A bad day for Obama

Romney vs Obama on 9/11

Compare Romney’s first tweet, to Obama’s first tweet on 9/11.

Is it a sign?

Is this a sign that Obama will lose in November?

Romney:  Cairo apology a disgrace

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is condemning the Obama administration's apologetic response to September 11 attacks on United States diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya.  The Libyan attack, in Benghazi, reportedly left an American official dead.

An overseas embassy is considered American soil.  So an angry mob of Islamist radicals broke into American soil, tore down the American flag and wave a banner of Al Qaeda on the anniversary of the 9/11 attack and the “experienced” foreign policy president apologized to them.  We need to get Mitt Romney in the White House post haste. 

Obama lead among Jewish in a major decline

Obama has a 46-44 percent lead over Romney in the TIPP poll. That means Obama is suffering from a decline in support throughout the electorate from his 2008 victory when he won 53 percent of the vote. But the president's loss of approximately 25 percent of Jewish voters this year is not matched by a similar decline in any other demographic group. 

the TIPP poll shows him threatening to rival Ronald Reagan's modern record set in 1980 when he won 39 percent of Jewish votes, the most ever by Republican since World War One.

Obama to Israel:  Drop Dead

It appears Obama won’t have time to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu as he will be campaigning.  I thought Obama had a lot of experience in foreign affairs.  This is the equivalent of a girl turning you down for a date because she has to wash her hair.

Obama’s convention bounce is now gone

It only lasted 5 days to completely disappear. 

Forward or Forewarned?

Obama’s campaign slogan of forward is being scorned by Romney with the changed to forewarned.  Forward works from progressives because like hope and change it is totally fluid.  Forward means nothing unless you tell people where you are going, which Obama is not doing.  

“Cannon to the right of them, Cannon to the left of them, Cannon in front of them  Volleyed and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well,  Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell, Rode the six hundred.”  A stirring poem giving us an example of what “Forward” can mean.

The Future with Obama as President for a second term

In 1999 and 2000, when Spain adopted the euro as its currency, interest rates fell to historic lows as the European Central Bank (similar to the U.S. Federal Reserve) made money easily available.  So Spain's banks, its property developers, and the everyday home-buyers (with prodding from the government) embarked on a frenzy of commercial and residential building and buying.  From 1996 to 2007, Spanish property values tripled.

 

Spain has a massive social safety net which accounts for a vast a majority of its government spending -- spending that absorbs nearly 46% of the country's annual economic output or GDP.  Further, the nation's unfunded long-term social commitments account for more than 15 times its yearly GDP.  Despite this, the Spanish government embarked on one of the most ambitious green energy programs in Europe, pouring untold billions of euros into solar and wind energy.

In the meantime, because of rigid labor laws, union influence, and government regulations which prevent wage reductions and mandate ever-increasing benefits, the Spanish unit labor cost has risen by 40% (as compared to Germany), making Spanish industry uncompetitive.  Many have, by necessity, moved their operations overseas.  Nonetheless, large-scale immigration, much of it illegal, continued unabated through 2008, further exacerbating the cost of government.

Does all this sound familiar?

Obama:  Did he avoid a Depression or is he causing it?

And interesting article on what really happened back in 1929 to 1933.  Rather than a lack of government action turning a recession into a depression, it was government action that did it and that action is strangely similar to the policies of Barack Obama.

Obama’s Justice Department and the South Carolina Voter ID Law

Apparently the Obama administration is lying about who disapproved the South Carolina’s Voter ID law.  It wasn’t the career Justice Department employees who objected. 

The Day the Sky Fell for Obama

But that was before 9/11/12, the day the roof fell in. The Chicago teacher strike raised doubts about the President’s domestic leadership, the publication of Bob Woodward’s new book raised questions about his economic management and political skills, and 11 years to the day after the 9/11 attack, radical America-hating Islamists stormed the U.S. embassies in Cairo and Benghazi, assassinated the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others even as U.S. and Israeli relations sank to another low point.

Add to this that the bounce in the polls is rapidly subsiding and this week is becoming the exact opposite of last week for the President.

Obama’s foreign policy

According to Reuters:  U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff were killed in a rocket attack on their car, a Libyan official said, as they were rushed from a consular building stormed by militants denouncing a U.S.-made film insulting the Prophet Mohammad….

The Libyan official said the ambassador, Christopher Stevens, was being driven from the consulate building to a safer location when gunmen opened fire.

This is going to require a big response by the Obama administration.  Perhaps Hillary should apologize in person.

Update:  Two marines died defending the embassy as well.

Chicago Teachers multitask:  They strike and party at the same time

On the second day of the strike the teachers appear to be ready to “party.”  Not much concern for the children here.

Is Chicago the start of a Democratic Civil War?

What’s brewing is a battle between Democratic Party management (chiefly mayors, backed by a significant portion of the public) and Democratic Party labor, also backed by a significant portion of the public. If there’s a win-win scenario out there, the party and its publics would do well to find it.

Static vs Dynamic evaluation of Romney’s tax reform

The main conclusion is that under plausible assumptions, a proposal along the lines suggested by Governor Romney can both be revenue neutral and keep the net tax burden on high-income individuals about the same. That is, an increase in the tax burden on lower and middle income individuals is not required in order to make the overall plan revenue neutral.

What to make of the polls

The polls in the last week have fluctuated wildly.  What should you make of it?  Are democrats oversampled?  What’s the difference between likely voters and registered voters?  Are likely voters all likely to vote?  

John Fund gives you a good lesson in polling.

Ward Churchill loses again

"The proceedings against Churchill took more than two years and included five separate opportunities for Churchill to present witnesses, cross-examine adverse witnesses, and argue his positions," the Supreme Court (Colorado) opinion said. "It possessed the characteristics of an adversary proceeding and was functionally comparable to a judicial proceeding." For this reason, the justices ruled, the university was acting sufficiently closely to the judicial function of government that it was immune from being sued.

This is a big loss for not only Churchill, but for tenure as well.  It appears that tenure will not protect a professor who commits professional misconduct.

  

Fact Checkers?

There is a good article about WaPa’s fact checkers checking out President Obama on his claims about his abortion voting record.  Here’s what they said about his claim that his opponents were lying saying that he didn’t support giving medical aid to any infant born alive.

The evidence suggests we could have awarded Four Pinocchios to the former Illinois senator for his comments to the Christian Broadcasting Network, but that interview is several years old now, and it’s not the focus of this particular column.

So what did they do?  They awarded the claim no Pinocchios.  It appears they thought this happened so long ago (2008) that the statute of truthfulness limitations ran out.

John Stossel tells the truth about Saint Bill Clinton

John Stossel gives a dose of truth to the myths surrounding Bill Clinton and never mentions Monica Lewinsky.  I think Clinton is getting a lot of credit for be a sane Democrat especially when we compare him to Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama or even Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi.

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Chicago schools, GM, The Economy, Obama's bounce, and Obamacare

http://legalinsurrection.com/tag/a-f-branco/

What are the results from the highest Paying School District in the Country?

Just 15 percent of fourth graders are proficient in reading and only 56 percent of students who enter their freshman year of high school wind up graduating.  The turned down a 16% pay raise over the next four years and teachers only pay 3 percent of their health-care costs.  And of every dollar set aside for education in Illinois over the past five years, 71 cents has gone to teacher retirement costs.  And the teachers are on strike. This is Chicago, Obama’s kind of town.  

Were Chicago Teachers simply not letting a crisis go to waste?

In a strike that reeks with irony, Rahm Emmanuel loses control.

So is the Chicago Teachers strike only Rahm’s problem?

In fiscal 2009, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget, the U.S.Department of Education spent $53.389 billion. In 2010, that climbed to $92.858 billion, then in 2011, it dropped to $65.484 billion. This year, according to OMB, Department of Education spending will hit an historical high of $98.467 billion.

So what is the Department of Education spending all that money on?  

Over the past four years, the Chicago public schools have churned through total revenues of approximately $20.27 billion and about $4.26 billion of that revenue—or almost 21 percent of it—has come from the federal government.

Government Motors uses government economics

It seems that on the new Volt from GM, the company the taxpayers bailed out is losing $49,000 per vehicle.   I remember an old joke to the effect, “we lose money on every sale, but our volume keeps us in business.”  Of course that only works in government and only for so long.

Bin Laden is dead and GM is the walking dead

Admirers of the GM bailout should bear in mind that it was the Bush administration that first decided to intervene at the firm, offering a bridge loan on the condition that it draw up a deeply revised business plan. President Obama’s unique contribution was effectively to nationalize the company, seeing to it that the federal government violated normal bankruptcy processes and legal precedent to protect the defective element at the heart of GM’s troubles: the financial interests of the UAW. It did this by strong-arming GM’s bondholders into taking haircuts in order to sweeten the pot for the UAW. The Obama administration also creatively construed tax law to relieve GM of tens of billions of dollars in obligations — at the same time that Barack Obama & Co. were caterwauling about the supposed lack of patriotism of firms that used legal means rather than political favoritism to reduce their tax bills.

Mitt Romney’s proposal for a structured bankruptcy would have necessitated considerable federal involvement, too, but with a key difference: The UAW contracts would have been renegotiated, and GM’s executive suites would have been cleaned out, placing the company on a path toward innovation and self-sufficiency rather than permanent life support. Which is to say, Obama did for GM what he is doing by un-reforming welfare: creating a dependent constituency.

The Do Nothing Government Economic Plan

Having spent over $5 trillion stimulating the economy one wonders why it isn’t working?  Would we be better off if Obama had done nothing?  One of the last of the "do nothing" presidents was Warren G. Harding. In 1921, under President Harding, unemployment hit 11.7 percent -- higher than it has been under President Obama. Harding did nothing to get the economy stimulated. 

Far from spending more money to try to "jump start" the economy, President Harding actually reduced government spending, as the tax revenues declined during the economic downturn. 

This was not a matter of absent-mindedly neglecting the economy. President Harding deliberately rejected the urging of his own Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover, to intervene. 

The 11.7 percent unemployment rate in 1921 fell to 6.7 percent in 1922, and then to 2.4 percent in 1923. It is hard to think of any government intervention in the economy that produced such a sharp and swift reduction in unemployment as was produced by just staying out of the way and letting the economy rebound on its own. 

Bill Clinton loudly proclaimed to the delegates to the Democratic National Convention that no president could have gotten us out of the recession in just one term. 

But history shows that the economy rebounded out of a worse unemployment situation in just two years under Harding, who simply let the market revive on its own, as it had done before, time and time again for more than a century. 

Deficit to top $1 trillion for the fourth time—what does that headline and Obama have in common?

Everything.

Obama’s Plans for a second term

I thought Obama’s making fun of Romney and the Republicans was actually quite clever.  “Budget surplus we need a tax cut.”  “Budget deficit, calls for a tax cut.” 

  

So let look at Obama’s prescriptions.  “Budget Surplus?  Raise taxes and spend more money.”  “Budget deficit?  Raise taxes and spend more money.”  “Unemployment too high?  Raise taxes and spend more money.”  “The Fed can’t lower rates any more to stimulate the economy so Raise taxes and spend more money.”

Hey this works pretty good.  It certainly beats thinking. 

What caused the economic crisis of 2008?

It wasn’t Wall Street, but rather government.  Government decided that racial quotas should replace credit qualifications in qualifying for a home loan.  And the rest as they say was history.

Obama’s Convention bounce is mainly among registered voters

It turns out the bounce President Obama got after the DNC is among registered voters, not likely voters.  Among likely voters the race is tied.  

Gallup Poll Oversamples Democrats again

The Gallup Poll oversamples Democrats again but this time it is even worse than normal.  The sample for the CNN/ORC poll includes 50.4 percent Democrats and 45.4 percent Republicans and appears to have only 4.2 percent independents. This means independents are under-sampled 25 percent while Democrats are over-sampled 12.1 percent.

With the weightings of independents, Democrats and Republicans conducted by the Rasmussen numbers, this poll's data would indicate a Romney lead over Obama of 53 percent to 45 percent.

Another sign of Obama’s coming Defeat

This year there are over 30 books out that are hostile to President Obama.  Compare that to 2008 and you have another sign of Obama’s weakness in the coming election

Even Obama calls it Obamacare

President Obama autographed a Lab coat of a University of Iowa Medical Student “Go Obamacare.”  I think everyone can agree with that.  We’re looking for Romney to make Obamacare go away.

Obamacare shows everyone what bureaucracy means

One of the most-anticipated new federal regulations governing which companies will be required to provide health insurance under Obamacare has finally landed--with a thud.

In the latest indication of how complicated putting the Affordable Care Act into action will be, the Department of Health and Human Services and Internal Revenue Service issued 18 pages of regulations just to describe what a "full-time employee" is. Of note, to the Feds a full-time employee works an average of just 30 hours a week, not the normally accepted 40 hours.

Liberalism and stupidity

Some notes from an academician who attended a conference on “Perspectives on Evil and Human Wickedness,”  

To begin with, I was struck by the conference call for papers on the Internet. It listed people commonly regarded as evil, including Torquemada, Hitler, Ivan the Terrible, Genghis Khan, and...Ronald Reagan. Of course, who can forget Ronald Reagan and his Republican hordes sweeping down from the steppes, leaving nothing but devastation in their wake? Few figures from recent history evoke such terror and loathing—at least, among leftist academics. What do you think these people think of the Tea Party? You guessed it. One French participant informed me that Hamas winning an election among the Palestinians is like “the Tea Party winning the American presidency.” It is hard to fathom how anyone could compare the Tea Party with the genocidal terrorists of Hamas—except, of course, that this is academia, an alternate reality if there ever was one. 

I’m convinced that “being liberal means never having to say you are sorry.”