“I sure am….he is not the only one vilified, though, look at Newt Gingrich, what’s going on with him, via the establishment’s attacks. They’re trying to crucify this man and rewrite history, and rewrite what it is that he has stood for all these years. It’s not just Ron Paul. I believe it is also Newt Gingrich that the establishment, that the liberal media, certainly that the progressives and Democrats don’t like.”
Obama sugar daddy #2 Warren Buffet, who says that the rich should pay more while Obama demands increases in a tax that the super rich don’t even pay, but small and medium sized businesses do… well Buffet not only goes to great lengths to shield his money from taxes, but he owes almost a billion dollars – LINK.
Sabra Feldman:
Instead of complaining about tax cuts for the “wealthiest Americans” or not, why not set up a voluntary tax for the “wealthiest Americans”? Then, the government can track which of the wealthiest Americans, particularly Obama’s wealthiest supporters, are willing to pay it.
“When we were doing the debates Newt and I used to talk and we could relate and I would listen to what he would say and I listened to what Romney would say. I would say Newt is definitely closer to Reagan,”
The biggest problem that Mitt Romney has is that the arguments in favor of his candidacy have been paper thin and largely circular.
He’s the “most electable” candidate because his supporters keep saying he’s the most electable. He’s “inevitable” because his supporters say he’s inevitable. “He’ll be conservative in office” despite governing as a moderate because his supporters say he’ll be conservative in office.
None of these arguments hold up under a bare minimum of scrutiny. Mitt has lost 2 of 3 major races he’s run so far (His record would have been 1-4 if he had run for governor again in 2006), he’s only won 1 out of 3 primaries up until this point despite having every advantage, he’s only pulling about 30% of the vote nationally, and there’s no reason at all to think that a guy who’s famous for shifting his positions would suddenly turn into Ronald Reagan once he gets into office.
Moreover, it’s hard not to notice the double standard that’s been going on during the primary. Every candidate in the field who pulls ahead of Mitt gets savaged by the mainstream media and his allies in the conservative press, while Mitt hasn’t even had a basic vetting. Furthermore, when Mitt bombed Newt into the ground with vicious negative ads in Iowa, despite the fact that Newt had been running a positive campaign, we were told, “Politics ain’t beanbag.” On the other hand, when the remaining candidates gave Mitt the same treatment he had dished out after New Hampshire, this was supposed to be some sort of unconscionable attack on capitalism that was hurting the guaranteed winner of the primaries. That’s horseflop.
Given that Ted Kennedy beat Mitt in 1994 with attacks on Bain Capital, how ridiculous is it that the most basic questions about his time there still hadn’t been brought up and perhaps worse yet, that Romney still doesn’t seem to have particularly good answers for some of those questions?
Senator John Kerry (D., Mass.) is in Egypt, meeting with leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood — the Islamist organization whose goals are to destroy Israel, “conquer Europe” and “conquer America” (to quote its most influential jurist, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi).
The Brotherhood, which operates throughout the world, seeks the imposition by governments of strict sharia law (as outlined in Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law) and, eventually, a global caliphate. Naturally, the Obama administration describes it as a “largely secular” and moderate organization — and William Taylor, President Obama’s hand-picked “special coordinator for transitions in the Middle East,” announced last month that the administration would be quite “satisfied” with a Brotherhood victory in the Egyptian elections.
As the Investigative Project on Terrorism reports, Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee and key Obama administration congressional ally, “welcomed the results of Egypt’s first democratic elections,” in which “voters gave the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) nearly 40% of seats, and more than 24% went to the ultra-conservative Salafi coalition led by al-Nour Party.” [ACM: byultraconservative, IPT means al-Nour is somewhat more impatient than the Brotherhood for the imposition of supremacist Islam; as I’ve explained on otheroccasions, the Muslim Brotherhood is Salafist in its ideology.]
In addition to praising the Brotherhood’s election as a model of transparency and integrity, Sen. Kerry also called for an infusion of cash from the International Monetary Fund to undergird Egypt’s new Islamist government.
The money quote…literally:
Here’s a quote from the article linked here: “United States, though over $15 trillion in debt, is the leading contributor-nation to the IMF, providing close to a fifth of its funding. That is about three times as much as second-place Japan, more than four times as much as China, more than six times as much as the leading Islamist country (Saudi Arabia), and more than the combined contributions of the three top European donors — Germany, Britain and France. (See Wikipedia Table, here.) Consequently, a cash infusion by the IMF to the Brotherhood-led Egyptian government would be a redistribution of wealth from American taxpayers to Islamists whose goal is to conquer American taxpayers — assuming, of course, there is any money left in the IMF after the Obama administration gets done using it as the device through which tapped out American taxpayers bail out, at least temporarily, Europe’s collapsing experiment in trans-continental socialism.”
Given all the attention to the ethics matter, it’s worth asking what actually happened back in 1995, 1996, and 1997. The Gingrich case was extraordinarily complex, intensely partisan, and driven in no small way by a personal vendetta on the part of one of Gingrich’s former political opponents. It received saturation coverage in the press; a database search of major media outlets revealed more than 10,000 references to Gingrich’s ethics problems during the six months leading to his reprimand. It ended with a special counsel hired by the House Ethics Committee holding Gingrich to an astonishingly strict standard of behavior, after which Gingrich in essence pled guilty to two minor offenses. Afterwards, the case was referred to the Internal Revenue Service, which conducted an exhaustive investigation into the matter. And then, after it was all over and Gingrich was out of office, the IRS concluded that Gingrich did nothing wrong. After all the struggle, Gingrich was exonerated.
1) Numerous Mexican citizens and an American citizen have been killed with weapons knowingly provided to criminals by our own government during Operation Fast and Furious. If Eric Holder was aware that was going on, do you think he should step down as Attorney General? Were you aware that was going on and if so, shouldn’t you resign?
2) In 2010 you said Solyndra, which gave your campaign a lot of money, was “leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.” Today, Solyndra is bankrupt and the taxpayers lost $500 million on loans that your administration was well aware might never be paid off when you made them. What do you say to people who say this is evidence of corruption in your administration?
4) Through dubious means, you and your allies in Congress managed to push through an incredibly unpopular health care bill that helped lead to the worst election night for the Democratic Party in 50 years. Since the bill has passed, many of your claims about the bill have proven to be untrue. For example, we now know the bill won’t lower costs and despite your assurances to the contrary, big companies like McDonald’s say they may drop health care because of the health care reform. Since the American people have rejected your health care reform and it doesn’t do what you said it would, shouldn’t you work with the Republicans to repeal it?
5) When you took office, gas was $1.79 per gallon. Since then, you’ve demonized the oil industry, dramatically slowed offshore drilling, blocked ANWR, and killed the Keystone Pipeline. Now, gas is $3.34 per gallon. How much higher do you anticipate driving gas prices?
6) Occupy Wall Street has been protesting against Wall Street and the richest 1 percent in America. You are in the top 1 percent of income earners in America and you have collected more cash from Wall Street than any other President in history. So, aren’t you exactly the sort of politician that Occupy Wall Street wants to get rid of?
7) How do you decide which foreign leaders to submissively bow towards and why do you think that’s appropriate for an American President?
8) If they could, don’t you think the Nobel Committee would take back the Nobel Peace Prize that you were awarded?
9) You made bipartisanship one of the central themes of your campaign in 2008. Yet, you’ve worked to push bills through Congress with almost no Republican support, spent much less time negotiating with Congress than George Bush, and you’ve said things like, “But, I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.” Why did you decide to break your campaign promise to pursue bipartisanship?
10) America lost its AAA credit rating for the first time under your watch. What do you think you should have done differently to have prevented that historic failure?
11) You cut more than 500 billion dollars out of Medicare to fund your wildly unpopular health care reform bill. Given that Medicare is running in the red already, don’t you think it’s irresponsible to cut money out of one entitlement program, that millions of seniors depend on — to put it into a risky new entitlement program?
WASHINGTON (AP) — It was a wish list, not a to-do list.
President Barack Obama laid out an array of plans in his State of the Union speech as if his hands weren’t so tied by political realities. There can be little more than wishful thinking behind his call to end oil industry subsidies – something he could not get through a Democratic Congress, much less today’s divided Congress, much less in this election year.
And there was more recycling, in an even more forbidding climate than when the ideas were new: He pushed for an immigration overhaul that he couldn’t get past Democrats, permanent college tuition tax credits that he asked for a year ago, and familiar discouragements for companies that move overseas.
A look at Obama’s rhetoric Tuesday night and how it fits with the facts and political circumstances:
OBAMA: “We have subsidized oil companies for a century. That’s long enough. It‘s time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that’s rarely been more profitable, and double-down on a clean energy industry that’s never been more promising.”
THE FACTS: This is at least Obama’s third run at stripping subsidies from the oil industry. Back when fellow Democrats formed the House and Senate majorities, he sought $36.5 billion in tax increases on oil and gas companies over the next decade, but Congress largely ignored the request. He called again to end such tax breaks in last year’s State of the Union speech. And he’s now doing it again, despite facing a wall of opposition from Republicans who want to spur domestic oil and gas production and oppose tax increases generally.
Be sure to read on to see the rest of “fact checking” from the normally in the tank for Obama AP just rips this SOTU to pieces.
My thoughts while watching:
Obama: It was wrong, it was irresponsible…
– which is why you were pressuring banks to make those bad loans when you worked for ACORN.And the Dodd-Frank bill is forcing banks to do the same thing again!!
Obama: I will work with anyone
Editor: YOUR Senate leadership has refused to pass a budget in almost three years!!!
Obama: Masterlock is made in Wisconsin
Editor: Maybe those Master Locks can keep the EPA and the government looters out….
Conservative writer Sabra Feldman: Unbelievable. Obama just said that, during his time in office, “over 1,000 jobs came back over here.” 1,000 manufacturing jobs? What, is he kidding? What about the millions of manufacturing jobs that moved to China, Korea, and other countries, and the hundreds of thousands of R&D jobs that went mostly to India and China? Just to get the currently-unemployed out of work, 1,000 jobs would have to return here 15,000 times.
Chuck DeVore: Obama in state-of-the-union: proposes to tax multinational firms more. Word of advice: businesses don’t pay taxes, consumers do.
Obama: Mandate that kids stay in school to graduate or till 18
– wow the good students will flood out to private schools. ..hey wait…
Chuck DeVore: Obama advocates more Federal intervention in local education, federal money with strings attached.
Obama: Open more land for drilling
Editor: Open them for drilling but them stop them from actually drilling by halting the permit process with thousands of impossible regulations and lawsuits from your eco-whackies.
Obama: More Green Jobs money from Congress!
Karen Mayhew-Reagan: Full of new jobs, like those found at Solyndra.
Editor: All this clean energy stuff that fails but makes his pals rich with our money so they can donate back to Obama…
Obama: equal pay for equal work!
Chuck DeVore: Obama Calls for equal pay for equal work – you mean like how WNBA players get paid the same as NBA players?
Editor: It means he wants to hire more government employees until WNBA players make the same as NBA players….err until NBA players make the same as WNBA players? NO it is NOT – men and women doing the same job. Two lawyers at the same firm. Two admins in the same university office etc. It is the govt setting wages….
Obama: One place to go for all mortgages!
He is talking about a full nationalization of the mortgage industry… OMG.. And now he is saying don’t destroy the free market LOL
Olga Mancuso: I’m having a brain stem hemorrhage…please send the death panels. If I could snort my scotch I WOULD to numb my brain quickly….
Editor: A Living will – the Banks have already been turned into virtual GSE’s… who the heck does he think he is kidding??? Prosecute who? Bawney Frank?? I think not… more like scape-goating.
Chuck DeVore: Obama calls for banks to write a “living will” as to how they’ll pay if they go bust (will be used against them in court by Federal prosecutors).
Editor: To prosecute them for doing what the government forced them to do in the first place.
Karen Mayhew-Reagan: I make 72k year, my husband is unemployed. How dumb does this guy think I am?
Obama: Put aside partisanship and lets work together!
Mark Souder: The gall. Attacks Republicans all night but then calls for bi-partisanship. The gall
Mark Souder: We work as a team, you rich insider-trading, oil-dripping heasrtless Republicans – we need to work together.
Editor: It is so typical of him. He asks for bi-partisanship after locking Republicans out and lying about them.
Ted Welsh: He is now on record as suceeding in and /or for doing all the things that the conservatives have been demanding. Oh, except that the government will run it all. Man what a con.
Obama: US and Israel are closer than ever!
Chuck DeVore: Obama says US and Israel are closer than ever. (Saying so, makes it so, I suppose)
Editor: Well Chuck, that whole 1967 thing really fired up the warm fuzzies….
Obama: America is back!
Mark Souder: He didn’t mean America was back. He meant that big government is back. The “era of big government is over” is, well, over.
Former Governor Charlie Crist left the Republican Party and ran as an independent against Marco Rubio in the Florida Senate race in a blatant attempt to get the Democrat in the race elected.
Romney’s “Charlie Crist” problem is this: Romney’s chief campaign strategist and several of his most senior campaign staff were Crist’s top political advisers — the same ones who crafted Crist’s moderate, ignore-the-tea-party strategy epitomized in Crist’s famous “hug” of President Barack Obama. That strategy led Crist, once the most popular Republican governor in the nation, to defeat.
Crist’s erstwhile political team was led by controversial GOP strategist Stuart Stevens. Stevens and partner Russ Schriefer are the principals in the high-profile Stevens & Schriefer Group consultant firm and are playing the lead role in crafting Romney’s primary and national campaign strategy.
According to the Stevens & Schriefer website, the firm had a long history with Crist, serving as chief strategists for his bids for education commissioner, attorney general, governor, and later for the U.S. Senate.
Other senior Crist political aides from his failed Senate campaign now hold key posts in Romney’s campaign. Amanda Henneberg, who had served as Crist’s press secretary, now is a spokeswoman with the Romney 2012 campaign. Likewise, Andrea Saul, who was Crist’s communications director, now is Romney’s press secretary.
Sarah is spot on. A total Rookie mistake that will be used against Newt if he is the nominee. This was David Gregory looking to generate sounds bites for Obama to use in commercials later.
If/When Newt is the nominee and Christie endorses Newt this sound bite will be used against both Newt and Gov. Christie’s reelection.
Notice that you don’t see John McCain on the Sunday shows bashing his fellow Republicans any more. He used to all the time. He learned his lesson.
Not to mention that this new narrative on “Newt being an embarrassment” relies on a series of incomplete facts. This is just Mitt Romney out to destroy his opponents again and it really doesn’t matter what the full facts are.
Did you all notice that NBC asked one question after another that had almost nothing to do with Obama and the economy?
Also…..
So after complaining about how he and his business model was attacked by republicans with anti-capitalist rhetoric – Mitt Romney attacks Newt Gingrich’s business model where he personally made $35K on a consulting contract and is an “influence peddler”.
I consult some politicians and I have given a small check to the NRA so according to Mitt Romney that makes me “an influence peddler”. Romney has jumped the shark…..
By the way, Mitt Romney saying that Newt made 1.6 million over all those years from Freddie Mac is like saying that Mitt Made Billions off Bain firing people and cannibalizing businesses. Newt never took all of Bain’s income and attributed it to Mitt Romney, so why is Mitt Romney taking all of the money Newt’s company made and attributing it to him personally?
The Democratic Party’s largest single contributors will make money off of the country losing hundreds of thousands of jobs with President Obama killing the Keystone Oil Pipeline from Canada.
Energy Policy: Killing the Keystone XL pipeline may help one of the world’s richest men get richer. North Dakota’s booming oil fields will now grow more dependent on a railroad the president’s economic guru just bought.
Stop us if you see a pattern here. About the time George Soros — Hungarian billionaire and key donor to leftist groups and the Democratic Party — invested heavily in the stock of the state-run Brazilian oil company Petrobras, President Obama was curbing U.S. offshore oil production and the U.S. Export-Import Bank announced a $2 billion loan to Petrobras to finance deep-water drilling off the pristine beaches of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
As he was imposing curbs and moratoria on U.S. offshore drillers, President Obama wished the Brazilians well in the hope we would someday be Brazil’s best oil customer.
Apparently, oil tankers coming from Brazil are better and safer than a pipeline from Canada, whose best customer we will not be if they ship their tar sands oil to China instead.
Interestingly, another billionaire, Obama economic inspiration Warren Buffett, stands to benefit from the Keystone XL pipeline delay.
As oil production ramps up in the Bakken fields of North Dakota, plans to use the pipeline to transport it have been dashed.
As a result, North Dakota’s booming oil producers will have to rely even more on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad, which Buffett just bought, to ship it to refineries.
Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has agreed to buy Burlington Northern Santa Fe in a deal valuing the railroad at $34 billion. Berkshire Hathaway already owns about 22% of Burlington Northern, and will pay $100 a share in cash and stock for the rest of the company.
…..That targeting has taken a sinister turn–a criminal one, in fact–as the Des Moines Register reports:
A Des Moines man has been arrested after police say he used, or tried to use, the identity of Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz in a scheme to falsely implicate Schultz in perceived unethical behavior in office.
Zachary Edwards was arrested Friday and charged with identity theft.
The Iowa Department of Public Safety issued a news release saying Schultz’s office discovered the scheme on June 24, 2011 and notified authorities.
Iowa blogger Shane Vander Hart has more, including this mug shot of Zachary Edwards, a Democratic operative:
Edwards is a former Obama staffer who directed “new media operations” for Obama in five states during the 2008 primaries. Thereafter, he was Obama’s Director of New Media for the State of Iowa. In the Democratic Party’s lexicon, “new media” apparently includes identity theft.
Edwards now works for LINK Strategies, a Democratic consulting firm with extraordinarily close ties to Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin. Its principal, Jeff Link, has served as Harkin’s campaign manager and chief of staff. Link, too, is a former Obama staffer. The LINK Strategies web site says that Jeff Link “served as a media consultant to the Obama for President Campaign, coordinating branding, all paid media and polling in 25 states, including seven battleground states (VA, NC, FL, CO, NM, NV, MT)….”
That Edwards allegedly tried to steal the Secretary of State’s identity in order to frame Schultz for “unethical behavior in office” is no coincidence. Iowa Democrats, as Kevin Hall of the Iowa Republican points out, have mounted a campaign of false accusations against Schultz…..
A top Palestinian Authority religious leader claimed in a sermon at a major Fatah event that Muslims are obligated to kill the Jews.
Mufti Hussein
The Mufti Muhammad Hussein presented the murder of Jews by Muslims as a religious Islamic goal while celebrating the 47th anniversary of the Palestinian Authority’s Fatah faction.
An appointee of Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, the Mufti made the claim at an official Fatah event marking the founding of the largest faction in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), also led by Abbas, as well.
Citing what he said was the Hadith (the Islamic tradition attributed to Muslim prophet Muhammad), the Mufti claimed “The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stone or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: ‘O Muslim, servant of Allah (G-d), there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’ ”
Although a video of the speech was previously available on YouTube, it has been removed because it violated the site’s Terms of Service for violence.
A poll sponsored by the Israel Project found that 73 percent of Palestinian Arabs “believe” this Hadith, according to the findings of a July 2011 study by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner.
The moderator who introduced the Mufti also reiterated another “Islamic belief” — that the Jews are descendants of apes and pigs,” according to a broadcast on PA TV translated by the media watchdog agency Palestinian Media Watch (PMW).
“Our war with the descendants of the apes and pigs (ie: the Jews) is a war of religion and faith,” the moderator said.
The Mufti added to the moderator’s statement,saying that Islam’s goal is to kill the Jews.The same cleric preached in a sermon at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque in 2010 that the Jews are “enemies of Allah.”
The National Bureau of Economic Research scored the recession as ending in June, 2009. Yet, today, in the 49th month since the recession started, there has still been no real recovery, like recoveries from previous recessions in America.
Unemployment actually rose after June, 2009, and did not fall back down below that level until 18 months later in December, 2010. Instead of a recovery, America has suffered the longest period of unemployment near 9% or above since the Great Depression, under President Obama’s public policy malpractice. Even today, 49 months after the recession started, the U6 unemployment rate counting the unemployed, underemployed and discouraged workers is still 15.2%. And that doesn’t include all the workers who have fled the workforce under Obama’s economic oppression. The unemployment rate with the full measure of discouraged workers is reported at www.shadowstats.com as about 23%, which is depression level unemployment.
Today, over 4 years since the recession started, there are still almost 25 million Americans unemployed or underemployed. That includes 5.6 million who are long-term unemployed for 27 weeks, or more than 6 months. Under President Obama, America has suffered the longest period with so many in such long-term unemployment since the Great Depression.
Notably, blacks have been suffering another depression under Obama, with unemployment today, 49 months after the recession started, still at 15.8%. Black unemployment has been over 15% for 2 ½ years under Obama. Black teenage unemployment today is over 40%, where it has persisted for over 2 years as well.
Hispanics have also been suffering a depression under Obama, with unemployment today still in double digits at 11%. Hispanic unemployment has been in double digits for three years under President Obama. Over one fourth of Hispanic youths remain unemployed today, which also has persisted for years.
The Census Bureau reported in September that more Americans are in poverty today than at any time in the entire history of Census tracking poverty. Americans dependent on food stamps are at an all time high as well.
Real wages and incomes have been falling so steadily under Obama and his confused, throwback, Keynesian/neo-Marxist Obamanomics, that the Census Bureau also reported that real median family income in America has fallen all the way back to 1996 levels.
Compare Obama’s lack of a recovery 2 ½ years after the recession ended with the first 2 ½ years of the Reagan recovery. In those years under Reagan, the American economy created 8 million new jobs, the unemployment rate fell by 3.6 percentage points, real wages and incomes were jumping, and poverty had reversed an upsurge started under Carter, beginning a long term decline.
While Obama crows about 200,000 jobs created last month, the most for a month during his entire Administration, in September, 1983 the Reagan recovery less than a year after it began created 1.1 million jobs in that one month alone. Under Obama, we are still almost 6 million jobs below the peak before the recession started over 4 years ago! In the second year of the Reagan recovery, real economic growth boomed by 6.8%, the highest in 50 years.
The chief excuse of the Obama apologists is that what we have suffered was not just a recession, but a financial crisis, and, they argue, recovery from a financial crisis takes a lot longer than recovery from a recession. But that is not the experience of the American, free market, capitalist economy.
The experience of the American economy is reported in full at the National Bureau of Economic Research, as cited above – recessions since the Great Depression previously have lasted an average of 10 months, with the longest previously 16 months, and the deeper the recession the stronger the recovery. That is the standard by which the performance of Obamanomics is to be judged. Which of those American recessions was a “financial crisis” that breaks the pattern?
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
Political Arena 