In the video you will see Democrats complaining that the Republican Party hasn’t offered a health care alternative bill, they are lying. Republicans in the House have offered and passed several bills but Democrats in the Senate refused to even debate them.
Category Archives: 2012 Primary
“Murder by President” (video)
Why was our embassy staff in Benghazi allowed to die over the course of seven hours when we had assets in range? Why did Obama order the CIA, the State Department, and the military response teams to stand down while they watched on live video feeds from our drones overhead?
The GOP must learn to dominate the plain of meaning…
Political Arena Editor Chuck Norton – Instead of calling it the “Fiscal Cliff” Republicans should call it “Taxmageddon”. It is more accurate and serves the battle of the narratives MUCH better.
“The rhetoric in Washington has done more to defeat liberty than all the armies and police forces in the world. This war all around us is being fought over the very meanings of words.
Meaning does not exist a priori. It is order imposed by individuals with arsenals of communication devices. Every inscription, every utterance, every gesture seeks to dominate the plain of meaning. Real violence is only an extension of this process.
Culture by definition a shared territory of meaning, inspires conflicts far more destructive than any other dispute over territory on the Earth’s surface. It is the message — the communication event — that we target.” – Warren Spector
Obama Lied: Cuts Pell Grant Eligibility after Promising Opposite
This is no different than the Obama Administration targeting women’s cancer screenings for rationing while fully admitting that it will increase women’s mortality rates.
Why is it that women’s and minority health are the first to be targeted for cuts as ObamaCare takes over? Why is it that Pell Grants for college are already being targeted? It is because those groups vote Democrat in such large numbers, that the Democrat leadership can do whatever it wants and likely keep that group secured as a voting block.
With the elite media, and in the case of the young being barraged by leftist professors, covering for them most of the time Obama can get away with it. Do you ever wonder why inner city minorities get the worst teachers, worst schools, worst city services and worst police protection in cities and areas ran by Democrats? It is for the same reason. No matter what the Democrats do they believe they will always get 85% or better of the black vote, so they put resources in swing districts to win swing voters.
Victor Medina:
Sorry, college students. President Obama has cut your access to Pell Grants by 33%; he just forgot to mention it before Election Day.
During the recent campaign, President Obama claimed credit for increasing funding to the Pell Grant program, which provides college funds, free from repayment, to millions of students. However, an email sent out Tuesday to some Dallas college students is revealing a detail the President forgot to mention: the time a student can receive a Pell Grant has been cut, by as much as three years. With Pell Grants for the fall semester now dispersed, colleges are informing students of their options, bringing the cuts to light.
The email, sent out by the Dallas County Community College District, informed students of the changes to the Pell Grant program. It revealed that the number of semesters a student could receive a Pell Grant had been cut from 18 semesters down to 12. It is a detail likely unknown to most students; in fact, the cut in grants has gone largely unreported by the media.
The email states that the cut in eligibility was part of an education bill President Obama signed into law in 2011. “On December 23, 2011, President Obama signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2012 (Public Law 112-74). This new federal law states that the amount of Federal Pell Grant funds a student may receive over his or her LIFETIME will be reduced to the duration of a student’s eligibility from 18 semesters (or its equivalent) to 12 semesters (or its equivalent). This new law applies to ALL Federal Pell Grant eligible students effective with the 2012-2013 award year beginning July 1, 2012. (DCL-GEN-12-01)”
The cut in grant eligibility has serious ramifications for non-traditional students. Part-time students who do not receive a full semester grant may lose out on funds if they do not earn an undergraduate degree within 12 semesters. Adults who go back to school, including retraining for a new career, will also have limited access to grants.
The amount of the grant varies based on family income (with a current yearly maximum grant of $5,550). If a student gets a grant less than a maximum, and a year later finds their income level has been reduced, they will not be able to recoup the difference in the lower amounts earned in a previous year. The cut in eligible semesters makes it difficult for students to make up that gap in later years.
This cut in eligibility was never mentioned by President Obama during the campaign, and when he boasted about increasing funding to the Pell Grant program, CNN fact-checked his claim as true. While the amount of government funding to the program is going up in future years, CNN failed miserably by not pointing out the cuts in eligibility to students. The cuts could be a rude awakening to students who thought President Obama was expanding their educational opportunities.
Foreign Policy Mag: Obama lied about standing up for tough Iran sanctions….
You mean they lied? So much for “standing strong” against Iran’s nuclear weapons program…..
The Obama administration often touts the Iran sanctions it once opposed. In the final presidential debate Oct. 22, President Barack Obama said his administration had “organized the strongest coalition and the strongest sanctions against Iran in history, and it is crippling their economy.”
The new Iran sanctions still must survive a House-Senate conference over the defense authorization bill, during which conferees may try to change certain portions of the new sanctions regime. Hill aides predict the White House will try to alter the new sanctions during that process, in what they would likely see as an effort to water them down.
“The truth is that the U.S. Congress continues to lead a comprehensive and unrelenting international sanctions program against the Iranian regime despite a comprehensive and unrelenting campaign by this administration to block or water down those sanctions at every move,” a senior GOP Senate aide told The Cable. “We beat them 100-0 last year and while they tried to kill this amendment more quietly this time, we beat them again 94-0. Hopefully House and Senate negotiators will stay strong and resist the administration’s strategy to dilute these sanctions in conference.”
After a month, plenty of Staten Island residents getting no help
….but (according to the exit polls) the elite media has people thinking that FEMA and Obama did such a great job….
Government spends $100,000 to teach young girls “condom negotiation”
We are printing up money and borrowing it from China for this? Can anyone say that Obama and the Democrat leadership is at all serious about getting the spending under control? There is no attempt at fiscal discipline. They literally say one thing and do another.
All of the talk about deficit control is just that, the tax they want to raise targets small domestic businesses to make it hard to compete against the mega-corps that fund the Democratic Party and assuming such a tax increase passes it will only raise enough money to run the government for a few days. Yet Democrats have the audacity to call their tax hike proposals “Deficit Reduction”.
The Democrat Leadership knows the spending and printing and borrowing will blow up the currency and make it collapse, and yet they are doing everything that can to bring it about. The only question left to ask is why.
The [Obama] administration is funding a $100,000 study of pregnant and “at-risk” 14-17-year-old girls on probation in Houston, Texas, to determine ways to help them choose safer lifestyles and avoid pregnancy, including better “condom negotiation” tactics.
The National Institutes of Health, part of the Health and Human Services Department, is providing a University of Houston researcher the money because of the lack of study of female teen juveniles in trouble with the law.
The school said the study, “Choices – Teen: A Bundled Risk Reduction Intervention for Juvenile Justice Females,” will include 30 at-risk girls, ages 14-17, on intensive probation with the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department.
The goal, said the school, is to determine if intervention programs will help the kids make better life decisions.
According to Danielle Parish, the assistant professor at the school’s Graduate College of Social Work who is conducting the NIH-funded effort, one of the big problems young girls need to learn is how to talk their boyfriends into using condoms.
According to the school’s release, “Parrish notes one of the big issues for this population of adolescent girls is condom negotiation. They may have a boyfriend who says it isn’t ‘cool’ to use a condom. To prepare the girls for these types of situations, the counselors and pediatricians will teach them how to negotiate condom use with their partner. The intervention also helps empower and motivate girls to make healthier choices regarding their alcohol use, smoking and prevention of unplanned pregnancy.”
Editor: I debated Dr. Gilarducci just as Mark Levin did
by Chuck Norton
In the video below Mark Levin very gently takes apart Dr. Teresa Gilarducci. She works for George Soros now, but before that she was an econ professor at Notre Dame. She was also on President Clinton’s Social Security task force.
When she was at Notre Dame I debated her when I was an undergrad in front of an audience, as I was the only one between IU and Notre Dame who would take the partial privatization position point of view on Social Security. Her incredible hypocrisy, that Levin exposes so well in the video below, showed itself in true form in my debate with her as well. Her “logic” is entirely political, circular and based largely on denial and misdirection. She is sweet, attractive and charming, and well knows it as she uses that as a weapon in her arsenal.
Dr. Gilarducci thought she was going to be debating a “college republican” undergrad, what she got is a former radio talk show host who passed the state exams and used to sell retirement and insurance products.
I will not outline the entire debate, but in short I did two things.
First: I outlined the Galveston Plan which has worked wonders as a legal exception to Social Security. I also pointed out the government managed, but partially privatized retirement plan that Members of Congress have which has been a great success through thick and thin. Such a plan would serve as a good model to grow at least a small percentage of Social Security to at least attempt to have a growth to pre-fund our retirement benefits.
All she would say about these partially privatized plans is that the retirees wouldn’t get the money and even though retired Members of Congress and some in Galveston were already getting great benefits now she insisted that soon that money would vanish because only government transfer payments can be trusted. She kept saying again and again, “Until you go to get your money at retirement and it’s not there.”
Ironically in the video below, the type of plan she insisted could never work because the “greedsters” in the private sector would steal it all, is the exact same plan that she has for herself for her own retirement by her own admission.
Second: Dr. Gilarducci had written some good papers on 401K reform. She argued that too much of the 401K investment is in the employers own stock, so if the employer goes under said employee looses a lot of their retirement. As a fix she proposed that 401K laws be changed to require diversity of investment to more reliably pre-fund such retirement plans. Social Security has much the same problem as all of the eggs are in one basket, there is no diversity of investment and people’s retirement’s are not pre-funded.
So I used her own words and arguments on how to have a reliable and secure 401k, but replaced the term “401k” with “Social Security”. I used those near verbatim arguments to make most of my case.
All through the debate she insisted that (what she didn’t realize were her own arguments in her own published work) were just bad arguments from a young undergrad who just didn’t know better and that is how she treated me……until the end when I dropped the bomb that many of the arguments she so cutely poo-poohed were actually her own published work. She was floored.
Mark Levin:
During my last few shows, including as recently as yesterday, I have alerted you to Obama’s desire to nationalize your 401-k plan and eliminate your mortgage interest deduction.
Some background on the former. Back in October 2008, I got word that Professor Teresa Ghilarducci of the New School had testified before Rep. George Miller’s committee in support of a plan to nationalize private pension plans — in particular, 401-k plans. I not only spoke about it on my show back then, but we tracked down the professor and I conducted the first interview on talk radio. I will discuss this at more length on my program this evening, but I thought you might want to be among the first to listen to that interview again. Please pass it along to as many people as you can. See below.
How the George Soros Smear Machine Works (video)
This is one of Bill O’Reilly’s best segments ever; with Dr. Monica Crowley and Phil Kent.
Poll shows most people blame GOP for the “Fiscal Cliff” when much of it is due to Obamacare taxes
Where is the establishment GOP? Where is anyone in the GOP to make the case?
Where is the GOP telling people that Taxmageddon, also known as the Fiscal Cliff, is largely do to 13 new Obamacare taxes, and the Democrats desire to raise taxes not on the rich, but on the productive middle class and small business S-Corps?
Where is the GOP to lambaste all of the wasteful spending and corrupt crony green energy boondoggles?
No one in the GOP is even defending themselves much less making a fight of it (please correct us if I we are wrong).
Famed actor Robert Davi said recently that he believes that elements in the establishment GOP and the Democratic Leadership are in a conspiracy to bring the country down. It is nonsense like this that make him correct.
It is nonsense like this that will finally push those who care about good policy to form a new party to replace the Republican Party because its brand is damaged and it’s establishment doesn’t seem to even really believe what it preaches.
I bet many in the GOP wishes they had Newt Gingrich right about now to make the case.
Via Breitbart News:
A new poll from CNN/ORC shows that President Obama remains Teflon despite the fact that he designed the upcoming fiscal cliff to speculation. Even though Obama insisted on massive defense cuts and huge tax increases as the two alternative parts of the fiscal cliff, the American public will apparently blame Republicans if the fiscal cliff isn’t stopped. A full 45% of respondents said they would blame Congressional Republicans – even though the Democrats control the Senate – while just 34% would blame President Obama.
The public, by and large, sees Republicans as obstructionist. That’s due to a combination of messaging failure on the part of the GOP — nothing new, in that they seem incapable of explaining the simple fact that low tax rates, particularly on job creators, spur economic growth and thereby raise tax revenues — and a media concerned only with saving its flailing president. The Republicans’ mixed messaging on the fiscal cliff has been astounding to watch. They signed off on the sequester, which put a fiscal gun to their heads, forcing them to choose between raising taxes partially or watching tax rates skyrocket and defense get slashed. Then they turned around and complained about the gun being put to their heads. Now, they’re standing for the principle that we need more tax revenue, but it can’t be raised by raising rates. No wonder the public is confused.
Poll numbers like this could be the reason that Republicans are looking to cave on tax increases, or ending tax deductions. 25% of the country says that the nation would undergo a crisis if we hit the fiscal cliff; 44% expect major problems. 25% say that it would cause minor problems. A full 77% of the public believes the fiscal cliff would hurt them personally.
Republicans have done such a poor job of informing the public about why taxes shouldn’t be increased that even Republicans, by a margin of 52%-44%, say they want both spending cuts and tax increases. An unbelievable 56% of Americans say they want high taxes on higher income earners, despite the fact that higher income earners pay a vastly disproportionate share of all tax revenue.
Some political strategists do get it…
Jay Heine is one that has always “gotten it”.
Political Strategist Jay Heine:
You want to know why we lost ground in 2006, 2008 and 2012? We elect/select candidates that tell us what we want to hear, who are “electable”, but not trustworthy. They get into office and they follow the crowd. The most successful office holders are those that stand on principle and are unwavering. It doesn’t matter whether they are conservative or liberal, it matters whether they do what they say they are going to do. If they don’t they alienate the electorate. And all the Republicans who are about to sell us out on the fiscal cliff are making the same error.
Cadell, Gingrich, Ingraham: The Republican Establishment Consultant Complex Responsible for Romney Defeat
[Editor’s Note – For anyone concerned about politics, or freedom in general, or the culture, should read this post carefully and watch every video link. We are gratified to see that that some in the regular GOP are seeing what we have seen for a long time which we summed up in our “Why Republican’s Lost” post. Fortunately I have been told by a mutual friend of this editor and the former Speaker that he was told to read our post. If he did it certainly shows in his speech at Restoration Weekend sponsored by Dave Horowitz.]
Newt Gingrich’s and Laura Ingraham’s speech at Restoration Weekend.
Read carefully what former Democratic political strategist Pat Caddell has to say which has been well reported by Breitbart News:
Speaking at The David Horowitz Freedom Center’s “Restoration Weekend” in Florida on November 16, Pat Caddell indicted what he called the Republican “consultant-lobbyist-establishment” complex for losing a presidential campaign in 2012 President Barack Obama had no business winning.
“No presidential campaign should be run by consultants,” Caddell said. “They should be run by people who are committed to the candidate and not into making big money.”
Caddell, the former Jimmy Carter adviser who consulted on the “Hope and the Change” movie that profiled disaffected Obama 2008 voters who were not going to vote for him in 2012, warned Republicans that the consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex may threaten to take the party into oblivion if not marginalized.
The Romney campaign, Caddell said, was driven be establishment consultants and was a failure of mechanics and message.
“But most of all, it was a failure of imagination,” Caddell said. ““It was the single worst campaign in modern history of a challenger who had a chance to win … and that’s the truth and nothing can take away from that.”
Caddell said “Republicans never attempted to put a frame around the national election” because “the people who run the messaging in the Republican party and their consultants refused to do it.”
As a result, Rommey lost decisively to voters who voted for the candidate who “cares about me,” which was more than 20% of the electorate. Many of these voters are Reagan Democrats and independents.
“You have to have some connection to the people,” Caddell said, noting Romney lost the “empathy vote” by 65 percentage points to Obama.
Caddell said the Republican establishment thought, “We don’t have to do anything, [Obama] will be defeated because of the economy.”
He said Republicans believed the “numbers” told them they would win the election, and that is why many in the establishment and consultant class thought they could win by default by “holding the ball” and running out the clock. As a result, Caddell said the party neither controls the presidency nor the Senate after having played so unimaginatively and cautiously in 2012.
Caddell blasted the Romney campaign’s strategy of not running positive biographical ads about Romney until the convention. He said he was puzzled the Romney campaign did not play up Romney’s success in managing the Winter Olympics, which the Obama campaign even admitted was a winning issue.
More shockingly, Caddell said the Romney campaign made no effort to run positive spots about Bain Capital, even after Ted Kennedy’s campaign had already eviscerated Romney over Bain during the Senate campaign two decades ago. Letting the Obama campaign define Romney again was, he said, campaign malpractice.
Caddell asked: “Don’t you think you would want to say something positive about Bain?”
Caddell also wondered why Romney, who spent nearly $50 million of his own money in losing the 2008 GOP presidential primary, did not loan his campaign a similar amount of money in the spring so his campaign could more positively define him to voters.
He then brutally told donors in the audience that the Republican consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex took millions of dollars from them to only enrich themselves without having any meaningful impact on the election.
“You donors and others were played for marks by groups like [Karl Rove’s American] Crossroads,” Caddell said, noting that establishment super PACs cared more about “preserving arrangements in the media.”
Too often, Caddell said the Republican consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex ignores anything that could be effective if it does not allow them to profit.
For instance, even though a Frank Luntz focus group found that the “Hope and the Change” movie was the most effective way for Republicans to appeal to independent voters, Caddell accused the Republican “consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex” of not utilizing the film because “that communication didn’t fit” in their conventional plans to make the consultant class wealthy.
Caddell said Republicans have to go away from a bureaucratic, top-down approach to messaging and outreach and be more imaginative in the future if they do not want to go the way of the Whigs. He said Republicans have been so poor on combating narratives and framing their own messages that minorities — like Asians — voted overwhelmingly for Obama despite sharing conservative values because they think Republicans “do not care about minorities.”
He said the Republican party needed to be more imaginative — like promoting education reform against teachers unions as the new battle for civil rights and running against corruption in Washington, which a Breitbart News/Judicial Watch Election Night poll found 85% of voters were concerned about.
“Why are Republicans not the anti-establishment party?,” Caddell asked.
Caddell emphasized a “narrative is a story” that comes over a period of time and “not just a single message.”
He cited Ronald Reagan as someone who knew how to speak to Democrats and “ordinary and common” Americans and bring them over to his side because Reagan had been one of them and came from regular Americans and shared their experiences.
“That is a quality that has been missing a long time in a search for alternative candidate,” Caddell said, in reference to Reagan’s ability to resonate with blue collar Americans.
In contrast, Caddell compared Romney to the “man on the wedding cake” and Thomas Dewey in 1948, who lost to Harry Truman in an election nobody thought Truman could win. Obama, Caddell said, turned “hope and change” into “divide and conquer” and activated his liberal base just like Truman energized the New Deal coalition in 1948.
Caddell said Republicans played into Obama’s strategy because they continued to believe they could win by default and did not aggressively confront Obama and his machine. For instance, even after the first debate in which Romney thumped Obama, Caddell said Republicans tried to run out the clock. They advised Romney not to challenge Obama on Libya, which Caddell said was as much of a transparency and honesty issue as a foreign policy issue.
As a result, the media was able to protect Obama and go on the offensive against Romney for most of the campaign.
Caddell again called the media the “enemy of the people” for wanting to protect Obama instead of trying to uncover the truth about Benghazi, and told Republicans if they do not confront the mainstream media like the Romney campaign failed to do, “they will continue to kill you.”
Caddell said those in the Republican consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex “do not want to hear any views from outsiders” because it threatens their racket. Caddell said this mentality will just result in more Republican losses unless this Republican consultant-lobbyist-establishment complex is eviscerated.
“As long as the establishment wants to preserve the establishment and their special deals, you will lose,” Caddell said.
Russian Columnist: Americans are repeating “The Soviet Mistake”
It is interesting to see how those not influenced by our elite media and our union controlled public schools view American politics.
It reminds me of my Eastern European friends I went to college with who told me that American News Media read like Communist propaganda. Those who are from Europe and Russia know very well what how a Marxist and a Communist behave, but unlike too many Americans, they are not afraid to call it what it is [except several foreign professors I had who would say this privately, but were very clear that if they told the truth about this it would be the end of their teaching career as American universities are heavens for radicalized ideologues who cannot function in the private sector – Editor].
Russian columnist Xavier Lerma asks how can Americans be so foolish as to elect a communist like Obama again, how can they not see that he says one thing and does the opposite, don’t they read history in America?
Bye, bye Miss American Pie. The Communists have won in America with Obama but failed miserably in Russia with Zyuganov who only received 17% of the vote. Vladimir Putin was re-elected as President keeping the NWO order out of Russia while America continues to repeat the Soviet mistake.
After Obama was elected in his first term as president the then Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin gave a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January of 2009. Ignored by the West as usual, Putin gave insightful and helpful advice to help the world economy and saying the world should avoid the Soviet mistake.
Recently, Obama has been re-elected for a 2nd term by an illiterate society and he is ready to continue his lies of less taxes while he raises them. He gives speeches of peace and love in the world while he promotes wars as he did in Egypt, Libya and Syria. He plans his next war is with Iran as he fires or demotes his generals who get in the way.
Putin said regarding the military [militarization is what the author meant as Russian is his first language],
Well, any normal individual understands that as true but [American style] liberalism is a psychosis . O’bomber even keeps the war going along the Mexican border with projects like “fast and furious” and there is still no sign of ending it. He is a Communist without question promoting the Communist Manifesto without calling it so. How shrewd he is in America. His cult of personality mesmerizes those who cannot go beyond their ignorance. They will continue to follow him like those fools who still praise Lenin and Stalin in Russia. Obama’s fools and Stalin’s fools share the same drink of illusion.
Xavier Lerma Continues to show that Obama is “repeating the Soviet mistake” by comparing what Obama is doing with what the Russian government now admits was their mistake:
“…we are reducing taxes on production, investing money in the economy. We are optimizing state expenses.The second possible mistake would be excessive interference into the economic life of the country and the absolute faith into the all-mightiness of the state.
There are no grounds to suggest that by putting the responsibility over to the state, one can achieve better results.
Unreasonable expansion of the budget deficit, accumulation of the national debt – are as destructive as an adventurous stock market game.
During the time of the Soviet Union the role of the state in economy was made absolute, which eventually lead to the total non-competitiveness of the economy. That lesson cost us very dearly. I am sure no one would want history to repeat itself.”
President Vladimir Putin could never have imagined anyone so ignorant or so willing to destroy their people like Obama much less seeing millions vote for someone like Obama. They read history in America don’t they? Alas, the schools in the U.S. were conquered by the Communists long ago and history was revised thus paving the way for their Communist presidents. Obama has bailed out those businesses that voted for him and increased the debt to over 16 trillion with an ever increasing unemployment rate especially among blacks and other minorities. All the while promoting his agenda.
Washington DC wants to run Healthcare, but they can’t even fix their own escalators (video)
Incompetence on parade…no accountability.
Wait, I Didn’t Vote For That When I Voted for Obama! …Uh, Yes You Did (video)
Jim Quinn:
Colleges start cutting professors work hours because of Obamacare
Elections have consequences. In a future post we will list the job layoffs that have resulted from Obama’s re-election and the slew of tax increases businesses and individuals will be paying as of January 1st. The number of layoffs are staggering and keep growing.
Companies that have employees work more than 28 hours a week are now considered full time by the law and employers must buy federally approved health insurance, which Obamacare has caused premiums to rise by $2,500 per year because of it’s mindless one sized fist all coverage and new taxes on insurance and health care. If employers do not provide the insurance they will have to pay a tax penalty….unless employees get less than 28 hours a week.
Welcome to mass layoffs and hiring of part timers only.
The first ones hit were not just the evil capitalists, this counts for most everyone, including university professors who are now feeling the heat. Radicalized academia actively supported and campaigned for Obama. Enjoy.
I am running into all sorts of people who voted for Obama again that had no idea about “Taxmageddon“. Most are shocked when they learn the truth, some just go into denial and even deny that anyone is getting laid off. Some even believe that we will have free health care and “gubmint” will just pay for it.
Pennsylvania’s Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) is slashing the hours of 400 adjunct instructors, support staff, and part-time instructors to dodge paying for Obamacare.
“It’s kind of a double whammy for us because we are facing a legal requirement [under the new law] to get health care and if the college is reducing our hours, we don’t have the money to pay for it,” said adjunct biology professor Adam Davis.
On Tuesday, CCAC employees were notified that Obamacare defines full-time employees as those working 30 hours or more per week and that on Dec. 31 temporary part-time employees will be cut back to 25 hours. The move will save an estimated $6 million.
“While it is of course the college’s preference to provide coverage to these positions, there simply are not funds available to do so,” said CCAC spokesperson David Hoovler. “Several years of cuts or largely flat funding from our government supporters have led to significant cost reductions by CCAC, leaving little room to trim the college’s budget further.”
The solution, says United Steelworkers representative Jeff Cech, is that adjunct professors should unionize in an attempt to thwart schools seeking similar cost-savings efforts from avoiding Obamacare.
“They may be complying with the letter of the law, but the letter of law and the spirit of the law are two different things,” said Mr. Cech. “If they are doing it at CCAC, it can’t be long before they do it other places.”
Under the new CCAC policy, adjunct professors will only be allowed to teach 10 credit hours a semester. Adjuncts are paid $730 per credit hour.
That is $14,600 dollars a year. You have a Masters or a PhD and you are just a tick above the poverty level. Good luck paying your student loans. How can you attract the best teachers when you can make more money working at Walmart?
Senator Mike Lee on the Obamacare SCOTUS Decision (video)
This is most informational.
Address by Senator Mike Lee 11-16-12
Senator Mike Lee of Utah addressed attendees of the Federalist Society’s 2012 National Lawyers Convention on Friday, November 16, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC. Senator Lee was introduced by Mr. Leonard A. Leo, Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society.
Greta To Obama Administration: GROW UP!
The Obama Administration is playing dirty. Trying to put a price tag on access — either a news organization plays ball and accepts what they dish out without challenge, or the news organization is excluded, punished. Check this out:
Fox News has been aggressively reporting on Benghazi because it is newsworthy when 4 Americans are MURDERED and because it was obvious the Obama Administration was telling “silly stories” that didn’t make sense and were not supported by the facts. The Administration’s Benghazi story got more curious when the Administration sent out Ambassador Susan Rice to sell the silly stories on 5 news shows. Two months later, the American people still don’t have the straight story. It is our job to get the facts. We are trying.
The Obama Administration has done everything but give us the straight story and they are fighting us on getting the facts.
And why do I say the Obama Administration should grow up? Because the Obama Administration is trying to punish Fox for trying to get the facts from the Administration (do I need to remind anyone that 4 Americans were murdered?) The Administration in what looks like a coordinated effort is denying Fox access to information that they are handing out to other news organizations. Why exclude Fox? That is simple – to punish — to try to teach us a lesson not to pry, not to look further for facts.
Here is my proof. The Administration is now 3 out of 3:
1/ The State Department called a media conference call the night before its employees testified on Capitol Hill and OMITTED FOX FROM THE CALL; (they claimed it was an accidental oversight);
2/ About 2 weeks after the above State Department conference call to all in the media, the CIA had a media wide briefing and released their timeline. The CIA invited major news organizations to the briefing but THE CIA EXCLUDED FOX FROM THOSE INVITED TO THE BRIEFING
3/ and now the latest…. DNI Director James Clapper told Capitol Hill last week that the DNI did not know who took the term Al Qaeda out of the talking points that was given to Ambassador Susan Rice. It turns out that is not true and the DNI released a memo to the media last night indicating that DNI Director James Clapper was wrong last week when he said that (incidentally two plus months after the murders.) The DNI / Intelligence removed Al Qaeda from the talking points memo given to Ambassador Susan Rice. But that’s not all – it isn’t just the “who is on first” at the DNI, it is also what the DNI did to Fox last night. The DNI LEFT FOX NEWS CHANNEL OFF ITS DISTRIBUTION LIST last night when it released this new memo to the media.
You know why Fox is left out 3 out of 3. We at Fox are not simply accepting what they say, what they dish out. We are looking for facts and corroboration when there are inconsistencies and discrepancies. To the extent we get anything wrong is because the Administration is doing whatever it can to thwart us from getting the facts.
They are trying to punish us into going away — hoping we get their message that we will never have access to them as long as we dare to challenge what they put out. And guess what? What they have put out and what we have challenged shows they are cagey and not giving the straight story.
A very effective political pop-culture video
This video from “Generation J” goes a long way into busting the stereotypes and false narratives that the left is smearing anyone who threatens their power with:
Entertainment Exec: Congratulations to the GOP for losing the easiest election of our lifetime
Mr. entertainment CEO makes a good point. Romney did not do any of the late night shows such as Jay Leno nor did he appear on John Stewart. Romney did not do talk radio, which is bigger than any music format, or Fox News which beats the other news networks combined.
Richard Mgrdechian is doing something about it. He manages Madison Rising which features traditional messages in it’s music. Here is their YouTube channel.
Richard Mgrdechian:
Congratulations to the GOP for losing the easiest election of our lifetimes. Over the past four years, Obama has been exposed as a liar, a fraud, a charlatan and a scam. We’ve seen his policies of racism, divisiveness and class warfare tear at the fabric of our society on a daily basis. We’ve seen the national debt go up by $5 trillion during his watch. We’ve seen the value of the dollar go down dramatically over that same time. We’ve seen ambassadors killed overseas while he sits around and laughs it up with daytime talk show hosts. On top of it all, we’ve seen an endless amount of buyer’s remorse from people who voted for him the first time around and swore they would never do it again. Yet, even with all of this – and an economy in complete shambles – we still lost. The obvious question would have to be how is that possible? Well forget voter fraud, the Electoral College, how much we spent or anything else; at the end of the day the answer is clear and simple – we lost because, no matter how many times they talk about it, Republicans once again missed the boat on popular culture.
Keep reading, because I can tell you right now that this won’t be just another abstract article about what “needs” to be done by someone who has no clue, concept or desire to actually do anything about it, but needs to fill space in a weekly column or has to come up with something to talk about on the radio for a segment or two. No, this is an article about what is being done, what the hurdles have been – mostly from within our own party, by the way – and specific ideas on what we can do to make sure we’re ready next time around.
First of all, we need to understand that popular culture trumps politics every time. Why? Simple: logic and rational arguments are not cool, they’re not fun, they’re not easy and they’re not inspirational. Pop culture on the other hand, is – by definition – all of these things. Pop culture is what we do every day. Pop culture influences what we say, what we think, what we watch, how we dress, what we eat, what we buy and how we act. Ultimately, pop culture is what defines us both as people and as Americans.
Right now, as pathetic as it may be, our front line in the culture war is the Tea Party movement. Unfortunately, these organizations and their events are about as far from “parties” as humanly possible. In fact, the whole thing is more like a tea funeral, actually. Sure, they were effective for a year or so as a way of galvanizing support and aggregating people who felt frustrated and alone, but in reality these groups – especially given they way they are currently run – are completely unsustainable. After all, there are only so many times you can stand there and watch the same twenty people screaming at a podium about the same twenty things for four or five hours at a time. Yes, they truly are funerals in every sense of the word – boring, dreary, draining, unappealing, exhausting and most of all – they are killing the conservative movement.
The same thing seems to be true of the RNC itself, as well as the vast array of non-profits organizations that are supposed to be helping us educate voters, grow our base and win elections. From what I’ve seen, they’ve failed miserably at all three. Not only have they failed, they’ve absolutely refused to do anything innovative, to change their thinking in any manner whatsoever or to make any attempt at all to leverage the power of popular culture.
Latino voters are culturally no different than the population at large, believe Democrat’s false narratives
There is some very wrongheaded thinking in part of the establishment GOP. They believe that in order to get in power Republicans should pander, and move to the left.
Those who hold such a view actually seem to believe that the Democrats will then stop calling Republicans racist and every dirty word in the book.
Look at what the Democrats do to black and Hispanic Republicans, they release their credit history to the public illegally like they did to Michael Steele, they release their social security number publicly like they did to Allen West, and they use every racial attack they can think of.
Democrats sent agitators to Michael Steele events to literally throw Oreo’s at him. They accused Allen West of being a part of a motorcycle drug gang, they trashed his military service, they trashed his family and even went after his children. They they engaged on what is now well reported outrageous vote fraud to unseat him, and replace him with a rich white guy.
Then the Democrats said it was Republican’s fault that Congress is richer and whiter.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee trashed Miquel Estrada when he was nominated to the DC Court of Appeals saying in their own committee memo’s that they must stop him “because he is Latino”.
Democrats trotted out campaign ringers to call South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who is Indian-American, a slut.
AEI:
I’ll start with the General Social Survey (GSS), the most widely used database for monitoring social trends. All the results that follow are based on the biennial GSS surveys conducted from 2000 to 2010.
Latinos aren’t married more than everyone else. Among Latinos ages 30–49, 52 percent are married. Everyone else: 54 percent.
Latinos aren’t more religious than everyone else. Among Latinos, 29 percent attend worship services regularly (nearly once a week or more). Everyone else: 31 percent. Among Latinos, 18 percent not only attend regularly but also say they have a strong affiliation with their religion. Everyone else: 24 percent.
Latinos aren’t more opposed to gay marriage than everyone else. Among Latinos, 44 percent disagree or strongly disagree with the statement that “homosexuals should have the right do marry.” Everyone else: 50 percent.
Latinos are a little more opposed to abortion than everyone else, but not by a landslide. Among Latinos, 12 percent are opposed to abortion under all circumstances. Everyone else: 9 percent. Among Latinos, 21 percent are opposed to all abortion unless the mother’s health is seriously endangered. Everyone else: 14 percent.
Latinos aren’t more conservative than everyone else. Among Latinos, 14 percent describe themselves as “conservative” or “extremely conservative.” Everyone else: 20 percent.
What about the Latino work ethic? For indicators on that, I turn from the GSS to the Current Population Survey (CPS). I restrict the results to the surveys from 2000–2008, before the financial meltdown—that is, we’re looking at work behavior in years in the normal range of unemployment.
Latino men are only fractionally more likely to be in the labor force than everyone else, and those with jobs work slightly fewer hours. Among Latino men ages 30–49, 92 percent were in the labor force. All other men ages 30–49: 91 percent. Among men ages 30–49 who had jobs, Latinos worked an average of 42 hours in the preceding week. All other men ages 30–49: 44 hours.
Latino women are substantially less likely to be in the labor force than everyone else. Among Latino women ages 30–49, 68 percent were in the labor force. All other women ages 30–49: 78 percent. Among those with jobs, hours-worked in the preceding week were virtually identical: 37.3 for Latino women, 37.5 for everyone else.
I can understand why people think Latinos are natural conservatives. Just about every Latino with whom I come in contact is hard-working and competent. I don’t get into discussions with them about their families and religion, but they sure look like go-getting, family-values Americans to me. But note the caveat: “with whom I come in contact.” There’s a huge selection artifact embedded in that caveat—I always come in contact with Latinos because they are on a work crew that’s doing something at my house or office, or at my neighbors’ houses. That’s the way that almost all Anglos in the political chattering class come in contact with Latinos. Of course they look like model Americans.
The data I used for the numbers above come from the most trustworthy, carefully conducted surveys available. They paint a portrait that gives no reason to think that Republicans have an untapped pool of social conservatives to help them win elections.
Heather MacDonald:
A March 2011 poll by Moore Information found that Republican economic policies were a stronger turn-off for Hispanic voters in California than Republican positions on illegal immigration. Twenty-nine percent of Hispanic voters were suspicious of the Republican party on class-warfare grounds — “it favors only the rich”; “Republicans are selfish and out for themselves”; “Republicans don’t represent the average person”– compared with 7 percent who objected to Republican immigration stances.
[In other words Republicans have allowed themselves to be maldefined, have been timid in the battle of the narratives, and not aggressive enough to show why capitalism and freedom work when given the chance. Conservatives have also not been active in pop-culture and public education. – Political Arena Editor]
And a strong reason for that support for big government is that so many Hispanics use government programs. U.S.-born Hispanic households in California use welfare programs at twice the rate of native-born non-Hispanic households. And that is because nearly one-quarter of all Hispanics are poor in California, compared to a little over one-tenth of non-Hispanics. Nearly seven in ten poor children in the state are Hispanic, and one in three Hispanic children is poor, compared to less than one in six non-Hispanic children. One can see that disparity in classrooms across the state, which are chock full of social workers and teachers’ aides trying to boost Hispanic educational performance.
Pew: Media coverage of Obama was largely positive in the final week of campaign, Romney coverage negative
Media coverage of President Barack Obama was largely positive in the final week of the presidential campaign, while coverage of Mitt Romney was mostly negative, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism.
From October 29 to November 5, positive stories about Obama in mainstream media outlets outnumbered negative ones by 10 percentage points, with 29 percent positive, and 19 negative. On the other hand, negative stories about the GOP nominee Mitt Romney outweighed positive stories by 17 points, with 33 percent negative compared to 16 positive.
The report, which analyzed 660 stories from 59 media outlets, also notes the positive media coverage of Obama was higher in the final week than it had been in previous weeks.
MSNBC Did No Negative Stories About Obama or Positive Ones About Romney Last Week of Campaign:
A new study just released by the Pew Research Center found that in the final week of the just-ended presidential campaign, the “Lean Forward” network did absolutely no negative stories about President Obama or positive ones about Mitt Romney.
MSNBC’s coverage of Romney during the final week (68% negative with no positive stories in the sample), was far more negative than the overall press, and even more negative than it had been during October 1 to 28 when 5% was positive and 57% was negative.
For Obama, meanwhile, the coverage improved in the last week. From October 1 to 28, 33% was positive and 13% negative. During the campaign’s final week, fully 51% of MSNBC’s stories were positive while there were no negative stories at all in the sample.
Democrats hope for return of the 55% “death tax” in 2013
Democrats love the death tax. It creams most small farms and small businesses while their super rich corporate donors get off the hook. It makes family farms easy targets for big corporate buyers. It also punishes larger companies for being privately held. It is yet another tax that the little guy has to pay while the mega-corporate interests that run the Democratic Party benefit from.
Fox News:
Ranchers, farmers brace for ‘death tax’ impact
Rancher Kevin Kester works dawn to dusk, drives a 12-year-old pick-up truck and earns less than a typical bureaucrat in Washington D.C., yet the federal government considers him rich enough to pay the estate tax — also known as the “death tax.”
And with that tax set to soar at the beginning of 2013 without some kind of intervention from Congress, farmers and ranchers like Kester are waiting anxiously.
“There is no way financially my kids can pay what the IRS is going to demand from them nine months after death and keep this ranch intact for their generation and future generations,” said Kester, of the Bear Valley Ranch in Central California.
Two decades ago, Kester paid the IRS $2 million when he inherited a 22,000-acre cattle ranch from his grandfather. Come January, the tax burden on his children will be more than $13 million.
For supporters of a high estate tax, which is imposed on somebody’s estate after death, Kester is the kind of person they rarely mention. He doesn’t own a mansion. He’s not the CEO of a multi-national. But because of his line of work, he owns a lot of property that would be subject to a lot of tax.
“Our number one goal is to repeal the estate tax, to get rid of it, not have it for every generation, when I die and my kids die and so on,” he told Fox News. “For everyone to have to re-purchase the ranch or farm over and over for each generation, that’s inherently unjust. So what we’re doing is asking our politicians to understand that and repeal the estate tax.”
That, however, is unlikely. Currently, the federal government taxes estates worth $5 million dollars and up at 35 percent. When the Bush-era tax rates expire in January, rates increase to 55 percent on estates of $1 million or more. While some Republicans want to eliminate the death tax entirely, President Obama has proposed a 45 percent rate on estates of $3.5 million and up.
“The idea behind the estate tax is to prevent the very wealthy among us from accumulating vast fortunes that they can pass along to the next generation,” said Patrick Lester, director of Federal Fiscal Policy with the progressive think tank — OMB Watch. “The poster child for the estate tax is Paris Hilton — the celebrity and hotel heiress. That’s who this is targeted at, not ordinary Americans.”
Editor’s Note – Wait just a minute. Why can’t Paris Hilton’s family pass their fortune on to their children? The Hilton’s provide a valuable service and also provide tens of thousands of good jobs. They also pay massive amounts on taxes and give to charities. Why should they be targeted for punishment by the federal government?
Where did we adopt the tyrannical Marxist idea that just because someone has it, it then becomes another’s right to take it? Do we have the rule of law or the law of the jungle?
The Democrats do not take that money to pass out to you and me, they spend the money over seas or hand it out to campaign donors and cronies just as they have dome in the emerging Green Corruption scandal.
Isn’t the “American Dream” to pass on something to your kids so they can do better than you? This is how radical the Democratic Party leadership has become.
More from Fox News:
But according to the American Farm Bureau, up to 97 percent of American farms and ranches will be subject to an estate tax where the exemption is set at $1 million. At that rate, the federal government will pocket $40 billion in 2013 and up to $86 billion in 2021. That contrasts with just $12 billion this year.
Tammy Bruce, Bill Whittle & Stephen Kruiser: Why the establishment GOP was stupid enough to adopt the Democrats false narratives (video)
This is very informative (more so in the second video). Tammy Bruce has been a TEA Party leader from before the beginning. She is a former leftist, former President of NOW, and an out of the closet homosexual who attributes Western enlightenment and tolerance to our Christian heritage.
If you only have time to watch one video, watch the second one (as the first one is sorta “meh”).
Tammy Bruce, Bill Whittle & Stephen Kruiser: Why the establishment GOP was stupid enough to adopt the Democrat’s false narratives
Senator Ted Cruz to GOP: If you don’t make the argument you don’t win it (video)
Senator Ted Cruz:
Why the Obamacare insurance mandate WON’T help those with pre-existing conditions (video)
The way the Obamacare health insurance mandate is structured is unsustainable. It creates what is called an “adverse selection spiral” (death spiral); meaning that if people act for their own best interests within the Obamacare structure, the more it weakens the system. Insurance companies are already getting out of health insurance because of this and countless employers are already dropping health insurance coverage for employees. Health insurance premiums have already gone up by $2,500 dollars a year, I was just notified that my premium went up to $267.00 a month.
This system will crash and it won’t take long. What will people who need insurance do then? What will those with preexisting conditions do then?
We need a new solution to the preexisting condition problem. Obamacare makes the problem worse, not better.
Rush Limbaugh rips Steve Schmidt on the air
Establishment GOP Pinheads “blame the voters”…..
I am sure readers have heard by now that Mitt Romney is blaming the 47% who is “on the take” and “isn’t paying taxes”.
Political Arena contributor Warren Roche put together this brilliant and entertaining montage, “Where is the love?”:
While it was impolitic for Mitt to include veterans and retirees in that number there is some truth to it, but in saying it they way he did left him open to be demagogued and attacked as hating retires, the disabled and veterans.
How many times will Republicans get whacked in the “battle of the narratives” before they learn? Or is the current crew in charge so used to fooling themselves that they have to be swept out for the party to have a chance in future elections?
At least some people get it:
I just think it’s nuts. First of all it is insulting. It is like WalMart after a bad week saying “The customers are being unruly”. – Newt Gingrich
“You have a political problem when the voters don’t like you, but you have a real problem when the voters feel like you don’t like them”. – George Will
Governor Bobby Jindal:
Yours truly had this to say a few days ago in Facebook Notes:
Much of the blue collar in this country used to be solidly in the Republican corner, but they feel like they have been lied to and taken for granted. Since the 2003 Bush tax cuts there have been ZERO domestic policy victories for this group of voters. That is why they are disillusioned and believe that no matter who they vote for government will just gets bigger, the economy will just get smaller while jobs dry up and flee the country. They feel squeezed and while they know that the Democrats are bad, they no longer have confidence in the Republican party. That is why these voters are staying home.
What isn’t helping is Republicans with an entitlement mentality who actually have the nerve to believe that just because the Democrat in power is a failed neo-Marxist Saul Alinsky radical that the man they cram down our throats is entitled to the blue collar conservative vote, and when they don’t get it they call them imbeciles.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz gets it as well and comments on why so many blue collar Republicans stayed home again:
Senator Marco Rubio:
Obama Pushes UN Gun Registration Scheme Hours After Election
Of course, criminals do not register guns. Canada has admitted that their gun registration program has been a waste of time and money as it was not helpful in deterring crime so the laws are being changed.
Via Gun Owners of America:
That didn’t take too long. Within hours of securing his second term as President, Obama moved forward to support renewing the debate over the UN Arms Trade Treaty. By “renew debate” i mean that the only reason it had stalled in the first place was because Obama didn’t want to back it during an election year and now that the little hurdle of being re-elected has been cleared he doesn’t have to hedge his gun grabbing bets any more.
An official at the US mission says all the right things to the press:
“We will not accept any treaty that infringes on the constitutional rights of our citizens to bear arms.”
Now, they can say that but it doesn’t make it true. The Arms Act as it stands does the following:
“The most recent draft treaty includes export/import controls that would require officials in an importing country to collect information on the ‘end user’ of a firearm, keep the information for 20 years, and provide the information to the country from which the gun was exported. In other words, if you bought a Beretta shotgun, you would be an ‘end user’ and the U.S. government would have to keep a record of you and notify the Italian government about your purchase. That is gun registration. If the U.S. refuses to implement this data collection on law-abiding American gun owners, other nations might be required to ban the export of firearms to the U.S.”
In short this is a gun registration that wouldn’t have to pass into law by both houses of Congress but is implemented by treaty. A treaty that, while it would need a 2/3 majority in the Senate, could be accomplished by misdirection and out right lies to the people, who in turn could pressure enough on the fence Senators to foolishly vote for this treaty.
This act also allows for a foreign body, the United Nations, to control and dictate how US firearm manufacturers operate and as such runs the risk of crippling if not outright eliminating the industry in its entirety.
If there is no company to make new guns for private citizens then eventually citizens will run out of guns to buy. Another end around to eroding the Second Amendment.
In short, America would lose its own sovereignty with regards to how it handles its industry and civil rights.
When Barack Obama talks about “under the radar” THIS IS WHAT HE MEANS!
A number of people have kept telling me how good Obama was on the Second Amendment. How we have National Park Carry now. They ignored me when I told them that he had to sign it since it was an add on to a bill he needed to sign for his own credibility (Credit Card reform). But now we see, and unfortunately we will continue to see for the next four years just how wrong you were.
The curtain has been pulled back and Obama has no fear of treading softly for re-election. The attack began even before all the votes were counted.
Reminder: This is how far Obama will go to Politicize National Security (video)
Christians, veterans, church goers, and people who are pro-life are dangerous militants according to Obama’s Department of Homeland Security. Radicalized Muslims are not even mentioned.
Political Arena 