Ann Coulter: America Nears El Tipping Pointo
Tony Katz: Costas To America: You're Just Not Smart Enough To Understand
Mike Shedlock: Are Austerity, Shrinking Wages, and Firing of Public Workers Bad Things?
Courtesy of Jonathan Garthwaite @ Townhall.com
Feel free to share the news, columns, and topics for discussion that the liberal media won't be sharing with us at june@friendsofronsmith.com
December 6, 2012
]]>If you thought President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder had given up on closing Guantanamo Bay and bringing jihadists to American soil, think again. Two troubling developments on the Gitmo front should have every American on edge.
The first White House maneuver took place in October, while much of the public and the media were preoccupied with election news. On Oct. 2, Obama's cash-strapped Illinois pals announced that the federal government bought out the Thomson Correctional Center in western Illinois for $165 million. According to Watchdog.org, a recent appraisal put the value of the facility at $220 million.
Democratic Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin led the lobbying campaign for the deal, along with Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, who is overseeing an overall $43 billion state budget deficit and scraping for every available penny. The Thomson campus has been an empty Taj Mahal for more than a decade because profligate state officials had no money for operations. Economic development gurus (using the same phony math of federal stimulus peddlers) claim the newly federalized project will bring in $1 billion.
Durbin told a local Illinois paper that "the decision to move ahead came directly from President Barack Obama" and that he had secured the green light during a discussion on Air Force One earlier in the spring. But this gift to Obama's Illinois homeboys wasn't just a run-of-the-mill campaign favor.
Obama's unilateral and unprecedented decision steamrolled over bipartisan congressional opposition to the purchase. That opposition dates back to 2009, when the White House first floated the idea of using Thomson to house jihadi enemy combatants detained in Cuba. As you may recall, the scheme caused a national uproar. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee overseeing the Justice Department's budget, blocked the administration from using unspent DOJ funds for the deal. With bipartisan support, Congress passed a law barring the transfer of Gitmo detainees to Thomson or any other civilian prison.
The message was clear: Taxpayers don't want manipulative Gitmo detainees or their three-ring circuses of transnationalist sympathizers and left-wing lawyers on American soil. Period.
But when this imperial presidency can't get its way in the court of public opinion, it simply circumvents the deliberative process. As Wolf noted: The shady deal "directly violates the clear objection of the House Appropriations Committee and goes against the bipartisan objections of members in the House and Senate, who have noted that approving this request would allow Thomson to take precedence over previously funded prisons in Alabama, Mississippi, West Virginia and New Hampshire."
Obama and his Illinois gang insist that Thomson will not become Gitmo North. But denial is more than a river in the Muslim Brotherhood's homeland.
The 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America, which spearheaded the movement against shipping jihadi detainees to the mainland, exposed the fine print of the Obama DOJ's deal with the state of Illinois. The purpose of the Thomson facility acquisition, according to the DOJ notice filed in the D.C. courts, included this clause:
"... as well as to provide humane and secure confinement of individuals held under authority of any Act of Congress, and such other persons as in the opinion of the Attorney General of the United States are proper subjects for confinement in such institutions."
Guess whom that covers? Yup: Gitmo detainees, who are being held under the 2001 congressional act known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force.
Now, bear all this in mind as you consider the second and more recent Gitmo gambit. On Wednesday, in response to a whistleblowing report from Fox News homeland security reporter Catherine Herridge, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., released a General Accounting Office report exploring the feasibility of transferring the Gitmo gang to civilian prisons.
Lo and behold, Feinstein concluded, the report "demonstrates that if the political will exists, we could finally close Guantanamo without imperiling our national security."
The "political will" does not exist now, nor has it ever. But thanks to Obama's sneaky, back-door misappropriation of government funds to buy Thomson, the feds have exactly what they need to fulfill the progressive-in-chief's Gitmo closure promise: a shiny, turnkey palace in crony land tailor-made for union workers, lawyers and terror plotters to call their new home.
Courtesy of Jonathan Garthwaite @ Townhall.com
]]>JOHN ANDREWS
Show me a sore loser, and I’ll show you a loser. This has rung in my ears since the election, as I listened to some fellow Republicans and conservatives weeping, whining, and caterwauling. Not to mention griping, blaming, and sulking. Enough already.
Good losers being similarly scorned, who does that leave? Political party animals who rebound from a loss with humility, humor, and honesty. Happy warriors who take a setback in stride, undaunted yet undefensive. Those are the comrades I’ll share a shell-shocked foxhole with. The authors of anguished obituaries for America and the GOP need not apply.
For a couple of days after Nov. 6, it’s true, I was bluer than the MSNBC presidential map. Then I stumbled on one of those websites, PoliticalDefeatTherapy.com, with a guaranteed offer to dispel the darkness and put you back on daylight time after voters clean your clock. Click, pay, and my Republican Rehab Kit was on the way.
When it came, I was initially disappointed. No Kryptonite to reduce Reid and Pelosi to jello. Not a word about Obama’s real birthplace. The envelope contained nothing but three toys – a magnifying glass, a telescope, and a small mirror – plus a pocket edition of the Declaration of Independence and U. S. Constitution. My $19.95 for this?
The instruction sheet - which I read last; typical man – quickly clarified things, however. To get past the superficial “optics” of the Democrats’ big victory, it advised, we Republicans can regain clear vision by putting the 2012 results under a magnifier, then scanning history and the future with a spyglass, and then, above all, looking hard at ourselves in the mirror.
But at no point in this perspective-recovering process, the instructions warned, should a shaken GOP entertain the temptation of abandoning its 150-year fidelity to individual liberty and personal responsibility, limited government and rule of law, free enterprise and private property, human rights and moral truth as gifts from God – the principles in America’s founding documents – first voiced by my party in behalf of the African slave.
This country doesn’t need, in other words, two liberal parties. Nor does it need a quixotic third party, a neo-Confederate secession craze, or a John Galt dropout movement. It needs the Republican party to continue our historically indispensable – and resiliently effective – role as the conservative party for these United States.
The magnifying glass that came in my rehab kit showed the Dems’ retention of the White House and Senate, as well as their Colorado legislative gains, to have been a tactical victory won on intensity and execution, not a repudiation of conservatism. The telescope, looking back, revealed many a political pendulum swing after all seemed lost – think 1964 for my side, 2004 for their side – and likely the same when looking ahead.
Then there was the mirror. Gazing into it was painful, but what a reality bath. Had the GOP, me included, often forgotten that politics is about people no less than principles? Was the other side’s edge in intensity and execution, securing reelection for Obama, baggage and all, partly our fault? Who could be to blame for the tarnished Republican brand but us? Ouch and ouch again.
Inviting a number of conservative audiences to try the mirror exercise has been interesting. There was pushback. “Nobody in this room bears any of the blame,” insisted a friend in Denver. “That’s moderate talk, RINO talk,” said another friend in Grand Junction.
“Death of a Nation,” went an online whine from Colorado Springs. “GOP, DOA, RIP,” moaned an email from Evergreen. Oh really? Time will tell. I’m betting that 2014 and 2016 will prove the reports of conservatism’s demise, like that of Mark Twain, to have been greatly exaggerated.
450,000 BUSINESSES SHUT DOWN IN ITALY; CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS IN SPAIN
MIKE SHEDLOCK
PSALM 666: THE STATE IS MY SHEPHERD, I SHALL NOT WANT
DOUG GILES
A Psalm of Obama
(To be sung by children, K-12, every morning of their seven-day school week.)*
The State is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
It makes me lie down in federally owned pastures.
It leads me beside quiet waters in banned fishing areas.
It restores my soul through its control.
It guides me in the path of dependency for its namesake.
Even though our nation plunges into the valley of the shadow of debt,
I will fear no evil,
For Barack will be with me.
The Affordable Care Act and food stamps,
They comfort me.
You prepare a table of Michelle Obama approved foods before me in the presence of my Conservative and Libertarian enemies.
You anoint my head with hemp oil;
My government regulated 16-ounce cup overflows.
Surely mediocrity and an entitlement mentality will follow me
All the days of my life,
And I will dwell in a low-rent HUD home forever and ever.
Amen.
*Special Note: For union workers teaching their subjects this psalm in government schools, it is to be regarded as a psalm of exquisite beauty. The main subject is the watchful care that the Government extends over its dependents and the consequent faux assurance that you must make them feel that the State will supply all their needs. The leading thought—the essential idea—is to get gullible Americans to fully believe that Big Government will provide for them and that they will never be left to want. Make certain the dumb bastards get that message, okay?
Courtesy of Jonathan Garthwaite @ Townhall.com
]]>Yikes, we're headed toward a fiscal cliff! It will crush the economy! Or so the media and politicians tell us.
The "cliff" is a series of tax increases and budget cuts that automatically go into effect Jan. 1 unless Congress acts.
Will Congress act?
It will! I see the future: The politicians will meet and fret and hold press conferences and predict disaster. Then they'll reach a deal.
It will just postpone the reckoning, but they'll congratulate themselves, and the media will move on.
America, however, continues to go broke.
"They're not going to admit that we're bankrupt, and they won't admit that we're on the verge of a major, major change in our society," says Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. "So they'll keep putting it aside, but then we'll eventually probably destroy the dollar."
The across-the-board cut, or "sequestration," was designed to be so distasteful that Congress would be moved to cut more deliberately. If it doesn't act, $110 billion in projected spending will be automatically cut -- half from domestic spending, half from the Pentagon.
"They assume that they made it so bad that they wouldn't accept it, but I don't think they did," said Paul. "They're not even ... talking about real cuts. They're talking about cuts in baseline budgeting."
Right, the old baseline budgeting trick.
"If they propose, let's say, a $10 billion increase for next year and cut it down to $9 billion, they say they're cutting 10 percent. But they're not cutting anything, they're only increasing it $9 billion instead of $10 billion. It's done on purpose so that people get confused."
Republican House Speaker John Boehner calls the fiscal cliff a "nightmare."
But why? Trillion-dollar deficits are more terrible.
Cuts of $110 billion would even be good for us because it would keep money in private hands, away from the bloated and freedom-killing bureaucracy.
"When government spending is about $3.8 trillion, you're going to cut $100 billion? That's a deck chair on the Titanic," said Russ Roberts of the Hoover Institution. "If they're actual cuts, I think that would be great. I'd cut 10, 20 percent across the board if I had my druthers. But across the board scares people because they think, 'Let's save the things that are really important and cut the things that are not so important.' (But) that never works."
It doesn't work because every cent in the budget is absolutely crucial to someone.
Lately the media are focused on the $400 billion in tax increases that make up four-fifths of the fiscal cliff. We're told that if the Bush-era tax rate cuts expire and the spending reductions kick in, catastrophe will follow.
"The tax increases sound scarier. But we have a trillion dollar deficit!" Roberts pointed out. "So to me, the idea of raising taxes is probably a good idea. It says this spending that we've been doing is not a free lunch."
I'm not convinced that giving politicians more money is ever a good idea.
And won't the wealthy high-earners find a way around the higher rates? When rich people do that, much of their money goes to lawyers instead of consumer satisfaction.
The other thing that scares Washington are the automatic cuts to Pentagon spending. "These draconian cuts represent a threat to our national security," say Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
"The Pentagon is hysterical about it," notes Ben Friedman of the Cato Institute. "But it's about 10 percent, which would bring us roughly back to where we were in defense spending in 2006 ... adjusted for inflation, not exactly a crisis year in the Pentagon. They've gotten very spoiled at the Pentagon. They had years of luxury."
Automatic cuts might even be good, said Friedman.
"We need probably bigger cuts in the defense budget because we do too much. This will force us to make some choices. We try to be everything in the world ... pretending that every unstable country is a threat to us."
I won't lose sleep over automatic spending cuts. The "fiscal cliff" frightens me less than the bankruptcy cliff.
Courtesy of Jonathan Garthwaite @Townhall.com
]]>During the Los Angeles riots of 1992, Rodney King famously asked, “Can’t we all just get along?” The answer should be an easy and unequivocal “yes,” but it seems less and less likely these days.
King was speaking in term of race, but the same could be said of political ideology. Liberals, conservatives and every other point on the political spectrum used to co-exist fairly easily (with the exception of left-wing anarchists who don’t get along with anyone). But these days détente has given way to anger and open hostility.
Some, not all, people have become less civil to those with whom they disagree politically. The modern left, birthed with the start of the eugenics-loving, racist progressive movement at the turn of the 20th century, always has embraced, to varying degrees, the concept of silencing opponents. Through the factions of communism, socialism and fascism (all takes on the same philosophy), leftists have made continuous attempts to silence and punish anyone who doesn’t toe their line.
President Woodrow Wilson, a progressive hero, made it illegal to speak German in this country and, in the Sedition Act of 1917, outlawed the use of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” against the government, flag or military. Wilson’s rabid racism and implementation of segregationist policies in the federal government are routinely ignored by progressives today. But they are all too real and did enormous and lasting damage to our nation.
But that was (and still is) what progressives stood for. They were the elites, the smartest the nation had to offer. And, as such, it was up to them to “improve” the world through government action. They were white, so blacks were inferior. They were smart, so anyone they deemed not to be was inferior, and so on. They believed certain “undesirable” people should be sterilized and thus bred out of existence.
Those deemed worthy or necessary to be allowed to continue to exist would be ruled by them because they, the progressives, quite simply knew better what people needed than the people themselves. Constitution be damned, they were “progressing” the human race.
Although their tactics have changed over time, their motivation and ultimate desires haven’t – they want control and don’t care who or what they destroy to get it.
Fast-forward to today. Progressives are in the process of seizing control of the health care system. Regulations and laws are making more and more businesses effective wards of the state functioning in the ever-narrowing window of what’s left of the free-market.
But it’s not just economics. The sentiments behind President Wilson’s Sedition Act are alive and well. They’re no longer embedded in government; they’ve moved to the media and academia. Speech codes limit not only the words students can use but their ability to express thoughts and opinions progressives deem unworthy. Progressive media outlets frame opposition to President Obama as racist in the hopes of scaring critics into silence.
Now this disparate world view and loyalty to ideology over country/liberty/reality is metastasizing into more places it will damage beyond repair.
Union workers voluntarily have driven Hostess out of business. Seems they’d rather have no pay than less pay, no pension over a restructured one. They commit economic suicide, and pampered, over-paid union bosses such as Richard Trumka blame the Bain Capitals of the world.
Even on something as serious as the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, progressives aren’t interested in facts. Calls for truth-seeking are met with cries of racism because UN Ambassador Susan Rice, the sacrificial lamb the president sent out to lie for him, happened to be black. These progressives are not remotely interested in why Rice lied to the American people about what happened that sad night, nor do they care about being lied to themselves. They care about their agenda. Lying to the contemptible masses is acceptable and encouraged because the unwashed masses don’t know what’s best for themselves anyway.
This “progressive” attitude toward reality is now amplified by the web of social media, which empowers the spread of their fact-lacking desires to once-unheard drones who parrot it unquestioned to the world. Like a cold virus on a plane, it spreads. The truth, or even a desire to find it (as in the case of Benghazi), immediately butts up against a wall of willful ignorance built by a left-wing industrial complex of moneyed interests and true believers. No amount of contradictory evidence can convince them what actually is if they wish it not to be.
The right has its own version of this suborn, wishfully ignorant army. But it is smaller with much less funding. The reason this hive-mindset doesn’t translate to the right is we are not all of like minds. Priorities to one conservative are not priorities to another. Diversity of opinion not only exists on the political right, it is encouraged. Nothing less would be accepted from a philosophy based on the individual.
The progressive left doesn’t suffer from intellectual diversity. In spite of its penchant for bumper stickers calling for questioning of authority, celebrating diversity and “tolerance,” progressives tolerate deviation from their prescribed norm like Hamas would tolerate the suggestion they observe Rosh Hashanah. That’s why there’s so little dissent from anything its leaders propose. No group of nearly 200 clear-thinking individuals who swore an oath to the Constitution and hoped to sway a majority of Americans to their cause would ever elect a radical San Francisco leftist their leader, yet Nancy Pelosi…
When Rodney King asked his famous question, we really could have all gotten along. But the intervening years saw the rejection of a liberal, almost moderate, left and the rebirth of a philosophy spawned from hatred and division with the sole goal of control. Although a great many Americans support this goal, the wool has been pulled over the eyes of many more who’ve been fooled into thinking liberty is a chip to be bartered for a crumb of pie rather than the key to making your own.
I opt against trading my liberty to sing kumbaya with those who seek to impose upon me that which I do not want because they deem it in my best interest. Our president can bow to anyone he wants, but I will no bow to him, nor will I bow to his ideological brethren. I will not bow to anyone. We can all get along, but as long as my opponents seek to deny me any of my liberty, I choose not to.
Courtesy of Jonathan Garthwaite @ Townhall.com
]]>The stunning resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus, days before he was to testify on the CIA role in the Benghazi massacre, raises many more questions than his resignation letter answers.
"I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair," wrote Petraeus. "Such behavior is unacceptable ... as the leader of an organization such as ours."
The problem: Petraeus' "unacceptable behavior," adultery with a married mother of two, Paula Broadwell, that exposed the famous general to blackmail, began soon after he became director in 2011.
Was his security detail at the CIA and were his closest associates oblivious to the fact that the director was a ripe target for blackmail, since any revelation of the affair could destroy his career?
People at the CIA had to know they had a security risk at the top of their agency. Did no one at the CIA do anything?
By early summer, however, Jill Kelley, 37, a close friend of the general from his days as head of CentCom at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., had received half a dozen anonymous, jealous, threatening emails.
"Back off." "Stay away from my guy!" they said.
Kelley went to an FBI friend who ferreted out Broadwell as the sender and Petraeus as the guy she wanted Kelley to stay away from.
Yet, learning that Broadwell was the source of the emails, that Petraeus was having an affair with her, and that the CIA director was thus a target for blackmail and a security risk should have taken three days for the FBI, not three months.
And when Broadwell was identified as the source of the threats, did the Tampa FBI office decide on its own to rummage through her other emails? And when Petraeus' secret email address popped up, did the local FBI decide to rummage through his emails, as well?
Was the CIA aware that Petraeus' private emails were being read by the FBI?
Surely, as soon as Petraeus' affair became known, FBI Director Robert Mueller would have been told and would have alerted Attorney General Eric Holder, who would have alerted the president.
For a matter of such gravity, this is normal procedure. Yet, The New York Times says the FBI and the Justice Department kept the White House in the dark.
Is that believable?
Could it be that Obama and the National Security Council were kept ignorant of a grave security risk and a potentially explosive scandal that the Tampa FBI field office knew all about?
By late October, with the FBI, Justice and the White House all in "hear-no-evil" mode, an FBI "whistle-blower" from Florida contacted the Republican leadership in the House and told them of the dynamite the administration was sitting on.
Majority Leader Eric Cantor's office called Mueller, and the game was up. But the truth was withheld until after Nov. 6.
On Thursday, closed Senate hearings are being held into unanswered questions about the terrorist attack in which Amb. Chris Stevens, two former Navy SEALs and a U.S. diplomat were killed.
There are four basic questions.
Why were repeated warnings from Benghazi about terrorist activity in the area ignored and more security not provided, despite urgent pleas from Stevens and others at the consulate?
Why was the U.S. military unable to come to the rescue of our people begging for help, when the battle in Benghazi lasted on and off for seven hours?
Who, if anyone, gave an order for forces to "stand down" and not go to the rescue of the consulate compound or the safe house? A week before Petraeus' resignation, the CIA issued a flat denial that any order to stand down ever came from anyone in the agency.
Fourth, when the CIA knew it was a terrorist attack, why did Jay Carney on Sept. 13, David Petraeus to Congress on Sept. 14, UN Amb. Susan Rice on Sept 16 on five TV shows, and Obama before the UN two weeks after 9/11 all keep pushing what the CIA knew was a false and phony story: That it had all come out of a spontaneous protest of an anti-Islamic video made by some clown in California?
There was no protest. Was the video-protest line a cover story to conceal a horrible lapse of security before the attack and a failure to respond during the attack -- resulting in the slaughter?
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has sent word she will not be testifying. And she will soon be stepping down. Petraeus is a no-show this week. He is gone. Holder is moving on, and so, too, is Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
President Nixon's Attorneys General John Mitchell and Richard Kleindienst and his top aides Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were all subpoenaed by the Watergate Committee and made to testify under oath about a bungled bugging at the DNC.
The Benghazi massacre is a far graver matter, and the country deserves answers. The country deserves the truth.
Courtesy of Jonathan Garthwaite @ Townhall.com
]]>Retired, four-star Army Gen. David Petraeus is paying the price for his hubris in much the same way as did the mythical figure Icarus who, like Petraeus, thought himself invincible but discovered otherwise when he flew too close to the sun before crashing back to earth. The now-retired CIA Director flew not too close to the sun, but rather ignored basic rules of secrecy, and ran afoul of the virtually limitless powers of surveillance we have placed in the hands of the FBI and other government agencies.
Like former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer before him, Petraeus’ sexual peccadillos were unmasked not by a scorned lover; rather they both were undone by surveillance tools lawfully lodged in the hands of federal regulators and investigators by the Congress of the United States.
In early 2008, Spitzer was forced to resign as governor of the Empire State when it was revealed he was enjoying the services of an exclusive call-girl service. The then-governor’s apparently long-running relationship came to the attention of the FBI not because its agents set out to catch Spitzer for sexual dalliances. What tipped off the feds were convoluted monetary transactions which Spitzer employed to pay for the escorts. These not-otherwise unlawful transactions initially were brought to the attention of federal investigators by financial institutions reporting what someone concluded were “suspicious transactions.”
Under federal law and pursuant to extensive federal regulations, employees of banks and other financial institutions are supposed to report any dealings of their customers which they deem “suspicious,” through what are called “Suspicious Activity Reports” (SARs). Unbeknownst to the average bank customer – and apparently even to some not-so-average customers like Spitzer – such documents may be filed and the data reflected therein data-based, without ever notifying the customer (and without ever securing a judicial warrant).
One thing can lead to another, and Bingo, a person’s private endeavors – whether legal or not – come to the attention of prosecuting authorities. If the victim of such investigation happens to be a public figure, the Icarus effect usually follows in short order.
In Petraeus’ case, it was not a matter of financial transactions being reported that did him in, but jealously between his paramour and another woman; jealousy that resulted in a chain of e-mails. While the e-mails between the two women do not appear to constitute communications reasonably considered to be “threatening,” when the FBI got hold of them, its agents believed otherwise, and launched an extensive investigation. As with the investigation of Spitzer, the feds maintain with a straight face their investigation was launched to “protect” the public figure.
The lessons we glean from this incident are many. Most are obvious, such as not engaging in behavior in which Petraeus engaged, and certainly not creating e-mail records thereof if you break Rule Number One.
Perhaps not quite so obvious, however, are lessons we as a nation ought to contemplate in the wake of this scandal.
Have we mistakenly elevated military leaders like Petraeus to near God-like status, and in so doing fostered in them a sense that they serve on a level far above the average military personnel or civilian citizen? Petraeus was, by all objective accounts, an outstanding military officer. But should we really allow a fawning biographer to spend months following a top Army general around, while he is supposed to be engaged in vital military duties, just so he can look good in a subsequently-published biography?
Is any general – or retired general holding a top-level civilian post in government – so exceptional that the normal rules of public service, including obligations to respond to legitimate inquiries from our elected representatives, are deemed not to apply?
And, do we really want to live in a society in which our every action involving some form of electronic communication – from a personal e-mail to a simple credit card transaction -- is easily accessible by a federal investigator sifting through secret algorithms to “discover” patterns of behavior seemed “suspicious,” and thereafter to be investigated? Because that’s right where we are, folks.
Courtesy of Jonathan Garthwaite @ Townhall.com
]]>Many of us woke up the morning after the election in a daze and I imagine quite a few of us thought, okay…we lost, it is a new day…WWBD-What Would Breitbart Do? None of us can speak conclusively for him, but many of us were so deeply influenced and impacted by his leadership that in different ways his ideas live on inside of us.
Just before he died, Andrew called for a true vetting of President Obama, something that simply did not happen in 2008. Though he did not live to see it, many people led the charge and dozens of important works, from Dinesh D'Souza's hit film 2016: Obama's America to David Maraniss's book "Barack Obama" did just that. But unfortunately, something else also became more clear than ever before, the corrupt media that Breitbart often assailed had its thumbs on the scales and tipped the election in the President's favor.
Everything that Andrew predicted in my film, Hating Breitbart, played out in real-time during the election right before our eyes. From Candy Crowley interrupting and taking Obama's side in the debate to George Stephonopoulous's introducing the 'war on women' narrative in the primary debates, members of the so-called mainstream media did everything they could to re-elect Obama and they were successful. And many of us are, as Andrew so often was, righteously indignant. Some might even be feeling hopeless, tired or defeated. And while I can understand a temporary crisis of faith, I believe Andrew would refuse to surrender to a defeatist attitude over one election loss. He understood that the true fight is with the Mainstream Media and Institutional Left and that they don't get ‘elected.’ We must bring the fight directly to them relentlessly. That was always his fight and that does not change with an election cycle.
Despite how the media wanted to depict Andrew, he was not an angry person….passionate, opinioned and confrontational yes, but not angry. I believe that by now, Andrew would have already dusted himself off and turned to the people he loved, fought for and defended the most passionately and vigorously-citizen journalists. And he would remind each of us that we all have to power to expose the malfeasance and corruption in the MSM and Institutional left. He would not Monday morning quarterback the Romney campaign or dissect numbers and graphs. He would exhaust every hour of every day exposing the corrupt mainstream media for who and what they are. Though they might be silently (and disturbingly some not so silently) grateful that Andrew is no longer here to stand up to their destructive behavior, in the months and years to come they will be forced to face the reality that his spirit and his example continues on every single day with thousands of citizen journalists in every inch of this nation. And they will never be able to put the Genie that Andrew released back in the bottle. That's what Andrew Breitbart would have done, and what millions of citizen journalists will continue to do as long as we have breath.
Courtesy of Jonathan Garthwaite @ Townhall.com
]]>Barack Obama wants you to know that the rich are out of control.
And I partially agree. It’s a matter of fairness.
After thinking about it for a few years, he has finally figured out that our economic problems have a very simple explanation: There are too many rich people.
I know of at least one too many. The one occupying the White House? Way too rich.
Too many rich people are causing a jobless “recovery.” Having too many rich people caused gas prices to go up, the stock market to go down and the housing bubble to burst. Too many rich people meant that a peaceful demonstration against America in Benghazi turned into terrorism.
The rich, Obama would have you believe, are probably responsible for the next ice age too.
Rich people, it seems, run up huge budget deficits on silly things like entitlement spending disguised as healthcare reform, green energy swindles disguised as “jobs programs” and road projects that benefit the Illinois Asphalt Contractors Association -bada-bing!
Rich people demand trillions in stimulus spending, huge mortgage entitlements for people who can’t make house payments and bloated pension programs for public workers.
Rich people get special treatment from banks that they are supposed to be regulating; they encourage the Federal Reserve Bank to print more money and they borrow gigantic sums from the Chinese.
The rich people are out of control, Obama tells us.
In order to get them back under control, they have to be taxed.
Obama and his friends want to tax impose a super-tax on the 4 million household making more than $250,000 per year to solve the so-called "fiscal cliff" where tax cuts expire and the federal government is forced to cut spending, just as they agreed to.
Former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich writes: “From the 1940s until 1980, the top income-tax rate on the highest earners in America was at least 70 percent. In the 1950s, it was 91 percent. Now it's 35 percent. Even if you include deductions and credits, the rich are paying a far lower share of their incomes in taxes than at any time since World War II.”
And that’s just not fair, say liberals.
“Fair” can also be called the Obama Doctrine.
The Obama Doctrine says that we have to tax the rich in the interest of fairness. We’d all have less money, for sure. We’d all get to wait in line for rationed toilet paper, rationed food and rationed healthcare but fairness would rule the land.*
Sure, the whole Land of Opportunity thing worked for 300 years, but what about the next 300 years?
Maybe instead America can be the Yeah, We’re the Land of Opportunity, But Don’t Get Carried Away With It, O.K.?
Or maybe we can be the Land of Fairness.
Certainly if those darn rich people would just stop being rich, then we’d have no budget problems at all.
Some of the rich are guiltily admitting as much. They’ve banded together into United for a Fair Economy. They’ve signed a pledge pleading with the government to tax the rich more.
“Seattle-based Judy Pigott, one of the heirs to her grandfather’s company that builds Peterbilt trucks and other heavy equipment, was one of the first people to sign the Pledge,” said a press release from the organization last year.
“’If we even kept what was in place from the end of the Reagan years and into those of Bush I,’” says Pigott, “’I suspect we’d not be in a budget crisis now. Let’s do what it takes to support all of us, since it takes all of us to keep this nation going.’”
You see, it takes a village to tax the rich.
Of course, Ms. Pigott is probably relying on her considerable economic experience as an heiress to come to that conclusion.
Economists and historians disagree with Ms. Pigott: “The historical evidence suggests that capital gains tax reductions tend to increase tax revenue,’ says Shahira ElBogdady Knight an economist with the Congressional Joint Economic Study Committee.
“When capital gains tax rates were lowered in 1978 and again in 1981, revenue climbed steadily. Conversely, when the tax rate was increased in 1987, revenue began declining despite forecasters predictions it would increase. For instance, capital gains tax revenue in 1985 equaled $36.4 billion after adjusting for inflation, yet $36.2 billion was collected in 1994 under a higher tax rate. In other words, tax revenue in 1994 was slightly less than it was in 1985 even though the economy was larger, the tax rate was higher, and the stock market was stronger in 1994.”
But what about fairness? asks Obama.
Oh, well here’s the answer:
In the interest of fairness, there is one guy who needs to be taxed, and taxed at the same rate they he has taxed our patience for nearly four years long.
Because the rich guy in the White House is out of control.
I say tax him. And then tax him again, until he stops taxing us.
That seems fair to me.
*Actual Fairness to be determined by the executive office under paragraph 5, subsection 2 of the U.S. Citizens Fairness Act also known as ObamaFair.
Fundamentals usually prevail in American elections. That's bad news for Barack Obama. True, Americans want to think well of their presidents, and many think it would be bad if Americans were perceived as rejecting the first black president.
But it's also true that most voters oppose Obama's major policies and consider unsatisfactory the very sluggish economic recovery -- Friday's job report showed an unemployment uptick.
Also, both national and target state polls show that independents -- voters who don't identify themselves as Democrats or Republicans -- break for Romney.
That might not matter if Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 39 to 32 percent, as they did in the 2008 exit poll. But just about every indicator suggests that Republicans are more enthusiastic about voting -- and about their candidate -- than they were in 2008, and Democrats are less so.
That's been apparent in early or absentee voting, where Democrats trail their 2008 numbers in target states Virginia, Ohio, Iowa and Nevada.
The Obama campaign strategy, from the beginning, has recognized these handicaps, running barrages of early anti-Romney ads in states that Obama carried narrowly. But other states, not so heavily barraged, have come into contention.
Which candidate will get the electoral votes of the target states? I'll go out on a limb and predict them, in ascending order of 2008 Obama percentages -- fully aware that I'm likely to get some wrong.
Indiana (11 electoral votes). Uncontested. Romney.
North Carolina (15 electoral votes). Obama has abandoned this target. Romney.
Florida (29). The biggest target state has trended Romney since the Denver debate. I don't see any segment of the electorate favoring Obama more than in 2008, and I see some (South Florida Jews) favoring him less. Romney.
Ohio (18). The anti-Romney auto bailout ads have Obama running well enough among blue collar for him to lead most polls. But many polls anticipate a more Democratic electorate than 2008. Early voting tells another story, and so does the registration decline in Cleveland's Cuyahoga County. In 2004, intensity among rural, small town and evangelical voters, undetected by political reporters who don't mix in such circles, produced a narrow Bush victory. I see that happening again. Romney.
Virginia (13). Post-debate polling mildly favors Romney, and early voting is way down in heavily Democratic Arlington, Alexandria, Richmond and Norfolk. Northern Virginia Asians may trend Romney. Romney.
Colorado (9). Unlike 2008, registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats, and more Republicans than Democrats have voted early. The Republican trend in 2010 was squandered by weak candidates for governor and senator. Not this time. Romney.
Iowa (6). The unexpected Romney endorsements by the Des Moines Register and three other newspapers gave voice to buyer's remorse in a state Obama carried by 10 points. Democrats' traditional margin in early voting has declined. Romney.
Minnesota (10). A surprise last-minute media buy for the Romney campaign. But probably a bridge too far. Obama.
New Hampshire (4). Polls are very tight here. I think superior Republican intensity will prevail. Romney.
Pennsylvania (20). Everyone would have picked Obama two weeks ago. I think higher turnout in pro-coal western Pennsylvania and higher Republican percentages in the Philadelphia suburbs could produce a surprise. The Romney team evidently thinks so too. Their investment in TV time is too expensive to be a mere feint, and as this is written, Romney is planning a Sunday event in Bucks County outside Philly. Wobbling on my limb, Romney.
Nevada (6). Democratic early voting turnout is down from 2008 in Las Vegas' Clark County, 70 percent of the state. But the casino unions' turnout machine on Election Day re-elected an unpopular Harry Reid in 2010, and I think they'll get enough Latinos and Filipinos out this time. Obama.
Wisconsin (10). Recent polling is discouraging for Republicans. But Gov. Scott Walker handily survived the recall effort in June with a great organizational push. Democrats depend heavily on margins in inner-city Milwaukee (population down) and the Madison university community. But early voting is down in university towns in other states. The Obama campaign is prepared to turn out a big student vote, but you don't see many Obama signs on campuses. Romney.
Oregon (7), New Mexico (5), New Jersey (14). Uncontested. Obama.
Michigan (16). Romney chose Pennsylvania, where there's no auto bailout issue. Obama.
Bottom line: Romney 315, Obama 223. That sounds high for Romney. But he could drop Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and still win the election. Fundamentals.
Courtesy of Jonathan Garthwaite @ Townhall.com
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