…when Intrade speaks, this writer listens. When polls show President Obama’s approval consistently below 50%, when polls show an generic Republican defeating Obama in 2012, but Intrade has him consistently above 50%, I take the poll results with a hailstone-sized grain of salt.
But perhaps not today, for, at the time of this writing, for the first time ever, Obama is below 50% on Intrade. Only a tenth of a percentage point (49.9%), mind you, and he may very well be back above 50% by the time the reader reads this.
In The following YOUTUBE clip Humberto Fontova discusses and exposes the real CHE with Glenn Beck, which begs the following questions: WHO is and has been keeping the truth from us about this murderous fanatic and who is keeping us from remembering WHAT happened in Cuba and WHY are they not teaching people the truth about it? Its a real WAKEUP CALL because our country is being run to the ground in the name of ideas and misconceptions about the workings of the real world in economics and the importance of limited government and free enterprise.
Is there even any doubt left that people like Al Gore and John Kerry, comfortable with both chaos and totalitarianism as they are - are down with the agenda? Here’s Lee Doren slamming the fake “Civility project”:
Via Lee Doren, How the World Works
Andrew Klavan on Obama’s use of craptastic, crap talk, (also known as “lies”):
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Friday described the National Labor Relations Board as a “rogue agency” for its response to subpoenas he issued for documents related to the panel’s legal complaint against airplane manufacturer Boeing.
The NLRB has yet to provide any documents to Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The board’s general counsel said Friday in a letter to Issa that the NLRB was concerned about releasing any documents prematurely.
That provoked a harsh response from Issa, who said the NLRB’s hesitation put into question “the integrity of NLRB and its leadership.”
“The National Labor Relations Board and Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon have thus far failed to comply with a lawful subpoena,” Issa said in a statement released Friday. “This refusal by NLRB to abide by the law further heightens concerns that this is a rogue agency acting improperly.”
A federal appeals court has ruled that the national health care law’s individual mandate is unconstitutional, calling it “an unprecedented exercise of congressional power.”
The 11th Circuit, which was hearing the case brought by 26 states led by Florida and the National Federation of Independent Business concluded:
that the individual mandate contained in the Act exceeds Congress’s enumerated commerce power. This conclusion is limited in scope. The power that Congress has wielded via the Commerce Clause for the life of this country remains undiminished. Congress may regulate commercial actors. It may forbid certain commercial activity. It may enact hundreds of new laws and federally-funded programs, as it has elected to do in this massive 975- page Act. But what Congress cannot do under the Commerce Clause is mandate that individuals enter into contracts with private insurance companies for the purchase of an expensive product from the time they are born until the time they die.
The ruling also calls the mandate is a ”wholly novel and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority.”
The Court of Appeals for the 11th circuit ruled today in Atlanta that mandatory health insurance, a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, is unconstitutional. Although the court declined to rule the entire law null and void, the impact of the ruling will be wide ranging. It is a major decision, because the plaintiffs are 26 states – the most significant plaintiffs in any challenge thus far. The Court of Appeals for 4th circuit based in Richmond has yet to rule on a separate challenge brought by the state of Virginia. One federal Court of Appeals for the 6th circuit upheld the constitutionality of the mandatory insurance provision, but the ruling was of far less consequence, because the plaintiff was a minor litigant, the Thomas More Legal Center, rather than a state.
The impact of the 11th circuit ruling is likely to be substantial and immediate:
State governments will slow down or halt their preparations to implement state insurance exchanges as required under the law.
Pressure will build on the administration to scale back or repeal its two costly new health entitlements, which have not gone into effect yet: (1) a costly expansion of Medicaid eligibility and Medicaid benefits and (2) subsidies for middle income people to pay for private health plans on state exchanges. The decision today blew a hole in a major source of revenue to pay for these new entitlements: the penalties on individuals who fail to enroll and employers who fail to provide it to their workers. Without this revenue, the remaining provisions of the law create a large budget deficit.
This is good news for employers who have held off on hiring because of concerns about future mandatory health insurance requirements on employers. If this decision is confirmed by the United States Supreme Court next term, it will remove a barrier to job growth.
This is a victory for individual liberty and limited government.
Betsy McCaughey is former Lt. Governor of New York State and author of
The Obama Health Law: What it Says and How to Overturn It.
Now that the recall elections for Republican senators are over with, focus is shifting to two Democrat recalls that are being held, next Tuesday.
Sen. Bob Wirch (D-Pleasant Prairie) faces Republican Jonathan Steitz, and the more vulnerable Senator, Jim Holperin (D-Conover) faces Kim Simac, the founder of the Northwoods Patriots, potentially Wisconsin’s “first tea party Senator”:
Holperin acknowledged in an interview Wednesday that he is more vulnerable than Wirch.“It has been on our minds and in our plans for two years now to have someone from the tea party movement in the state Senate,” says Tim Dake, chair of Wisconsin GrandSons of Liberty, a Tea Party Patriots organization. “If she wins, it is going to be huge.
***
Holperin, whose district voted for Walker, says he will continue campaigning as well. This is the senator’s second time facing a recall effort. The first attempt came in 1990, when he was a member of the Assembly, over his support of Ojibwe spearfishing rights. He handily won that recall election. He was elected to the Senate in 2008.
Like Holperin’s district, a majority of voters in Wirch’s district also voted for Walker in the November election. But Wirch says his district voted for JoAnne Kloppenburg in the state Supreme Court race rather than incumbent Justice David Prosser, a former Republican state Assembly member. Wirch describes his district as “Democratic-leaning, but not by much.”
Months after the unions’ campaign of vandalizing our state and threatening our leaders, the unions have returned with a sleazy ad campaign about Kim Simac. They are alleging that Kim chose not to pay her taxes, and they have spent heavily on dishonest ads. The truth is that Kim’s business had some down years, and she did not owe any taxes for those years.
“My business has struggled in years, especially with a down economy and a hurting tourism industry. There have been years when my net income has fallen into a tax bracket that has no yearend tax liability.”
These races are still important because one of the ‘moderate’ Republican Senators, Dale Schultz, may bolt the GOP and join with the Democrats. According to Campaign To Defeat Barack Obama:
He is under intense pressure from Senate Democrats to switch sides – in fact Schultz once was a Democrat. Schultz also was the ONLY Republican who voted against Gov. Walker’s budget reform bill and then publicly criticized Governor Walker for his efforts to bring fiscal sanity to Wisconsin.
We learned today that Schultz even went to the Democrat Leader in the Senate and offered himself as a vote for them in the Senate.
This would be disastrous and would mean Democrats would be able to block Gov. Walker’s agenda in Wisconsin. We can’t let the Left win this way.
That’s why we are going all out to win in the 2 RECALL campaigns against Democrats that take place next Tuesday. In fact, if we prevail in these two races the net gain for Democrats through this entire RECALL process will have been ZERO (0) seats. They will have spent more than $30 MILLION for nothing!
So let’s go out and finish the win. Let’s see those 2 Democrat Senators who abdicated their job duties and fled to Illinois lose their seats. Let’s make the Left eat crow for ever starting these shameful RECALL campaigns to punish Republicans who actually DID do their jobs. And let’s make sure the Democrats’ effort to “buy off” a Senator fails.
You can contribute any amount from as little as $5 to the maximum allowed contribution of $5,000. TV ads for the 2 RECALL districts are rather expensive. One of the two RECALL campaigns takes place in the most expensive media market in the state of Wisconsin: Milwaukee.
Thus, we’re going to need quite a few people who can contribute $100 or more to pitch in. Our goal is to collect more than 500 contributions of $100 or more within the next 24 hours. You can contribute online – HERE.
Both sides in the recall effort against a Democratic North Woods senator are pushing ahead and pouring money into the race.
When Democrats failed to take back the Senate Tuesday, some had speculated that there would be less focus or spending in the fight to recall Sen. Jim Holperin (D-Conover).
But so far, that’s not the case, said officials supporting Holperin and his challenger, Republican Kim Simac.
“It looks to me like everything’s full speed ahead. Nobody’s pulling anything out,” said John Hogan, executive director of the Committee to Elect a Republican Senate.
Of the two Democratic senators up for recall on Tuesday, Sen. Jim Holperin of Conover is universally believed to be the Republicans’ best shot at picking up a seat. After a better-than-expected night on Tuesday, Republicans are bullish about the possibility of knocking off Holperin.
The 12th Senate District is basically a Republican district. It went to Obama in 2008, but narrowly. It went to Scott Walker by 57.4 percent — considerably more than his 52.3 percent statewide total. By my rough estimate, conservative Justice David Prosser’s share of the vote there this spring was about 55 percent, compared with a 50-50 statistical split statewide.
Combine that with the fact that elections this week proved once again that the conservative base is just as able to turn out voters in Wisconsin as the liberal base, and the district looks ripe for Republicans.
KENOSHA – Senator Bob Wirch says Democrats were asleep last November, but he says they are definitely awake now. Meanwhile, Republican challenger, Jonathan Steitz is bringing out the big names to help his cause.
On his summer break from Congress, Representative Paul Ryan spent the afternoon in Kenosha stumping for Jonathan Steitz in a seat Ryan hopes Republicans can take over.
“I think these recall elections are a vindication that the new leadership in Madison is taking us in the right direction. They are cutting spending, getting taxes down so we can create jobs,” said Rep. Paul Ryan.
“It’s great. It’s an honor to have him here, I appreciate his time. I think the turnout today shows that we have a real good grassroots effort behind us,” Steitz said.
In a move that surprised nobody, the Obama White House reneged on its promise that there would no photos allowed at Dover Air Force Base upon the return of American troops killed in that heliocopter crash, last weekend.
Barack Obama went to Dover Air Force Base on Tuesday for the return of the remains of 30 American troops killed in a weekend helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
The liberal media respected the rule. The White House didn’t. They posted an image on the White House website. It was their photo of the day.The APreported:
A White House photographer was allowed to take and widely distribute a photo from the ceremony Tuesday for the return of the remains of 30 American troops killed in a weekend helicopter crash in Afghanistan despite the Pentagon’s claim that any public depiction of the scene would violate the wishes of bereaved families.
News media coverage of the ceremony had been banned by the Pentagon over the objections of several news organizations.
Pentagon officials had said that because 19 of 30 of the American families of the dead had objected to media coverage of the remains coming off a plane at Dover Air Force Base, no images could be taken. In addition, the Pentagon rejected media requests to take photos that showed officials at the ceremony but did not depict caskets.
…upon the deaths of 21 of those Seal Team Six members, the President’s narcissistic self-absorption has usurped honoring the express wishes of men lying silent within metal tombs who asked nothing from the country they died defending except that above all, family comes first.
Ironically, in March 2009, the Obama administration chose to reverse an 18-year-old moratorium, renewed by George W. Bush, that banned photographing the caskets of US soldiers returning home from war. The newly-enacted Pentagon policy specified that, upon notification of a loved one’s death, the “primary next of kin” has the right to make the “family decision regarding media access to dignified transfers at Dover.”
By toting along a photojournalist to an event that banned photographs, Barack Obama, the man who approved the “primary next of kin” policy, decided once again to exempt himself from a rule he made for others. The President chose to disregard the wishes of 19 military families and violated a stipulation that was included with his authorization.
When asked about the picture, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said that it was “carefully taken so that it did not show the cases containing remains.” Which really means: We knew the families were against media coverage but the President made an executive decision to secretly attempt a tactful photo op.
Carney should have stopped there, but he kept on explaining – “In this case, the White House released the photo, in the interests of transparency, so that the American people could have as much insight as possible into this historic and sobering event.” The President is so wary that he didn’t even invite the press to his transparency award ceremony. The most opaque, non-transparent presidency in the history of the nation decided to be transparent on the one occasion when total discretion was of the essence.
If President Barack Obama wants to be transparent, maybe instead of invading the homecoming of dead war heroes with a hidden camera he could start with a more benign effort like releasing his college transcripts and following his own rules.
During the Bush years, Libs were always “questioning the timing” of any good news that was reported – especially news about the wars. Of course, they were projecting their habit of politicizing everything, including the wars, onto us. Liberals trumpeted any bad news, even if it demoralized troops, and undermined the war effort. The media highlighted the caskets coming home, and obsessively kept Americans appraised of the body count. Anyone know how many troops have died since Obama’s been in office? Many of you don’t, do you? That’s because media lost interest in the number of troop deaths the day Obama took office, which is strange, because the death rate has increased substantially in Afghanistan since Obama took office.
Today another five heroes were killed in the war against jihad. The rate of US death under Obama’s ‘leadership’ is unprecedented. Obama’s war, “the good war,” is a killing field for our soldiers, and has been since he took control. Last week CNS reported that “analysis of U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan” shows that “64% of those deaths have happened while President Obama has been in Office. At least 1,019 of 1,588 U.S. troop deaths in Afghanistan have occurred since President Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009.”
Last Friday’s attack resulted in the single largest loss of life in one day since the war began in 2001.
You no longer hear the MSM dwelling on body bags coming home, do you?
Now, that Obama is President, Hollywood is finally ready to make a pro-American war movie by a writer behind one of the Bush era anti-Iraq War films, and featuring as the hero – (you guessed it!) President Gutsy-Kick-A$$-Call, himself. Imagine that.
The White House is also counting on the Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal big-screen version of the killing of Bin Laden to counter Obama’s growing reputation as ineffectual. The Sony film by the Oscar-winning pair who made “The Hurt Locker” will no doubt reflect the president’s cool, gutsy decision against shaky odds. Just as Obamaland was hoping, the movie is scheduled to open on Oct. 12, 2012 — perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost to a campaign that has grown tougher.
The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration.
It was clear that the White House had outsourced the job of manning up the president’s image to Hollywood when Boal got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently — to the surprise of some military officers — at a C.I.A. ceremony celebrating the hero Seals.
Just like W., Obama is going for that “Mission Accomplished” glow (without the suggestive harness). At least in this president’s case, though, something has been accomplished.
That’s Maureen Dowd in the New York Times – announcing another upcoming version of the killing Osama story, sounding peeved, but still ending on a high note. As for any White House plumbing problems – maybe Team Obama has “tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration,” – but that’s just those who leak stuff they don’t like. These days when you read something like this…
A current U.S. official and a former U.S. official said the Americans included 22 SEALs, three Air Force air controllers and a dog handler and his dog. The two spoke on condition of anonymity because military officials were still notifying the families of the dead.
…you can bet those US officials don’t have anything much to worry about.
But back to her observation that “Boal got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently — to the surprise of some military officers — at a C.I.A. ceremony celebrating the hero Seals.” I’m sure they were surprised, and probably wondering who the hell invited the guy who wrote that “Kill Team” story for Rolling Stone.
Boal is no stranger to failed war movies. His first co-writing credit was for In the Valley of Elah, one of a flock of shitty Iraq-themed movies audiences avoided in droves in the Fall of 2007. (Hey, [the producers] listened to a wide variety of experts – from Joe Biden to Barack Obama – who predicted the surge would fail, Iraq would get worse, etc. etc.) These movies were supposed to be welcoming the surviving members of Bush’s legions home in defeat to an angry America – how could they fail? (Don’t bet against well-led American troops, says I…)
As mentioned above, Boal also scripted the slightly less shitty (but still unwatched) Academy Award winning Hurt Locker. (“Everything wrong with Hurt Locker could have been fixed, within the budget, by a decent script.” – Greyhawk) Ostensibly “about” an EOD team, the film – like Elah – was really about how screwed up Army dudes are. (Sympathetically, of course.)
More recently Boal penned the Kill Team story for Rolling Stone. Like Locker of Elah, it’s based on truth. For as good a review as I’ve seen anywhere, (though mine would be different if I had the stomach to write one) here’s Carl Prine’s take.
So, will America line up and pay hard earned cash (with gas at 4+ bucks a gallon…) to watch a movie this guy writes about killin’ bin Laden? (Maybe – who’s in it?)
GreyHawk’s idea for the climax:
Whoever gets the script credit, I’ve already written the perfect ending for the movie (it won’t be used) – and now that I think more about it, I can envision another great cinematic moment, the climax of the film, done with fast cuts back and forth…
Joe Biden fingers his rosary – in slow motion Ben Afleck shoots Osama’s wife and tackles the two girls. Hillary chews a chunk of ham and cheese – while whoever’s playing America’s first ever female SEAL puts a round into center mass bin Laden. Obama stares impassively from his corner – Matt Damon puts the kill shot into bin Laden’s eye, his brains splatter the wall.
As an homage to the Christening scene in The Godfather (one that college film study majors will be instructed to appreciate well into the next century), Biden’s chanted Hail Marys provide a continuous soundtrack – broken only by gunshots. As the echo of the last one fades, a “counterterrorism expert” in the Situation Room says:
“Can you believe that guy was hiding out in a million dollar mansion surrounded by friends and family while his ‘troops’ did all the fighting?”
A long awkward silence follows, until Biden says “We should all go to Mass tonight,” then Hillary chokes a little on some bread.
Ben Howe says:”Barack Obama has failed his party, his country & the world. He must be replaced in 2012.” He created this excellent video to drive the point home.
Something tells me that most ObamaZombies are too pre-programmed with ‘blame Bush’ and anti- Tea-Party propaganda to get the message, though.
Some liberal/independent minds may be reached however.
Tuesday night, Charles Krauthammer and Bill O’Reilly discussed the possibility that Obama supporters might finally see the light, after witnessing so much economic destruction after two and a half years of Obama’s policies, (and two more with the Dem controlled House). Krauthammer noted that after controlling all levers of power, Dems have nothing to show for it. No good story to tell.
More Krauthammer from Wednesday’s Fox News Special Report Pan: “Obama is the anti-EF Huttten, when he speaks, no-one listens”:
Many older members of the urban communities rocked by violence have been shocked by the level of self-destruction exhibited by the rioters. Some shop owners have got together to defend their property, even beating up rioters who have turned up with iron bars. In one video, a West Indian woman in her 50s braves the rubble-strewn streets to lecture the rioters: “These people worked hard to make their businesses work and then you lot wanna go and burn it up. For what?” On Twitter, the hashtag #riotcleanup is being used by community members to co-ordinate some post-riot street-cleaning, to make amends for what one elderly Tottenham resident described as “the stupid behaviour of the young”.
But it is more than childish destructiveness motivating the rioters. These are youngsters who are uniquely alienated from the communities in which they grew up. Nurtured in large part by the welfare state, financially, physically and educationally, socialised more by the agents of welfarism than by their own neighbours or local representatives, these youth have little moral or emotional attachment to their communities. Their rioting reveals not that Britain is in a time warp in 1981 or 1985 with politically motivated riots against the police, but that the tentacle-like spread of the welfare state into every area of people’s lives has utterly zapped old social bonds, the relationship of sharing and solidarity that once existed in working-class communities. These riots suggest that the welfare state is giving rise to a generation happy to shit on its own doorstep.
In various internet political and religious forums, I have seen the suggestion being made — leaking in from the fringes, mostly — that the odd rise of “flash mobs” over this summer — those events that began with perhaps a dozen young people swarming a convenience store or fast-food place, creating havoc and then quickly dispersing, and have since grown in scope to involve larger-scale random acts of chaos and violence at public gatherings, and prompted citymayors to close beaches and enforce curfews — are not meaningless or coincidental, but rather are “training exercises” or “dry runs” for larger scenarios; they are, according to some, “research” meant to discover what can be accomplished quickly, how mobs are responded to, the efficacy of law enforcement and, finally, at what point a flash event can, by sheer numbers and the element of surprise, subdue and repress resistance, or warrant the deployment of National Guards.
Ask “to what purpose,” and the answer you get runs along the lines of “when the cities are in chaos in 2012, Obama will declare a national emergency, install martial law and suspend elections.”
A “U.S. Day of Rage” is scheduled to start an “Occupy Wall Street” camp-out on “17/9/2011″ (which would denote orchestration by those who use the British means of writing dates). And as with the “Arab Spring,” much of the organizing is being done through social media, especially super-popular Facebook and Twitter.
Immediately upon clicking links, one finds it to be the America-targeting element of a worldwide movement, especially popular by the looks of it, in Old Europe. Again, that is no surprise to those who have looked into the updated mode of Marxist revolution stemming from the Gramsci and Trotsky schools and historically, even the days before Marx and Engels. Revolutionary proponents likes to hide behind the non-American ideal of democracy (as in permanent rule of the proletariat majority, forget about a republic) along with nebulous and mysterious anarchistic labelling.
The term “Day(s) of Rage” is the product of Chicago’s Weathermen, led by Obama workmate Bill Ayers and cohabitants.
This Day of Rage speaks of non-violence, yet plays up the violent terrorism of the current rioting proceeding in Great Britain.
This entry in GulagBound.com will be updated, so we may bring you the news immediately and fill it out as we go.
Robyn from Berkeley relates a story about a liberal friend from an affluent neighborhood in NJ, whose son is viciously attacked by a black mob, and notes how left-wing hate has been spreading like a virus all across the nation since the election of the Radical in Chief, Barack Obama:
The radicals want to promote anarchy. But it’s more than this: they want the hate that blackens their souls to warp others as well.
My dear friend, Gail, was in tears, shell-shocked, incredulous. She kept repeating over and over again, “How could this happen? How could this happen?” She struggled to find the words for such barbarism; she had not a clue of how it could invade her insular world.
I spoke to Gail tenderly, as though I were calming down a frightened child stirring from a deep sleep.
“I’m so sorry, sweetie. This is horrible. Justin didn’t deserve to be treated this way, and his friends didn’t need to see such brutality.
“But, Gail, it’s not just happening in your small town, but it’s happening all over the country, and it’s getting worse every day. There have been random mob violence against white people in Iowa, Chicago, Atlanta, in Wisconsin, where dozens of white people were beaten up, even pulled out of their own cars.”
“But why?” Gail asked me plaintively. “Why is this happening now?”
“It’s Obama,” I explained. “It’s what I told you a few years ago. This is what happens when you put someone in power like Obama. Something spreads, like a virus. It’s subtle; it’s almost invisible. But it poisons one person, and then another and another, until soon the whole country is corrupted.
“It’s a sickness called hatred, Gail. Most black people are good, law-abiding, moral people. Obama comes from a far-left fringe group of militants who hate America and want to drag us down. Those same people have degraded and exploited poor black kids for years. These radicals use them as their foot soldiers. Obama would never get his own hands dirty.
“I know these militants, Gail; I live among them. They hate America; they want to devolve us back into some primitive brute state. This is why things are getting worse and worse in this country: the economy, the Middle East, and hate crimes against whites.”
After I finished, Gail was quiet for several seconds. Then she said, sounding heartbroken, “But he made so many promises. He seemed so nice.“
While Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Barack Obama have been AWOL in the wake of black mob violence in the United States, at least one black leader is passionately condemning the violence,and chastising th “violent hooligans” attacking innocent people.
We need more black leaders like the Mayor Nutter of Philadelphia.
Another video by Granny Jan, but this one isn’t funny.
Yesterday, Weekly Standard Reporter, Daniel Halpernoticed that The White House had scrubbed the word Israel, from their website after having posted a photo of Vice President Joe Biden and Shimon Peres, with an accompanying caption that indicated it had been taken last year in Jerusalem, Israel.
Within two hours of posting, the White House has apparently gone through its website, cleansing any reference to Jerusalem as being in Israel.
Upon a cursory search on the WhiteHouse.gov site, The Blaze uncovered only one reference to “Jerusalem, Israel” (see the screen shot below). Interestingly, this reference is present in a State Department official’s biography and it highlights a location (Jerusalem, Israel, of course) at which the individual (Adrienne Fagler) plans to serve the U.S. government.
***
If the government did, indeed, remove the references as stated, the action is bizarre. However, it’s not unexplainable. As mentioned, at least one reference still places Jerusalem in Israel (a fact the government, itself, has officially disputed pending Middle East negotiations). Either way, messages seem to be crossing, criss-crossing and, quite potentially, getting purposefully removed from the record.
Perhaps the White House is afraid that any mentions it makes of the city’s placement within Israel will contradict its policies and rhetoric. At the end of July, The Blaze covered the ongoing debate surrounding Israeli-American passports.
Despite a 2002 law requiring it to do so, thus far the federal government has refused to allow those born in Jerusalem to have “Israel” printed on their travel documentation. Now, the case is headed for court and it could have a profound impact on how the U.S. government officially recognizes Jerusalem moving forward.
The perfect motivation to remove the connection between city and nation from its web site? Quite possibly.
Despite the tens of millions of union cash spent ($30 mil by some estimates) and Obama’s Organizing for America on hand to help with a massive state-wide propaganda campaign, Wisconsin Dems still managed to fail in their bid to win a majority in the State Senate.
Voters made it clear tonight that they supported Republicans reigning in the unions, balancing the budget, and controlling runaway spending. With no hopes of Democrats taking control of the Wisconsin State Senate, concern is now growing that a less enthused union backed voting block will not turn out to support the two Democrats facing recall next week- paving way for a Republican victory in those races.
Dems coming up short tonight could depress voter turnout for next week. Two Democratic state senators, Jim Holperin and Robert Wirch, face recalls next Tuesday, and Holperin is vulnerable.
Lefty progs on twitter knowing how much was at stake, howled with rage at Waukesha County clerk, Kathy Nickolaus, for no other reason than the fact that she’s still employed after her snafu, last Spring, during the Supreme Court election:
Nickolaus forgot to report the results from the City of Brookfield in an unofficial report to the Associated Press on election night in April. The results caused Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg to declare victory. Instead, when the votes from Brookfield were reported to the Government Accountability Board, incumbent Justice David Prosser was declared the winner following a lengthy recount.
Alberta Darling won her race, but the heavily Republican Waukesha County was the last one to be counted, causing Progs, unable to graciously accept defeat, to call for her head on Twitter. Some made veiled threats like this one:
In “the heat of the moment”, Democratic Party of Wisconsin Spokesman Graeme Zielinski accused Nickolaus of ‘sitting on’ Waukesha County results, and tampering with votes in the 8th Senate District recall race.
By 1:00 a.m. Wed morning, the Democrat Party of Wis had disappeared the news release from their website alleging the vote tampering:
MADISON, Wis. — Democrats are forging ahead with efforts to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker next year, one day after losing four of six recall elections to oust GOP state senators.
“The people” were supposed to be on the side of the unions who protested at the state capitol when Walker’s bill passed, limiting the unions’ collective bargaining privileges against taxpayers and school districts. But it turns out that “the people” had other ideas. In the end, even a massive infusion of cash and union volunteers was not enough to deliver the three state Senate recall races the unions needed, despite the fact that President Obama carried all six of the seats in question in 2008.
This marks the unions’ third huge defeat in Wisconsin this year. The other two were the passage of Walker’s bill and the re-election of David Prosser to the state Supreme Court. The grand talk of recalling Walker himself next year seems a bit blustery now, given the great failure of last night.
Yesterday, Charles Fried wrote a risible and scoff-worthy piece at The Daily Beast entitled: Obama Is Too Good For Us. I excerpted this already, yesterday, but it bears repeating:
Barack Obama is not a skillful strategist like Bill Clinton. He is not a gifted rhetorician like Ronald Reagan. Nor is he a bold and inspiring leader like Abraham Lincoln. And he can’t seem to shake himself loose from the strings that attach him to the trial lawyers, to big labor, and, surprisingly, to the standard banker-economists who got us into the mess we are in now. But he is an honest man. He is intelligent, analytical, and knowledgeable. And he tries hard to think through the dilemmas which confront us and to tell us clearly and straightforwardly what he wants to do and why he wants to do it.
Now…I have no idea who this Charles Fried is…I can’t tell you if he’s just a fellow left-wing “intellectual” who assumes these things about Obama, because that’s how he sees himself, or if he was engaging in some kind of Alinsky Jedi-Mind trick where he writes flattering and soothing things about the master to keep the scales from falling from the drones’ eyes. It’s always one of the two – they’re either mindless drones who believe what they want to believe – or they’re true believers in on the ruse. You never know with these people.
Fried’s absurd contention that Obama is “an honest man” disqualified the entire piece from taking up any more of our time. The man is many things, but “honest” is decidedly not one of them. In my post, yesterday, I linked to my magnum opus from 2008 where I tabulated Obama’s lies, exaggerations, and flip-flops for several months. I also linked to a website that continues to tabulate the lies to this day.We are not talking about differences in opinion, here, but provable lies. It should be beyond obvious by now to even the most casual observers that, as Jim Geraghty famously noted back in 2008, all Obama statements come with expiration dates.
Anyone who doesn’t notice this, by now, obvious fact, has to be a mindless drone. Those who notice, and look the other way, because they’re down with the program, is what we call “a fellow traveler”, and there are many in this category in the MSM. That’s why so many damaging stories about Obama don’t get explored by said media. We saw this throughout the 2008 election season, and ever since. They won’t report on a damaging story until it’s reached critical mass in alternative media. See ACORN for just one example.
They have had Obama’s back on his stupid birth certificate, his fake Social Security number, all the scandals coming out of his various departments, particularly his thoroughly corrupt DOJ including but not limited to Operation Fast and Furious. They take Obama’s side on the economy, even though it’s he, and his fellow partners in crime in Congress who have brought us to the precarious place we are. Obama’s only half way done, he tells his minions at fundraisers. Half way done with what? Completely destroying the US economy?
The MSM has essentially become an American version of Pravda.
They ask us to believe, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, that Obama is “intelligent, analytical, and knowledgeable”.
Today in his excellent WSJ piece, Is Obama Smart?, Bret Stephens writes:
I don’t buy it. I just think the president isn’t very bright.
Socrates taught that wisdom begins in the recognition of how little we know. Mr. Obama is perpetually intent on telling us how much he knows. Aristotle wrote that the type of intelligence most needed in politics is prudence, which in turn requires experience. Mr. Obama came to office with no experience. Plutarch warned that flattery “makes itself an obstacle and pestilence to great houses and great affairs.” Today’s White House, more so than any in memory, is stuffed with flatterers.
Much is made of the president’s rhetorical gifts. This is the sort of thing that can be credited only by people who think that a command of English syntax is a mark of great intellectual distinction. Can anyone recall a memorable phrase from one of Mr. Obama’s big speeches that didn’t amount to cliché? As for the small speeches, such as the one we were kept waiting 50 minutes for yesterday, we get Triple-A bromides about America remaining a “Triple-A country.” Which, when it comes to long-term sovereign debt, is precisely what we no longer are under Mr. Obama.
Then there is Mr. Obama as political tactician. He makes predictions that prove false. He makes promises he cannot honor. He raises expectations he cannot meet. He reneges on commitments made in private. He surrenders positions staked in public. He is absent from issues in which he has a duty to be involved. He is overbearing when he ought to be absent.Then there’s his habit of never trimming his sails, much less tacking to the prevailing wind. When Bill Clinton got hammered on health care, he reverted to centrist course and passed welfare reform. When it looked like the Iraq war was going to be lost, George Bush fired Don Rumsfeld and ordered the surge.
Mr. Obama, by contrast, appears to consider himself immune from error. Perhaps this explains why he has now doubled down on Heckuva Job Geithner. It also explains his insulting and politically inept habit of suggesting—whether the issue is health care, or Arab-Israeli peace, or change we can believe in at some point in God’s good time—that the fault always lies in the failure of his audiences to listen attentively. It doesn’t. In politics, a failure of communication is always the fault of the communicator.
And so on. Be sure to read the whole thing. Thus far the piece has garnered 1,370 comments, been “liked” 6,708 times on FB. I daresay Mr. Stephens has struck a chord.
One comment worth reprinting:
I never got the case that he’s so smart–he never did anything to show it, certainly. Oh, he’s not stupid, but I read a few years ago that someone estimated (based on textual analyses of writings and speeches where we know the president was the primary author) that the average Presidential IQ has been in the 120 range–a bit more than one standard deviation above the mean, about the 70th percentile. That sounds about right for Obama.
But I think that beyond intelligence there is another matter–his appalling ignorance. This is a guy who doesn’t know the difference between liability and collision/comprehensive auto insurance, and no one on his staff does either, as proved during the ObamaCare discussions. He has not a clue about history, or any aspect of science and scientific method. His knowledge of business or economics is a trivialized Keynesianism that only knows how to spend govt money. He does not seem to be well-read, he certainly never tries to use allusion. His vocal style is a turgid imitation of the old Southern Baptist preacher style, but he uses pauses very woodenly and his demeanor, body language, intonations and content are incongruent with each other, projecting weakness, condescension and insincerity, as we saw (not for the first time) in yesterday’s speech. He is highly competitive and a dangerous enemy because he is almost totally amoral and without scruple. He has no problem lying, even to his friends and supporters, to advance his personal interests. He is massively insecure and thin-skinned, esp for a politician.
Thing is, this was all blatantly obvious in 2008, but he won rather decisively. THAT is worth trying to understand.
Massive funds+ in the tank media+complete absence of scruples = electoral success!
UPDATE:
I should have added “mass-amnesia” to that equation. How else can you explain how American opinions can be so easily manipulated by the liberal narrative?
Thomas Sowell sounding downtrodden today, after initially supporting the debt ceiling deal:
Why was there a financial crisis in the first place? Because of runaway spending that sent the national debt up against the legal limit. But when all the big spending bills were being rushed through Congress, the Democrats had such an overwhelming majority in both houses of Congress that nothing the Republicans could do made the slightest difference.
Yet polls show that many people today are blaming the Republicans for the country’s financial problems. But, by the time Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, and thus became involved in negotiations over raising the national debt ceiling, the spending which caused that crisis in the first place had already been done — and done by Democrats.
Had the Republicans gone along with President Obama’s original request for a “clean” bill — one simply raising the debt ceiling without any provisions about controlling federal spending — would that have spared the country the embarrassment of having its government bonds downgraded by Standard & Poor’s credit-rating agency?
To believe that would be to believe that it was the debt ceiling, rather than the runaway spending, that made Standard & Poor’s think that we were no longer as good a credit risk for buyers of U.S. government bonds. In other words, to believe that is to believe that a Congressional blank check for continued record spending would have made Standard & Poor’s think that we were a better credit risk.
How on earth do you forget the massive spending spree Dem Socialists have been on since Obama was elected, and the fact that the tea party spontaneously arose from nowhere to fight the insanity?
Poor Obama’s been getting gray hairs over fixing this mess, and he says he’s only halfway through. I know – the day he was nominated to be the Democratic candidate for President in 2008, was supposed to mark the moment “the rising of the oceans began to slow, and the planet began to heal”. I’m not sure about the oceans, but I’m pretty sure the planet is a lot sicker now, than when he took office.
And it’s everybody else’s fault, you see – especially the Tea Party’s, and GW Bush’s.
IS THIS ADMINISTRATION IN LA LA LAND? As the market drops over 600 points, the Obama administration is AWOL and worse.
First of all, where’s Geithner been all day? If the man who is supposed to be reassuring markets said anything, I haven’t seen it. Instead, he announced Sunday that he’s staying on the job, and gave an interview the same day with John Harwood of the New York Times in which he said the administration bears no responsibility for the S&P downgrade.
Harwood: Do you feel that you or the administration’s policies are in any way responsible for this downgrade?
GEITHNER: Absolutely not. You’ve seen the president work incredibly hard and make really amazing progress trying to heal the damage caused by this terrible crisis. And you saw him work his heart out to try and bring both parties together to reach agreement on a long-term fiscal deal. Made some progress, didn’t solve it all, but a very good down payment.
Well, I’m touched that the president is working his heart out. But failing to accept any responsibility for this cannot be good news for the markets. It’s good politics, but it suggests little willingness to change course.
TRA LA LA LA LA LA LA.
If you thought that brown-nosing was bad, wait til you see The Daily Beast’s Charles Fried:Obama Is Too Good For Us.
Barack Obama is not a skillful strategist like Bill Clinton. He is not a gifted rhetorician like Ronald Reagan. Nor is he a bold and inspiring leader like Abraham Lincoln. And he can’t seem to shake himself loose from the strings that attach him to the trial lawyers, to big labor, and, surprisingly, to the standard banker-economists who got us into the mess we are in now. But he is an honest man. He is intelligent, analytical, and knowledgeable. And he tries hard to think through the dilemmas which confront us and to tell us clearly and straightforwardly what he wants to do and why he wants to do it.
I don’t know about you, but I threw up in my mouth at the “he is an honest man” part. No needto read any further, really. I believe I’ve seen enough, thank you! At least he admits Dear Reader is no Reagan. That’s something, I guess.
Saracuda tackledthe administration’s lies on her FaceBook page, Monday:
“Many commonsense Americans like myself saw this day coming. In fact, in June 2010, Rick Santelli articulated the view of independent Tea Party patriots everywhere when he shouted on CNBC, ‘I want the government to stop spending! Stop spending! Stop spending! Stop spending! STOP SPENDING!’ So, how shamelessly cynical and dishonest must one be to blame this inevitable downgrade on the very people who have been shouting all along ‘stop spending’? Blaming the Tea Party for our credit downgrade is akin to Nero blaming the Christians for burning Rome. Tea Party Americans weren’t the ones ‘fiddling’ while our country’s fiscal house was going up in smoke. In fact, we commonsense fiscal conservatives were the ones grabbing for the extinguishers while politically correct politicians and their cronies buried their heads in what soon became this bonfire…
Santelli slams the Obama administration for playing the blame game over the downgrade to our credit rating, noting that even if you think it’s a bad call, you don’t beat up the other coach or take the umpire out behind the barn.
In a great monologue Rush says he is angry about what’s happening to this country and that this is exactly what he meant when he proclaimed “I hope he fails!”, which if you remember became big time news because the lefties didn’t understand it. Well thanks to Obama’s success Rush says we are now witnessing ‘Barackolypse Now!’ and adds that Obama is getting exactly what he wanted for his birthday.
I defended Rush, even when other weak kneed conservatives chastised him for not giving Dear Reader a chance. Anyone halfway paying attention in 2008 knew what the hell Obama was all about, and knew that we were in for hell on wheels with him in the White House with super majorities of Dem Socialists in Congress. Good Lord, what a nightmare this has been.
Other newly minted Rushisms, today: “Obamagedden”, “Debt Man Walking” (in 2012).
Rush has long taken the position that all of this economic destruction is being orchestrated on purpose.
Videos at links.
ND FLASHBACK to January, 30, 2009 in which I razzed an idiotic Anti- Rush MoveOn ad. You’ll notice that the ad hasn’t aged very well.
NARRATOR: Listen to what Rush Limbaugh said about President Obama’s Agenda and his Jobs Package.LIMBAUGH: I HOPE HE FAILS!
NARRATOR: The Obama Jobs bill overwhelmingly passed the House…. But not one Republican voted yes. Every Republican member of the House chose to take Rush Limbaugh’s advice. Every Republican voted with Limbaugh….and against creating 4 million new American jobs.
We can understand why a extreme partisan like Rush Limbaugh wants President Obama’s Jobs program to fail….but the Members of Congress elected to represent the citizens in their districts?… that’s another matter.
Now the Obama plan goes to the Senate…. And the question is:
Will our Senator, _____ ,side with Rush Limbaugh too…
LIMBAUGH: I HOPE HE FAILS!
NARRATOR: OR will he reject the partisanship and failed economic policies of the past,
and stand up for the people of _____
Bwahahahahaha! Weak….As, I’m sure they know…Rush wants Obama’s far left goals for America to fail. So do many Americans.
Of course, nobody’s laughing, anymore. Obama didn’t fail.
Oh, what do you know…
Which Obama special friend stands to make 10 billion on the S&P downgrade? Right now, this is just a rumor, but it all makes sense.
I think the previous headline suggests an answer to the WHO.
When S&P is about to issue a change in credit rating, they send a preliminary rating and a justification for the rating to the organization. The organization is given the opportunity to formally respond in writing to the proposed ratings change. The formal response is then forwarded to the Standard & Poors Credit Committee for final review. In the momentous event of the issuance of a preliminary downgrade of the United States; the most senior credit analysts at S&P would have personally met with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and senior Treasury staff. President Obama himself or another White House official would have attended the meeting to provide the Administration’s input.
Bloomberg Financial Services estimated that the stock market losses for the week prior to the S&P downgrade were $840 billion for the S&P 500 index of the largest U.S. companies and $2.7 trillion for stock prices world-wide. Most of those stupendous losses were suffered by individual and pension funds who tend to hold stocks for long term appreciation; but some traders who were “short the market” would have made significant profits. Shorting stocks is a speculative investment strategy that is perfectly legal; but the speed and severity of the recent decline indicates powerful traders “in-the-know “about the coming downgrade illegally shorted massive amounts of stock and made epic profits on insider-trading.
Insider trading is subject to criminal prosecution by the Justice Department under Section 32(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Individuals face up to 20 years in prison for criminal securities fraud and/or a fine up to $5 million for each “willful” violation. In addition violators are usually charged with mail and wire fraud (which carry additional 20 year prison terms); general “securities fraud” (up to 25 years in prison); and possibly racketeering, tax evasion, and or obstruction of justice. Civil penalties from enforcement by the Securities & Exchange Commission are the greater of $1 million in fines or treble the amount of the illegal insider-trading profit.
Of course you can get 29% of the American people to agree that the moon is made out of Swiss cheese. Anywhere from 39% – 45% of the American people approve of the job Obama is doing as President, an equally absurd notion.
I usually ignore polls because they almost always depress me, but this actually looks like positive news, for once. 29% is left-wing moonbat territory. If this is the best the liberal mob can do after their latest round of vicious attacks on the tea party, they should cease and desist because their heavy-handed and over the top political agitprop will end up back-firing. The majority ain’t buying.
Looking deeper:
Still, a plurality (43%) of all voters think the Tea Party has made things worse of the country in the budget debates in Congress. Thirty-two percent (32%) say the Tea Party has made things better for America, and 14% say it’s had no impact. Eleven percent (11%) are undecided.
Again, there’s a noticeable partisan divide: 53% of Republicans believe the Tea Party has made things better, while 73% of Democrats feel it has made things worse. Unaffiliated voters are evenly divided with 37% saying the Tea Party made things better and 37% worse.
That’s more in line with the depressing state of affairs in this country. That “plurality” of 43% who think the tea party has made things worse would be the numbskulls who still support Obama. On the other hand, voters who think the tea party has made things better, made no difference or don’t know AKA people who live in a little place called, “Realityville”, add up to 57%.
What a busy little weekend for news we just had. The S&P downgrade has the Dem-Socialist spin machine working on all cylinders, and boy oh, boy, are they laying it on thick…
Think back just three short years ago when a Republican held the White House, or a little further back when Repubs briefly held both Houses of Congress. Can you imagine for one second, our Republican leaders besmirching their fellow citizens in this way? Dem Socialists loved to howl every five minutes that Republicans were questioning their patriotism, but that was always just misdirection. They knew they were putting politics above country when troops were on the battlefield, and they didn’t want people to notice. But did Republican Congressmen, President Bush, or Vice President Cheney ever attack or vilify Democrats, or the Communist fronted anti-war protesters (whose very goal was to undermine the war effort) during the Bush era?
In fact, President Bush (ChimpyMcHitlerHaliburtonInc) always defended their right to protest. Protesters from every wacko lefty fringe group you can imagine protested during the Bush years, and Republicans in power managed to endure it all without viciously attacking their fellow citizens even when they protested in the mostvile, uncivil and unhinged manners imaginable. Although, to be fair, they may not have commented on the more egregious elements of the protests because the MSM never reported on it.
People forget what it was like before our country was this profoundly sick and divided. Oh, it was divided before – but not like this. Never before have we had a President who would instruct his left-wing followers to “punish” their political enemies whether it be at the ballot box, on Twitter, on the White House Snitch Site, outside a Russ Carnahan Townhall, you name it…..This President has infected Washington DC with a Chicago style of political thuggery that should make every alert citizen recoil. But not the far left. They recoil at everything decent, holy and good–they won’t do the sane thing and cut spending because the left truly is sick.That’s right, I said it - mentally ill. Why else would they put their own self interests above the country’s economic or national security interests? Their quest for power supersedes everything else?
These are not happy people and they want everyone else to join them in their misery. They’ve succeeded – their sickness infects the entire country, and we can’t seem to shake it.
You demonized the only adults in Washington D.C. who were among the Tea Party. You made certain we would end up here.
How hard could it have actually been? The ratings agencies TOLD you what you needed to do — rein in spending – it wasn’t bloody rocket science. Hell anyone who ever balanced a CHECKBOOK could have told you what you needed to do.
But you played politics. You acted like Scarlet O’Hara and just refused to think about anything unpleasant. Well, Barry, I hate to tell you this, but there’s no kindness of strangers here to rely on. This is cold, hard reality. Until YOU, sir, the U.S. credit rating has always been stable or improving. YOU, sir, own this. You and your lickspittle accomplices in Congress and the media have brought us to this point.
Do not think the American people will forget. Do not think we will forgive. This country is angry sir, and nation after nation has discovered there is nothing on Earth more dangerous than a pissed-off American.
This country is on the edge of something very ugly, sir, and you personally have brought us here.
Put aside for a moment the fact that Obama’s willingness to compromise was entirely theoretical; never did he put such a compromise plan on the table. His FY 2012 budget proposal was anything but a compromise; it included no entitlement reform and projected massive deficits for as far as the eye could see, and therefore received not a single vote in Congress.
What is most ludicrous is the Democrats’ effort to distract attention from the fact that they controlled Congress from January 2007 until January 2011. The first Congress that had any ability to be influenced by the Tea Party movement has been in office for only six months. Do the Democrats seriously expect anyone to believe that S&P’s downgrade of U.S. debt arises out of something that Republican Congressmen have done in the last six months? We expect the Democrats to appeal to ignorance at all times, but this is ridiculous.
Let’s take a walk down memory lane. What did the Democrats do with respect to federal debt during the four years they controlled both Houses of Congress? Here is a summary of the deficits the Democrats racked up during that time:
Of the $14.5 trillion national debt, nearly $4.8 trillion–one-third of the total–was incurred during that four-year period when the Congress was exclusively controlled by the Democrats. Moreover, and equally important, during that time the Democrats did nothing to assure the markets that they have a long-term plan to deal with the country’s burgeoning debt. On the contrary, for more than two years the Congressional Democrats have refused to adopt or even to propose a budget! If you are looking for the reason why rating agencies have lost faith in the ability of our government to get its spending and debt under control, you need look no farther.
Let us stipulate that (a) U.S. fiscal health wasn’t exactly robust when Obama became president, and (b) in a time of fiscal crisis, a steadfast opposition to tax increases doesn’t soothe the worries of the bond market, yet still the fact remains that the immediate cause of the current crisis was the incredible two-year Obama/Pelosi/Reid deficit spending binge. And Obama’s response to the debt-ceiling impasse – tax the rich! millionaires and billionaires! corporate jets! Republicans are coming to steal Granny’s Social Security check! — was immature, selfish and harmful.
Democrats don’t want to fix the problem, they want to score political points against Republicans. And they expect their liberal friends in the media to help them do it — a perfectly realistic expectation, given the fact that Barack Obama could only have become president with the willing assistance of his liberal friends in the media, who more or less anoninted him as the Democratic nominee the day he beat Hillary in the Iowa caucuses.
I’d imagine even some liberal reporters are now experiencing buyer’s remorse and — despite their profound instinctive loathing of Republicans — are sick and tired of watching Obama scapegoat others for his own incompetence.
As Hinderaker noted at the end of his piece:
…it is hard to believe that even the dimmest voters will fall for the idea that the movement that was founded in order to do something about the spending and debt crisis is somehow to blame for that crisis.
Keith Koffler of White House Dossier sounding as pessimistic as me, here, (and after watching that video, who wouldn’t feel fatalistic about our country’s future): The Sickness Besetting the Country, and the President:
There is a sickness gripping America, an systemic illness that threatens President Obama more than any particular problem.
Because the problems are but symptoms of the illness.
Two of the symptoms appeared just in the last few hours: the downgrade of U.S. debt, and the shooting down of a Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan, killing 31 U.S. special forces.
The downgrade is not just an economic blow; it’s a disgrace. The helicopter is not an isolated incident, but consistent with stepped up attacks by a Taliban sensing our eagerness to leave.
The illness, perceived by a country that overwhelmingly says things are on the wrong track, is such: This country is out of control, and the president is either incompetent or unwilling to lead it.
Other symptoms abound: the abnegation of the U.S. leadership in the world, the rise of China to take our place, the failure to deal with a gnat like Qaddafi, the high price of gasoline, the millions of jobless Americans.
The president has both created the illness and failed to cure it, because he has failed to rise above his limitations: He is a leader who has never led anything larger than a Senate office, and he is a liberal ideologue.
Today the S&P fired back saying treasury’s argument “is irrelevant.” Zero Hedge reported, via Free Republic:
Yesterday we showed that when it comes to projections, the CBO’s own track record makes S&P shine in comparison. Apparently this fact was not lost on S&P itself which sent out a note explaining which “clarified assumption used on discretionary spending growth.” Basically, as S&P says, “Our ratings are determined primarily using a 3-5 year time horizon. In the near term horizon, by 2015, the U.S. net general government debt with the new assumptions were projected to be $14.5 trillion (79% of 2015 GDP) versus $14.7 trillion (81% of 2015 GDP) with the initial assumption – a difference of $345 billion.” So yes, while by 2021 the difference could be $2.1 trillion based on the CBO’s current baseline model, the truth is that the CBO’s own estimate on revenue and spending projections in a decade will likely have a +/- $10 trillion margin of error. So does anyone really care? In essence all S&P did was point out what Zero Hedge and others have been saying: that a “deficit cutting” plan which is massively back end loaded and has about $20 billion in cuts over the next year is absolutely without credit or merit.
The Hill)— Standard & Poor’s laments the possibility cuts to entitlement programs won’t materialize and the decreasing likelihood of new tax revenues.
The decision by Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the U.S. credit rating to “AA+” at once laments the possibility that cuts to entitlement programs will not materialize and the decreasing likelihood of new tax revenues. But it appears to give more weight to the need for more spending cuts, as it warns that a further credit rating downgrade is in the cards if the U.S. does not trim spending.
In contrast, while the report indicates that new tax revenues would help mitigate the debt crisis, failing to find these revenues does not immediately put the U.S. at risk of another downgrade.
Specifically, the report warns directly that a further downgrade to “AA” status could occur within the next two years if there is “less reduction in spending” than what was agreed in the debt ceiling agreement. S&P said one factor that could lead to this second downgrade is if the minimum $1.2 trillion in spending cuts under the debt ceiling agreement does not occur.
That would be Obama’s thoroughly disgusting former “Car Czar”, Steven Rattner, the hyper partisan corruptocrat behind the threats to Chrysler bondholders, and the Dealergate scandal. A real sweetheart. He figures, “oh what the hell, I got the whole table in my corner – most people ain’t gonna check the transcript, or watch it on Youtube. Yeah – I didn’t say what the square, here says I said”.
Americans prefer to see themselves as doers rather than victims. They do not see themselves, as the masses in the Progressive Era a century ago may have done, as helpless victims of large corporations and financial interests.
They want public policies that enable them to earn success, and they resent policies that channel money to the politically well positioned or to those who have not made decisions and taken actions necessary for earned success. They want to be empowered, not patronized.
One might think that after a historic shock to the American economy in the first serious downgrade of our credit rating in decades, an American President would want to speak to a worried nation about the future and his plans to address the situation. Instead of taking an opportunity to demonstrate leadership, Barack Obama instead spent the weekend away from public scrutiny at Camp David. ABC News reports this morning that Obama won’t talk publicly today, either:
After spending a low-key weekend at Camp David, the only item on the president’s schedule this morning is his daily briefing in the Oval Office.
Well, that’s not entirely true. Obama will make two public appearances this evening, Mary Bruce notes … at two fundraisers. With no cameras allowed.
What’s Obama going to say? He doesn’t want to muss himself with all the finger pointing and tea party demonization. His minions have that covered quite adequately. Meanwhile, the White House prepares itself to make war on S&P over the downgrade. They should put Rattner in charge.
Captain Ed points out the trouble with that strategy:
That runs into two problems, however. National Journal’s Michael Hirsh notes one of them, which is that Egan Jones had already downgraded the US over its dept-to-GDP ratio and the prospects of rapidly increasing debt over the next several decades. The second is the immediate spin from the White House and Democrats that tried to blame the entire thing on Tea Party intransigence. Essentially, that spin corroborates S&P’s analysis; it just blames it on a minority of politicians in a party that only controls one chamber of Congress, a rather ridiculous notion.
The White House seems rudderless, responding in entirely contradictory ways to the embarrassment of the downgrade, without any sense of leadership from the man in charge. This isn’t “leadership from behind,” it’s the political equivalent of an absentee landlord.
It would almost be funny watching the liberal mob acting out every single word Ann Coulter wrote about them in “Demonic”- their casual embrace of contradictory ideas, demonization of their enemies, idolization of their leaders, their ferocious lies and desperate need for approval – but I’m feeling a little too sick to my stomach, right now, to laugh.
***
If you’re not already depressed enough after reading this compilation of bad news, readMark Steyn’s: Mad Debt.
