The Fundamentals of Nov 2nd, 2010

indyfromaz|

Newsweek’s Ben Adler was aghast at the clause in the GOP’s Pledge to America that Republicans will provide a “citation of constitutional authority” for every proposed piece of legislation. “We have a mechanism for assessing the constitutionality of legislation, which is the independent judiciary,” Adler wrote. “An extraconstitutional attempt to limit the powers of Congress is dangerous even as a mere suggestion, and it constitutes an encroachment on the judiciary.”
A progressive blogger, meanwhile, writes in U.S. News & World Report that such talk of requiring constitutionality is “just plain wacky.”
Before we get to the historical niceties, a question:
Does anyone, anywhere, think legislators should vote for legislation they think is unconstitutional? Anyone? Anyone?
How about presidents? Should they sign such legislation into law?
Yet, according to this creepy logic, there’s no reason for congressmen to pass, obey or even consider the supreme law of the land. Re-impose slavery? Sure! Let’s see if we can catch the Supreme Court asleep at the switch. Nationalize the TV stations? Establish a king? Kill every first-born child? Why not? It ain’t unconstitutional until the Supreme Court says so!
Nationalize Health Care, sure, why not. Mandate that all citizens will have health care or else they will pay a fine (that is actually a tax but we don’t call it that except in court when we have to) or possibly go to jail.
Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Mandate that Companies must provide Health care or pay a fine (that is actually a tax but we don’t call it that except in court when we have to).
Whoops!, sorry the Democrats ALREADY DID THAT.
And of course, that means the president can’t veto legislation because it’s unconstitutional, because that’s apparently not his job. Wouldn’t want to “encroach” on the judiciary!
Especially, the judiciary we’ve been packing with Liberals for a generation or two.
Like suing a State of The Union, Arizona.
Get a Liberal judge to rule that if we want to ignore Border Security you can’t do anything about it! ~ 
Oh, and you’re a “racist” if you disagree with us.
Of course, reasonable people understand how absurd all of this is.
There’s nothing in the Constitution — nothing! — that says the Supreme Court is the final or sole arbiter of what is or is not constitutional.
But for Liberals, let’s just pass whatever the hell we want, when we want it, and if we can get a Liberal enough judge to agree we can do it, Go for it!
Nor is there anything in Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court case that famously established judicial review. Nor is there in Cooper v. Aaron, the 1958 case in which the court ruled that its findings are the law of the land.
George Washington vetoed an apportionment bill in 1792 because it was unconstitutional. What was he thinking? If only he had a Ben Adler around to tell him what a fool he was.
Andrew Jackson vetoed the reauthorization of the national bank in 1832 because he believed it was unconstitutional. He added at the time that, “It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval as it is of the supreme judges when it may be brought before them for judicial decision.”
“Even the Supreme Court has never claimed that it is the only branch with the power or duty to interpret the Constitution,” says Jeff Sikkenga, a constitutional historian at Ashland University’s Ashbrook Center. “In fact, it has said that certain constitutional questions like war and peace are left to the political branches to decide.”
The debate over whether the courts are the final word on the Constitution is more than 200 years old. The debate over whether they are the sole arbiter of constitutionality is extremely recent and extremely silly.
But it’s also necessary because too many politicians — in both parties — have abdicated their most solemn duty: to support and defend the U.S. Constitution. George W. Bush signed campaign finance reform even though he thought much of it was unconstitutional. Nancy Pelosi thinks the Constitution has as much relevance as a pet rock. When asked if the health-care bill was Constitutional, her perpetually wide-open eyes grew perceptibly wider as she incredulously asked, “Are you serious?”
The real issue is quite simple. If more politicians were faithful to the Constitution, the government would be restrained. And restraining government is “weird,” “wacky” and “dangerous” to so many liberals today. (Jonah Goldberg).
And people who propose it, The Tea Party Movement, are “racists”, “stupid”, “morons” ,”idiots” ,”dumb”,”ignorant”,”fools”.
Fascinating.


A Reminder:
Unless something totally unforeseen occurs, Democrats are poised to take a real beating in November. Their response to the impending disaster has run the gamut. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is in denial: “One thing I know for sure is that Democrats will retain their majority in the House of Representatives.” Massachusetts Senator John Kerry is condescending: “We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on, so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening.” President Obama is angry: “It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election.” Why is the electorate ready to kick Democrats to the curb? Here’s why:
* An “unstimulated” economy. The original Mother of All Stimulus packages, $787 billion dollars, quickly grew to an astounding $865 billion. It wasn’t enough. Congress pumped out another $26 billion in “supplemental” stimulus in August. The results? Unemployment in the private sector remains well above the eight percent Democrats promised, even as public sector workers who support Democrats were rewarded; our Democratically-controlled Congress has amassed more debt in the last four years than nearly the previous two hundred and thirty combined; the Keynesian economic model Democrats stand by is a colossal failure; the Summer of Recovery was a propaganda fiasco.
* The health care bill. The absolute epitome of ideological, public-be-damned arrogance. A horrendous compendium of bribes, exploding bureaucracy, runaway costs, written in secret and unread by those who passed it. It includes a mandate, likely un-Constitutional, forcing people to buy health insurance or pay a fine. The same administration which originally claimed the commerce clause of the Constitution made such a fine possible is now saying that the federal governments’s “power to tax” justifies it. Irrelevant. 60% of Americans want this monstrosity repealed, ASAP.
* The federal lawsuit against the state of Arizona. Again, it’s the arrogance, stupid. Despite all the hectoring from Democrats and the Obama administration about racist this, and xenophobic that, fair-minded Americans recognized four things: people have a right to protect their life and property, and if the federal government can’t or won’t do it, they have a right to do it themselves; the idea that anyone opposing the “rights” of illegal aliens is a bigot is nonsense on stilts; the ruling class in Washington, D.C. is holding genuine border control hostage to “comprehensive reform;” the glaring double-standard of suing Arizona for violating federal immigration statues, even as the feds turn a blind eye to hundreds of “sanctuary cities” with illegal protection directives unquestionably in conflict with federal law.
* The demonization of the Tea Party movement. Take your pick: teabaggers, racists, angry white men, fringe elements, bigots, Astro-turfers, etc. etc. Democrats and the media have tried every one, and every one has been a miserable failure for one overwhelmingly simple reason: decent Americans know they’re decent, and getting insulted by Democrats running the country into the ground has only stiffened their resolve. Progressives want to demonize people who believe in smaller government, fiscal responsibility and a desire to return to Constitutional principles? Why not attack people who believe in guns, and religion too? Oh wait. The president already did that as well.
* A hopelessly compromised media. Air America tanked, CNN is tanking, and ABC, NBC and CBS news programs have been shedding viewers at historically unprecedented rates—even as Fox and the Wall Street Journal prosper. Americans don’t mind people in the media expressing their opinions, as long as they’re characterized as opinions, but they seethe when such opinions are portrayed as “hard news.” They get even angrier when certain stories are “omitted” by those same organizations, especially when Americans recognize such omissions are calculated to protect the progressive agenda. I wonder if it occurs to either Democrats or their media water-carriers that a majority Americans may savor whacking both groups in November. Depressed looks on the faces of Nancy Pelosi and Katie Couric? In theater circles, that’s known as a “two-fer.”
* The Ground Zero mosque. Yet another reminder of the contempt progressives and their media enablers have for ordinary Americans who had the “temerity” to allow their feelings to be known. Despite every attempt to characterize these Americans as Islamo-phobic bigots, the public wasn’t buying, again for one overwhelmingly simple reason: decent Americans once again demonstrated their decency by separating the legality of the project from the appropriateness of it.
* The complete disconnect between the First Family and ordinary Americans. The golfing, the soirees, and the high-priced vacations have created the perception that we are living through another “let them eat cake” moment in history. On Tuesday, the president called the public schools in Washington, D.C. a “‘struggling’ system that doesn’t measure up to the needs of first daughters, Sasha and Malia.” Those would be the same public schools Congressional Democrats tossed 3,300 low-income kids back into when they killed funding for vouchers that had freed those kids from D.C.’s educational ghetto. The First Lady is hectoring Americans to eat healthier. Perhaps more Americans would if they could afford to: the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) stated in their Producer Price Index that the price of food increased 2.4% for March 2010. That’s the biggest increase in almost 30 years.
* The war on terror. A politically correct contingency operation against unnamed insurgents with a specific draw-down date? Democrats once again prove that all the talk about Afghanistan being the “good war” was complete rubbish. They want out, and victory—along with the heroic efforts of our men and women in harm’s way—be damned. Once again: has America ever fought another war where they knew the exact location of the enemy, had the ability to inflict possibly irreparable damage on them—and decided to split the difference instead? If you answered “Vietnam,” another progressively-instigated catastrophe resulting in the deaths of fifty-eight thousand American soldiers and three million innocent Asians, go to the head of the class. And when is that civilian trial of the 9/11 perpetrators scheduled to begin?
* Czars and nationalization. The Obama administration and Congressional Democrats may bristle when Americans call them socialists, but the nationalization of banks, car and insurance companies, student loans and healthcare sure isn’t free-market capitalism. Neither is wiping out oil jobs in Louisiana with a government-mandated ban on offshore drilling—after the feds completely bungled their role in cleaning up the spill which engendered it. Unelected czars who answer to no one but the president, along with out-of-control government agencies such as the EPA have made it clear to many Americans that this administration often considers Congress a completely unnecessary component of governance, especially if they don’t kowtow to the president’s agenda.
* “Unexceptional” America. Progressive contempt for the values and traditions which make this the greatest country on earth can no longer be disguised. An American president who “believe(s) in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism” has made it plain that this is not a great nation which needs tweaking, but a fundamentally flawed one needing a complete progressive make-over. Once one understands this basic premise, everything this administration and Democratically-controlled Congress does makes sense. All of it centers around the ridiculous premise that America owes the world an apology for any number of shortcomings, many of which can only be alleviated by government-mandated “social justice.” That would be the same social justice which demanded—and still demands—that Americans manifestly unqualified to own homes be given mortgages, regardless.
Unknown to the majority of Americans, this precise mindset was part of the financial “reform” bill which also requires banks to lend a certain percentage of capital to minority-owned businesses, even if it means lowering their lending standards. Apparently progressives won’t be satisfied with their odious social-engineering schemes until every sector of the American economy bears a striking resemblance to the housing sector. So far, Americans support financial reform because it’s been framed as “Main Street versus “Wall Street.” It’s not. Like every other initiative undertaken by this Congress and this administration, it’s the elevation of irresponsible and dishonest Americans over those willing to accept the consequences of their own behavior.
There you have it. Democratic control for four years in Congress, and two in the White House has been exactly what many predicted: an ideologically-driven disaster of epic proportions. For years, progressives obfuscated their true intentions, because even they knew most Americans couldn’t stomach them. The elections of 2006 and 2008 changed everything. Progressives bought into their own hype, believing they had pulled off a multi-generational transformation of the American mindset. As a result, they showed Americans their true colors: unbridled arrogance, utter contempt for the average citizen’s intellect, and a ham-fisted, never let a crisis go to waste determination to bend the electorate to their will, using government as a club.
That’s why they’re going down in November. And the most satisfying aspect of the whole scenario is this: despite every attempt they’ve made to blame anyone and everyone else for their problems, they brought it on themselves. (Arnold Ahlert)
And don’t forget the LARGEST TAX INCREASE IN AMERICAN HISTORY during a recession (or “jobless recovery”) that Congress was too chicken to vote on stopping.

But don’t worry, it’s all those damn Republican’s fault!!
And George W. Bush.
The Banks.
CEOs
Corporate America.
Wall Street.
Teabaggers.
The Right Wingers.
Christians.
“The Rich”
FOX News
Rupert Murdoch (who owns Fox)
Talk Radio
Did I leave anyone out?
Oh, yeah, DEMOCRATS!

The First A-Bomb

indyfromaz|

“People are frustrated, they’re anxious, they’re scared about the future. And they have a right to be impatient about the pace of change. I’m impatient. It took time to free the slaves,”– President Obama speaking to young Democrats at a hip-hop concert in Washington.

After all, this struggle to retain their power is as important as freeing the slaves which the then Democrat party was against by the way just like they were the ones against the Civil Rights Acts more than Republicans. But those are actual facts and that’s the last thing you’ll hear from the Democrats for the next month at least.
In the 2008 campaign, Michelle Obama at one point said of her husband’s burden: “Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics.”
The president often clears his throat with “let me be perfectly clear” and “make no mistake about it” — as if we, his schoolchildren, have to be warned to pay attention to the all-knowing teacher at the front of the class. (VDH)


Hitler proclaimed that the Third Reich would last a thousand years.
It didn’t.
The Democrats are still hoping for the same thing.
And since they have shown the need to win at all costs and have a propensity for Ends Justify the Means they have begun their bombardment.
And the Ministry of truth will be right their with them, arm-in-armament.
It will not be about their actual “accomplishments”. It will be a war of words. Mostly lies, distortions and personal attacks.
FEAR IS HOPE, after all.
And the first of the “October Surprises” was dropped by ultra-liberal Lawyer Gloria Alred.
The maid who was hired through a legitimate company 9 years ago with all due diligence of the day. When it was discovered she was an illegal, she was fired. LAST YEAR.
But it didn’t matter until just now, a month before the election when she is neck and neck with Ultra liberal Former Governor Jerry Brown.
Only now it matters. If Brown was farther ahead you’d never have hear this one.
And now this maid who was making $23/hr should be in prison for felonies and fraud.Exposed by the liberals for their own gain. After all, she was fired in 2009 and is still here in the country, so what has she been doing since?
But do you think a Justice Dept. that has a policy and a practice of not prosecuting minorities is going to touch this with a 12-foot barge pool?
Especially, when this woman can be used a political pawn, and discarded like throwing out the trash after the election if Brown wins.
Cindy Sheehan, anyone? You do remember her right?
NO.
This is merely a cynical Political stunt by the Democrats.

As any employer can tell you, when an employee presents employment verification documents, they must be inspected and then accepted if they appear to be genuine. Meg and her husband took the appropriate steps as required by law. The documents appeared to be valid and they had to accept them as presented.
The Social Security Administration issued these “No-Match” letters for several years before stopping the practice altogether. They sent millions of letters every year, to employers and employees, before realizing the futility of the process. When Meg and her husband received the No-Match letter for the employee they took the same action that tens of thousands of employers have done; they asked the employee to correct the information.
As the No-Match letter states, “Any employer that uses the information in this letter to justify taking adverse action against any employee may violate state or federal law and be subject to legal consequences.” It is impossible to legally terminate an employee based on “clues” or suppositions about their immigration status. You must have concrete facts before you can take action, or else be subject to discrimination lawsuits. When the employee confessed that she was working illegally in the U.S., it was the proper action to then terminate her employment. (Fresno Business Journal)

But that doesn’t matter, because the whole point of this exercise was to set off a Democratic A-Bomb (Ad-hominem bomb) and smirk and act all superior. To puff themselves up.
The issues, and poor victim of this charade, the maid, reading a pre-prepared statement to camera might as well have been a captive of Al-Qaeda for all it matters.

Want to hear Gloria Alred be destroyed by logic and reasoning: http://www.marklevinshow.com/Article.asp?id=1970739&spid=32364
When asked if her client was an “illegal alien” she said  “No”.
When pressed she repeatedly said she wasn’t an illegal alien, merely an “undocumented worker” (who has openly admitted to committing Social Security Fraud).
So the famed lawyer, Gloria Alred, deliberately dismisses the legal and lawful term because it doesn’t fit with her agenda.
And that’s liberalism for you and their view of the law.

And there are plenty more A-Bombs to come as the Democrats will stop at nothing to hold on to their power.
NOTHING.

Expect to see the next two weeks bring much more in way of personal attacks and allegations of scandal. And especially with so much money floating around in hard-to-track outside groups, those attacks are likely to be pretty vicious.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson recently psychoanalyzed the falling support for the president by claiming that “the American people are acting like a bunch of spoiled brats.” (VDH)

After all, they are vastly superior to you and you are the Barbarian hoards at THEIR gates trying to sack their Utopian Dream so they have to do everything they can to destroy you.

When America votes for a liberal candidate, it is redeemed by the left as intelligent — and derided as dense when it does not.

As is their new “Made in America” campaign which bitches and moans that the Republicans are solely responsible for outsourcing jobs and that’s why you need to keep the Democrats.
The fact that millions have lost their jobs SINCE the Democrats took over. That the Stimulus was a total failure (upwards of $300,000 per “saved or created” job-mostly in the public sector not private sector to begin with).
That their refusal to extend tax cuts sends a message to employers that not only will ObamaCare kick your ass but now we are going to raise your taxes also!
That always makes a good atmosphere for job creation.
The Democrats can hang themselves on their “only for those making $250,000 a year” crap around their necks and choke on it. They refused to even bring THAT up for a vote.
And they left town knowing they had never done it.
So where are their convictions. They have none.
They just want to hold onto to their power. That’s it.
They will say anything. Do anything to win.
The End Justifies the Means.
Moral, Ethics, and the Truth Be damned!
We want to keep our power!
“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”–Candidate Obama

And Now, A Word From Charles “Look, advertising is legalized mendacity. When you see an ad in a football game that tells you essentially if you drink the right beer or you drive the right car, you are going to get chicks, nobody sues them on the grounds of false advertising. So everybody understands that.
Those are the rules of the game. I draw the line — personal attacks on family or personal issues which I think are completely out of bounds. And that happens as well. But I think if it’s on policy or how a person has conducted himself in office, absolutely OK.”– Charles Krauthammer on “Special Report with Bret Baier” setting the boundaries for political attack ads.
But when the end justifies the means there are no boundaries.
Nothing is off-limits.
Nothing matters but winning.
The carnage is immaterial.
The Truth doesn’t matter.
There is only the Power.

And that is what needs to change.

Current polls suggest that these clueless and unappreciative Americans apparently believe that an elite education does not ensure their officials can balance a budget, pay their own taxes or speak candidly.
What an outrageous “How dare they!” thought.

Come Hell or High Water

indyfromaz|  

The Congress that took the last week of July until Sept 13 off has now left Washington for all-out-war campaigning after working an exhaustive 17 days since late July and won’t be back until after they have had their heads chopped off by the American people.

Poor babies.
They left town without the House passing a budget for the first time since 1974. The 4th time the Senate has done it since 1974.
So the government that started a new fiscal year today with resolutions.
I bet your household budget works the same way. You just fake it. right?
They also left town without dealing with the Tax Increases coming on 1/1/11. They were too chicken. So they split town to save their own asses rather than tell you, your employer, or any potential employers if they were going to get hit with the largest Tax Increase in American History (for real).
Failure to extend the Bush tax cuts will also mean a reinstatement of the marriage penalty that makes some married couples pay higher taxes filing jointly than they would if they were single and filing individual returns. It will mean cutting in half the child tax credit from $1,000 to $500. It will increase tax rates on dividends from a maximum of 15 percent to 39.6 percent, which affects seniors who depend on dividends to supplement their Social Security and pensions. And it will raise the top capital gains tax rate from 15 percent to 20 percent, stifling business investment.
It will also raise taxes anyone who pays taxes. Regardless of income.

The President repeatedly says he want to raise taxes on the rich as a class warfare tactic, but in all these months has he actually proposed an actual bill for it?
Or was he hoping Pelosi or Reid would do it for him? Be the good Lieutenants and get all the troops in line to set up for the firing squad one more time?
But the fact remains it was all talk and no action. Much like the Congress since the passage of the business buzzsaw killing Financial Reform bill the Democrats have done nothing useful since (not that they did it before to be fair).
And who is to blame for the President not proposing and the Democrats not disposing of this part of the agenda, The Republicans.
The Minority party is at fault for the President not even sending a bill containing his Tax proposals to the House and the House not willing to come up with the bill and vote on it.
It’s all those damn Republicans fault!
HUH??
Now that’s a “transparent” “drain the swamp” “most ethical congress” “responsible”, “post-partisan” government isn’t it?
The real problem was there were enough Democrats  who were willing to join Republicans on an across-the-board extension of the Bush tax cuts that it made the Reid-Pelosi position of raising taxes on some higher earners untenable, so no tax bill moved forward.
But that was the Republicans fault too.


Members of Congress have now returned home to try to save their own jobs, never mind helping the millions of Americans who have lost theirs. “When we come back this fall, the election will be over,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the Washington Post. “I hope that it also means that Republicans will finally be able to put the American people ahead of their short-term political interests and ambitions.”
Now that’s responsible government.  and very “post-partisan”.


So it’s time to get your Lame Duck Poisoning Prevention Shot.
The New Roman Empire is being invaded by a hoard of Barbarians are the gate. So it’s time to prep the wells for poisoning and to raze the crops and poison the soil.
What Reid and his counterpart in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are hoping is that Democrats who lose their seats in the election will be willing to pass legislation in a lame duck session that they know the voting public doesn’t support. In Reid’s logic, they will be free to vote their liberal ideology. And it won’t matter because they will have already lost their jobs. But it is precisely this kind of arrogance that has Democrats in such poor shape heading into the mid-term elections. (Linda Chavez)
Some say you have to admire our “rock star” (in his own mind and the media’s) President for sticking to his ideology as he is 200% in campaign mode, 2008 campaign mode, that he doesn’t care about moving to the center. He wants to move even farther LEFT. Hoping to spike turnout amongst those who were fainting in his presence 2 years ago.
Now their fainting from working so hard. But that doesn’t matter. And once again, it’s supposed to be how he says it, not what he says.
Let’s party like it’s 2008!

The perception that he’s The Anointed One is supposed to trump the reality of the last 21 months.
A couple of back-to-back statements by President Obama at a town hall rally in Des Moines, Iowa, tell us all we need to know about his economic philosophy and that we aren’t going to climb out of his recession and begin to slow the growth of the national debt as long as he’s calling the shots.
Voters, he said, tell him to “cut government spending.” But “most spending is for veterans, for education, for defense. … Finding $700 billion is not easy.”
Yet a few minutes earlier, in response to criticism over illegal immigrants getting health care in the United States, he had said, “It is very important that we have compassion as part of our national character.” (How about compassion for future generations of Americans?)
Does anyone see the disconnect here? If Obama believes our national character is deficient unless we expand the welfare state to illegal immigrants, then how could he ever preside over a balanced budget?
His wildly inaccurate statement about where the money is spent is equally revealing. For fiscal year 2010, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and other sources, benefits for veterans constituted about 3.5 percent of the budget; education expenditures were 3 percent; and defense and security totaled about 20 percent.
Even worse than these errors is his defeatist statement that “finding $700 billion is not easy.”
Well, of course it’s not easy if you have no desire to trim the size, functions and intrusiveness of government.
Didn’t he just say again the other day that he is “committed to fiscal responsibility”? Hasn’t he incessantly argued that President George W. Bush is the one who ran up these outlandish deficits?
We all know what a distortion and exercise in scapegoatery that is. President Bush fulfilled his promise to cut the deficit in half by 2006. In fiscal year 2007, the deficit was $161 billion. Hard to believe, isn’t it?
That’s just three years ago, and Obama says it’s nearly impossible to trim much? Even the final Bush year, which Obama continues to blame for all “this mess” and which Obama has used to establish his new deficit base line, was not actually the alleged $1.3 trillion, but closer to $800 billion when TARP repayments are factored in.
Assuming Obama even wants to bring down the deficit, his economic philosophy precludes him from advancing policies likeliest to do it. You cannot make much headway on the deficit in a period of recession, and his policies are leading us toward a double-dip recession.
Indeed, the dirty reality is that Keynesian policy works as a double whammy against fiscal sanity. It involves government’s spending money it doesn’t have, which, by definition, increases the deficit and debt. And it also increases the deficit by smothering the private sector and deterring real economic growth. There is no appreciable “multiplier effect” from monies that are spent by government fiat, as opposed to those spent in response to true market forces, including real consumer demand — as opposed to government  command.

We saw the devastating impact of reckless Keynesian policies during the Great Depression, and we’re witnessing them again today. As long as Obama is married to his redistributionist profligacy, we cannot reduce the deficit. And it’s even worse when you consider that Obama wants to raise taxes on the primary generators of economic growth, small businesses, during a slow economic period.
With his signature audacity, Obama told town hall attendees their taxes haven’t gone up in his administration. Puleeze! Obamacare, anyone — for starters? He also said Republicans haven’t been honest with voters about what needs to be done to revive the economy. “We can’t pretend that there are shortcuts,” he said.
Sorry, but he’s the one being dishonest. The Bush years saw robust economic growth until the last year of Bush’s second term. The policies that led to the subprime collapse, the recession and the skyrocketing deficit in his final year were brought upon mostly by liberal Democrats hellbent on demonstrating their “compassion” for people by insisting on loans to people who couldn’t repay them and cynically resisting President Bush’s efforts to rein in Fannie and Freddie.
President Reagan didn’t continue to blame Jimmy Carter for his malaise-ridden economy during his term. He didn’t implement policies that didn’t work after promising they would and then whine that it would “take 10 years to get out of this mess because it took us 10 years to get into this mess.” He passed tax cuts that launched an unprecedented period of peacetime growth — and not at the expense of federal revenues, as has been falsely alleged.
I don’t expect President Obama to come clean with the American people or to ever accept responsibility for his disastrous policies, much less to voluntarily change course, but it’s gratifying to see that people, including some of his supporters, are finally onto him. (David Limbaugh)

And if you were expecting the Media to do their job, of journalism. Forget it. The Propaganda ministers for Obama are in full damage control, but unlike 2008, people are less inclined to believe their spin.
But it’s all they have and if they say it often enough people will believe their lies.

Gallup: Distrust in Media Hits New High and Three Times as Many See Media as ‘Too Liberal’ Over ‘Too Conservative’

They are too busy kissing up to Rep. Alan Grayson’s so-blatant-it’s-a-supernova misrepresentation attack ad, Obama’a 2008 “glory days” (they actually use that term repeatedly) and the manipulation by the far left of a Maid of California Gubernatorial Candidate Meg Whitman who was an illegal alien (she was fired last year for this by Whitman) and now is being paraded around the media with a prepared speech and lots of crying in the most cynical of acts.

And the Liberal media eats it up and regurgitates it.

So don’t expect anything from them expect spin.

“I’m sad to report today a death of a good friend to all of us…..Journalism, the once esteemed 4th estate of our nation and the protector of our freedoms and a watchdog of our rights has passed away after a long struggle with a crippling and debilitating disease of acute dishonesty aggravated by advanced laziness and the loss of brain function.” — Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2009.

Doubt me?:
Watch ABC’s World News Runs White House Produced Pro-ObamaCare Video as ‘News’: http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=hdkUkUQueu

CNN urging liberals to promote the “Amazing Achievements” of the liberals: http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=hdkUSUZunz

Matt Lauer (Today Show) urging the President to be more forceful about attacking the Republicans: http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?v=hdkUSUqG6U

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

All aboard the Democrats Unsinkable Ship of Keynesian Economic  State, The Titanic!

And don’t forget to destroy the land behind you.

If they can’t have it, no one can!

Film at 11.

Incestuous Narcissism Part 2

indyfromaz|

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. -Old Chinese Proverb.

And these days not only do people get fish, they demand that you catch it for them and/or “the rich” give them their fish because it’s only “fair”.
And if that fish isn’t good enough for them they will throw it back until they get a bigger, better fish that THEY like!
Unemployment insurance prior to the Age of Obama was for 26 weeks. 6 months and was only meant to help you out in between jobs. Not be de-facto welfare.
Or a stimulus, if you remember what Speaker Pelosi said in July 2010:
“Let me say that unemployment insurance… is one of the biggest stimuluses (sic) to our economy. Economists will tell you, this money is spent quickly. It injects demand into the economy, and it’s job creating. It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name.”
So unemployment is good for everyone! So nearly 10% unemployment is great!
Aren’t you happy? Don’t you have lots of Hope!?
Now it stretch to 2 YEARS or more. Because Democrats have made finding a job so hard they have to cover their own buts by bribing people.
They call it “compassion”. I call it a bribe. Democrats are very good at paternalistic bribes.
The government pays you not to work. You in turn don’t bother looking. And if you aren’t looking you aren’t one of the statistics on Unemployment numbers because you aren’t looking.
Thus, the government can keep it artificially lower than it already is. Which is very high indeed.
So the Unemployment rate is just another political game to be manipulated.
Meanwhile, you have people just sitting around eating Doritos and hanging out doing nothing and getting paid for it!
And the government doesn’t make it easy to get off the dole either. Whether on purpose or not.
In the first year of unemployment, the size of the benefit check is based on your old salary. You can go right back on unemployment after a temp job, and nothing changes. But federal law requires states to recalculate benefits for the second year. If you worked a few days or a few months, the second year’s checks will be based on that lower earnings total. (Hartford Courant)

So you’re on unemployment, you get a temp job, your benefits get cut. So the obvious answer is to not take the temp job, right?
The government makes you want to stay.
But now Ms. Hanson rues the day she took that work. Why? The Connecticut Department of Labor used her negligible earnings in her part-time job as the new baseline for Hanson’s unemployment benefits. She went from receiving $483 a week to getting nothing.
“Afterwards, unofficially, they said I shouldn’t have taken the job,” Hanson says. (CSM)
Incentives to stay unemployed. Incestuous you might ask? At least I would.
Employers and economists point to several explanations. Extending jobless benefits to 99 weeks gives the unemployed less incentive to search out new work. Millions of homeowners are unable to move for a job because the real-estate collapse leaves them owing more on their homes than they are worth.
The job market itself also has changed. During the crisis, companies slashed millions of middle-skill, middle-wage jobs. That has created a glut of people who can’t qualify for highly skilled jobs but have a hard time adjusting to low-pay, unskilled work…
Many of the applicants he (Mark Sperry of Catepillar) saw at job fairs, he says, were just going through the motions so they could collect their unemployment checks. Some workers agree that unemployment benefits make them less likely to take whatever job comes along, particularly when those jobs don’t pay much. Michael Hatchell, a 52-year-old mechanic in Lumberton, N.C., says he turned down more than a dozen offers during the 59 weeks he was unemployed, because they didn’t pay more than the $450 a week he was collecting in benefits.
It is particularly troubling at a time when 4.3% of the labor force has been out of work for more than six months—a level much higher than after any other recession since 1948. (WSJ)
So what are you to do if Unemployment pays better than the job?
Just game the system.
And the system shall provide.
The disconnect between workers and jobs could constrain the economy for some time. It makes it hard for even small firms, which as a group typically account for an outsize share of job growth in a rebound. (WSJ)
So if you have 99 weeks of unemployment, you go out “looking” for a job but not really, then when it gets to about 95 weeks you get serious about it. But that’s nearly 2 years later!
There was a Swedish study that when they cut the benefit time, the amount of time people kept “looking” decreased in proportion.
Alan Krueger, the current Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and a highly respected labor economist has said in his academic writing exactly that: unemployment insurance causes the unemployed to stay unemployed longer.
In his academic studies Dr. Krueger wrote that “more generous unemployment insurance (UI) benefits have been found to be associated with longer spells of unemployment,” and further finds that “the job finding rate jumps up around the time benefits are exhausted. Most importantly, we find that job search intensity is inversely related to UI benefit generosity for those who are eligible for UI.” In other words, a senior Obama administration official finds that less generous UI benefits cause the unemployed to search harder for new work.
Lawrence Summers, Director of the White House’s National Economic Council has said the same:
“government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work. Each unemployed person has a ‘reservation wage’—the minimum wage he or she insists on getting before accepting a job. Unemployment insurance and other social assistance programs increase [the] reservation wage, causing an unemployed person to remain unemployed longer.”
“Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect. . . . In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker’s incentive to quickly find a new job.”-Liberal Economist Paul Krugman’s Macroeconomics textbook.
The Same Paul Krugman  recently described Sen. Jon Kyl’s (R-AZ) statement that unemployment insurance causes individuals to stay out of work longer “a bizarre point of view.”(Heritage.org)
More specifically, In the NY Times:  In Mr. Kyl’s view, then, what we really need to worry about right now — with more than five unemployed workers for every job opening, and long-term unemployment at its highest level since the Great Depression — is whether we’re reducing the incentive of the unemployed to find jobs. To me, that’s a bizarre point of view — but then, I don’t live in Mr. Kyl’s universe.
So, like everything with Liberals, it’s all politics.
We, The Democrats, who have the patent on “compassion” will kiss your behind and let you sit on your ass for 2 years. As long as those evil Republicans don’t come in and demand you have some self-respect that is.
Even if they do, the Democrats will trot out their “grandma eating dog food” “they want to cut you off” “they’re heartless” “mean” “Cruel” class warfare hoaries anyhow.
Or as Mr. Krugman put it, “How can the parties agree on policy when they have utterly different visions of how the economy works, when one party feels for the unemployed, while the other weeps over affluent victims of the “death tax”?
Democrats feel your pain (good,sense they are the cause of most of it!). And Republicans are heartless, greedy and obsessed with the kiss up to “the rich”.
Meanwhile, you sit on your behind for up to 2 years eating Doritos and watching Judge Judy.
Who are you going to vote for, the pimp or Mom who says get you lazy ass off the couch?
Unemployment has become a political weapon and a tool, akin to welfare.
You don’t work, we pay you. You vote for us, we keep paying you.
Regardless of the economic and social cost.
Unemployment insurance exists for good reason, and no-one has suggested abolishing it. However, the good that it does also comes with a cost in delaying the return of the unemployed to work. Economists from right to left and in the Obama administration agree about this. Wishing it were not so does not make it true. Congress should consider both the costs and benefits of extended UI benefits when weighing how many years of benefits to provide unemployed workers. (Heritage).
But what we have now is incest at it’s best.

Clowns to the Left of Us…

indyfromaz|

Want to know how serious the Democrats are about border security and immigration?

Well, let’s invite a comedian to do his testimony in front of a live Congressional Committee (estimated to cost $125,000 taxpayers) to mock the whole idea of immigrant labor on farms.
This ain’t no Elmo moment, this was a serious mockery of Congress and immigration.
With joblessness near double digits, federal spending hurtling us toward national bankruptcy and an Islamic terror regime seeking nukes, what is Congress doing? Taking testimony from comedians.
What was Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., thinking when she invited Comedy Central’s faux right-wing pundit Stephen Colbert to appear — “in character”! — before her House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration?
But what does she care? She’s a 15-year incumbent whose San Jose district is so far to the left that she routinely gets re-elected with over 70% of the vote.
WASHINGTON – Taking his blowhard comedy act to Congress, Stephen Colbert told lawmakers that a day picking beans alongside illegal immigrants convinced him that farm work is “really, really hard.”
“It turns out — and I did not know this — most soil is at ground level,” Colbert testified Friday. Also, “It was hotter than I like to be.”
Still, Colbert expressed befuddlement that more Americans aren’t clamoring to “begin an exciting career” in the fields and instead are leaving the low-paid work to illegal immigrants.
Staying in character as a Comedy Central news commentator, Colbert offered a House hearing his “vast” knowledge, drawn from spending a single day on a New York farm as a guest of the United Farm Workers.
The union launched its “Take Our Jobs” campaign to back up its claim that few Americans would do the work of farm laborers, the vast majority of whom are in the U.S. illegally. Only seven people accepted the jobs, the union said.
Colbert pleaded with lawmakers to do something about the farm labor issue because “I am not going back out there.”
A House bill that creates a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants has been filed and another is being drafted in the Senate but Congress is due to recess soon to focus on fall elections. The bills, or pieces of them, could come up in a lame-duck session after the November balloting.
As the immigration subcommittee hearing began, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers praised Colbert for drawing a roomful of onlookers and photographers. Then he asked the comedian to leave the room — and to leave the job of testifying to the expert witnesses, including Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez.
“You run your show, we run the committee,” said Conyers, D-Mich.
Congressional committees frequently invite entertainment or sports personalities to testify on specific issues in an attempt to draw media attention. Colbert has no background or expertise in either farm labor issues or immigration policy.
Colbert said he was there at the invitation of subcommittee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. And Conyers later gave him the go-ahead, apparently hoping Colbert’s performance would counter the testimony of a political science professor who said illegal immigrants were competing with black and Hispanic citizens for jobs.
Colbert wiped his brow and launched into his mock right-wing schtick, demanding that lawmakers do something about the agriculture industry’s dependence on immigrant labor.
“I’m not a fan of the government doing anything,” Colbert insisted. “But I’ve got to ask, Why isn’t the government doing anything?”
Colbert’s humor drew guffaws from the audience and several Democrats on the subcommittee. But most of the Republicans sat stone-faced.
“Maybe we should be spending less time watching Comedy Central and more time considering all the real jobs that are out there,” said Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa.
At the close of the hearing, Colbert dropped his TV persona and turned serious, saying he was using his celebrity to bring attention to farm labor because “these seem to be the least of my brothers.”
“Right now migrant workers suffer and have no rights,” Colbert said.
The Insufferably Morally and Intellectual Left was taking the mickey out of you. They were mocking you. They are so far above you that you can’t even comprehend how brilliant this was…
Lofgren is also chairwoman of the House Homeland Security Committee’s subcommittee on border, maritime and global counterterrorism. So maybe we’ll soon hear Robin Williams’ take on countering terrorists sneaking in from Mexico.
The big question, presumably, is whether Lofgren will ask Williams and Carrey to appear as themselves, or as Mork the space alien and Carrey’s dopey character from “Dumb and Dumber.”
Big automatic tax increases loom. Afghanistan’s not going too well. Iran may soon have atomic weapons. You’d think Democrats holding such high positions of responsibility had more pressing things to do than listen to jokesters.

Oh, and the vote to stop the LARGEST TAX INCREASE IN AMERICA HISTORY on 1/1/11, The Democrats don’t really care enough.
Comedians doing faux testimony and ad hominem attack ads are far more compelling.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - U.S. House Republican leader John Boehner is criticizing Democratic leaders in Congress for postponing a vote on extending Bush-era tax cuts until after the Nov. 2 election.

But they are way smarter than you. That's why they are going to be trotting out the "grandma eating dog food" and "starving your kids" and "killing grandma" and "stealing your check"  class warfare BS, et al.

FEAR IS HOPE

Adverse Selection

indyfromaz|

The leftists are all in a tizzy. A tizzy of their own making mind you.
But they’ll never see it that way. Because it was done “for the children” and the Insufferably Morally Superior Left doesn’t care about reality in their fantasies and delusions of “fairness” and “equality” in their own minds.
It makes them “feel good”.
Here’s a little lesson the Left refuses to hear about reality:
People who buy insurance often have a better idea of the risks they face than do the sellers of insurance. People who know that they face large risks are more likely to buy insurance than people who face small risks. Insurance companies try to minimize the problem that only the people with big risks will buy their product, which is the problem of adverse selection, by trying to measure risk and to adjust prices they charge for this risk. Thus, life insurance companies require medical examinations and will refuse policies to people who have terminal illnesses, and automobile insurance companies charge much more to people with a conviction for drunk driving or if you get into an accident (or if your neighbors are idiots you’re going to pay more because of a more adverse selection–that’s why “my rates keep going up but I haven’t caused any accidents”).
It describes a situation where an individual’s demand for insurance (either the propensity to buy insurance, or the quantity purchased, or both) is positively correlated with the individual’s risk of loss (e.g. higher risks buy more insurance), and the insurer is unable to allow for this correlation in the price of insurance. This may be because of private information known only to the individual (information asymmetry), or because of regulations or social norms which prevent the insurer from using certain categories of known information to set prices (e.g. the insurer may be prohibited from using information such as gender or ethnic origin or genetic test results). The latter scenario is sometimes referred to as ‘regulatory adverse selection’.
And regulatory adverse selection is what we have in droves in the Insufferably Morally Superior Left Health Care Cramdown.
And the little superior moralists are shocked and applauded that the insurance industry would actually follow these principle laid out above and not just roll over and kiss their morally superior asses and do  “the right thing for the children” and as they are told like a good little doggie.
Health plans in at least four states have announced they’re dropping children’s coverage just days ahead of new rules created by the healthcare reform law, according to the liberal grassroots group Health Care for America Now (HCAN).
The new healthcare law forbids insurers from turning down children with pre-existing conditions starting Thursday, one of several reforms Democrats are eager to highlight this week as they try to build support for the law ahead of the mid-term elections. But news of insurers dropping their plans as a result of the new law has thrown a damper on that strategy and prompted fierce push-back from the administration’s allies at HCAN.
The announcement could lead to higher costs for some parents who are buying separate coverage for themselves and their children at lower cost than the family coverage that’s available to them.
“We’re just days away from a new era when insurance companies must stop denying coverage to kids just because they are sick, and now some of the biggest changed their minds and decided to refuse to sell child-only coverage,” HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome said in a statement. “The latest announcement by the insurance companies that they won’t cover kids is immoral, and to blame their appalling behavior on the new law is patently dishonest.
“Instead, they should reverse their actions immediately and simply follow the law. If the insurance companies can casually turn their backs on sick children now, who will they abandon next? This offensive behavior by the insurance companies is yet another reminder of why the new law is so important and why the Republicans’ call for repeal is so misguided.”
Health plans and state insurance commissioners in July raised concerns that the new rules could lead some insurers to stop children-only coverage because families could wait until their children get sick to buy coverage.
Days later, the Obama administration issued regulations clarifying that insurers would still be able to establish enrollment periods in accordance with state law.
“To address concerns over adverse selection, issuers in the individual market may restrict enrollment of children under 19, whether in family or individual coverage, to specific open enrollment periods if allowed under state law,” the Department of Health and Human Services clarified.
The issue had largely dropped out of sight since then, but insurers including WellPoint and CoventryOne have announced in recent days that they’re dropping children’s coverage in California, Colorado, Ohio and Missouri, according to HCAN. (The Hill)
I guarantee this is only the beginning. Trust me.
But the Insufferably Morally Superior Left will just sit there and be “appalled” and kick and scream and whine and moan “they aren’t doing what we told them to do whaaaahh!!!”
Then go to their government buddies and pass more regulations to have their way.
I say a new term in a headline recently that fit, LAWFARE. Waging a war by lawsuits and REGFARE, waging war by regulation.
That’s the Insufferably Morally Superior Left in a nutshell.
As I said repeatedly and often during the Health Care debate, it’s about the government and leftists wanting total control of who lives and who dies and you dependent on them for everything. Period. End of Story.
They want private insurance gone. But private insurance is not going quietly.
That would be a moral hazard.
In insurance markets, moral hazard occurs when the behavior of the insured party changes in a way that raises costs for the insurer, since the insured party no longer bears the full costs of that behavior. Because individuals no longer bear the cost of medical services, they have an added incentive to ask for pricier and more elaborate medical service—which would otherwise not be necessary. In these instances, individuals have an incentive to over consume, simply because they no longer bear the full cost of medical services.
And does this not sound like ObamaCare to you??

Cynical Ploy

Stimulus: President Obama’s new plan to cut taxes on all but those most likely to create jobs is little more than an exercise in class warfare to divide Americans and win votes — not to get the economy growing again.
Much was made of Obama’s “compromise” on taxes, including his plan to keep lower rates on the 98% of Americans who earn less than $250,000, and spend $180 billion or more to cut some business taxes and invest in more infrastructure repair.
The president’s supporters say this is a good plan — giving Republicans the tax cuts they want while letting average Americans keep their current tax rates. Only the “rich” get hit.
This plan is actually quite cynical, as even the New York Times tacitly admits, saying Obama “intends to cast the issue as a choice between supporting the middle class or giving breaks to the wealthy.” In short, it’s not really about jobs at all. It’s about politics.
Obama, though himself wealthy, seems to truly hate the private-sector rich — believing the neo-Marxist pap that as a “class” they create nothing, but rather exploit the rest of us.
When he told Joe the Plumber during the 2008 campaign that he wanted to “spread the wealth,” he was at least telling the truth.
In fact, the wealthy are the nation’s creators, innovators and job makers. The small businesses they run account for more than four of every five new jobs. Obama’s tax hikes target them — and you.
As economists Kevin Hassett and Alan Viard recently noted, “Fully 48% of the net income of sole proprietorships, partnerships and S corporations reported on tax returns went to households with incomes above $200,000 in 2007.”
A recent National Federation of Independent Business survey found that 50% of the small-business owners who employ 20 to 249 workers fall in the top two income brackets. They’re the “rich.”
So half of all small-business profits — maybe more — will be hit by Obama’s tax hikes. And guess what? They’ll respond predictably by not expanding their businesses or doing more hiring. If Obama’s plan is passed, expect no meaningful job growth for years.
For two years, we’ve heard repeated verbal assaults leveled at successful people to make the rest of us resent their success — like the canard that the rich don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes.
Well, as the National Taxpayers Union recently reported, the richest 1% of Americans earn 23% of all income and pay almost twice that — 40% — toward income taxes. Meantime, the bottom 50% take home 12% of the income and pay only 2.9% of the taxes.

Fair? Since 2002, the year before President Bush’s 2003 across-the-board tax cut went into effect, the share of taxes paid by the wealthy has risen every year. As for Democrats’ claim that the tax cuts “benefited only the wealthy,” 7 million new U.S. jobs were created from 2003 to 2008. How’s that stack up to Obama’s record of 4 million lost and counting?
Instead of emulating past success, Obama continues to push policies that scapegoat the rich while using “stimulus” spending to enlarge government, enrich unions and subsidize favored industries.
To their credit, Republicans have countered with a far better plan — one that freezes tax rates at the Bush levels and rolls back spending to the pre-stimulus levels of 2008. This would have a truly stimulative effect on the economy. It would be even better if the tax changes were made permanent and future spending were cut.
Until something is done to convince businesses that Washington is capable of fiscal sanity, few companies will willingly commit huge amounts of capital to new investments and jobs.
Like the rest of us, they want tax and regulatory relief, entitlement reform and smaller government. Until they get it, they’ll sit on the sidelines waiting for the craziness to end.
As the New York Times last weekend described the new Democratic “firewall” approach, “A national campaign trumpeting Democratic accomplishments on health care, education and Wall Street regulation has given way to a race-by-race defensive strategy.”
Joe Sixpack’s inevitable reaction to such a change in tack is simple: If ObamaCare, more money for teachers unions and preserving too-big-to-fail on Wall Street are so great, why not run on these things?
Instead, the party whose theme song used to be “Happy Days Are Here Again” is battening down the hatches.
“Small businesses drive economic growth, not government,” he added, “but ObamaCare and a slew of upcoming tax hikes are going to make it harder for our district’s small businesses to stay afloat.”
The hyperspending that was supposed to provide jobs has failed — yet those in power plan more of it.

But don’t worry, Obama’s new stimulus-that-isn’t-a-stimulus will solve everything.
After all, Obama was on the TV yesterday touting that “3 Million people had jobs” because of him.
Isn’t he amazing!
The fact that they are union and government union apparatchiks kind of got lost in the ra-ra speech.
That and the millions of people who have lost their jobs SINCE he came to power. They don’t matter.

Obama characterized Republicans as pandering to corporations, millionaires, special interests, and credit card and insurance companies. He asserted they did “not having a plan to govern” and praised the values that “we Democrats believe in.”
The president recalled the principles upon which America was founded — “values of self-reliance and individual responsibility” and “a country that rewards hard work. A country built upon the promise of opportunity and upward mobility” — and contrasted them with his characterization of the Republican attitude in Washington. “They’re asking us to settle for a status quo of stagnant growth, eroding competitiveness, and a shrinking middle class.”
Said Obama, “This country is greater than the sum of its parts — America is not about the ambitions of any one individual, but the aspirations of an entire people and an entire nation.”(Politics Daily)

<>

We also hoped for a chance to get beyond some of the old political divides -– between Democrats and Republicans, red states and blue states -– that had prevented us from making progress. Because although we are proud to be Democrats, we are prouder to be Americans -– (applause) — and we believed then and we believe now that no single party has a monopoly on wisdom.

We’re just way smarter than you and if we just explain why 2000+ page government takeover bills that we never even read are great then you’ll just love us!

“I ran because I had a different idea about how America was built.”
“Yes, our families believed in the American values of self-reliance and individual responsibility, and they instilled those values in their children. But they also believed in a country that rewards responsibility; a country that rewards hard work; a country built on the promise of opportunity and upward mobility.”

(just don't be too mobile or you'll be an evil "rich" person)
It’s amazing he can say this with a straight face. But then again, he is so much better than you.
It was an America where you didn’t buy things you couldn’t afford (They just expect government handouts to do it for them because they are entitled); where we didn’t just think about today -– we thought about tomorrow. An America that took pride in the goods that we made, not just the things we consumed. An America where a rising tide really did lift all boats, from the company CEO to the guy on the assembly line.
That’s the America I believe in.
<<>>

He’s other deeply, deeply cynical and manipulative and/or delusional and  just thinks his soaring charms and rhetoric will override the reality of what he and democrats have actually been doing.
What matters is scoring cheap,soaringly cynical, disingenuous, arrogant and deeply divisive political rhetoric that sounds good and makes you feel good.
I just feel sick.

Recession 2 “Summer of Recovery” 0

The government is about to confirm what many people have felt for some time: The economy barely has a pulse.
The Commerce Department on Friday will revise its estimate for economic growth in the April-to-June period and Wall Street economists forecast it will be cut almost in half, to a 1.4 percent annual rate from 2.4 percent.
That’s a sharp slowdown from the first quarter, when the economy grew at a 3.7 percent annual rate, and economists say it’s a taste of the weakness to come. The current quarter isn’t expected to be much better, with many economists forecasting growth of only 1.7 percent.
Such slow growth won’t feel much like an economic recovery and won’t lead to much hiring. The unemployment rate, now at 9.5 percent, could even rise by the end of the year.
“The economy is going to limp along for the next few months,” said Gus Faucher, an economist at Moody’s Analytics. There’s even a one in three chance it could slip back into recession, he said.
The report confirms the economy has lost significant momentum in recent months. Most analysts expect the nation’s GDP will continue to grow at a similarly weak pace in the current July-to-September quarter and for the rest of this year.
The economy has grown for four straight quarters, but that growth has averaged only 2.9 percent, a weak pace after such a steep recession. The economy needs to expand at about 3 percent just to keep the unemployment rate, currently 9.5 percent, from rising.
According to data released earlier this week, home prices fell as much as five percent across the country in the month of July, and existing home sales fell 27%.

The worst in 15 years.

But if you listen to the liberals and their pundits, it slow but it’s all good. You just to have more hope. Give it more time. Don’t be so impatient.
So what if GDP growth has gone for 5% in the last quarter of 2009 to 1.6% now it’s still improving!
And you wouldn’t to hand the keys back over to Bush now would you!
After all, Bush was Republican and all Republicans are Bush. (a gold star to anyone who can spot the logical fallacy in that statement ) But isn’t that what the Democrats ARE saying…
Cue Sisyphus!


Will the economy actually enter a double dip, with G.D.P. shrinking? Who cares? If unemployment rises for the rest of this year, which seems likely, it won’t matter whether the G.D.P. numbers are slightly positive or slightly negative.
All of this is obvious. Yet policy makers are in denial. Why are people who know better sugar-coating economic reality? The answer, I’m sorry to say, is that it’s all about evading responsibility.(Paul Krugman)

After all, it’s Bush’s Fault! and you wouldn’t want Republicans! they’ll just wreck the car again like they did before!
After all, Bush was Republican and all Republicans are Bush.
And as Mr Krugman also says, showing his liberal roots,”The administration has less freedom of action, since it can’t get legislation past the Republican blockade.”
The Democrats currently have an overwhelming majority in the House and 59/100 seats in the Senate and The Presidency.
Yet, it’s a “republican blockade”.

The problem is that the Democrats can’t get all the Democrats to vote for all of this crap so they have to blame the minority party for it!
It sure as hell can’t possibly be their fault!
So, if November happens as predicted and the Democrats are the minority, it will be the tyranny of the majority then right? They will be the victims yet again, as they are now in the majority.
Perpetual Victimization!

But the Democrats will focus again on the 1 tree in the forest that isn’t on fire and say that’s you’re hope and change, just be patient, socialism wasn’t built in a day!


On Thursday, Standard & Poor’s said action is needed soon if the U.S. is to keep the much-coveted AAA bond rating that lets the government borrow in global markets at the lowest rates possible.
S&P’s warning came just days after Morgan Stanley asserted that the U.S., along with a number of other developed nations, is likely to default on some debt. Such defaults are “inevitable,” it said, given the growing number of retirees in developed nations who will have to be taken care of by a shrinking pool of workers.
The sovereign debt crisis “is not over,” said the investment bank’s Arnaud Mares, and that includes in the U.S.
What worries Wall Street is a public debt-to-GDP ratio of around 53%. That’s high enough as it is, but it’s about to go a lot higher. By 2020, recent data suggest, the ratio will top 100% — a red line that virtually all economists agree is dangerous.
In raw numbers, we owed roughly $7.5 trillion at the start of this year. By 2020 that explodes to $23.5 trillion, according to an analysis of Congressional Budget Office data by economist Brian Riedl.
What do these numbers mean? To begin with, we spend $187 billion a year, or 1.3% of GDP, to pay our debts now. Just 10 years from now, that will surge to $1.1 trillion, or 4.8% of estimated GDP. Fiscally speaking, we’ll be gasping for air.
Debt can be a good thing, but in big doses it’s poison. If, as some fear, the U.S. should simply say it can’t pay its debts and default — or do a de facto default by printing money to retire our debt — the consequences would be dire.
No nation would want our bonds in their portfolios. To entice them to buy, we’d have to offer a much higher risk premium — that is, higher interest rates.
That means our debt service could go even higher, squeezing out even more of our economy’s spending.
The dollar would implode, and prices for foreign goods — which now make up 15% of our economy — would soar. Private investment would shrink and, along with it, private-sector GDP
Americans’ standard of living, once the envy of the world, would recede into the pack of mediocre, government-run nations.
It doesn’t have to be this way. All this is due to unrestrained spending. The federal government now spends about $29,000 per household. That will rise to $38,000 by 2020. If you think “the rich” will, or can, pay for it all, think again.
Unless we begin to control spending, we can kiss our American lifestyles goodbye. It’s that simple.
Sadly, the White House is unwilling to see reality. Which may explain why, as our debts mount to ruinous heights, Vice President Joe Biden — President Obama’s point man on the recovery — can burble, “This is a chance to do something big, man!”
Yeah, man, something big — like wreck a country.
Warnings about America’s impending financial car wreck are being sounded, loud and clear. The only question is whether those driving the car will slam on the brakes before it’s too late.(IBD)

Got the car out of the ditch and drove it straight off a cliff and into a bottomless pit!
Way to go Barack & Co!
Yours is the Superior Intellect!

Stop Me Before I Lie Again!

A Democrat advocacy group that was essential to the passage of ObamaCare has come out with a new Powerpoint presentation on how to sell ObamaCare, aka sell a 5-gallon jug of water to a drowning man.
And the most interesting revelation: They Lied!
Shocking though that may seem, it seems that in this presentation on the last page of “don’t”s they don’t wanna anyone to talk about the cost savings, deficit reduction, and the lower premiums that was there mantra for 15 months as they crammed it down everyone’s throat in the most partisan vote in memory.
It seems, they might have ‘misspoke’

The presentation also concedes that the fiscal and economic arguments that were the White House’s first and most aggressive sales pitch have essentially failed. “Many don’t believe health care reform will help the economy,” says one slide.

When you see this first panel, think Alinksy’s Rules for Radicals, Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people. The result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

It’s hard to overstate how important the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)—which makes the official judgments on how much bills cost and save—is in Washington. “I consider CBO God around here,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, recently said during the Health Care Debate.(Newsweek– our “islamophobic” fear mongers)

I wonder if he feels the same way after yesterday’s report that showed what the deficit spending has done to the economy?
“We think the numbers are now pretty well set from CBO,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said. “We think it will post the largest deficit reduction of any bill that we’ve adopted in the Congress since 1993.”

CBO told lawmakers that the health package would cost $940 billion over the next decade, reducing the deficit by $130 billion. It will reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion in the second decade of the plan’s implementation, according to those who have seen the score.
“We are absolutely giddy” about the score, Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said during an interview on Fox News on Thursday. About the deficit-reduction figures, he added, “This is great news for the American people.”(The Hill)
So without further adieu…

Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and deficit and instead stressing a promise to “improve it.”
The messaging shift was circulated this afternoon on a conference call and PowerPoint presentation organized by Families USA — one of the central groups in the push for the initial legislation. The call was led by a staffer for the Herndon Alliance, which includes leading labor groups and other health care allies. It was based on polling from three top Democratic pollsters: John Anzalone, Celinda Lake and Stan Greenberg.
The confidential presentation, available in full here and provided to POLITICO by a source on the call, suggests that Democrats are acknowledging the failure of their predictions that the health care legislation would grow more popular after its passage, as its benefits became clear and rhetoric cooled. Instead, the presentation is designed to win over a skeptical public, and to defend the legislation — and in particular the individual mandate — from a push for repeal.
The presentation concedes that groups typically supportive of Democratic causes — people under 40, non-college-educated women and Hispanic voters — have not been won over by the plan. Indeed, it stresses repeatedly that many are unaware that the legislation has passed, an astonishing shortcoming in the White House’s all-out communications effort.
“Straightforward ‘policy’ defenses fail to [move] voters’ opinions about the law,” says one slide.  ”Women in particular are concerned that health care law will mean less provider availability — scarcity [is] an issue.”
The presentation also concedes that the fiscal and economic arguments that were the White House’s first and most aggressive sales pitch have essentially failed.
“Many don’t believe health care reform will help the economy,” says one slide.
The presentation’s final page of “Don’ts” counsels against claiming “the law will reduce costs and deficit.”
The presentation advises, instead, sales pitches that play on personal narratives and promises to change the legislation.
“People can be moved from initial skepticism and support for repeal of the law to favorable feelings and resisting repeal,” it says.  “Use personal stories — coupled with clear, simple descriptions of how the law benefits people at the individual level — to convey critical benefits of reform.”

In other words, get ready for more grandma has to use someone else’s dentures stories!  Get out the hankies, it’s America’s Most Outrageous Sob Stories Season 2!.
Appeals to emotions, not logic.
Hmmm, the exact opposite of the Ground Zero Mosque where the supporters are totally devoid and deaf to emotions. Curiouser and Curiouser..
Could it be manipulative?  Nahh….


The presentation also counsels against the kind of grand claims of change that accompanied the legislation’s passage.
“Keep claims small and credible; don’t overpromise or ‘spin’ what the law delivers,” it says, suggesting supporters say, “The law is not perfect, but it does good things and helps many people. Now we’ll work [to] improve it.”

The “free” Miracle Cure is just snake oil after all. But don’t tell the customer who had it force down their throat that.


The Herndon Alliance, which presented the research, is a low-profile group that coordinated liberal messaging in favor of the public option in health care. Its “partners” include health care legislation’s heavyweight supporters: AARP, AFL-CIO, SEIU, Health Care for America Now, MoveOn and the National Council of La Raza, among many others.
Let’s see, A Seniors advocacy group that has it’s own Health Insurance arm, Government Unions who have been getting most of the bailouts, Liberal advocacy group funded by a Billionaire Socialist, “The Race” (La Raza) a racist hatemongers group of Latinos who believe in (amongst other things) giving parts of Arizona and New Mexico back to Mexico and are as Open Borders as it gets.
Interesting grouping…


The presentation cites three private research projects by top Democratic pollsters: eight focus groups by Lake; Anzalone’s 1,000-person national survey; and an online survey of 2,000 people by Greenberg’s firm.
“If we are to preserve the gains made by the law and build on this foundation, the American public must understand what the law means for them,” says Herndon’s website. “We must overcome fear and mistrust, and we must once again use our collective voice to connect with the public on the values we share as Americans.” (Ben Smith-Politico)


Water anyone?
“We thought the best thing to do now was to remind people why they personally wanted reform in the first place.”–Spokesman for Families USA.
Wanted it? It was running at 66% against when it was passed and that hasn’t improved one  bit since.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 55% of U.S. Likely Voters favor repeal of the health care bill. That’s down from 59% a week ago, but support for repeal has ranged from 52% to 60%since the law was passed by Congress in March.

I guess follows my new rule that if 60+% of the people are against it, the Democrats are for it and you should be too!   (Health Care, Ground Zero Mosque, Deficit Spending, Continued Bailouts…et al)

A recent Government Accountability Report (GAO), finding that each job ‘created’ by the stimulus bill costs an average of $194,213.
But, fear not! The Government is here to save you…money!
Just over 70 days. I can see November from my house…