Blame Our Failing Schools for Occupy Wall Street

Blame Our Failing Schools for Occupy Wall Street

Posted By Bruce Thornton On November 2, 2011 @ 12:20 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 143 Comments

Having taught in a state university for thirty years, I’m not surprised by the ignorance on display among the Occupy Wall Street protestors. From kindergarten to university, for decades our schools have abandoned the teaching of basic facts and foundational thinking skills, and replaced both with leftish received wisdom and stale mythologies, all the while they have anxiously monitored and puffed up students’ self-esteem.

This lack of critical understanding and ignorance of simple fact characterize the main theme of the protests, that the wealthy “1%” of Americans have gamed the system to enrich themselves at the expense of everybody else, an analysis redolent of Scrooge McDuck cartoons or Frank Capra’s portrait of Old Man Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life. But these caricatures are woefully uninformed about how a global, free market economy works. For example, the protestors rail about growing “income inequality,” but they forget that this expansion of the wealth of top earners has been accompanied by that same cohort’s paying more and more of the total federal tax bill, so that today nearly half of tax-filers pay nothing. Nor do they consider the issue of income mobility: from 1999-2007, about half of households in the bottom quintile had moved up the income ladder, while nearly half of households in the top quintile had moved down.

As for those greedy “millionaires” who refuse to pay their “fair share,” in this same period, half were millionaires only once, and only 6% were millionaires for the whole nine years. Indeed, as the Treasury Department reports, among the top 1/100 of 1 percent in 1996––the group Mother Jonesdemonized for obscenely increasing their wealth over the last 30 years–– only 25% remained in this group in 2005, and the median real income of these taxpayers declined over this period. Finally, according to the Treasury Department, “Median incomes of all taxpayers increased by 24 percent after adjusting for inflation. The real incomes of two-thirds of all taxpayers increased over this period [1996-2005]. In addition, the median incomes of those initially in the lower income groups increased more than the median incomes of those initially in the higher income groups.” No doubt things have gotten worse for many because of the recession, but there are plenty of people to blame beyond the “1%” and Wall Street villains, from the federal appointees running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to the home buyers lying on mortgage applications.

This obsession with income inequality, moreover, reflects profound ignorance of capitalism’s revolutionary genius. To the protestors, the fact that top earners increased their income more than others did is prima facie evidence of capitalist skullduggery. They seem to think that a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates has a zillion dollars because they somehow purloined money that in a just world other people would have had. Of course, in reality Microsoft and Apple have created hundreds of thousands of jobs and enriched others at the same time the corporations enriched themselves. That’s how capitalism works: it creates wealth that indeed spectacularly benefits the few, but that also raises the living standards of the many by creating jobs. More important, it is a dynamic, open system, one that creates opportunities for the clever and hardworking. And it has been wildly successful, so much so that today, young people who in the past would have started work at 16, can now spend several years of extended adolescence in colleges and universities, where they can earn impecunious degrees in subjects like Medieval French Poetry or Postcolonial Literature, and then loaf about lower Manhattan protesting the evil system that has rescued them from the drudgery of farm labor or factory work, and given them nutritious cheap food, healthy bodies, straight white teeth, and gadgets like X-Boxes and I-Pads.
But to the therapeutic sensibility and the entitlement mentality cultivated by the schools, this success in spreading wealth to historically unprecedented numbers of people is not as important as the system’s failure to measure up to utopian standards and equally enrich everybody no matter how lacking in virtue or talent. The “creative destruction” of capitalism––which promises not wealth and success for everybody, but the opportunity for everybody to strive for success and wealth through their talents and virtues––is an intolerable injustice, one that must be remedied by the coercive power of the state. Hence according to a survey conducted by Democrat pollster Douglas Schoen, 65% of the Manhattan protestors believe that “government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement—no matter the cost.” Of course, that attitude is exactly what has created the looming economic crisis fueled by runaway entitlement costs that if not reined in, will double by 2050 and consume every dollar of federal tax revenues. The protestors are also ignoring the federal government’s role in creating the housing crisis by coercing and enabling banks to issue sketchy mortgages. And let’s not forget the fed’s role in inflating via federal subsidies the higher education bubble that has doubled tuition every nine years, and saddled so many of the protestors with the “injustice” of student loan debt, which since 1999 has increased 511%, and now totals $1 trillion.

In the protestors’ desire to empower the federal government even more, we see how the ignorance of history enables such delusional utopianism. For underlying these demands is the necessity for redistributing income in order to advance the idea of radical egalitarianism, and that is a notion whose resultant tyranny and bloody failure is documented on every page of history, from the French Revolution to the Soviet gulags. But how would the protestors know that history? What passes for history in most schools today is a melodrama of Western wickedness against the oppressed “other,” accompanied by feel-good romances about the achievements of marginalized minorities. It reminds me of Jane Austen’s satiric History of England, in which she says her purpose is to “vent my spleen against & shew my hatred to all those people whose parties and principles do not suit with mine, & not to give information.” The result is the sensibility we see among many of those camping out in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park: a penchant for decrepit ideas that are seductive to immature and undeveloped minds steeped in a sense of entitlement and an arrogant assurance of their own righteousness.

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Obama’s food-stamp dole at record levels

David
Paulin

 

Nearly 15 percent of the population — 45.8 million people
–  were on the food-stamp dole in August, the Wall Street Journal
reported. How come?

According to the paper, it’s all because of the horrible
economy, with the number of people on food stamps having risen 8.1 percent in
the past year.

What the WSJ doesn’t mention is that the exploding use of
food stamps has much to do with changing attitudes over the years about what
food-stamp recipients are entitled to — and that now includes junk food and
sugary drinks. In addition, soaring levels of fraud have helped to drive soaring
food-stamp use, according to a recent Op-Ed in The Journal, “The Food-Stamp Crime Wave.” (Do WSJ
reporters read their paper’s Op-Ed page?)

Interestingly, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried some
months ago to stop the use of food stamps for sugary beverages like soda pop in
an effort to curb exploding levels of diabetes and obesity among New Yorkers. However, the
Obama administration rejected Bloomberg’s proposal for eliminating soda. Among other
things, administration bureaucrats claimed Bloomberg’s plan lacked “a clear and
practical means to determine product eligibility, which is essential to avoid
retailer confusion at point-of-sale and stigma (emphasis added) for
affected clients.”

Stigma? Now that’s an interesting word, because there is no
stigma left anymore for those using food stamps, which incidentally are no
longer actually “stamps” but debit cards that you swipe like a credit card. And
food-stamp cards can buy just about anything your stomach
desires. Nationwide, 6 percent of
food stamp benefits are spent on sugary beverages, according to the United
States Department of Agriculture, which administers the food stamp program and
that was the source of the WSJ’s statistics about soaring levels of food-stamp
use.

As to fraud, that WSJ Op-Ed by James Bovard noted that “The
number of food-stamp recipients has soared to 44 million from 26 million in
2007. Not surprisingly, fraud and abuse are rampant.”

Among other things, he explained:

Millionaires are now legally entitled to collect food
stamps as long as they have little or no monthly income. Thirty-five states have
abolished asset tests for most food-stamp recipients. These and similar
“paperwork reduction” reforms advocated by the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA) are turning the food-stamp program into a magnet for abuses
and absurdities.

Ultimately, soaring food-stamp use is not just another
anti-poverty program for the Obama administration. It’s all about “spreading the
wealth around.”

Unfortunately, poor people who really need food stamps must
now endure the “stigma” of being lumped together with the many deadbeats now on
the food-stamp dole.

Debunking Obama’s Latest Jobs Myth

Debunking Obama’s Latest Jobs Myth

Mike Brownfield

November 3, 2011 at 9:37 am

 

Imagine a high-speed train zooming down hundreds of miles of glistening train track stretching across sunny California, connecting Anaheim to San Francisco. It’s a bullet train dream, and it’s a prime example of President Barack Obama’s latest plan to create jobs in America. The trouble is that this dream is far from reality.

The Los Angeles Times reported this week that the California high-speed train–which is funded in part by $3 billion in federal grants from President Obama’s stimulus–is now expected to cost $98 billion, twice what was expected, and will take an additional 13 years to complete, extending the project to 2033. Questions remain about where the funding will come from, whether the project is viable, and whether the projected ridership will even materialize.

But projects like these are central to President Obama’s plan to put Americans back to work. Speaking yesterday from Georgetown Waterfront Park in Washington, D.C., Obama declared that his plan will “put hundreds of thousands of construction workers back on the job rebuilding our roads, our airports, our bridges and our transit systems.” And that is, of course, all at the expense of the American taxpayers.

The President once called these projects “shovel ready,” meaning that as soon as money arrived from the federal government, workers could be on the job. He made it sound as easy as flipping a switch, but unfortunately it didn’t work as planned. Despite a $787 billion stimulus package, America’s economy continues to languish with 14 million out of work and a 9.1 percent unemployment rate. The President joked, “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.” Though he didn’t use the phrase “shovel-ready” in his remarks yesterday, the implication was still there. If Congress approves his jobs plan, he argued, all the construction workers sitting on the sidelines will be put back to work overnight.

But that’s not the way things work in the real world. Associated Press and Congressional Research Service reports show that infrastructure spending does not create jobs and, in fact, can even have a negative effect. Heritage’s Patrick Knudsen explains:

Building and repairing roads and bridges neither creates net job growth nor boosts the economy in the near term.

First, increasing government spending on these projects simply moves resources from one place to another — it may employ construction workers, but only by reducing jobs in other sectors. Further, the money never gets out the door soon enough to promote near-term job growth.

And then there’s the President’s flawed argument that since others are doing it, the United States should be, too. “How do we sit back and watch China and Europe build the best bridges and high-speed railroads and gleaming new airports, and we’re doing nothing?” he asks. It’s not a new line of argument from the President, and it leaves out some very important facts.

Dating all the way back to the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama spoke of the need to “invest” in infrastructure in order to be competitive with the likes of China. At the time, Jim Geraghty reported at National Review Online that while Obama puts China on a pedestal, he entirely overlooks some serious problems with transportation in China–namely, stories of severe power shortages affecting the country’s exports, an episode where 500,000 train passengers were left stranded for days, and outbreaks of violence where airplane travelers were left grounded without accommodation. And that’s not to mention the working conditions under which China builds its infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Europe, which heavily subsidizes its passenger rail systems, receives a poor return on its investment. Heritage’s Ron Utt explains that despite massive spending, passengers are opting for more efficient transportation in the air:

In Europe as a whole (EU-27), rail accounted for only 6.1 percent of passenger travel in 2007, including travel by air and sea. Buses accounted for 8.3 percent of the market, and air travel accounted for 8.8 percent. Despite Europe’s huge investment in passenger rail, its market share declined from 6.6 percent in 1995 to 6.1 percent in 2007. Over that same period, commercial air increased its share from 6.3 percent to 8.8 percent. By providing faster service and competitive prices, it took passengers away from rail, buses, and autos.

But to hear President Obama tell the story, building a European- or Chinese-style infrastructure is the key to the future–and to creating new jobs. Workers are ready to go, and all they need is your money to get started. But this is something we tried once already with the last stimulus, it didn’t work, and it’s not going to work this time, either. Obama’s infrastructure plan is a train that shouldn’t leave the station, headed for a bridge to nowhere, and jobs are the last thing that it will deliver.

The Worst President Since Before the Civil War

By Steve
McCann

Three years ago, the people of the United States
elected someone who has turned out to be the worst president since the pre-Civil
War era.  Barack Obama, whether in economic matters, domestic affairs or
international relations, has been an abject failure and has severely jeopardized
the future of the American people.

This must be the focus and message of those seeking
the Republican presidential nomination, who must not allow themselves to be
focused on demeaning each other and sidetracked by falling for the usual tactics
of the Democrat and media smear machines (epitomized by the latest specious
attack on Herman Cain).

A cursory examination of Obama’s overall record
compared with other presidents reveals someone driven purely by statist
ideology, whose narcissism renders him incapable of change regardless of the
long-term consequences.  He does not seem to care what happens to the American
people.

Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt faced far worse
economic conditions when they came into office than were in play when Barack
Obama was elected president.  Yet with one a fiscal conservative (Ronald Reagan)
and the other (Franklin Roosevelt) a liberal Democrat, even though they pursued
differing solutions to the dilemmas at hand, neither put the nation squarely and
inexorably on the road to bankruptcy and second-class status.

Barack Obama and his apologists continuously claim
that he inherited the worst economy since the Great Depression and that if it
were not for his policies presently in place, matters would be far worse.  The
reality is that he did not inherit the worst economy since the 1930s, and his
policies have diminished the standard of living for the majority of
Americans.

The actual factors in play for Barack Obama, Ronald
Reagan, and Franklin Roosevelt when they assumed office were as
follows:

	Annual GDP Growth	Unemployment Rate	Inflation
Barack Obama	1.1%	6.7%	1.0%
Ronald Reagan	.1	7.6	12.6
Franklin Roosevelt	-13.0	24.0	-10.0

For the average American, the employment numbers are
the most critical.  The following chart is a side by side comparison of the
employment situation for Barack Obama as of Election Day 2008 versus the present
day after three years of his failed policies:

	November 2008	October 2011	Difference
Unemployment Rate	6.7%	9.1%	+35.8%
Total Employment	144.25 million	140.07 million	-4.18 million
Employment-Goods Producing sector	20.9 million	18.1 million	-2.8 million
Part-time Workers (Only Jobs Available)	1.57 million	2.9 million	+84.7%
Unemployed 27 Weeks or more	2.2 million	6.3 million	+4.1 million
Avg. Weekly Wage (inflation adjusted)	$654.03	$655.87	+.2%

(http://www.bls.gov/schedule/archives/empsit_nr.htm#current)

How does Barack Obama compare to some of his
predecessors, who inherited far more severe financial crises?  As a further
comparison, while he did not inherit a financial crisis, Jimmy Carter is
included, as he is considered by many the worst president in the post-World War
II era, and many of his policies triggered the massive recession and inflation
inherited by Ronald Reagan.

(Note: The Bureau of Labor Statistics changed its
method of calculating the unemployment rate in 1994.  Therefore, in order to
make this a more valid comparison, those workers the BLS considers discouraged
and marginally attached to the labor force and therefore not part of the
unemployment rate calculation have been added below.)

	Unemployment Rate as of Election Day	Unemployment Rate Three years later	Difference
Barack Obama	7.9%	10.75%	-36%
Ronald Reagan	7.6	8.3	–  9
Jimmy Carter	7.8	5.9	+24
Franklin Roosevelt	24.1	20.1	+17

Barack Obama has chosen uncontrolled and unbridled
government spending, much of it directed to his cronies and fellow ideologues,
as his solution to restarting the economy.  This has created an enormous amount
of new debt for the nation with nothing to show for it.  One of his
predecessors, Franklin Roosevelt, also chose that route as part of his plan to
rescue the American economy.  However, he never took it to the extreme that
Obama has done, with the aid of his allies in the Democratic Party.  During
Obama’s tenure, he has added over $4,000 billion ($4 trillion) to the national
debt.

Using the historical actual deficits as a percentage
of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) applied to today’s GDP, the comparison would
be as follows (Herbert Hoover has been added, as he faced the actual massive
collapse of the economy in 1929, the first year of his term.)

	Average Deficit as % of GDP First Three Years of Term	(2011 Dollars) Additional National Debt
Barack Obama	9.23%	$4,005 Billion
Ronald Reagan	4.08	1,800
Franklin Roosevelt	3.50	1,531
Jimmy Carter	2.27	986
Herbert Hoover	.01	15

(http://www.usgovernmentspending.com)

The ultimate measure of the success or failure of a
president’s economic policies is the growth of the nation’s Gross Domestic
Product while facing economic headwinds.  Here, too, Barack Obama cannot measure
up to those who faced enormous challenges, as his policies and regulatory
obsession have shown him to be an anti-capitalist ideologue with more in common
with the Occupy Wall Street Movement than with the American
people.

	Barack Obama	Ronald Reagan	Franklin Roosevelt
Actual inflation adjusted GDP Growth First Three Years	.3%	13.7%	23.4%

It should be noted that Franklin Roosevelt, after
re-election in 1936, began to pursue more statist policies including demonizing
the rich, higher taxes, passing union-friendly legislation, and additional
government spending, so that by the third year of his second term, the GDP had
contracted by 6.5% and unemployment rose to 19.0% from a low of 14.0% in 1937.
Yet the annual budget deficit as a percent of GDP averaged 3.85% for Roosevelt’s
first two terms as compared to Obama’s 9.23% to date.  (http://www.shmoop.com/great-depression/statistics.html)

By any measure, Barack Obama is not only a failure in
his economic policies, but he is, in the aggregate, the worst steward of the
American economy since economic measurements began to be
recorded.

It is little wonder that his re-election strategy is
centered on demonizing his potential opponents and deliberately appealing to the
base nature of the human race — greed and envy — as manifested in his class
warfare rhetoric.  This is a record that cannot be defended under any
circumstances, and one the Republicans must focus upon and unceasingly bring it
before the American people.

Morning Bell: Debunking Obama’s Latest Jobs Myth

Morning Bell: Debunking Obama’s Latest Jobs Myth

Posted By Mike Brownfield On November 3, 2011 @ 9:37 am In Enterprise and Free Markets | No Comments

Imagine a high-speed train zooming down hundreds of miles of glistening train track stretching across sunny California, connecting Anaheim to San Francisco. It’s a bullet train dream, and it’s a prime example of President Barack Obama’s latest plan to create jobs in America. The trouble is that this dream is far from reality.

The Los Angeles Times reported this week ^[1] that the California high-speed train–which is funded in part by $3 billion in federal grants from President Obama’s stimulus–is now expected to cost $98 billion, twice what was expected, and will take an additional 13 years to complete, extending the project to 2033. Questions remain about where the funding will come from, whether the project is viable, and whether the projected ridership will even materialize.

But projects like these are central to President Obama’s plan to put Americans back to work. Speaking yesterday from Georgetown Waterfront Park in Washington, D.C., Obama declared ^[2] that his plan will “put hundreds of thousands of construction workers back on the job rebuilding our roads, our airports, our bridges and our transit systems.” And that is, of course, all at the expense of the American taxpayers.

The President once called these projects “shovel ready,” meaning that as soon as money arrived from the federal government, workers could be on the job. He made it sound as easy as flipping a switch, but unfortunately it didn’t work as planned. Despite a $787 billion stimulus package, America’s economy continues to languish with 14 million out of work and a 9.1 percent unemployment rate. The President joked ^[3], “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.” Though he didn’t use the phrase “shovel-ready” in his remarks yesterday, the implication was still there. If Congress approves his jobs plan, he argued, all the construction workers sitting on the sidelines will be put back to work overnight.

But that’s not the way things work in the real world. Associated Press and Congressional Research Service reports ^[4] show that infrastructure spending does not create jobs and, in fact, can even have a negative effect. Heritage’s Patrick Knudsen explains ^[5]:

Building and repairing roads and bridges neither creates net job growth nor boosts the economy in the near term.

First, increasing government spending on these projects simply moves resources from one place to another — it may employ construction workers, but only by reducing jobs in other sectors. Further, the money never gets out the door soon enough to promote near-term job growth.

And then there’s the President’s flawed argument that since others are doing it, the United States should be, too. “How do we sit back and watch China and Europe build the best bridges and high-speed railroads and gleaming new airports, and we’re doing nothing?” he asks. It’s not a new line of argument from the President, and it leaves out some very important facts.

Dating all the way back to the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama spoke of the need to “invest” in infrastructure in order to be competitive with the likes of China. At the time, Jim Geraghty reported at National Review Online ^[6] that while Obama puts China on a pedestal, he entirely overlooks some serious problems with transportation in China–namely, stories of severe power shortages affecting the country’s exports, an episode where 500,000 train passengers were left stranded for days, and outbreaks of violence where airplane travelers were left grounded without accommodation. And that’s not to mention the working conditions under which China builds its infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Europe, which heavily subsidizes its passenger rail systems, receives a poor return on its investment. Heritage’s Ron Utt explains ^[7] that despite massive spending, passengers are opting for more efficient transportation in the air:

In Europe as a whole (EU-27), rail accounted for only 6.1 percent of passenger travel in 2007, including travel by air and sea. Buses accounted for 8.3 percent of the market, and air travel accounted for 8.8 percent. Despite Europe’s huge investment in passenger rail, its market share declined from 6.6 percent in 1995 to 6.1 percent in 2007. Over that same period, commercial air increased its share from 6.3 percent to 8.8 percent. By providing faster service and competitive prices, it took passengers away from rail, buses, and autos.

But to hear President Obama tell the story, building a European- or Chinese-style infrastructure is the key to the future–and to creating new jobs. Workers are ready to go, and all they need is your money to get started. But this is something we tried once already with the last stimulus, it didn’t work, and it’s not going to work this time, either. Obama’s infrastructure plan is a train that shouldn’t leave the station, headed for a bridge to nowhere, and jobs are the last thing that it will deliver.

Quick Hits:

• Thousands of Occupy Wall Street protesters rioted in Oakland yesterday evening — shutting down a busy port, taking over abandoned buildings, setting fires, burning American flags, and destroying ATMs ^[8].
• Europe’s leaders threatened to halt aid to Greece ^[9] until after it votes on a referendum to meet its commitments to the Eurozone. Meanwhile, Greece’s government is reportedly ^[9] “on the brink of collapse.”
• The Obama Administration considered bailing out solar company Solyndra ^[10] just before it went bankrupt. The Energy Department would have taken on some of its debt in return for a partial stake in the company.
• Amazon.com is offering to process sales-tax collection ^[11] for merchants who sell products through its site all for a fee equal to 2.9 percent of the taxes collected. Previously, Amazon lobbied against the imposition of sales taxes on online transactions.
• The State Department has purchased more than $70,000 worth ^[12] of President Barack Obama’s two books for Christmas “gratuities” and stocking of “key libraries” abroad.

Is Herman Cain the Answer?

By Ron
Lipsman

Whenever I see the inane bumper sticker War Is Not
the Answer, I always think: That depends on what the question is. If
Roosevelt had answered the real question posed to him by the Japanese 70 years
ago according to the bumper sticker, then the idiot who pasted the sticker on
his bumper would likely not have had the freedom to do so. If the Israelis had
answered the actual question posed to them by Nasser in May 1967 according to
the bumper sticker, there would be no Israel today. Similarly, the answer to the
query in the title depends on the exact question.

The short form of the question is obviously: Who
should the Republicans nominate to oppose Obama in 2012? For me — a staunch
conservative — the long and much more important and meaningful form of the
question is formulated as follows:

The US has been listing left for a hundred years,
drifting away from a constitutional Republic devoted to individual liberty, free
markets and limited government by the consent of the governed toward a statist
society of forced equality, shared economic misery and unlimited, unresponsive
government. Following a brief (and temporary) course correction under Reagan, we
have continued our inexorable slide toward socialistic oblivion under the two
Bushes, Clinton and especially under Obama. There have been signs in the last
two years that a significant percentage of the electorate has finally awakened
to the existence of the cliff toward which we are speeding. The next election
provides a chance — perhaps the final chance — to irrevocably halt the mad
dash to the edge and then to restore America back to its original
political/cultural roots and traditions. Is Herman Cain the Moses we so
desperately seek to lead us back to the promised land?

The odds may be slim, but I believe that the United
States has the opportunity to effect a fundamental course correction next year.
It is possible that the people might elect a truly conservative President and
supply him with a sufficiently conservative Congress so that together they could
halt the leftward drift and set the country on a more traditional course. It may
be that enough of the electorate is actually ready to bring this about. Reagan
would have done it a generation ago, but he lacked the requisite companion
Congress and the people had not sufficiently awakened to the gravity of the
progressive threat. Today the conditions are more ripe.

One thing is clear: Mitt Romney is not Moses. Of
course he would be immeasurably better than Obama. But it is absolutely certain
that he desires to be president not in order to answer the question in the form
that I posed it. While his instincts might be more conservative than liberal,
Romney is a “big government Republican,” another Bush or McCain, who:

• has no appreciation for the perilous course that our
  nation has traveled in the 20^thcentury;
• thinks that Obama pushed the wrong levers rather than
  sought to radically transform the nature of the country;
• and who will do no more than briefly arrest the
  country’s mad dash to the left, while leaving intact the socialist
  infrastructure to be further ratcheted up by the next Social Democrat that
  succeeds him.

Make no mistake — there are people out there who
understand the perilous state in which we find ourselves and who might formulate
and implement a program to rescue the nation. People like Jim DeMint or Mike
Pence come to mind. Paul Ryan perhaps. But they are not running. Who among those
actually running might be our Moses? As I said, Romney definitely is not. And
the people know it. That’s why, despite his advantage in experience,
organization, money and recognition, he can’t break away from the pack. Who then
is the answer? Certainly not Huntsman — another faux conservative. Not Paul —
an extreme libertarian whose opinions on national security and social morality
are frightening.

That leaves five: Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, Perry and
Santorum. In fact, I believe that each of those five understands the horrible
drift of the country over the last century and would be determined to reverse
it. So which of them should be Moses? Well, none of them is a perfect redeemer.
And our American Idol style of selecting a nominee has exposed the warts in each
of them. Santorum is severely damaged goods. His overwhelming loss in his Senate
re-election run in 2008 makes him a sure loser. No one is taking him seriously;
his poll numbers are anemic; he would do us a favor by joining Pawlenty on the
sidelines. When the Idol process began, Bachmann raced to the front. But then,
apparently due to her relative inexperience and her permanent “deer in the
headlights” facial expression, the ardor for her cooled. Next to streak to the
front was Rick Perry. But his feeble performance in several Idol rounds knocked
him off the pedestal. Gingrich’s numbers have not oscillated up and down like
the previous two. In fact, he is clearly the sharpest tack in the bunch, but his
track record of quixotic behavior and moral ambiguity gives pause. And so that
leaves the Hermanator (a term that Cain uses for himself in his 2005 book).
People like him and for the moment at least, he has leapt to the front of the
Idol polls.

So what about Herman? Can he play the role of Moses?
He has no money, no organization and no political experience. And there is
something about him that suggests political naïveté. But his heart and, more
importantly, his head seem to be in the right place. I just finished reading the
2005 book, which he wrote following his unsuccessful run for the Senate from
Georgia in 2004. I believe that he understands what has happened to the country
and would work assiduously to bring about a course correction that conservatives
so fervently desire. Does he have the gravitas to pull it off? The last
non-politician that the country elected president was Eisenhower — who only
commanded the most formidable army in the history of the world. Somehow CEO of
Godfather’s Pizza doesn’t quite match up. But let us not forget that Reagan was
president of the Screen Actors Guild and Lincoln’s resume wasn’t all that
impressive either.

The dispatching of Obama and his replacement by a
committed conservative is a paramount task for our nation. The choice we have
for the leader who is to accomplish that task is limited to Romney and one of
Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich or Perry. Romney might defeat Obama, but it will not
herald the transformation that we seek. I believe that there is a reasonable
chance that any of the latter four, if given the spear of leadership, might be
up to the task. If Cain turns out to be the Idol selection, then I will support
him enthusiastically and pray that he can deliver. Personally, I prefer Perry
for reasons that I outlined in another
article in this journal. But if the Hermanator gets the nod, then on the
basis of what I have seen and read thus far, I can live with that and I will
vote for him optimistically.

Barack Obama ‘Acting Stupidly’

Jeannie
DeAngelis

Without saying anything, Barack Obama’s silence speaks
louder than all his empty words. The President who likes to define himself as a
champion of racial equality and promoter of civility has thus far stood by in
silence as liberals attempt to lower the stature of Herman Cain by portraying
him as a conservative version of Stepin Fetchit.

By failing to address the prejudicial remarks directed
at Herman Cain, the President of the United States is revealing a side of
himself that reeks of a form of discriminatory selectiveness that should further
discredit his claim to be the purveyor of civility and racial
justice.

Who can forget the President’s response to the
supposed prejudice leveled against Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates?
Without the benefit of all the information surrounding the incident, Barack
Obama rushed before the cameras to publicly condemn Cambridge, Massachusetts
police officer Joseph Crowley and insinuated that, due to the color of his skin,
Gates was the target of racial profiling and victimized by ‘stupidity’ on the
part of law enforcement.

Recently the President spoke at the dedication of the
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.  It was there that he
described Dr.
King as “a black preacher with no official rank or title who somehow gave voice
to our deepest dreams and our most lasting ideals, a man who stirred our
conscience and thereby helped make our union more perfect.”

Yet, while Herman Cain, a man who fits a similar
description, is whacked by MSNBC analyst Karen Finney with a verbal billy club
and drenched with a fire hose of mean-spirited rhetoric that described him as
merely a “Black man who knows his place” – Barack Obama has remained
silent.

Where is the President’s usual predictable
indignation?  Why no public correction or call for mutual
respect?

At the Martin Luther King Memorial dedication, in an
attempt to portray himself as a great black leader, Obama didn’t hesitate to put
a self-referential spin on the narrative of Dr. King’s life, saying:
“Even after rising to prominence, even after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr.
King was vilified by many, denounced as a rabble rouser and an agitator, a
communist and a radical.”

Barack Obama had the temerity to place himself on the
same level as Martin Luther King Jr. and yet, soon after, he stood by while
left-wing pundits with zero content of character made racially humiliating
comments about Herman Cain that were based solely on the color of his
skin.

Thus far, Obama hasn’t said a word.  He has neither
corrected, condemned, nor cited mentor Saul Alinsky, whom he
quoted at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial dedication
when he said, “We can’t be discouraged by what is. We’ve got to keep pushing for
what ought to be.”

Maybe the President also believes that if a black
American such as Herman Cain is a conservative,  he should know his place and
that, especially in politics, they are nothing more than a stereotype, a
caricature.

When not diminishing the memory of Dr. King by
pretending to be much like him, Barack spends some of his off time making the
rounds collecting campaign contributions in Hollywood.  In the meantime, liberal
comedian David Letterman is on a mission to replace GW Bush with
Herman Cain as
the newest late-night-created Republican stammering idiot.

If any of the Letterman “Top
Ten Signs Herman Cain’s Campaign is in Trouble” were
applied to Barack Obama, the left would be picketing the Ed Sullivan Theatre and
demanding an Imus-style resignation.  If the butt of Dave’s jokes had been named
Henry (as in Professor Henry Gates), Obama would never have stood for Letterman
implying that Henry was “less fun-crazy and more crazy-crazy.”

It doesn’t end there either.  In the name of fairness
and economic equity the President, who insulted Tea Party activists by referring
to them as
racists and by using the vulgar sexual slang term
“tea
baggers” to describe American citizens, has yet to condemn
the behavior taking place within the ‘Occupy’ movement.

So far, Obama has not disassociated himself from a
protest infiltrated by prostitution,
public masturbation,
filth, violence,
and people fighting over money, blankets and food, nor has he called for
civility from a nationwide movement presently populated by ingrates that scream
police brutality after defecating on the bumpers of squad
cars.

Which brings us back to Obama’s disingenuous attempt
to convince people that he possesses a measure of righteousness that sets him
apart from mere mortals.

When it benefited him politically and he wanted to
paint the right as impolite, he hosted a civility conference in Tucson Arizona,
quoted Scripture, and called for a measure of tolerance he demands for himself
but is unwilling to extend to anyone else.

If Hollywood liberals promise to put cash in Obama’s
2012 campaign coffers, he casually overlooks demeaning comments directed toward
Herman Cain by asinine comedians because what would otherwise be viewed as
racially-tinged humor may instead help advance his cause.

If a group of deadbeat derelicts squat in public parks
and proceed to behave like savages, if the signs they carry support “sharing the
wealth” and condemn the wealthy, and in time for the next election hold the
promise of swaying the general public toward liberal policies, then by saying
nothing the President, America’s self-proclaimed purveyor of non-discrimination
and equal rights, is condoning rape, racism,
and barefaced anti-Semitism.

By exhibiting selective indignation and failing to
address the negative racial remarks directed at potential presidential
opponents, supporting the nationwide disgrace that is the ‘Occupy’ movement, and
choosing to associate with liberal comedians who make Herman Cain the butt of
racial jokes, President Barack Obama is proving he doesn’t understand the
responsibilities of his role, or understand his place as a
leader.

Author’s content: www.jeannie-ology.com

Obama Chooses American Defeat

James G.
Wiles

In April, 2007, at the height of
American casualties during the Surge in Iraq, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
(D. Nev.) famously announced
“the war is lost.” His remark attracted national headlines – and a big push-back
from Republicans, who, in the wake of the 2006 elections, controlled neither
House of Congress.

An American President – George W.
Bush of Texas – had refused to accept defeat. He changed his military leaders,
launched the Surge and victory followed. And, even though, the Republicans had
lost control of Congress, President Bush’s control of the Executive branch and
the American people’s refusal to accept defeat prevailed over leading Democrats’
desire for American defeat.. It enabled the forces of the Sunni Awakening,
General Petraeus and the coalition’s troops to crush the Iraq
insurgency.

Over a thousand American soldiers died  in
Iraq after Leader Reid’s remarkable press conference.

Democrats, like Reid, who’d predicted
defeat, never changed their views.  Now, President Barack Obama has just
guaranteed that Senator Reid’s remark will come true. Iraq is not Vietnam and
the Middle East is not Southeast Asia. Yet, the parallels – 36 years after a
Democratic Congress cut off U.S. funding for South Vietnam – are
unsettling.

Once again, a leader of the
Democratic Party has opted for American defeat – after a splendid American field
army has achieved military victory. Former New York Times Baghdad
bureau chief John Burns predicted  disaster as a result of Mr. Obama’s decision
on Hugh
Hewitt on October 24.  “We’ll see” was the most optimism Pulitzer-Prize
winner Dexter
Filkins could muster  on his New Yorker blog.

These guys aren’t
conservatives. But, with Michael Yon, these famous war correspondents are
not hopeful about whether America’s sacrifice in Iraq will be
redeemed..

How can Democrats ever be trusted
with America’s national security again?

It’s a simple as
that.

Read Fred and Kimberly Kagan’s
excellent piece this weekend in the new issue of the  Weekly
Standard for the post-mortem. The Kagans were part of the intellectual
brain trust behind the Surge – the Surge which President Obama has just thrown
away.

 

Obama takes risky stance against the rich

 

By Richard McGregor in Washington

Getty

With the US economy suffering through its deepest slump since the Great  Depression, the Obama administration has designed a political strategy to match,  with echoes of the campaign rhetoric deployed by Franklin Roosevelt in the  1930s.

Throwing out the standard presidential playbook dictating an aspirational  pitch to centrist voters, the White House is cementing a high-risk message that  strikes firmly at wealth and privilege.

“There is surging sentiment out there among voters that the economy is  weighted towards the wealthy,” said a senior White House official. “Public  opinion has changed dramatically.”

The White House strategy will make the 2012  election a generational test of the Republican push of the past three  decades for cutting taxes, in ways their critics say have been constantly skewed  towards the highest earners.

The after-tax income of the wealthiest 1 per cent of US households increased  by 275 per cent over the past three decades, compared to an average of 62  per cent for all Americans, the independent Congressional Budget Office reported  this week. For the poorest 20 per cent, the growth was only 18 per cent.

The “Occupy  Wall Street” protests that are spreading raggedly across the US and the  world have thrown a spotlight on mounting popular anger at economic stagnation  and income inequality.

But the factors driving the White House go further, to their inability to  strike any substantive deals on their terms with congressional Republicans  emboldened by their smashing victory in last November’s mid-term elections.

The failure of the economic recovery to yield many jobs during its mild  upswing of the past two years has also transformed the political calculus for a  president facing a perilous re-election battle.

“In normal circumstances, this pitch might be suicidal. But these are not  normal circumstances,” said William Galston of the Brookings Institute.

Mr Galston has been reading the speeches of Franklin Roosevelt’s winning  campaign for the 1936 presidential election and finds striking comparisons to  the emerging line from Mr Obama.

“Roosevelt wasn’t just saying: ‘I am fighting for you.’ It was: ‘I am  fighting against them,’” he said.

All sides of politics have been regrouping since the fraught negotiations in  August over the country’s  borrowing limits that bought the US to the edge of sovereign default.

While Mr Obama was widely depicted as weak in his dealings with Congress, the  clash damaged the Republican majority in the House of Representatives even more.  Congressional approval ratings are now in single digits.

Although they have offered little fresh on policy, Republicans are tweaking  their public message, with the hardline house majority leader, Eric Cantor,  recently acknowledging the need to address the rich-poor gap.

Mitt Romney, the frontrunner in the Republican race to challenge Barack Obama  in 2012, has taken to saying that he is standing up for the “middle class” because the rich “can look after themselves”.

For the White House, this is just the terrain that it wants to fight on. “The  Republicans want to give the average millionaire a $200,000 tax cut, while the  middle class is struggling,” said the White House official.

The majority of Republican voters polled by the White House agree with the  president, the official added, meaning “they hold a different opinion from their  lawmakers and their candidates”.

Mr Obama has been barnstorming the country for the past month, highlighting a  jobs package which his aides acknowledge little of which has any chance of  passing.

The aim is put Mr Obama back at the centre of the debate after a period in  which he seemed marginalised and ineffective, the worst position a sitting  president can be in.

“Let’s re-emphasise what powers we have! What we can do on our own! Push the  envelope!” William Daley, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview  with Politico, the Washington publication.

Despite Mr Obama’s battered standing, senior Republicans remain wary of a  rejuvenated president.

“What the president wants to turn this into is the proposition that you may  hate us, but you will hate these people more,” said a senior Republican  congressional official. “We need to make sure we do not allow him to turn this  election into an anti-incumbent election.”

Besides the inherent risk in making wealth the central issue in a country  which has prided itself on the ability of anyone to get rich, Mr Obama must also  surmount a credibility gap in taking on Wall Street.

“He has blown hot and cold on the finance sector, so he is widely regarded as  having fallen between two stools,” said Mr Galston.

In the White House, there is no doubt that it is entering the election year  with its back against the wall.

“You can just feel this electorate is very volatile,” Mr Daley told Politico. “So strap yourself in.”

Who is Barack Obama?

By Mondo
Frazier

There are so many things the public does not know
about the man who sits in the White House.  Who is Barack Obama?  In my search
to find out the answers I embarked on a journey that has lasted three years and
counting — and nearly made my head explode.

As usual, when Obama is the subject, Americans can’t
count on the progressives in the Corporate Mainstream Media (CMM) for much
help.  So, what’s one to do?  The foreign press proved helpful.  Therefore,
gleaned from the foreign press: a few stories which didn’t rate any coverage
from the U.S. CMM.

In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama went on a mission
to Russia with Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN).  The  newly-minted U.S. senator was
invited to be part of a Russian fact-finding tour that inspected a nuclear
weapons site in Perm, Siberia.  The base Lugar and Obama visited was where
mobile launch missiles were being destroyed under the Cooperative Threat
Reduction program (CTR), which also went by the name of the Nunn-Lugar
program.

What happened next — after the inspections were over
— was at the time reported by several foreign news sources but was never
reported in the USA by the CMM.  The Russians detained Obama and Lugar for three
hours at the airport, demanding to examine both Obama’s and Lugar’s passports
and search their plane.  Some sources reported that the Russians accused Barack
Obama of being a spy.

But wait — there’s more!

According to an Italian source, the Russians did not
accuse Obama of being an American spy; they accused him of being a spy for the
British!  The report went on to say that the incident ended up involving the
White House, the U.S. State Department, and military officials, along with their
counterparts in Moscow.

Strangely enough, an official report from Lugar’s
office about the trip never mentioned the incident.  Neither did Barack Obama in
2008 when he was desperate to exhibit some foreign policy
chops.

One other oddity: in the fall of 2008, Obama admitted
on his Fightthesmears.com site that he had held dual citizenship with both the
United States and Great Britain (the site explained that this was due to Barack
Obama, Sr. being a foreign national) until 1982.  Did the Russians know
something about Obama’s citizenship in 2005 that ordinary Americans don’t know
in 2011?

Another story no one has seen fit to ask about:
Obama’s Most Excellent Pakistani Adventure.

In the summer of 1981, 20-year-old Barack Obama
embarked on a two-week trip to Pakistan.  At least what little reporting that
has been done claimed the length of the trip was two weeks.  The only proof that
the trip didn’t turn into a longer stay is that we (supposedly) have records
which show that Barack Obama enrolled at Columbia University later that same
summer.  Of course, the public hasn’t seen those records, but that’s what we’ve
been told.  Anyone in doubt will be directed to Obama’s autobiography,
Dreams from My Father.

Obama clearly gave the impression in DFMF that he was
this penniless, somewhat confused young man, in search of an identity.  Obama
makes sure readers don’t miss the point by writing that he was forced to wear
“thrift store clothing” during this time.  Yet he somehow managed to find the
cash to finance a two-week trip to Pakistan.

Which he never wrote about.  Which in itself is odd:
here’s a guy who wrote two autobiographies that explored events real, imagined,
and totally fictional that supposedly forged the modern-day Barack Obama from
humble beginnings.  That’s according to the Obama Narrative^TM —
which gets most of its facts from Dreams from My
Father.

Not only did a poor, nearly destitute Obama manage to
afford the trip to Pakistan, but once there he somehow financed two weeks in the
Lahore Hilton International.  In addition, Obama was introduced to the future
prime minister and president of Pakistan — and went bird-hunting with him.
Which the prime minister mentioned in the Pakistani press in 2008.  There’s so
much more, including one question the CMM never asked Obama: who arranged all of
this?  For a 20-year-old nobody.

Another curious piece to the queer Obama puzzle is the
connection — which hasn’t been made in the CMM (attention, Fox News!) —
between illegal foreign contributions to the Obama campaign and subsequent
billions in Stimulus money to foreign companies and banks.  During and after the
2008 election, accusations of illegal foreign contributions — which flowed into
the Obama campaign when credit card safeguards were disabled on the campaign’s
website — were documented in the conservative press and
elsewhere.

Who were these mysterious donors, and in what
countries did they live?  Unfortunately, due to the chicanery of Team Obama, we
may never know.  Fast-forward to 2009.  Obama’s multi-billion-dollar Stimulus is
rushed through Congress, and billions of dollars in Stimulus money are doled out
to foreign companies and banks.  Finland, China, Brazil, and India are just a
few of the beneficiaries of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars. Might these have
been payoffs for those shady, unknown donations?

Bill Clinton was the first president to benefit from a
foreign spoils system, but Barack Obama has made Clinton look like an
amateur.

One more coincidence in shady fundraising.  The lady
involved with Obama’s fundraising in the Caribbean?  None other than Vera Baker,
who packed up and hurried left the country after the National Enquirer
started exploring a possible tryst between her and Obama in a Washington
hotel.

Barack Obama can only hope that ObamaCare covers
“extreme stress” — because whoever on his staff is responsible for keeping
track of all of the weird stuff in the president’s life is definitely a
candidate for burnout.

One final item involves that most elusive of
documents: Obama’s long-lost long-form birth certificate.

A Chicago-area activist, Sherman Skolnick, writing for
a radio show/website (now defunct) by the name of Cloak and Dagger uncorked this
headline on his readers.  It referred to another story he’d written in 2005 —
three years before anyone in the media coined the term “birther” to tamp down
curiosity about our 44^th president’s past.  (All-caps headline in the
original story.)

CLOAK’S EXCLUSIVE AUGUST 2005 STORY EXPOSING OBAMA’S
KENYAN BIRTHPLACE FORCES OBAMA TO SANITIZE HIS PASSPORT
FILE.

Just another day in the life of anyone attempting to
pierce the shroud of mystery that surrounds our 44^th president.  The
final result is the publication of The Secret Life of Barack Hussein
Obama.

Mondo Frazier is the editor/founder
of the website DBKP – Death By 1000
Papercuts and the
author of The Secret Life of Barack Hussein
Obama, published
by Threshold Editions/Simon &
Schuster.