIC DESIRE.

And so his failures in the debt ceiling fight. He wasn't serious, he was only shrewd—and shrewdness wasn't enough. He demagogued the issue—no Social Security checks—until he was called out, and then went on the hustings spouting inanities. He left conservatives scratching their heads: They could have made a better, more moving case for the liberal ideal as translated into the modern moment, than he did. HE NEVER OFFERED A PLAN. In a crisis he was merely sly. And no one likes sly, no one respects it.

SO HE IS LOSING A BATTLE IN WHICH HE HAD SUPERIOR FORCES—THE PRESIDENCY, THE U.S. SENATE. In the process he revealed that his foes have given him too much mystique. He is not a devil, an alien, a socialist. 

HE IS A LOSER. AND THIS IS AMERICA, WHERE NOBODY LOVES A LOSER.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904800304576474620336602248.html

Peggy Noonan again knocks it out of the park.  There's an old saying, "Any jackass can knock down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one."  Obama is obviously not a carpenter.



Independents sour on President Obama

President Barack Obama is losing independent voters, a new national poll shows.

A majority of independent voters say they disapprove of Mr. Obama’s handing of his job, and far fewer independents say they would vote to re-elect the president, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press reported.

In the Pew survey, taken July 20-24, some 54% of independents said they disapproved of Mr. Obama’s job performance, his highest disapproval rating among those voters so far. Some 36% said they approved of the president’s handling of his job.

Some 31% of independents said they would vote to re-elect the president, a drop from 42% in May. Where Mr. Obama in prior Pew surveys had claimed a plurality of independents, the June poll showed him to be losing independents to a generic GOP candidate, 39% to 31%....

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/07/29/independents-souring-on-president-obama-poll-shows/

While liberals have nowhere else to go but Obama, and conservatives being in the ABO club (anybody but Obama), it is the independents that will decide the election.  And Obama needs a lot of them (conservative make up 40% of the population, liberals 20%) if he wants to win a second term.  It won’t happen.  Obama is no longer the candidate of nonspecific hope and change.  He is the candidate with a record of 9% unemployment, enormous deficits, and divisiveness. 

NYT lets the Cat Out of the Bag

Giddy after the recent legalization of gay marriage in New York, THE EDITORS AT THE NEW YORK TIMES ARE LAYING OUT THE LEFT'S POST-GAY MARRIAGE AGENDA IN THE PAPER'S PAGES FOR ALL TO SEE.

What they clearly want is a country that is sexually unrecognizable from the one we live in today, one WHERE MARITAL INFIDELITY IS ACCEPTED AS A LIFESTYLE CHOICE AND ACTUALLY CELEBRATED, and traditional marriage is legally marginalized and removed from the public square.

Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat essentially laid out the cultural side of the left's and the Times' post-gay marriage agenda in a July column.

GAY MARRIAGE SUPPORTERS CALLED LIBERATIONISTS "HOPE THAT GAY MARRIAGE WILL HELP KNOCK MARRIAGE OFF ITS CULTURAL PEDESTAL ALTOGETHER," DOUTHAT EXPLAINED.

To liberationists, IF TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE BECOMES THE "GOLD STANDARD" FOR RELATIONSHIPS BOTH GAY AND STRAIGHT, THE GAY MARRIAGE MOVEMENT WILL HAVE "FAILED IN ITS DEEPER MISSION," which he describes as introducing a "greater freedom than can be found in the one-size-fits-all rules of marriage."

The apparent hope is that legalized gay marriages will be more openly sexually promiscuous than straight marriage, providing an example that would then influence heterosexual couples to adopt the same open-marriage lifestyle.

IN A JUNE ARTICLE CALLED "MARRIED, WITH INFIDELITIES," THE TIMES USED GAY ACTIVIST AND COLUMNIST DAN SAVAGE'S OPEN MARRIAGE AS THE NEW MODEL FOR STRAIGHT MARRIAGES that should take root culturally from the legalization of gay marriage….

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/07/the_gray_ladys_sexual_agenda_revealed.html

Well this certainly answers the question of how gay marriage “hurts” traditional marriage.

Atlas Shrugs

I was at a public hearing in an inner-city Birmingham neighborhood for various government officials to get public input on some local environmental issues.

…But RONNIE BRYANT WASN’T THERE TO TALK ABOUT THAT PARTICULAR MINE. As a mine operator in a nearby area, HE WAS ATTENDING THE MEETING TO LISTEN TO WHAT RESIDENTS AND GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS WERE SAYING. He listened to close TO TWO HOURS OF PEOPLE TRASHING COMPANIES OF ALL TYPES AND BLAMING POLLUTION FOR RANDOM CASES OF CANCER IN THEIR FAMILIES. Several speakers clearly believe that all of the cancer and other deaths they see in their families and communities must be caused by pollution. Why? Who knows? Maybe just because it makes for an emotional story to blame big bad business. It’s hard to say.

After Bryant listened to all of the business-bashing, he finally stood to speak. He sounded a little bit shellshocked, a little bit angry — and a lot frustrated.

My name’s Ronnie Bryant, and I’m a mine operator…. I’ve been issued a [state] permit in the recent past for [waste water] discharge, and after standing in this room today listening to the comments being made by the people…. [pause] Nearly every day without fail — I have a different perspective — men stream to these [mining] operations looking for work in Walker County. THEY CAN’T PAY THEIR MORTGAGE. THEY CAN’T PAY THEIR CAR NOTE. THEY CAN’T FEED THEIR FAMILIES. THEY DON’T HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE. And as I stand here today, I just … you know … WHAT’S THE USE? I GOT A PERMIT TO OPEN UP AN UNDERGROUND COAL MINE THAT WOULD EMPLOY PROBABLY 125 PEOPLE. They’d be paid wages from $50,000 to $150,000 a year. We would consume probably $50 million to $60 million in consumables a year, putting more men to work. And my only idea today is to go home. What’s the use? I don’t know. I mean, I see these guys — I see them with tears in their eyes — looking for work. And IF THERE’S SO MUCH OPPOSITION TO THESE GUYS MAKING A LIVING, I FEEL LIKE THERE’S NO NEED IN ME PUTTING OUT THE EFFORT TO PROVIDE WORK FOR THEM. So as I stood against the wall here today, basically what I’VE DECIDED IS NOT TO OPEN THE MINE. I’m just quitting. Thank you.

http://rightwingnews.com/culture/businessmen-who-are-actually-going-john-galt-their-stories/

More stories follow in the link. 

President Obama Is No Longer Tethered To Reality

Image by AFP via @daylife



President Barack Obama’s speech to the nation Monday night was highly disturbing. Because read carefully, it reveals A PRESIDENT WILDLY DIVORCED FROM THE FUNDAMENTAL REALITIES OF THE NATION HE IS SUPPOSED TO BE LEADING.

President Obama actually told America on national television that it is a nation “WITH A SYSTEM IN WHICH THE DECK SEEMS STACKED AGAINST MIDDLE CLASS AMERICANS IN FAVOR OF THE WEALTHIEST FEW.” It is incomprehensible how a man serving as president of these United States could make such a fundamentally false assertion about his own country.

As I explain in my new book, America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, before Obama was even elected, official IRS data showed that for 2007 THE TOP 1% OF INCOME EARNERS PAID MORE IN FEDERAL INCOME TAXES THAN THE BOTTOM 95% COMBINED. The top 1% paid 40.4% of all federal income taxes that year, almost twice their share of income. THE MIDDLE FIFTH OF INCOME EARNERS, THE ACTUAL MIDDLE CLASS, PAID 4.7% OF FEDERAL INCOME TAXES. Deck stacked against the middle class in favor of the wealthiest few?

Moreover, the BOTTOM 40% OF INCOME EARNERS AS A GROUP PAID NO FEDERAL INCOME taxes that year. They instead received net payments from the IRS equal to 4% of total federal tax revenues. As my book explains, this was actually the result of nearly 30 years of Reaganomics. Today close to 50% of Americans pay no federal income tax….

http://blogs.forbes.com/peterferrara/2011/07/28/president-obama-is-no-longer-tethered-to-reality/

Reality to most liberals is like a twilight zone where strange things happen that they can’t understand.  And they keep trying to terraform the landscape to something otherworldly.  The problem is what they create eventually is poisonous to the workingmen and women of the country.