Supreme Court Justices are sworn to uphold the Constitution Of The United States. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that we select Justices who have respect for that document. That's why it was fairly disturbing to discover that one particular liberal Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, does not think so highly of our Constitution:

As Egyptian officials prepare to send to trial 19 American democracy and rights workers, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg visited Cairo last week where she suggested Egyptian revolutionaries not use the U.S. Constitution as a model in the post-Arab Spring.

"I would not look to the U.S. Constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012," Ginsburg said in an interview on Al Hayat television last Wednesday. "I might look at the constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, have an independent judiciary. It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done."

Ginsburg has said in the past that she looks to foreign law when weighing issues. That is a violation of her Constitutional oath of office, but at least now we know why she does it.

When liberals speak of a government that embraces "basic human rights", they aren't talking about a government that guarantees individual liberty, as does our Bill Of Rights. They are talking about something entirely different. To liberals, "basic human rights" means the government should intercede and provide everyone with things like food, shelter, education, health care, universal pre-school, birth control, utility bill payments, welfare payments, retirement income, etc. Basically, if anyone lacks anything, liberals believe the government should provide it for them, and that it is a "right".

Nothing the government does is free, however, so when liberals provide some people with these unnamed Constitutional "rights", they must infringe on the rights of others. This is commonly known as "redistribution of wealth", which is also nowhere to be found in our Constitution.

President Obama holds the same view of our lousy Constitution as does Justice Ginsburg. He has called it "fundamentally flawed", and opined that it contains an "enormous blind spot". This Obama statement from a few years ago explains what he meant:

Obama said, “The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, as least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted.”

When liberals use the phrase "economic justice", they mean that if you have something your neighbor does not have, the government should force you to provide that thing for your neighbor. This is the essence of "redistribution of wealth", and it's also why liberals whine endlessly about income inequality (rather than focusing on the undeniable rising standard of living of all Americans over the last 100 years). A major difference between liberals and conservatives is, conservatives believe in equal opportunity for all, while liberals believe in equal outcome for all. This is also the difference between capitalism and socialism, and it explains liberal disdain for capitalism (unless liberals can use a rising stock market as evidence Obama is doing a good job, as they've been doing recently. Consistency is not liberals' strong suit). By the way, the rising American standard of living came from capitalism, not socialism, but liberals would prefer you not know that.

After a liberal Supreme Court Justice expresses her disdain for our Constitution, she's going to need some assistance in removing her foot from her mouth. Who better to provide such assistance than the liberal New York Times, who conveniently ran a column called 'We The People' Loses Appeal With People Around The World in the wake of Ginsburg's remarks. Here's a taste:

The Constitution has seen better days.

Sure, it is the nation’s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But its influence is waning.

A quarter-century later, the picture looks very different. “The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,” according to a new study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.

The study, to be published in June in The New York University Law Review, bristles with data. Its authors coded and analyzed the provisions of 729 constitutions adopted by 188 countries from 1946 to 2006, and they considered 237 variables regarding various rights and ways to enforce them.

Translation – Our Constitution is old and musty, and just not hip for these modern (left-wing) times. And why is this so ? One guess:

There are lots of possible reasons. The United States Constitution is terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights. The commitment of some members of the Supreme Court to interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning in the 18th century may send the signal that it is of little current use to, say, a new African nation. And the Constitution’s waning influence may be part of a general decline in American power and prestige.

Notice the cover for Ginsburg's behind. Liberals want more and more "rights", but oddly, they also want to end certain existing rights:

[Our Constitution] has its idiosyncrasies. Only 2 percent of the world’s constitutions protect, as the Second Amendment does, a right to bear arms. (Its brothers in arms are Guatemala and Mexico.)

Yeah. That crazy Constitution of ours allows our citizens to arm and protect themselves. Big Brother doesn't like that. A defenseless and docile (dependent) population is much easier to control. Independence is so "idiosyncratic" these days.

Liberals wish we were more like Canada:

“America is in danger, I think, of becoming something of a legal backwater,” Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court of Australia said in a 2001 interview. He said that he looked instead to India, South Africa and New Zealand.

Mr. Barak, for his part, identified a new constitutional superpower: “Canadian law,” he wrote, “serves as a source of inspiration for many countries around the world.” The new study also suggests that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, adopted in 1982, may now be more influential than its American counterpart.

The Canadian Charter is both more expansive and less absolute. It guarantees equal rights for women and disabled people, allows affirmative action and requires that those arrested be informed of their rights. On the other hand, it balances those rights against “such reasonable limits” as “can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

Groovy. I wonder why they left out the part about how Canada doesn't even have free speech. If the Canadian government thinks what you are saying is offensive (politically incorrect), they can arrest you. For one example, the Canadian government threatened to arrest conservative columnist Ann Coulter BEFORE she gave a speech in Canada. I guess Coulter was guilty of thought crimes. This is what happens when liberals start determining what is a right and what isn't. Another name for it is "oppression", and left-wingers admire it.

Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out something about rights – the more rights that are guaranteed, the more the government becomes totalitarian:

…Justice Antonin Scalia told the Senate Judiciary Committee in October. “Every banana republic in the world has a bill of rights,” he said.

“The bill of rights of the former evil empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours,” he said, adding: “We guarantee freedom of speech and of the press. Big deal. They guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of street demonstrations and protests, and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account. Whoa, that is wonderful stuff!”

I prefer to stick with individual liberty over government diktat, but that's just me. Maybe it's because I was taught that if you want something, you go out and earn it. You don't just demand that someone else give it to you for free. That seems RIGHT to me. I don't need the government to control every aspect of my life. I always thought the greatest thing about America was that here it didn't. If that concept is old and musty, then I suppose I am too.

President Obama says Jesus wants to raise taxes:

"When I talk about shared responsibility, it's because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling and at a time when we have enormous deficits, it's hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income or young people with student loans or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone," Obama said.

"But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus' teaching that, for unto whom much is given, much shall be required"

Ah, yes. If I remember correctly, it was at the Sermon On The Mount that Jesus said, "Blessed is the tax collector, for he shall forcibly extract hard-earned wages from the people and funnel it to power-hungry politicians in order to fund a bloated and corrupt spendthrift government that will use the money to engage in cronyism and buy votes". It was either that, or Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek". I can't be certain.

As with so many Obama statements, the one about Jesus is filled to the brim with falsehoods. Nobody is asking "seniors on a fixed income" or "middle-class families" or "young people with student loans" to "shoulder the burden alone". Everybody pays taxes, and the rich already pay the most. Actually, now that I think about it, nearly half of all Americans pay no income taxes. So much for "shared responsibility". How ironic it is that Obama lies in the same sentence in which he quotes Jesus. When I think of Obama, another biblical verse applies – “The tongue deviseth mischiefs; like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. Thou lovest evil more than good; and lying rather than to speak righteousness. Thou lovest all devouring words, O thou deceitful tongue” – (Ps.52:2-4).

When asked about Obama's comment, the President's Press Secretary, Jay Carney, whipped out his own devilish forked tongue to say Obama "wasn't campaigning" when he made the comment. Riiiight. Obama isn't campaigning about as often as fish aren't swimming.

Since our President is pulling out the 'What Would Jesus Do ?' card, I have a few questions.

When the government forcibly extracts the fruits of one's labors beyond that which is called for in the Constitution to fund the government, couldn't that be called stealing ? I seem to remember something in the Bible about "Thou Shalt Not Steal".

When the government raids the Social Security Trust Fund, couldn't that also be called stealing, and doesn't that hurt "seniors on a fixed income", as does Obama's payroll tax cut ?

And what about abortion ? I remember something in the Bible about "Thou Shalt Not Kill", yet, Obama is pro-abortion and ObamaCare forces religion-based healthcare providers to fund things like birth control, which would include the morning-after abortion pill. What would Jesus think about that, Mr. President ?

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) weighed in on ObamaCare's forced religious contraception coverage issue, and in typical Pelosi fashion, she had no idea what she was talking about. Pelosi said she was "standing by her fellow Catholics" in support of ObamaCare's contraception mandate on religious groups. That's nice, except for the fact that the Catholic Church is AGAINST the ObamaCare mandate:

The Obama administration's decision requiring church-affiliated employers to cover birth control was bound to cause an uproar among Roman Catholics and members of other faiths, no matter their beliefs on contraception. "It's not about preventing women from buying anything themselves, but telling the church what it has to buy, and the potential for that to go further," said Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, representing some 600 hospitals.

Liberals are always telling me religion should stay out of state business, so it should follow that they believe the state should stay out of religious matters. After all, the First Amendment to the Constitution says "Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]". Yet, liberals are supporting Obama's contraception mandate. Go figure.

Naturally, there will be costs to religious-based healthcare providers, and fines if they don't adhere to the ObamaCare mandate:

Employers that fail to provide health insurance coverage under the federal law could be fined $2,000 per employee per year. The bishops' domestic anti-poverty agency, Catholic Charities, says it employs 70,000 people nationwide. The fine for the University of Notre Dame, the most prominent Catholic school in the country, could be in the millions of dollars.

What effect do you suppose this will have on Catholic charities ? And why doesn't our Jesus-quoting President care about that ?

It's always the same with the big government types like Obama. They always think they can make better decisions with your money than you can. They always impose costs and burdens on the private sector and the business sector. They always infringe on liberty. Religious groups are concerned about where these liberal mandates on the public will end. I can answer that one. They DON'T end. NOT EVER.

After watching President Obama's State Of The Union (SOTU) speech last night, I have to say, the man simply astounds me. Obama is the ultimate politician, a very good performer. I have to give him that much. He knows how to give a speech. They say politics is the art of manipulation (or maybe it's just me saying it). Obama has that game down pat. He knows how to tell people what they want to hear, and more importantly, he knows how to leave out the parts people don't want to hear, the parts Obama doesn't want the people to know.

If you had arrived in America for the first time yesterday and listened to Obama's SOTU, you'd think things were going really well in America. If all you listened to was this President, you'd think he has done a fabulous job, because he told you he has. You wouldn't know how deeply we are in debt. You wouldn't know we have record deficits. You wouldn't know our entitlement programs are unfunded. You wouldn't know unemployment is so high. You wouldn't know our public schools are falling short. You wouldn't know our health care costs are still skyrocketing. You wouldn't know we're on an unsustainable fiscal path. You wouldn't know the federal government is borrowing 43 cents out of every dollar it spends. You wouldn't know Obama's net record on private sector job creation is below zero. You wouldn't know the federal government is spending more money than at any other time in American history barring WWII. You wouldn't know we have record numbers of people on government assistance. You wouldn't know energy costs are rising. You wouldn't know so many people had simply given up looking for work. You wouldn't know any of these things, and that's my first major problem with Obama's speech. He managed to give a State Of The Union speech without ever leveling with the American people about the actual state of the union.

The reason the President didn't level with the American people is simple – he wasn't giving a SOTU speech at all. He was giving his re-election speech. He was campaigning last night. What we witnessed was Obama's 2012 strategy.

Obama started out by giving our troops well-deserved congratulations for carrying out their missions in Iraq and Afghanistan:

These achievements are a testament to the courage, selflessness, and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces. At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example.

Yes, imagine what we could accomplish if we all worked together…and forget all about the fact that Obama and his Democratic party tried for years to LOSE the Iraq War when our President was named Bush.

Obama followed the above statement with this one:

Think about the America within our reach: A country that leads the world in educating its people. An America that attracts a new generation of high-tech manufacturing and high-paying jobs. A future where we’re in control of our own energy, and our security and prosperity aren’t so tied to unstable parts of the world. An economy built to last, where hard work pays off, and responsibility is rewarded.

Okay, Mr. President, I am thinking about these things…and I can't help but remember that you are against school vouchers that would help the poorest kids in the worst schools attend better schools. I can't help but remember that your party opposed No Child Left Behind to measure school performance. I can't help but remember that you put the special interests of the teachers unions above all else. I can't help but remember how your party's anti-business, anti-wealth, anti-capitalist, high tax rhetoric and legislation does precisely the opposite of attracting high-tech, high-paying jobs to this country. I can't help but remember how you opposed energy independence by shooting down the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada. I can't help but remember how your party opposes drilling in ANWR. Why aren't we "working together" on these things ??? Why is it only "working together" when you get what you want ?

Obama spoke of the promise of America:

…the basic American promise that if you worked hard, you could do well enough to raise a family, own a home, send your kids to college, and put a little away for retirement.

Sure, Barry. Your Democrats pushed for higher home ownership for decades…and then when those policies blew up in all our faces and brought the economy to it's knees, you pretended you had nothing to do with it. Your Democrats created Social Security for our retirements…and then the government raided the Social Security Trust Fund, leaving us nothing but a bunch of IOU's to fund our retirements. And now you're doing the same thing to federal pension programs. Excuse me if I'm not overly impressed with the way we've been "working together" up until now.

As is Obama's habit, he splits the world into an "us vs. them" battle:

We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules. What’s at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. We have to reclaim them.

Liberals always lose me with this scarecrow tactic. On the heels of his "we should all work together" remarks, Obama immediately begins splitting us apart, putting the wealthy into one box and everyone else into another box. That's not how things actually work. In reality, we're all in the same box. For example, if Steve Jobs becomes a billionaire by creating and selling his products, that in turn creates jobs and prosperity for others. It creates economic growth and opportunity. That's how "everyone gets a fair shot". It's a symbiotic relationship, but liberals pretend the wealth of a person like Steve Jobs somehow comes at the expense of someone else. Liberals pretend Steve Jobs is somehow stealing from the poor. Their position is absurd and counterproductive.

Not everything in Obama's speech was wrong, however. He made some good points, and many of those points should be attractive to Republicans. In fact, entire segments of Obama's speech sounded like things Republicans have been saying for years, as follows:

…we have a huge opportunity, at this moment, to bring manufacturing back. But we have to seize it…companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world. It makes no sense, and everyone knows it.

Correct, Mr. President. I've been telling your liberal brethren that for years. They never believe me. Hopefully, they will believe you. What are the President's specific plans ?:

First, if you’re a business that wants to outsource jobs, you shouldn’t get a tax deduction for doing it. That money should be used to cover moving expenses for companies like Master Lock that decide to bring jobs home.

Second, no American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas. From now on, every multinational company should have to pay a basic minimum tax. And every penny should go towards lowering taxes for companies that choose to stay here and hire here in America.

Third, if you’re an American manufacturer, you should get a bigger tax cut. If you’re a high-tech manufacturer, we should double the tax deduction you get for making your products here. And if you want to relocate in a community that was hit hard when a factory left town, you should get help financing a new plant, equipment, or training for new workers.

So my message is simple. It is time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America. Send me these tax reforms, and I will sign them right away.

Hmmm. That wasn't very specific, but it will play well. If the President wants Congress to "send me these tax reforms", it would be helpful if he spelled them out. Obama also co-opted the Republicans 'All Of The Above" position on energy.

No Obama speech would be complete without his usual basket of distortions and falsehoods. I don't call him the Great Prevaricator for nothing. Here are a few:

I set a goal of doubling U.S. exports over five years. With the bipartisan trade agreements we signed into law, we’re on track to meet that goal ahead of schedule.

Facts – U.S. exports were $1.842 trillion in 2008 before Obama. U.S. exports were $1.837 trillion in 2010 (link). Doesn't sound like were "on track" to double exports to me.

On immigration, Obama said:

I believe as strongly as ever that we should take on illegal immigration. That’s why my administration has put more boots on the border than ever before. That’s why there are fewer illegal crossings than when I took office.

It's true that illegal border crossings are down, but it's the recession that accomplished it. Fewer illegals come here for jobs when there aren't any jobs.

Here's one that made me want to throw a brick at my television:

During the Great Depression, America built the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge. After World War II, we connected our states with a system of highways. Democratic and Republican administrations invested in great projects that benefited everybody, from the workers who built them to the businesses that still use them today.

In the next few weeks, I will sign an executive order clearing away the red tape that slows down too many construction projects. But you need to fund these projects. Take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home.

There’s never been a better time to build, especially since the construction industry was one of the hardest hit when the housing bubble burst. Of course, construction workers weren’t the only ones who were hurt.

Gee, if only we had spent some money on infrastructure during Obama's reign…like the $800 billion stimulus package that was passed !!! That was sold to us as "shovel ready projects" to rebuild our infrastructure, but it seems our infrastructure was NOT rebuilt with that money. Unbelievable.

Here's another example of Obama adopting a faux Republican stance in a pretense of bipartisanship:

There’s no question that some regulations are outdated, unnecessary, or too costly. In fact, I’ve approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his.

LOL. Obama as a regulation reducer ??? Not hardly. Here are the facts:

The report says the Obama administration has "imposed 75 new major regulations costing more than $380 billion over ten years." In addition, the report says there are 219 more "economically significant regulations" in the works which will cost businesses $100 million or more each year — for a minimum cost of $21 billion over ten years. The number of pages in the Federal Register, in which such rules are recorded, is increasing rapidly, the report says, and "pages devoted to final rules rose by 20 percent between 2009 and 2010, and proposed rules have increased from 2,044 in 2009 to 2,439 in 2010."

But the biggest laugh-out-loud line of all from the Great Prevaricator was this one:

I’m a Democrat. But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.

Ho-ly crap-salad. I can't believe he said that. Is this the same guy who has increased federal spending by $900 billion per year in only three years on the job ? Is this the same guy who created the largest new entitlement since Medicare ? Is this the same guy who passed an $800 stimulus ? Is this the same guy who proposes new federal spending for everything imaginable, and is running up record debt because of it ? Allow me to explain what liberals believe people cannot do for themselves. Liberals believe people can't feed themselves, house themselves, obtain medical care, save for their own retirements, choose a school for their kids to attend, choose what food to eat, choose a mortgage, pay for college, pay their energy bills, understand credit card terms, find a job without the government's help, invest wisely, etc, etc. I could go on and on. About the only thing liberals believe people CAN do for themselves is pay taxes. Outside of that, they think we're a bunch of helpless children who wouldn't know enough to come in out of the rain without the loving assistance of Big Brother.

If you want to know the true state of the union, you'll get a much more accurate picture from the Republican response to Obama's speech, from Gov. Mitch Daniels:

Voter ID frauds: A few weeks ago, I excoriated the Obama Justice Dept. for blocking South Carolina's voter ID law. Every time I mention voter ID laws, liberals tell me voter ID is racist (because voter ID is applied equally to all voters, by definition it cannot be racist). Liberals also tell me there is no voter fraud problem to justify the implementation of voter ID. As usual, liberals are lying:

South Carolina's attorney general has notified the U.S. Justice Department of potential voter fraud.

Attorney General Alan Wilson sent details of an analysis by the Department of Motor Vehicles to U.S. Attorney Bill Nettles.

In a letter dated Thursday, Wilson says the analysis found 953 ballots cast by voters listed as dead. In 71 percent of those cases, ballots were cast between two months and 76 months after the people died. That means they "voted" up to 6 1/3 years after their death.

Because voter ID laws would have prevented every one of these fraudulent votes by dead people, I'm left once again to conclude that liberals are in FAVOR of voter fraud. There is no other rational explanation for their position on the issue.
====
On The Brink: The European Union announced an oil embargo against Iran in response to Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program. Iran's response:

Tensions in the Gulf could reach a breaking point as a senior Iranian official said Iran would “definitely” close the Strait of Hormuz if an EU oil embargo disrupted the export of crude oil, the semi-official Fars news agency reports.

The announcement came in response to a decision by the European Union on Monday to impose an oil embargo on Iran over the country’s alleged nuclear weapons program.

“The pressure of sanctions is designed to try and make sure that Iran takes seriously our request to come to the table,” EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said.

The Strait of Hormuz is the vital link between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

It is also one of the most strategic chokepoints in the world when it comes to oil transit.

With world oil output estimated at some 88 million barrels per day in 2011, the US Energy Information Administration estimated that some 17 million of those barrels passed through the Strait.

If economic sanctions sufficiently pressure Iran to retaliate by closing down the Strait, nearly 20 per cent of worldwide oil trade would be impacted, resulting in a massive spike in global energy costs.

However, with Washington’s decision to deploy a second carrier strike group in the Gulf, the EU’s attempt to pressure Iran economically could greatly increase the likelihood of all-out war in the region.

If Iran tries to close the Strait Of Hormuz, there will be war, period, and this time, it really will be what liberals have been crying wolf about for years, a "war for oil". The reality is, a closed Strait Of Hormuz would bring the west to it's knees economically. The United States will never allow that to happen.
===
Dismal State Of The Union: Here's an opinion/analysis piece from the Washington Times that hits the mark. Not much for me to add to it:

There is one person — one American among the 300 million of us — who is not to blame for the state of the union. Everyone else, each of you, in some small or large way, bears some share of the blame, but not this guy. Not one little bit.

This guy is Barack Obama. He is not the least bit to blame for the dismal state of the U.S. economy. George W. Bush is, for sure, and that evil Dick Cheney, oh, no doubt. House Speaker John A. Boehner — evil, too — is, of course, to blame. But guess what? So is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, and every Democrat in the House and Senate.

Now, President Truman made it very clear: The buck stops with him. No passing the buck for that guy. But Mr. Obama blames everyone but himself. Mr. Bush, he says, left the nation in a ditch, a deep ditch, and he’s been digging out since he took office. And Congress? Those guys are just plain awful, he says. So mean. Wah, they won’t do anything I want done! Mr. Obama feels so sure about it that he’s basing his re-election campaign on bashing Capitol Hill.

But with the president delivering his State of the Union speech to Congress Tuesday night, let’s pause here to take as hard look at the real state of America, by the numbers, using only cold, hard facts.

The unemployment rate when Mr. Obama was elected was 6.8 percent; today it is 8.5 percent — at least that’s the official number. In reality, the Financial Times writes, “if the same number of people were seeking work today as in 2007, the jobless rate would be 11 percent.”

In addition, there are now fewer payroll jobs in America than there were in 2000 — 12 years ago — and now, 40 percent of those jobs are considered “low paying,” up 10 percent from when President Reagan took office. The number of self-employed has dropped 2 million to 14.5 million in just six years.

Regular gasoline per gallon cost $1.68 in January 2009. Today, it’s $3.39 — that’s a 102 percent increase in just three years. (By the way, if you’re keeping score at home, gas was $1.40 a gallon when George W. Bush took office in 2001, $1.68 when he left office — a 20 percent increase.)

Electricity bills have also skyrocketed, with households now paying a record $1,420 annually on average, up some $300.

Some 48 percent of all Americans — 146.4 million — are considered by the Census Bureau either as “low-income” or living in poverty, up 4 million from when Mr. Obama took office; 57 percent of all children in America now live in such homes.

Since December 2008, a month before Mr. Obama took office, food-stamp use has increased 46 percent. Total spending has more than doubled in just four years to a record high of $75 billion. In 2011, more than 46 million people — about one in seven Americans — got food stamps. That’s 14 million more than when Mr. Obama took office.

Median household income has dropped nearly 7 percent in the last six years, taking inflation into account. What’s more, nearly 20 percent of males age 25 to 34 now live with their parents.

Low- and middle-income Americans 65 and older now hold more than $10,000 in credit card debt, up 26 percent since 2005. The average age of the American car is 10 years; in 1990, it was 6.5 years old (by the way, in 1985, Americans bought 11 million cars; in 2009, less than half that, 5.4 million).

On the macro side, America’s annual budget has jumped to $3.8 trillion — and yet the United States brings in only about $2.1 trillion in revenue. The U.S. trade deficit for 2011 was $558 billion. America’s total public debt stands at $15.23 trillion; in January 2009, the debt was $10.62 trillion. Mr. Obama is on pace to borrow $6.2 trillion in just one term — more debt than was amassed by all presidents from Washington through Bill Clinton combined. The debt is rising by $4.2 billion every day — $175 million per hour, nearly $3 million per minute.

So, America, that is the State of Your Union. But remember, Mr. Obama had not one thing to do with it. So don’t blame him when you go to the polls. Blame everyone else, especially yourself.

The era of big government is back with a vengeance, and has been for the last decade. The negative results are plain to see, and President Barack "The Buck Stops There" Obama is preparing to argue that the answer is…BIGGER government, where the lines between pubic and private enterprise are blurred even further. Heaven help us if we give this man a second term. American liberty hangs in the balance.

One of my biggest problems with liberals is their predilection to manufacture phony, if not downright absurd, political arguments. Today's post is about one of those phony arguments, the left's outrageous phony outrage over state voter ID laws.

President Obama's Justice Dept. has blocked the state of South Carolina from implementing it's voter ID law, which would require voters to present photo identification at the polling place prior to voting. This is a pretty curious move, seeing as how 31 states already have some form of voter ID law in place, and seeing as how the Supreme Court has already rejected a challenge to the Indiana voter ID law, with the liberal Justice Stephens writing the majority opinion in that case. Here's what Stephens wrote about the reasons for voter ID laws in the Indiana case:

…flagrant examples of such [voter] fraud in other parts of the country have been documented throughout this Nation's history by respected historians and journalists, that occasional examples have surfaced in recent years, and that Indiana's own experience with fraudulent voting in the 2003 Democratic primary for East Chicago Mayor – though perpetrated using absentee ballots and not in-person fraud – demonstrate that not only is the risk of voter fraud real but that it could affect the outcome of a close election.

There is no question about the legitimacy or importance of the State's interest in counting only the votes of eligible voters. Moreover, the interest in orderly administration and accurate recordkeeping provides a sufficient justification for carefully identifying all voters participating in the election process. While the most effective method of preventing election fraud may well be debatable, the propriety of doing so is perfectly clear.

That's it in a nutshell. Voter ID laws help prevent voter fraud, and we all want our elections to be honest…or at least most of us do. Many liberals, in their typical phony manner, attempt to redefine the issue and cast it in racial terms. Here's one example, from that left-wing rag, The Nation. Listen to how they recast the issue:

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) took an important step in combating the epidemic of Republican vote suppression efforts on Friday. DOJ blocked a South Carolina law requiring voters to present photo identification, because the law would disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters.

Notice how The Nation magically transforms "voter ID" into "voter suppression". Presto Change-o, and Voila!, with one misleading liberal sentence we now have a phony liberal manufactured controversy.

There are so many things wrong with the liberal stance here that it almost isn't worth listing them, but I will anyway. First of all, the voter ID laws don't apply only to minorities. They apply to ALL VOTERS, thus they are not discriminatory. Second, the voter ID states offer the ID's for free, thus there is no poverty excuse for liberals to cite. Third, we show ID's for all kinds of things, and no liberal groups are raising arguments of discrimination or disenfranchisement in these other areas. Here are some examples of when Americans are required to show ID – when cashing a check, when opening a bank account, when purchasing alcohol, when purchasing cigarettes, when purchasing a firearm, when using a credit card, when entering a nightclub, when going to an R-rated movie, when renting a DVD, when boarding a plane, when applying for a passport, when entering government buildings, when picking up a package from the Post Office, when renting a car, when receiving a driver's license, when buying a house, when going through Customs, when entering the White House…

Are minorities being "disenfranchised" in all the above instances I cited ? Of course not. Only a nut would think so…so why all the liberal hullaballoo over voter ID laws ? There is no rational explanation, but there are some explanations, albeit dark and ugly ones. Because voter ID laws are not in the least discriminatory, despite the phony claims of liberals, there must be other reasons for liberals to detest them. Here's the list of possibilities I came up with…

1. Liberals are afraid they will lose the illegal votes that usually go to Democrats.
2. Liberals want to rig elections by sending illegal voters to the polls. They are angry that their attempts at voter fraud are being thwarted.
3. Liberals think minorities are inferior, and cannot be held to the same standards as others.
4. Liberals will never miss a chance to cast Republicans as racists, no matter how baseless the charge.

Sick stuff, but these are the only explanations for the phony liberal outrage that I can see. All other liberal excuses are as thin as a reed, and the real outrage here is that the U.S. Justice Dept. is actually trying to block states from preventing voter fraud. And what a coincidence it is that Obama's Justice Dept. is acting now, when our very next election decides Obama's future as President. Welcome to the Obama-nation, kiddies, where up is down, fair is unfair, and division is unity. The Great Prevaricator has struck again.

CNN exit polls from the 2008 presidential race yielded some interesting results, as follows:

Voting by race and gender
—————
White men voted 57-41% for McCain.
White women voted 53-46% for McCain.

Black men voted 95-5% for Obama.
Black women voted 96-3% for Obama.

Latino men voted 64-33% for Obama.
Latino women voted 68-30% for Obama.

Other races voted 64-32% for Obama.

In addition to his strength with minority voters, Obama had a significant advantage with young voters and lower income voters. I've read reports in the past that Obama won the college graduate vote (liberals like to pretend this makes them smarter), but that also depends on the race of the college graduate. White college graduates voted 51-47% for McCain. Non-white college graduates voted 75-22% for Obama. As for party affiliation, Democrats and Republicans voted like Democrats and Republicans usually do. Not much to tell there. The story is the independents, who voted for Obama 52-44% overall, but once again, that vote also hinged on race. White independents voted for McCain, 49-47%.

I'm not leading up to any grand discussion of race by citing these statistics. What I'm leading up to is a discussion of 2012 campaign strategy, particularly the strategy of the Democrats. That strategy has been obvious to me for a long time, but it was nice to finally see it in writing, as I did this morning. The writing was done by a left-wing think tank, the Center For American Progress (CFAP), which is run by former Clintonista John Podesta and funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros (aren't the terms "left-wing" and "billionaire" supposed to be a contradiction in terms ? How can someone be both ? Maybe we should check in with the Occupy movement's brain cell for clarification. The Occupiers can form a circle, beat on some tom-toms, do some bong hits, and get back to us with an answer in 3-6 months). Anyway, the CFAP (which is not to be confused with the PFJ) has produced a guide for Obama's 2012 re-election, called The Path To 270: Demographics versus Economics in the 2012 Presidential Election. 270 is the number of electoral college votes it takes to win the presidency. Here are some of the CFAP's observations:

With a little under one year to go before the 2012 presidential election, next year’s battle looks increasingly competitive, with ongoing economic distress and a highly energized Republican base potentially neutralizing the incumbency advantage that President Barack Obama would traditionally hold…In August 2011, Gallup reported record low public approval of President Obama’s handling of the economy, with barely one-quarter (26 percent) approving of the president’s performance on this key indicator. No president in the past 50 years has been re-elected with unemployment as high as it is today. Historically, administrations with unemployment problems have seem them mitigated with significant employment change ahead of an election.

Translation – the economy stinks, and the advantage that gave Obama over the Republican nominee in 2008 now works against Obama. If the 2012 election is about Obama's record and the economy, he loses.

…it is clear that two large forces will ultimately determine the outcome: the shifting demographic balance of the American electorate, and the objective reality and voter perception of the economy in key battleground states. The central questions of the election are thus fairly straightforward. Will the rising electorate of communities of color, the Millennial generation, professionals, single women, and seculars that pushed Obama to victory in 2008 be sufficient and mobilized enough to ensure his re-election in 2012?

Translation – the "shifting demographic base" means that white people comprise an ever falling percentage of the electorate, and minorities comprise an ever rising percentage of the electorate. Latinos in particular are the fastest rising demographic. The percentage of white voters in 2008 was the lowest in election history, and that trend will continue. The Democrats hope to appeal to the rising minority demographic to counter their disadvantage on the economy. The Democrats also count on getting the votes of young people, single women, and the non-religious. What's interesting about this to me is who this "progressive" vision leaves out – white men, married white women, Christians, and adults. I'm not sure who the CFAP is referring to when it says it wants the vote of "professionals". Maybe they meant to say "professors". I consider most adult working people to be professionals, and they aren't particularly fond of the tax and spend policies of Democrats. Successful professional people tend to vote Republican. They don't want their hard-earned wages to be "redistributed" to someone who didn't earn them.

The financial crisis and the Great Recession have severely clouded the electoral picture, making it clear that 2008 marked only the potential for a new progressive alignment in American elections, rather than its consolidation.

Translation – The "progressives" hoped Wall Street's sins would result in an anti-capitalist backlash that would bring the socialist policies of leftists into favor. That has not happened to any large extent, and remains confined to fringe elements like the Occupiers. America has not yet lost it's collective mind and decided to eat the rich. Thus, the "progressives" have more work to do.

CFAP restates it's conclusions:

As we’ve previously argued in other CAP reports (see “New Progressive America,” “State of American Political Ideology, 2009” and “Demographic Change and the Future of the Parties”), the shifting demographic composition of the electorate—rising percentages of communities of color, single and highly educated women, Millennial generation voters, secular voters, and educated whites living in more urbanized states or more urbanized parts of states—clearly favors Democrats and has increased the relative strength of the party in national elections in recent years. In contrast, the Republican Party’s coalition of older, whiter, more rural, and evangelical voters is shrinking and becoming more geographically concentrated and less important to the overall political landscape of the country.

In CFAP's view, the Grand Old Party is just that…old. And as they say on New Year's day, it's out with the old and in with the new. In this case, what is jettisoned from the "progressive" coalition is small town white Christian America. Screw Norman Rockwell. The "progressives" don't care about him. He's so yesterday.

Given the voting demographic the "progressives" hope to capture, what policies do you suppose they might endorse ? Might they endorse wealth redistribution, higher taxes for successful people, no taxes for the less successful, big new entitlement and government spending initiatives, lax immigration policies, higher minimum wages, more government re-engineering of society, etc ? You're darn tootin' they would. Would they demonize wealthy and successful people, act like success is an accident of birth as opposed to being the result of hard work, pile demand after demand onto the shoulders of the business sector, and try to control the minds of our children via a monopoly on government education ??? Absolutely. And if all these "progressive" policies have a negative economic effect on the country, lead to higher prices, fewer jobs, an overall poorer citizenry, stagnant economic growth, the erosion of our founding principles of liberty, and an end to the American dream, do the "progressives" care ? No, they certainly do not. After all, they have election battles to win, and class warfare is their weapon of choice. If someone has their hand out, the "progressives" intend to fill that hand, and the consequences be damned.

The Lord Of The Flies movement takes baby steps…

All Animals Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others: “We need to limit the amount of food we’re putting out to curb the influx of derelicts.” – OWS kitchen volunteer Rafael Moreno

All Animals Are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others, Part II: "If you’re going to come here and get our food, bedding and clothing, have books and medical supplies for no charge, they need to give back. There’s a lot of takers here and they feel entitled. – OWS protestor Lauren Digiola (link)

Yes, we certainly can't have any entitlement-seekers infecting the Occupy movement of…um…entitlement-seekers. Gotta keep those losers out. The stuff the Occupiers have is THEIRS, dammit !!! They can't be expected to redistribute THEIR wealth to the less fortunate !!! We Are The 99%…except for those homeless derelicts !!!
===
Robbing Peter To Pay Paul: "With nine days to go before the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) faces default, a Senate committee on Wednesday is expected to vote on a new plan to address the crisis. … The legislation would … provide USPS billions in cash from taxpayers. Specifically, it would hand over some $7 billion in supposedly 'surplus' contributions the government has made to the Federal Employees Retirement System. Such temporary surpluses, however, are common and are typically erased by normal financial swings or amortization over time. Transfer of the entire pot to USPS leaves taxpayers vulnerable if USPS later falls behind (which, given its condition, is not unlikely) while allowing needed structural reforms to be delayed. … USPS, and mail delivery itself, faces an uncertain future. Comprehensive change is needed to prevent massive losses and virtual bankruptcy. The reforms being considered by the Senate, however, fall short — while putting taxpayers even more at risk for the consequences of failure." –The Heritage Foundation's James Gattuso

I call this the Social Security financial oversight model. When the government sees a pile of money, it can't keep it's grubby mitts off of it. Btw, there is about $17.5 trillion sitting in the retirement funds of Americans if you add all of them together. How much do you think the government money-grubbers would love to gain control of that pile of cash ??? You'd have to subtract the $2.5 trillion sitting in the Social Security Trust Fund from the $17.5 trillion amount, because those SS funds don't really exist (the government already "borrowed" that money), but still, that leaves $15 trillion in our retirement funds, which is almost the exact amount of the national debt. When the cash-strapped government is already thinking about "borrowing" money from the pensions of federal employees, how long will it be until your IRA's and 401K's are taken over ? Lest you think I'm engaging in some fanciful paranoid delusion…the Obama administration already has plans to takeover your 401K's, which it could then "borrow" from. Beware.
===
National Debate Loser: And what can we say about Rick Perry ? Trying to list the federal departments he would eliminate, Perry had an epic debate brain fart instead…

"Commerce, Education and the, uh, what's the third one there? Let's see…The third agency of government I would — I would do away with, Education, uh, the, uh, Commerce and, let's see,…I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops."

Doh !!!! I think the third government department Perry was going for there is Lingerie, or maybe Junior Miss. Commodore Perry's presidential battleship may have just sunk.
===
When Life Gets Tough, Make Things Up: "From a policy standpoint I think it's really important to know that President Obama was a job creator from day one. Now, was the ditch that we were in so deep that when you're talking to people and they still don't have a job, that's any consolation to them? No. But I'll tell you this: If President Obama and the House congressional Democrats had not acted, we would be at 15 percent unemployment." –House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

For the record, under Obama, the alleged "job creator from day one", we have lost about 2.4 million jobs, and nobody outside Pelosi's vivid imagination believes unemployment would have been at 15 percent without Obama's failed stimulus package. Pelosi is a perpetual brain fart.
===
Top 1% Denier: Here's an exchange between left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore and a CBS reporter…

Reporter: How are you helping these [Occupy protesters]?
Moore: Because I do well, I want taxes raised on people who do well, including mine.
Reporter: How are you helping these people with your $50 million?
Moore: I don't have $50 million.
Reporter: That's what it's rumored you are worth.
Moore: Well, really. Is that what you do is sell rumors?
Reporter: We're asking you for the truth.
Moore: You're just punk media is all you are. You lie. You lie to people. Stop lying to people. Stop lying.
Reporter: Are you not part of the 1 percent?
Moore: Just don't lie, okay?

I'm still waiting for the FIRST left-wing multi-millionaire like Moore to give their own personal riches away for the "cause". When they start doing that, I'll start taking them more seriously, and not a moment before. Before the wealth redistributors start spending other people's money, how about they spend their own ???
===
Unitary Executive Back In Style: "If the Republican Congress won't join us, we're going to continue to act on our own to make the changes that we can to bring relief to middle-class families and those aspiring to get in the middle class". – VP Joe Biden

Whatever you say, Joe, but what about those 15 jobs-producing bills the Republican House has already passed that are sitting in the Senate waiting for the Democrats to bring them up ? In addition, why does every Democrat "jobs package" have to end up costing the taxpayers between $450 billion and $1 trillion ? Do Democrats simply not know our national debt is about to pass $15 trillion any day now ? Maybe their entire party has had a brain fart. The Democrats idea of stimulus is to take a bucket of water out of one end of the pool and pour it into the other end. They seem to believe they can fill up the pool this way. It won't ever work, because it CAN'T work. The real answer is to take money out of the government's hands and put it back into the hands of the private sector where it can do some good. The private sector is where growth comes from, not the government.
===
And To Think, THIS Is the Guy They Call The Father Of The Democratic Party: "We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." – Thomas Jefferson

While I'm quoting Jefferson, who in today's society believes these words ?…

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition". – Thomas Jefferson

Not the political left, I can tell you that for sure.

Peter Schiff is a financial expert, the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital Inc. He's been in the financial industry for a very long time, and he's part of the top 1% the Occupy Wall Street protestors are going after. Watch as Schiff goes into the crowd of OWSers and asks them straightforward questions about taxes and business. The lack of straight answers from the OWSers illustrates their simplemindedness. Once you get past their canned talking points, there's nothing else there.

I have to give Schiff credit for walking into that crowd. Brave man. My favorite part was when one of the OWSers finally said 35% was Schiff's "fair share", and Schiff replied, "that would be a huge tax cut for me". Oops. OWSer heads have clearly been stuffed full of economic fairy tales and divisive class warfare rhetoric (see: President Obama and friends). They simply don't have a clue.

Now all liberals reading this can robotically accuse me of acting on behalf of the top 1%, though I have no idea why I would want to do that, being one of the 99% myself. Maybe it's because they believe I hate the poor, or something equally ridiculous. What liberals will never do is attempt to understand HOW JOBS ARE CREATED, or admit that I might have a legitimate desire to see them created to benefit the people, and that's what informs my thinking on tax policy. That would be waaaay too honest for liberals. After all, it's harder to demonize someone who has good intentions. You must turn them into a devil first. If you don't believe me, read a little of the liberal Blog Of Mass Destruction. That is a prime example of persuasion via demonization. It's basically an endless stream of name-calling, negative characterizations, and attribution of bad intent toward anything non-liberal. It's a pure hate-fest.

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain once said foreign policy was not his strong suit.

And he keeps proving himself correct.

Yesterday, Cain said he might release all the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay in exchange for one American hostage.

Apparently, Mr. Cain didn't get the memo – we don't negotiate with terrorists ! Can you imagine an American president releasing Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and friends under ANY circumstances ? I can't.

Cain later said he "misspoke", using the favored obtuse verb of the political class. I would have preferred if Cain said "I was totally out to lunch on that question".

This isn't Cain's first unclear foreign policy position. When asked about the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, Cain originally said he was against it, but then changed his mind and said he was for it. He's also been vacillating on his comment about putting an electric fence on the Mexican border. He said he was joking (leave the jokes to Jon Stewart, Mr. Cain. You are supposed to be running for President), and then he said maybe he would put up the electric fence. Pick a position, Cain. These are not small issues.

As stated at one of the above links, you get the impression that Cain is making up his foreign policy answers as he goes along. As Cain says himself, he is not a politician. If that means he doesn't read from a prepared script or a teleprompter like Obama does, that's one thing. That's a plus. But if it means he hasn't really thought through some of these foreign policy issues, that's something else entirely. That means he's unprepared.

Cain also has a problem with his 999 tax plan. Namely…Congress will NEVER pass it. Democrats and Republicans alike have problems with it. One of the architects of Cain's 999 plan, economist Stephon Moore, is already saying the 9% national sales tax should be removed and replaced with a 9% payroll tax. This reflects the conservative concern that Cain is opening up another revenue stream for the federal government, when the feds have plenty of revenue streams already. Conservatives fear the 9-9-9 plan could eventually become the 20-20-20 plan. Democrats are concerned that the tax is regressive and raises taxes on the poorer segments of society (in political parlance, the word "regressive" means everyone is taxed at the same rate, which is…bad?…for some reason. Democrats favor discriminating against people).

In the polls, Cain and Romney are neck and neck…for the moment.

And now for a little comic relief, let's play…

Are You Smarter Than A Wall Street Occupier ? (Isn't everyone ?)

It's a quiz given by New York magazine to the Zacotti park squatters, and yes, they are as clueless as they seem. Nearly 90% of them don't know the top marginal tax rate for the "rich". 84% of them don't know what the Dodd-Frank Act is. 94% of them mistakenly believe the government spends more on the military than on health care and pensions. The Occupiers don't know anything about the very issues they are protesting. Classic.

"It is hard to understand politics if you are hung up on reality. Politicians leave reality to others. What matters in politics is what you can get the voters to believe, whether it bears any resemblance to reality or not". – Thomas Sowell

Liberals from here to eternity are wringing their hands over the alleged austerity brought to our federal government by those Tea Party-led House Republican insurgents. Liberals are certain that all this crazy slashing of government spending will send the country into economic chaos, because everyone knows the only good economy is one with a $1.3 trillion deficit (see Sowell quote above). President Obama is on the campaign trail road right now trying to convince Americans that we must spend tons more money we don't have to fix the economy. Listen to what Reuters says in the cited link:

Democrats have spent much of the year playing defense as Republicans aligned with the conservative Tea Party movement have won record spending cuts in a series of budget battles.

With the recovery stalling, Democrats have shifted the focus from austerity back to stimulus, where they believe they hold a winning hand.

And this:

A July article in USA Today [said], "Already in 2011, softer government spending has sapped growth."

Jared Bernstein, former chief economic adviser to Vice President Biden, wrote over the summer that "government spending cutbacks have been a large drag on growth in recent quarters and have led to sharp losses in state and local employment."

Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argued in September that "the turn toward austerity (is) a major factor in our growth slowdown."

All those "record spending cuts" and "government spending cutbacks" sure sound like austerity, no ?

But just for kicks, and because people tend to play fast and loose with the truth when it comes to politics, let's check the record. This is from Investors.com:

…data released by the Treasury Department on Friday show that, so far, there haven't been any spending cuts at all.

In fact, in the first nine months of this year, federal spending was $120 billion higher than in the same period in 2010, the data show. That's an increase of almost 5%. And deficits during this time were $23.5 billion higher.

So, during this period of so-called Tea Party-led "austerity", federal spending actually INCREASED by 5%. Liberals are referring to a 5% spending INCREASE as "austerity". Furthermore, federal spending has increased by 97% over the last ten years, and state spending has increased by 72% over the last ten years. We aren't living in anything close to an age of austerity. We're living in an age of skyrocketing government spending…and liberals, as usual, are being less than honest, for the reasons stated above by Mr. Sowell.

Above is a photo of the Occupy Wall Street protesters tussling with police as they blocked off the Brooklyn Bridge:

About 700 protesters were arrested after a horde of anti-Wall Street demonstrators swarmed the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday, halting traffic for more than three hours and clashing with cops on the famed span. Up to 100 cars were left stranded as the loud, angry crowd covered the crossing from end to end in an inflamed day of demonstrations against high unemployment, bank bailouts and financial pain for the masses.

One irate driver, a Ground Zero construction worker, was livid. “I work my ass off all day, and these goddamned hippies close down the Brooklyn Bridge so I can’t get home?” he said. “This ain’t right!”

No, it certainly ain't right, but the OWSers don't care about that. In their quest for attention, they don't care about anyone else's rights, just their own. I'm not sure how the OWSers associate the Brooklyn Bridge with Wall Street greed, or how they think blocking traffic for hours is going to accomplish anything other than pissing people off. The arrest of the 700 was the largest mass arrest since 1200 lefties were arrested at the 2004 Republican National Convention. I bet the media is going to be all aflutter over this spectre of left-wing violence….or not. Media hysteria is reserved for peaceful right-wing protests. When lefties get arrested, the subject magically morphs into police brutality.

I have a few observations:
1) Who knew there were still hippies ? Far out, man. Let's have a concert ! We can call it it Wallstock.
2) Isn't this anti-Wall Street protest about three years late ? At least the Tea Partiers showed up to protest the bailouts AS THE BAILOUTS WERE HAPPENING. Where were the OWSers ? I assume they overslept, as hippies are prone to do.
3) If the OWSers were really looking for jobs, they wouldn't be protesting for weeks on end. Also, as stated in the above link, lots of OWSers are making trips to the ATM machine in between railing against corporate personhood and chanting "People Over Profits". They don't seem to mind when the corporate machine spits out twenty dollar bills at them.

Btw, has anyone noticed that the OWSers are overwhelmingly white ??? This seemed to be a big issue with the Tea Party protests for some reason, so I thought I'd mention it. I know how concerned liberals are about this type of thing.

The Occupy Wall Street protesters, to date, have been rebels without a cause. No, strike that. They have a cause, or at least a vague idea of a cause. The OWSers know they're against capitalist greed, namely Wall Street, but unlike most protest movements, the OWSers haven't had any list of demands or solutions. Their message, if there is one, is muddled. You'll see a guy with an "Equal Taxation For All" sign standing next to a guy holding an "Eat The Rich. 90% Top Tax Rate" sign. Rather than rebels without a cause, you might say they've been rebels without a clue.

But a message of sorts is forming. This comes from the Brooklyn Bridge fiasco:

Once the demonstrations began, the crowd bellowed together as they marched: “Show me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like!” Organizers of the amorphous group issued an ominous “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City,” Thursday night.
“No true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power,” the group declared. “We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments.”

And there you have it. According to the OWSers, democracy looks like, um, a small group of people imposing it's will on the general public. Yes, how very democratic of the OWSers, assuming the word "democratic" is synonymous with "mob rule". I'll have to check my Webster's. Something seems amiss. The rest of that OWSer philosophy sounds all too familiar. If only we could get rid of those private corporations who "run our governments", then we'd live in a world of "justice", without "oppression", and….blah, blah, blah. It's all been said a thousand times before. Some countries have even succeeded in getting rid of those private "robber barons" (USSR, Cuba, pre-market Communist China, etc). The only thing that has ever happened when free enterprise is repealed is that the government becomes an all-powerful tyrant where the people have no rights whatsoever, and no economic recourse whatsover. The people become serfs controlled 100% by their government overlords. At least with corporations, the participation of the public is voluntary. We don't have to buy their products or do business with any corporation. When the government is all-powerful, it FORCES you to bend to it's will. In the "true democracy" of the OWSers, individual choice is obliterated. What emerges from the ashes of free enterprise is totalitarianism. If that's OWS "democracy", you can count me out.

It seems some of the OWSers have developed a list of demands, which I call 'Repeal Reality And Replace With Economic Suicide'. Some of the individual ideas are not terrible, but when you take them all together…what a disaster:

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.

Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.

Demand four: Free college education.

Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.

Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.

Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.

Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.

Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.

Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.

Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the "Books." World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the "Books." And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.

Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.

Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.

These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy.

Hopefully, I won't have to explain how insane the above collective demands are to anyone…except to the Reverend, of course. The debt forgiveness proposal alone would collapse our financial system in a hearbeat, while the $20 minimum wage would skyrocket unemployment at the same time the government is spending trillions and trillions of dollars and the open borders policy would bring in millions looking for jobs….oh sorry, I'm starting to explain the insanity, after I said I shouldn't have to. Maybe I should call the OWSer plan 'How To Turn America Into A Third World Country Overnight', because that's what it would do. God forbid these lefties ever get what they are asking for. I have too much compassion for them to wish them such a fate.

I have a special Homer Simpson "DOH!!!" shout-out for Demand Three, where people get a living income whether they have a job or not. Hippies everywhere will love that one, but, how many people would go to work if they were paid whether they did or not ??? Answer – not many. God, lefties are dumb. I never stop being amazed.

You can see some of the OWS signs here. Below is my absolute favorite Rebel Without A Clue OWS sign (Don't look if you are offended by obscene language):

Yeah, man !!! We're offended by sh*t ! It's bullsh*t, and we want it replaced with different sh*t !!! F*ck !..and oh yeah, Peace !

How eloquent. A product of the public school system, no doubt.

I suppose this was inevitable. The left generally makes up some kind of nonsense to avoid the facts, and here is today's nonsense…

Actress/mental patient Janeane Garofalo graced the Keith Olbermann show with more of her inestimable brilliance. The subject is Herman Cain and the Tea Party. This is classic:

And thus closes the circle. Now we have two opposing theories emerging from the lunatic fringe – 1) Tea Partiers are against Barack Obama because they are racist, and 2) Tea Partiers are for Herman Cain because they are racist.

Heads I win, tails you lose. And Keith-boy goes right along for the ride, as Janeane and Keith-boy revel in each other's galactic dishonesty.

Hilarious. Watch for this talking point to be peddled by other dishonest lefties near you.

This is a public service announcement.

According to the latest Zogby poll, Herman Cain is leading the field of Republican presidential nominees. Cain also won the recent Florida P5 straw poll by a wide margin.

I have a few observations:

1) Herman Cain is a black man.

2) Herman Cain is a Tea Partier.

3) Liberals keep trying to tell us the Tea Party is racist.

One of the above three statements doesn't fit with the other two. One of them has to be wrong.

I have a way to settle this. Here's a video of Herman Cain speaking at a Tea Party event. Let's see if the Tea Party crowd likes him, or if they don't like him because he's black…

Any questions, liberals ???

If you are interested in matters more important than the divisive litany of liberal lies, check out Herman Cain's website. His 999 Plan alone makes me love him. Here's a sample:

Promote freedom, not tyranny.

Looks like I have some time to kill until President Obama unveils his jobs plan next month (no rush, Mr. President), which I'm certain will save the nation (satire intended) unless those "terrorist" (Biden's word), "un-patriotic" (Pelosi's word), "radical" (Reid's word) House Republicans put "ideology above country" (Obama's phrase) and shoot it down for partisan reasons (irony apparent to everyone except liberals). The President will be putting the finishing touches on his plan to get re-elected save America while vacationing at Martha's Vineyard, lifestyle choice of the rich and famous. Champagne wishes and caviar dreams, Mr. President.

But not to worry, this President will never forget his roots (Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Saul Alinsky, etc). Even though Obama now farts through silk, he once knew the heavy weight of oppression, like when he was asked to repay his student loans from Harvard Law School. One can only imagine how he must have suffered. I used to think George Washington and his men had it rough at Valley Forge until I heard Obama talk about his student loans. Now I know what real pain must feel like. With such tribulations in his past, it's a wonder Obama didn't become a blues singer instead of going into politics. Lucky for us, eh ? Therefore, I have no doubt he will remain in touch with the common man (his waiters, bellhops, maids, sommeliers, drivers, etc).

But what am I supposed to write about while I wait around for Obama to save me next month ??? How can I drive my ship without my Captain, my rudder ? What are we supposed to do while we wait around for Obama to produce some jobs for us ? I feel your pain, liberals. Without Obama around to take care of me, I might have to…think for and take care of myself ??? No way, Jose. The heck with that. What is this, Somalia ??? That's way too scary a proposition.

But maybe, I'll give it a try just this once until O Captain! My Captain! returns from his self-imposed exile in paradise. Let's see, what should I write about without The One's guidance ??? Hmmm…

I could write about the government-dependent low-class warriors who are rioting in England, where the mob is expressing it's moral outrage by…stealing flatscreen televisions ??? Btw, don't believe for a second that the British riots are about the police shooting someone. They aren't, just as the 1992 L.A. riots weren't really about Rodney King. Those putative "causes" merely serve as excuses for the thugs to behave like thugs.

I could write about how John King, a non-union electrical contractor in Toledo, Ohio, was shot and had the word 'scab' written on his truck, and about how he was repeatedly threatened, intimidated, and abused by union thugs. But you know, after a few thousand incidents of union-perpetrated and other assorted violence from the left, you kind of become numb to it. I know the mainstream media is numb to it, because you'd think the common left-wing violence was non-existent in this country if you listen to the mainstream media. They are too busy trying to convince us that the far rarer instances of violence from the right are the existential threat, even if they have to manufacture that "threat" out of whole cloth, as they tried to do when that crazy liberal pothead shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and killed several other people. Our "reporters" in the media insanely tried to pin that one on Sarah Palin's crosshairs election map, without a shred of evidence that the deranged metalhead anarchist kid had ever even heard of it, let alone seen it or acted on it. Our mainstream media is just "responsible" like that. Liberals calling for toning down the "violent political imagery and rhetoric" from a frigging campaign election map was all the rage among liberals for five minutes, but now the top Democrats in the country are calling Republicans anti-American terrorists and radicals. It truly boggles the mind how quickly liberals forget all about what they said yesterday. Obama's recent specialty has been calling for toning down partisan rhetoric, which he immediately follows up with twenty minute speeches filled to the brim with partisan rhetoric. I don't know how his speechwriters can keep a straight face when they conjure up this stuff.

I could write about the gang of hundreds of blacks youths beating up white people at the Wisconsin State Fair. That event has also been mysteriously scrubbed from the media, but I guarantee you if the reverse had happened, we'd have an army of reporters and a national conversation on race taking place, with massive protests, Al Sharpton, and President Obama jumping into the fray to figure out where we had gone so wrong as a nation. Stronger hate crime legislation would be called for. Lest you should think this is a one-time event, it is not. The same type of thing happened recently in Illinois, South Carolina, and other places. The fact is, black on white crime is far greater than the reverse, even though you'll never hear that from our politically correct mainstream media either. The subject is taboo, and I guarantee you some liberal reading this is thinking I must be some kind of racist for even mentioning it. That's how conditioned and brainwashed they've become.

I could write about a recent study from Duke University/UNC, that concluded only 6% of American terrorists were Muslims from 1980-2005. Liberals have been using that study to bash concerns about Muslim violence here, but in typical liberal fashion, they entirely miss the point. The study actually shows that Muslims are the most demographically prone-to-terrorism group in America by a wide margin, but liberals forget to tell you that part. They focus on the 6% number instead. They don't bother to mention that Muslims are only 0.6% of the population, making that 6% number a very high percentage indeed for such a small group of Americans. Plus, terrorist groups like Al Qaeda really didn't start operating until the 1990's, and the study starts from 1980.

Even more interesting is who the study said DOES commit terrorist acts in America. Here's the pie chart:

According to the study, which comes from FBI statistics on terrorism, Latinos are the most terrorist group, at 42%. I assume that is due primarily to violence associated with the drug wars. In second place for the most terrorist acts is, drumroll please, LEFT-WING GROUPS, at 24% (29% when you include communist groups). I don't even see a category for right-wing terrorism, which means there aren't enough terrorist acts from the right to qualify for it's own category.

Here's a political thought experiment for you. Look at all the terrorist groups in the above pie chart, as well as the examples I cited in my post, and ask yourself, do these groups vote for Democrats or Republicans ??????? The answer is pretty obvious. They vote for Democrats.

So tell me, WHOSE POLITICAL RHETORIC NEEDS TO BE TONED DOWN BECAUSE OF THE VIOLENCE IT MIGHT INSPIRE ?????????????? The media pretends it's the rhetoric of the right, but reality says it's the rhetoric of the left.

When liberal economist/Princeton professor/New York Times columnist Paul Krugman speaks, his words are immediately incorporated into the left-wing body politick. Liberals use Krugman to fashion phony talking points by the dozens, and the bigger the Krugman lie, the better. Here are a few of the latest Krugman lies being consumed and regurgitated whole by liberals:

"The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist president — actually a moderate conservative president. Once again, health reform — his only major change to government — was modeled on Republican plans, indeed plans coming from the Heritage Foundation. And everything else — including the wrongheaded emphasis on austerity in the face of high unemployment — is according to the conservative playbook." – Paul Krugman

Here we have three contentions from Krugman. Two of them are completely, pants-on-fire false. The other has a grain of truth, but is also mostly false. The first lie is the contention that Obama is a conservative. The mostly false statement is that ObamaCare is a Republican plan that came from the Heritage Foundation. The third lie is the laughable argument that Obama is pursuing a path of fiscal austerity. Liberals across the land are repeating these things as if they were written on stone tablets, when they should be treating them as if they were written on a bookie's flash paper. Let's dispense with Krugman's arguments one by one.

1) Obama is a conservative.

It's hard to stop laughing long enough to take this Krugman argument seriously, but I'll give it a try. I never dreamed anyone would have the cojones to make the case that Obama is a conservative, or that I'd have to shoot such an inane argument down. After all, Obama was a community organizer, schooled in the tactics of radical Saul Alinsky. He was an ACLU lawyer. He attended a church for twenty years that advanced left-wing black liberation theology. Obama said Reverend Jeremiah Wright was "like a father" to him (until Wright's "God damn America" tirades became a political liability). Obama is a lifelong Democrat who launched his first political fundraiser from the home of domestic terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn of Weathermen infamy. Obama was voted the most liberal Senator in Congress in 2007. In the Illinois legislature, Obama voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act four times. In his book Dreams From My Father, Obama said he hung out with marxists in college and was mentored by "Frank", a reference to the American communist Frank Marshall Davis. Obama is admittedly pro-union, and his General Motors bailout rewarded the unions while screwing the bondholders. His Justice Department is trying to prevent Boeing from moving a plant from unionized Seattle to a right-to-work South Carolina. Obama is in favor of the Employee Free Choice Act that will remove the secret ballot from union voting. Obama is a believer in global warming who wanted to institute Cap And Trade. He advocates increasing taxes on the wealthy, and openly favors redistribution of wealth. He even said the U.S. Constitution had a "blind spot" because it didn't authorize redistribution of wealth. One of Obama's first acts as President was to enact an $800 billion plus Keynesian stimulus package that was supported by Democrats and rejected by Republicans. Obama is opposed to capital punishment. In the Illinois legislature, Obama was in favor of the state banning the sale and manufacture of handguns. Obama has said he favors a single-payer health care system "in principal", which would replace private insurance companies. He ran for President as the anti-Iraq war candidate. As a candidate, Obama supported giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. He supported raising the Social Security payroll tax on wealthier Americans. Obama signed into law the largest new entitlement program since Medicare was enacted in 1965. Federal spending has increased by $900 billion per year since Obama took office. Federal spending is higher now than at any time in U.S. history, with the exception of World War II. I could go on and on and on.

This is the guy Paul Krugman says is a conservative…and Krugman says it with a straight face…and liberals repeat it as if it were true. You have to wonder what planet these people inhabit. It can't be this one.

2) ObamaCare is a Republican plan from the Heritage Foundation.

Let's start with the fact that almost all the Democrats in Congress voted FOR ObamaCare, and almost all the Republicans voted AGAINST ObamaCare. That should give you an indication of how "Republican" ObamaCare is. Then add in the fact that 26 states, all of them led by Republicans, have filed suit against ObamaCare for being unconstitutional. Yes, ObamaCare is so obviously supported by Republicans, just as Krugman says !!!! Or not.

What is true is that a few conservative groups and/or individuals (Dole, Romney) did advance the individual mandate, primarily at the state level (in accordance with the 10th Amendment), as a potential solution to the "free rider" health care problem. Obviously, the idea never really caught on with or was supported by the GOP. Krugman conveniently omits that significant truth.

As for the idea that ObamaCare came from the Heritage Foundation, that idea didn't originate with Krugman. It came from President Obama himself. Here's the Heritage response:

It began when President Obama told "Today" show host Matt Lauer on March 30 that "a lot of ideas in terms of the exchange, just being able to pool and improve the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market, that originated from the Heritage Foundation."

First, Heritage did not originate the concept of the health insurance exchange. Furthermore, the version of the exchange we did develop couldn't be more different than that embodied in this law…

For us, the health insurance exchange is to be designed by the states. It is conceived as a market mechanism that allows individuals and families to choose among a wide range of health plans and benefit options for those best suited to their personal needs and circumstances…

Under the president's law, however, the congressionally designed exchanges are a tool imposed on the states enabling the federal government to standardize and micromanage health insurance coverage, while administering a vast and unaffordable new entitlement program. This is a vehicle for federal control of state markets, a usurpation of state authority and the suppression of meaningful patient choice… This is probably not something President Obama gives a whit about, but we at Heritage do.

The other charge — repeated on this page and elsewhere — is that the federal individual mandate in Obama's health-care plan came from us.

For the record, we think that the law's federal mandate is unconstitutional…

Yes, in the early 1990s, we, along with other prominent conservative economists, supported the idea of such a mandate. It seemed the only way to solve the "free-rider" problem, in which individuals can, under federal law, walk into any hospital emergency room nationwide and rack up big bills at taxpayer expense.

Our research in the ensuing two decades has led us to realize our initial idea was operationally ineffective and legally defective. Well before Obama was elected, we dropped it.

Krugman neglected to mention that Heritage has been against it's own 20-year old mandate idea for some time now. Must have been an unintentional slip by old Paulie, eh ? Sure it was. It would also be helpful if Krugman mentioned that the overwhelming majority of Republicans reject such a "Republican idea". Maybe it's just me, but I'm pretty sure that Republicans usually support alleged "Republican ideas".

3) Obama is pursuing a path of fiscal austerity.

I've written about this canard extensively already, so I'll be brief here. One would have to be almost mentally challenged to believe we have entered a period of fiscal austerity. What the debt limit deal accomplished was to authorize $2.1 trillion in new debt (see how "austere" it is already ?!?!) in exchange for cutting $2.1 trillion in future spending out of the projected $10 trillion in new debt over the next decade. With the debt deal (which doesn't reduce the debt by one penny), by 2021, our government is still projected to be spending 22% of GDP, well above the modern age federal spending average of 19%. This is what Krugman is calling "austerity", which it obviously is not. It's the opposite of austerity. It's…um…hmmm….what IS the opposite of austerity ??? Um, how about "opulence" ? We'll go with that. Krugman is referring to opulence as austerity. As I said in my last post, everything is upside down with liberals. Here's yet more proof.

In short, Paul Krugman is a big fat liar. It would be nice if liberals stopped repeating his lies. Krugman's column in the New York Times is called "The Conscience Of A Liberal". It's a shame he doesn't have one.

Every once in a while, I read something and think to myself, "I wish I had written that". Today's featured column, by conservative writer John Hawkins, is one of those times. Here is his column in it's entirety. It is called, 7 Promises I Make To Liberals:

It's no secret that liberals and conservatives don't get along. But, if there's any one thing that we've learned from the liberal love of sensitivity classes and situation comedies, it's that once people get to know each other and learn about each other's beliefs and concerns, all legitimate differences melt away. So, with that in mind, I'd like to relieve the concerns of our liberal pals by telling them what we conservatives are really like. Think of it as sensitivity class – for liberals. Granted there may be a few conservatives here and there who disagree with me on these things, but as someone who has known conservatives all my life, I can assure you that they're the exceptions, not the rule.

1) I don't hate black Americans, Hispanic Americans, gay Americans, Jewish Americans, Muslims, or any of the other groups that liberals obsessively claim that conservatives hate. In all fairness, you could probably make a great case that I strongly dislike Nazis, Satanists, Fred Phelps’ clan full of weirdos, and Noam Chomsky, but who doesn't? Not only is it extraordinarily offensive to be falsely accused of hating whole classes of people, it's really bad for America to try to falsely convince tens of millions of Americans that they're despised and hated by half the country.

2) I'm not rich, I don't have any particular love of rich people, and I'm not being paid off by the Koch brothers (although they're welcome to start at any time.) Of course, I also don’t envy the rich, think it's "unfair" that they have more than I do, or want to punish them because Paris Hilton and the Kennedy family don't deserve their money. So, am I "in the pocket" of the rich? No, it can just seem that way if you're comparing conservatives like me to people who seethe with resentment for people who’ve done well in life.

3) I'm not "anti-science." I like science. I read books about science. In fact, I'm extremely dubious about embryonic stem cells and manmade global warming because I've been convinced by science-based arguments. Moreover, it seems rather odd that the "pro-science" side of these debates seems to rely on pleas from Michael J. Fox, sad stories about polar bears, and iffy claims about "consensus" when the "anti-science" side seems to trot out statistics and science-based arguments. Let's face it: You don't have to accuse people of wanting birds to die to get them to buy into the theory of gravity. If you can’t convince people to buy into a scientific argument with science, then maybe your evidence is a whole lot shakier than you seem to think.

4) I'm an anti-authoritarian, non-conformist. That's one of the reasons I don't like the government inserting its tentacles into our lives, it's why I work for myself, and it's a big part of why I'm on the Right. People think we take "marching orders" from Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, or the Koch brothers? Hell, conservatives are the only real rebels left in American society. We're the ones who have the courage to say that we're not victims, that we don't care if Hollywood and the media disagree with us, and we're willing to advocate policies we think are good for the country even if we're called "mean" for it. You can be the biggest jerk in the world and you'll still be patted on the back for being "compassionate" by everyone from Lady Gaga to the teachers at your kid's school, to the New York Times if you're a liberal. Want to be slandered, demonized, and constantly accused of being things you're not because you believe in doing the right thing? Be a conservative.

5) I love women and I don't think they should be barefoot, pregnant, and chained in the house on a clothesline that runs between the bedroom and the kitchen. As a matter of fact, I'd say I'm more supportive of women than a lot of liberal feminists today because while I don't think women HAVE to be stay-at-home moms, I consider that to be every bit as much of a valid and important career choice as being a corporate VP. Also, isn't it a bit ironic that conservatives are accused of "hating women" in a country where Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are wildly popular on the Right, while liberal men launch non-stop misogynistic attacks at them and their families?

6) I'm a compassionate person. I give money to charity, I've bought groceries for people, and I've held fundraisers on my blog to raise money for people in need. In fact, one of the biggest reasons I'm a conservative is that I believe our philosophy is the best way to do good in people's lives and preserve the best things about this country for future generations. This baffles some liberals, who can't seem to understand how that can be the case when conservatives oppose so many government programs that "help" people. What they may be missing is that if the government is not an unalloyed good, but a "necessary evil," then its "help" is often as counter-productive as tossing shotguns into the middle of a drunken barfight so people can "protect" themselves. Compassion is about what you do personally, not what government programs you advocate funding with other people's money.

7) Although I'd like to see liberalism become as discredited as Nazism, I don't want to see any liberals shot, murdered, killed, blown up, sliced, diced, carved, cut, or eviscerated because they disagree with me politically — and that includes abortion doctors. If we have a constitutional republic and you believe in the Constitution along with law and order, then you should believe in solving even extreme political disputes via political means, not via violence. Incidentally, I will also not shout down a liberal on stage at his own speech to try to prevent him from speaking, throw pies at him, toss glitter at him, engage in a citizen's arrest/kidnapping, or protest at a liberal's home, which we all know is nothing more than a veiled threat. Those are fascist tactics, which have no place in a democratic society and all decent people should speak out against that kind of behavior.

Exactly. The only other word to the wise I will pass on to liberals is this – when you call conservatives racist, anti-science, violent, uncaring, misogynistic creeps in the svegali-like grip of the Koch Brothers who care only about the rich, or when you shout down and threaten conservative speakers, it doesn't make conservatives question their beliefs. Not even close. It has precisely the opposite effect. It makes conservatives think that liberals are lunatics.

I found the following current event quotes on The Patriot Post.

Insane The New Sane: "The same politicians who spent $1.7 trillion more than they collected, in just this year alone, say the problem is that private citizens are not paying enough. … [B]ecause the political class has made the national debt so high, it is able to insist that taking a chance on the power of liberty is an irresponsible gamble. Because the government lives so far beyond its means, it would be irresponsible to provide it with reduced means. This is how we have reached the madness of a moment when the national debt is used as an argument against spending reductions, or growth-oriented tax and regulatory policies. The insane problem becomes a weapon against rational solutions." –columnist John Hayward

There's nothing for me to add to that. Well said.

Moron Of The Week: "Isn't the Tea Party — I'm not trying to call them names or anything. I just want to ask a very serious question: Aren't they exactly what the Founding Fathers feared most? Which is people who are ignorant about the way the world works come to power. That is what the Founding Fathers hated the most. They were not for direct democracy" –HBO's Bill Maher

I'm still trying to figure out why Bill Maher has a political television show on HBO. His neverending ignorance on political matters is astounding. In the above quote, Maher not only demonstrates a cluelessness about the Founding Fathers and the original Boston Tea Party (it was about TAXES, Mr. Maher), he also doesn't seem to understand that today's Tea Party is not a direct democracy, it's a protest movement and only one of many political forces in this country. The Tea Party does not govern. Our elected representatives perform that function. That is and always has been a representative democracy. The "serious question" Bill Maher asks here is a complete joke.

Leadership Failure: "Meanwhile, the World's Greatest Orator bemoans the 'intransigence' of Republicans. OK, what's your plan? Give us one actual program you're willing to cut, right now. Oh, don't worry, says Barack Obluffer. To demonstrate how serious he is, he's offered to put on the table for fiscal year 2012 spending cuts of (stand well back now) $2 billion. That would be a lot in, say, Iceland or even Australia. Once upon a time it would have been a lot even in Washington. But today $2 billion is what the Brokest Nation in History borrows every 10 hours. In other words, in less time than he spends sitting across the table negotiating his $2 billion cut, he's already borrowed it all back. A negotiation with Obama is literally not worth the time." –columnist Mark Steyn

The extent of Obama's leadership on the debt limit has been to say he wants revenues raised along with spending cuts, and he didn't even care about spending cuts until the Republicans forced him to care. That's how this President leads…by following.

Hijacking The Tax And Spend Crowd: "Here's the thing about Obama. He ran as a transformational president. He sees himself as transformational. He always has. What occurred between 2008 and 2010 is the Tea Party. And the Tea Party has stopped that kind of transformation from occurring because it has hijacked the Republican Party and the John Boehners of the world who would have cut a deal with the president of the United States. It has hijacked the Republican Party and it has now become substantially just a no-tax party as opposed to a party that cares about the deficit. I think no tax trumps their caring and concern about the deficit." –CNN's Gloria Borger

Poor Obama. His transformational dreams were crushed by the Tea Party. Sniff, sniff. Cry me a river. In reality, it was, well, reality that crushed Obama's unrealistic dreams. Plus, if any party NEEDED hijacking after the big spending, debt accumulating Bush years, it was the Republican party. Thank goodness the Tea Party arrived on the scene and changed the discussion, because without it we wouldn't even be talking about reining in the sole cause of our fiscal unsustainability – big government.

Speaking of which…

The Left Calls It 'The Plan': "Forget all the numbers being tossed around in Washington — the millions and billions and trillions of dollars being taxed, borrowed, printed and spent as the country approaches the Aug. 2 debt-ceiling deadline. … Forget the fact that such 'entitlements' as Social Security and Medicare — social-insurance programs that the public long thought to be actuarially sound — have been exposed as little more than legal Ponzi schemes, paying today's benefits out of tomorrow's borrowed receipts. Instead, just ask yourself this simple question: When did it become the primary function of the federal government to send millions of Americans checks? For this, in essence, is what the debt-ceiling fight is all about — the inexorable and ultimately fatal growth of the welfare state." –columnist Michael Walsh

This reminds me of a USA Today article from a few months ago, titled "Americans Depend More On Federal Aid Than Ever". Here's a piece of it:

Americans depended more on government assistance in 2010 than at any other time in the nation's history, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data finds. The trend shows few signs of easing, even though the economic recovery is nearly 2 years old.

A record 18.3% of the nation's total personal income was a payment from the government for Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, unemployment benefits and other programs in 2010. Wages accounted for the lowest share of income — 51.0% — since the government began keeping track in 1929.

Americans got an average of $7,427 in benefits each in 2010, up from an inflation-adjusted $4,763 in 2000 and $3,686 in 1990. The federal government pays about 90% of the benefits.

"What's frightening is the Baby Boomers haven't really started to retire," says University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes of the 77 million people born from 1946 through 1964 whose oldest wave turns 65 this year. "That's when the cost of Medicare will start to explode."

If you think things are bad now, America, prepare yourselves. You ain't seen nuthin' yet. Unless we change course dramatically, in a decade we'll be looking back at these times as the good old days.

The political left in this country wants the citizenry to be dependent, and, btw, disarmed. A passive and helpless population is more easily controlled.

My closing quote comes from our "transformational" President himself, though it sounds more like politics as usual to me.

Blaming Bush: "We don't need a constitutional amendment to do our jobs. The Constitution already tells us to do our jobs — and to make sure that the government is living within its means and making responsible choices. … We don't need a balanced budget amendment. We simply need to make these tough choices and be willing to take on our bases. And everybody knows it. … It turns out that our problem is we cut taxes without paying for them over the last decade; we ended up instituting new programs like a prescription drug program for seniors that was not paid for; we fought two wars, we didn't pay for them; we had a bad recession that required a Recovery Act and stimulus spending and helping states — and all that accumulated and there's interest on top of that." –Barack Obama

Maybe we wouldn't need a balanced budget constitutional amendment if the government showed any indication it could live within it's means or discipline itself, but it has not done that. When I hear Obama whining about a balanced budget amendment, all I hear is him thinking, 'but how will I spend and borrow more money ? How will I play politics and buy votes ?'

Now that Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) is making some noise in the GOP Iowa primary, the attacks from the left have begun in earnest. No surprise there. It's to be expected.

After reading a half dozen or so attack pieces from the left against Bachmann, you begin to pickup the common threads. Thus far, the left is trying to portray Bachmann as a evangelical dim bulb anti-feminist who makes a lot of false claims. They say she went to a lightweight college to get her law degree (as if it's easy to get a law degree and pass the bar exam no matter where you go to college). For the record, Bachmann got a B.A. from Winona State University, then went to law school at Oral Roberts (now Regent University), and received her Masters in law from William And Mary Law School. If Bachmann is an idiot, she sure fooled a lot of colleges and professors. After college, Bachmann went to work for the IRS as a tax attorney, but I won't hold that against her. I guess Bachmann's Masters degree isn't sufficient for the liberal blogger elites who work part-time at Starbuck's while still living in their parents basements. She doesn't measure up to their standards. Heck, I bet Bachmann doesn't even know how to make a half-caf double mocha latte !

Liberals believe calling someone an "evangelical" is akin to calling them a knuckle-dragging neanderthal, so you will hear that label applied to Bachmann every single time a liberal refers to her, without fail, unless her shooting star fizzles. I'm not even sure what an evangelical is, other than a Christian who believes the doctrine. Bachmann belongs to a Lutheran church, which isn't any kind of cult to my knowledge. Some libs may believe otherwise, because at Bachmann's church, they don't say things like "God Damn America !", or refer to this country as "AmeriKKKa !", like they do at another prominent politician's former church, which liberals seemed to have no problem with. But calling Bachmann a "Lutheran" or a "Christian" doesn't pack enough wallop, so they'll stick with "evangelical". That makes it sound more like Bachmann is eager for the Rapture to arrive, and maybe she'd push the button on the nuclear football to get back with Jesus sooner rather than later. Liberals actually believe things like this are a genuine concern, while at the same time they believe real Islamic terrorists blowing things up is a minor matter. Liberals believe the real threat there lies in potential civil rights violations against Muslims. They are such nuanced thinkers.

The charge from the left that Bachmann is anti-feminist is outright hilarious. I don't know how many individual accomplishments it takes for a conservative woman to banish that stupid left-wing talking point, but I don't know of any conservative woman who has ever managed to meet the left's definition of feminism, which is nothing more than – she favors killing the unborn. Bachmann does not favor that (she can think for herself, lefties ! That's the true measure of liberation), so she doesn't qualify. Bachmann not only talks the anti-abortion talk, she also walks the anti-abortion walk, having foster parented 23 children as well as having five children of her own, in between getting her Masters, working for the IRS, working in the Minnesota State Senate, being the first Republican woman ever elected to Congress in Minnesota, owning a stake in a family farm, and now running for President. If that isn't enough "equal rights" to satisfy the femi-nazis, they can go piss up a rope, because their movement has no meaning.

My favorite left-wing hit piece on Bachmann is one that says more about how the author thinks than it does about Bachmann. It comes from the Huffington Post. Here's the money part:

The first woman elected as president of the United States has to be exceptional. Superior. The smartest, best educated and most rational person in the room. So, not Palin, not Bachmann. Why? Because failure is not an option.

I used to work at a Wall St. investment bank. There were diversity programs galore but it was still problematic to find a senior woman to promote to Managing Director in Information Technology. I used to discuss this often with my boss, himself an MD. He finally suggested just promoting a particular (and the most senior) woman in the group to managing director. His argument was "self selection". People tend to like and promote people who are similar to themselves. I get that and I agree. But this woman was not good. If there were five options in any given situation, not only would she not pick the best one, she would almost always pick the worst one. So my worry was that the first woman MD would "represent". She would be the standard bearer. She would have to do a good job, on behalf of her entire gender. If she sucked, the reaction would be "See. Women can't be managing directors". If a guy in that role sucked, it would just be "Gee, John is an idiot" and not "Men are idiots".

Barack Obama carries that burden for African Americans. Happily, he carries it well. Regardless of your politics, you have to admit (really, you have to!) that he is well-educated, competent, rational, even-tempered and intelligent.

So, even if my political views weren't the polar opposite of Palin's and Bachmann's (which they are), I would still say "not Palin, not Bachmann". As women, this is a risk we cannot afford to take.

This is the perfect example of deranged liberal groupthink. You see, in this mindset, Obama isn't just a man. No, he's a black man, and therefore represents all blacks (the racist subtext is that all blacks are alike, and one black must speak for all of them). Bachmann isn't an individual woman who stands or falls on her own merits. No, instead she represents all women to this liberal dunderhead (the mysoginist and sexist subtext is that all women are alike). The writer of this garbage is a liberal woman who no doubt thinks of herself as a feminist, as she slices and dices individuals up into neat little bigoted categories.

Needless to say, in the non-groupthink world, the rational world, Obama and Bachmann are just people. They don't represent every other person in the country who looks like them. If Abe Lincoln had failed, nobody would have said all tall, bearded people failed. Nobody would have talked about what a blow it was to Bearded Americans everywhere. If Obama fails, it doesn't mean black people fail. That's an utterly insane notion. And if Bachmann fails, it doesn't mean women fail either.

The final nail in Bachmann's coffin for the left comes from the fact that she is a Tea Party supporter. Liberals absolutely cannot hold with any protest movement in this country…unless it is one of the hundred or so liberal protest movements. On the very rare occasion when conservatives, libertarians, independents, and even some Democrats protest, as happened with the Tea Party movement, liberals immediately turn into quaking-in-their-boots pansies, fearing the next Civil War is upon us. They act as if the Bastille is about to be stormed. It would be comical if it wasn't so hypocritical and pathetic. The same liberals who throw things and blackball conservative speakers on college campuses (we can't have any ideas muddying our university waters !), are the ones who believe middle-aged Tea Partiers are somehow going to turn into the Brownshirts. It's absurd. Btw, has anyone heard the libnuts complain and quiver about all the "dangerous" union protesting going on now ? No, me neither. Curious, huh ?

Do I think Bachmann would be a good President ??? I have no idea. I haven't made any such judgement one way or the other. For now, I think other candidates may be better choices, but it's still early. Pushing Bachmann for President is not the purpose of this post. I only defend her to the extent that I will defend anyone against the liberal lunacy. Everybody deserves that much.

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has conducted a study to determine which states are the least and most free. Predictably, those two bastions of liberaldom, New York and California, are the least free:

It might be the ‘Land of the Free’, but some states certainly aren’t living up to the words of America’s national anthem. New York, New Jersey and California are the least free in the U.S., based on an index of public policies affecting your individual freedoms. The rankings are based economic, social and personal freedoms of Americans – and include measures such as taxes, government spending and regulations

But New Hampshire, South Dakota and Indiana are the most free states in the U.S., according to Virginia think tank the Mercatus Center.

New York is by far the least free state and has had ‘the most interstate emigration of any state over the last decade’, the 'Freedom in the 50 States' report said.

The state also has ‘by far the highest taxes in the country’ and ‘only Alaska has more government debt as a percentage of the economy’. New York’s smoking and gun laws are ‘extremely’ strict, cigarette taxes are the ‘highest in the county’ and ‘motorists are highly regulated’. The report recommends New York should legalise same-sex partnerships, cut spending, privatise transport systems and cut taxes.

With their high taxes, big government spending, and excessive regulations, New York and California are leading the nation in citizen's fleeing those oppressive states. In spite of this, California still has unemployment of 11.9%, far above the national average of 9.1%. All the people leaving New York has brought that state's unemployment down to 7.9%, thus proving that despite being the financial center of our country, liberals can still drive people away if the government becomes oppressive enough.

With all those taxes and government spending, I figured at least New York and California would have all kinds of government services and could boast about low poverty rates, but when I looked up the information, I found that was not the case. Poverty in both New York and California is above the national average. Hmmm. Could it be liberalism ain't all it's cracked up to be ? Let's look some more.

Surely, with the highest taxes in the country, at least New York and California wouldn't be drowing in debt, right ?

Wrong. New York and California are two of the most debt-ridden states in the union. It's like I always say, no amount of taxation will ever be enough to fund modern liberalism.

In review, the lands of the not-so-free, liberal New York and California, have the highest taxes, the most government spending, the most stringent regulations, high unemployment (in Cali's case), have poverty above the national average, are drowing in red ink, and people are running away from those states in droves…..or as MSNBC would put it – proof that liberalism works !

Bonus Question – Guess which states business leaders rank as the worst for business ???

Okay, that question was too easy. Naturally, the answer is liberal California and New York.

As they say, the states are our laboratories of democracy. The liberals in New York and California might want to admit their experiment is failing, not that I expect that will happen. Liberals never admit to being wrong about anything. Their solution is only…more liberalism. Good luck, liberals. You'll need it. If I know liberals, and I do, their "solutions" to the problems in high tax, big spending, not-so-free liberal states like New York and California will be – higher taxes, more spending, and less freedom. God bless 'em. Some folks cannot be taught. They just keep trying to shove that square peg into that round hole.

If liberals can screw up New York and California, the two states with the largest natural advantages over the other states, we better remain on watch to insure they keep their grubby mitts off the rest of us, if it isn't too late already.

Maybe freedom works best. I always thought so.

Beware. Liberals are about to "help" us peons again.

A few years ago, then Senator Obama said electricity rates would "necessarily skyrocket" if his energy policies were implemented. In spite of this, for some odd reason, we decided to elect him President. Not our wisest move, America, because here comes the skyrocket:

Consumers could see their electricity bills jump an estimated 40 to 60 percent in the next few years.

The reason: Pending environmental regulations will make coal-fired generating plants, which produce about half the nation's electricity, more expensive to operate. Many are expected to be shuttered.

The increases are expected to begin to appear in 2014, and policymakers already are scrambling to find cheap and reliable alternative power sources. If they are unsuccessful, consumers can expect further increases as more expensive forms of generation take on a greater share of the electricity load.

"Each generator will have to decide for itself whether the investment required to meet environmental requirements can be justified based on its projection of market prices and the cost of its capital. In any case, those costs will be passed through to consumers," said Mark Pruitt, director of the Illinois Power Agency, which procures electricity for Illinois.

American Electric Power, one of the country's largest coal-burning electricity generators, said Thursday it will retire nearly a quarter of its coal-fueled generating capacity and that it will spend up to $8 billion to retrofit remaining units to meet regulations that start taking effect in 2014. Those moves will have an impact.

"The sudden increase in electricity rates and impacts on state economies will be significant at a time when people and states are still struggling," AEP Chairman and CEO Michael G. Morris said.

Coal plants that account for roughly a fifth of Illinois' electricity generation could exit the market as a result of the new emissions rules, the Illinois Power Agency told state legislators in a memo last month.

More than 8,000 megawatts of coal-fired generation capacity has been retired in the U.S. since 2005, according to data from industrial software company Ventyx. Generators have announced they plan to retire another 21,000 megawatts in the near future, and some industry consultant studies estimate 60,000 megawatts of power, enough for 60 million homes, will be taken offline by 2017.

2014 is shaping up to be a banner year. Not only will our energy bills skyrocket, but we'll all be forced to purchase high-end health insurance via ObamaCare that same year. If the feared double-dip recession doesn't happen earlier, the Obama-nauts want to make sure it kicks in before too long. A recent study showed that up to 30% of employers would drop employee provided health insurance when ObamaCare arrives in full, showing further how much liberals love us peons.

If I know liberals, and I do, they will respond to the coming high energy bills by proposing yet more new government programs to "help" the people solve the financial hardships liberals created in the first place. And when Republicans object to the new energy welfare programs liberals propose, liberals will call the Republicans mean, uncaring racists who only care about the rich.

What new energy sources will replace the coal plants ? Beats me. We know liberals won't go for nuclear energy. I hear talk of solar and wind, but…I assume liberals are just pulling our leg about that. They're not serious, are they ?

As our capacity to produce electricity diminishes dramatically due to liberal regulations, the deep-thinking liberal geniuses also want all Americans to start driving, what else?…electric cars !!! Thanks, libs. You'll be driving demand for our shrinking supply of electricity through the roof. Guess what effect that will have on energy prices ? More skyrocketing, of course, assuming the electricity will even be available. What will the liberal solution be to that liberal-created problem ? Maybe they'll start promoting Conestoga wagons next. Those are quite green, along with a sizeable amount of brown, if you know what I mean. I think we should just say neigh, before everything turns to sh…well, you know.

When I look at everything President Obama has "accomplished" in nearly 2 1/2 years on the job, I don't have much of an answer to the above question. Consider this:

- Obama has accumulated nearly $4 trillion in new debt since he took office. No President has ever come close to running up debt at this pace. The deficit for this year is estimated to be over $1.6 trillion. What do you think liberals would be saying if Bush was doing this ??? Obama is running up debt twice as fast as Bush did. Obama's budget proposal adds another $9-13 trillion in debt over the next decade, a recipe for economic destruction.

- The Guantanamo Bay prison is still open, despite candidate Obama's promise to close it within a year. Obama has endorsed the unlimited detention of enemy combatants without trial. Obama has endorsed trials by military commissions. Rendition (CIA secret overseas prisons) continues under the Obama administration.

- Obama just signed an extension of key provisions of the Patriot Act into law, which include the power to set roving wiretaps, extract information on suspects' business or library records, and engage in secret surveillance of non-American suspects not known to be tied to any terrorist group.

- Remember how the left was outraged over Bush issuing executive orders (Bush issued 290 in 8 years) ? As of March 1, 2011, Obama had issued 77 executive orders, roughly the same rate as Bush, yet I've never heard a peep about it.

- Obama campaigned against NAFTA, saying he would renegotiate that deal. He didn't. What Obama did do was sign a free trade deal with Colombia.

- Democrats are outraged over Paul Ryan's plan to reform Medicare because seniors will have to pay more for health care insurance (Medicare spending cuts), but Democrats cut Medicare already. ObamaCare cut $575 billion from Medicare, and siphoned most of that money ($410 billion) to Medicaid in order to partially pay for ObamaCare insurance subsidies, yet I never heard any left-wing demagoguery about pushing grandma over the cliff when that happened. In addition, ObamaCare creates a Medicare advisory board (IPAB) that does a lot more than advise. IPAB will unilaterally make decisions on Medicare pricing and coverages. If the 15-member IPAB decides grandma doesn't get that kidney she needs, grandma doesn't get the kidney, and there's nothing Congress can do about it. Sarah Palin famously referred to the IPAB as Obama's "death panels", which liberals denounced as a lie. Um, no, Palin wasn't lying. She was telling a truth liberals didn't want to acknowledge. Also mssing from the Democrats' wailing and gnashing of teeth over Ryan's plan is the fact that SOMEBODY will have to pay more for Medicare in the future. We either have to pay more, or cut services. The demagoguery of the Democrats accomplishes nothing, though it does make for good meaningless political imagery.

- Obama was the anti-war candidate in 2008, and now he has us involved in a third war, this time in Libya. Obama has also upped the number of predator drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and other places where Congress has not authorized war. Also, as I pointed out the other day, the Libyan War is now illegal under the 1973 War Powers Act. Obama openly advocates using our military to push democracy in the Middle East, a position liberals strenuously objected to when Bush advocated it. By the way, does anybody see any anti-war protestors these days ?? Why not ?? We're involved in, count 'em, THREE wars, more if you count the predator strikes in other countries.

- The highest unemployment rate under Bush was 7.6%, and the average unemployment rate under Bush was about 5.5%. Unemployment after nearly 2 1/2 years of Obama is 9% (and in reality 17%). I know there are mitigating circumstances here, but remember, Obama said with his stimulus package, unemployment would never exceed 8%. The stimulus was a failure. The CBO has recently upped the cost estimate of the stimulus, so now it's an $830 billion failure.

What liberals hated most about Bush were war, his anti-terrorism policies, and the debt he ran up. Obama has continued almost all of those policies. Liberals also hated the Bush tax cuts, which, btw, Obama extended.

So, I ask liberals, what are you supporting about Obama, other than the fact he's a Democrat ? And why should that matter ? I suppose liberals could support ObamaCare, which is a big new entitlement program (which comes at a time we can't figure out how to pay for our existing entitlement programs), but ObamaCare is also a big new source of revenue for the insurance companies that liberals claim to detest. Obama is mandating that we buy insurance from those detestable free market companies that liberals want to do away with, so libs can't be very happy with that either. ObamaCare subsidies are rather like Ryan's Medicare plan that liberals hate, but liberals give Obama credit for his "accomplishment", while they hate Ryan for his. I suppose liberals like the single-payer Medicare model that will help bankrupt the country (Medicare had $79 trillion in unfunded liabilities last time I checked), but that seems rather more like the problem than the solution to me. My major problem with single-payer is, who controls prices and how are consumers incentivized to control costs ? I mean, if somebody else was paying for your car, would you be more likely to buy a Buick or a Mercedes ? With single-payer, the only cost control is the government hammer (and sickle). There has to be a better way.

And liberals, if you believe Obama's financial reform legislation is going to have any effect on the $608 TRILLION currency and credit derivates market (aka, credit default swaps), you're living in even more of a fantasyland that I thought.

I can easily list all the reasons I think Obama is a terrible President, and I have done so on this blog. What I'd like to know is why liberals support him, because I don't get it.

All over the Leftosphere, I'm hearing a huge pile of manure being shoveled regarding former President Bush and Osama Bin Laden. The Leftos are saying Bush didn't care about getting Bin Laden and wasn't even looking for him (I'm not even counting the crazed Lefto conspiracy theorists who think Bush was protecting Bin Laden for some reason). They mainly cite two facts to support their inane hypothesis. First is a statement Bush made in a 2002 press conference:

Second is the fact that Bush closed the CIA "Bin Laden Unit" that was tasked specifically with finding Bin Laden. That unit operated from 1996-2005.

At this point you might be thinking, 'Well gosh, King, it DOES sound like Bush wasn't looking for Bin Laden'.

Yes, I suppose it does…if these two bits of information are all you look at, as the Leftos would have you do. The truth, however, is much different than what the Leftos are shoveling.

Let's start with the obvious fact that Bush wasn't really the one looking for Bin Laden, and neither was Obama. That job was done by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. If Bush said he didn't think much about Bin Laden in 2002, well, the people who count, such as the CIA's Bin Laden Unit, WERE thinking about Bin Laden, and were still looking for him until at least 2005, when the unit was disbanded. This leads to the second fallacy of the Leftos. They are intentionally trying to mislead us into believing the disbandment of the Bin Laden Unit meant Bush (America) was no longer searching for Bin Laden. This is untrue (and the Leftos know it). Here are the facts about the end of the Bin Laden Unit, as reported at by the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, July 3 — The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday.

The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center, the officials said.

The decision is a milestone for the agency, which formed the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring Mr. Bin Laden to justice "dead or alive."

The realignment reflects a view that Al Qaeda is no longer as hierarchical as it once was, intelligence officials said, and a growing concern about Qaeda-inspired groups that have begun carrying out attacks independent of Mr. bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Agency officials said that tracking Mr. bin Laden and his deputies remained a high priority, and that the decision to disband the unit was not a sign that the effort had slackened. Instead, the officials said, it reflects a belief that the agency can better deal with high-level threats by focusing on regional trends rather than on specific organizations or individuals.

"The efforts to find Osama bin Laden are as strong as ever," said Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, a C.I.A. spokeswoman. "This is an agile agency, and the decision was made to ensure greater reach and focus."

You'd have to be crazy to think any American President wouldn't be trying to find the man behind the 9/11 attacks. Of course they were looking for Bin Laden. We never stopped looking for him. We were looking for him for 15 years before we finally got him. In fact, Bush sent the might of the Ameican military after Bin Laden following 9/11. We invaded Afghanistan to get him and remove the state Al Qaeda-supporting Taliban from power. If that wasn't about disrupting and apprehending Al Qaedans, I don't know what would be. We nearly got Bin Laden at Tora Bora, but he slipped through our fingers, partly due to a bad decision on our part to outsource some of the job to Afghanis. We got lots of other high-level Al Qaeda terrorists from that invasion, along with a treasure trove of information about Al Qaeda. In my last post, I provided some information about how the interrogations of Al Qaeda members captured in Afghanistan provided us with early information about Bin Laden's couriers. That was one brick in the wall that led to finally getting Bin Laden.

In 2003, Bush took a detour into Iraq, but Bin Laden's trail had gone cold again by then. I thought the Iraq War was a mistake, and I thought so before the wmd intelligence (which was also not gathered by Bush, Leftos) turned out to be wrong. I'm glad Saddam's gone, and I think the Middle East is a better place without the Butcher Of Baghdad, but I wouldn't have made the same call Bush did. If anything would be an argument in favor of the Lefto proposition that Bush stopped looking for Bin Laden, it would be the Iraq War. That diverted resources away from Afghanistan, as the Leftos are quick to point out, but as we all know now, Bin Laden wasn't in Afghanistan. He was in Pakistan. Also, I'm pretty sure we can conduct a war and still have the CIA looking for Bin Laden. I do believe we are capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. I mean, you didn't ever not get your IRS tax refund because the government was too busy with the Iraq War, right ? Our mammoth federal government can do more than one thing at a time.

In the wake of Bin Laden's killing, I'm hearing criticism from Right-wingers of Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to investigate potential illegal activity by the Gitmo CIA interrogators. The Righties say this will demoralize the CIA, and they also point out that those interrogations provided all kinds of valuable info about Al Qaeda. The Leftos have responded by saying…there is no such investigation by Obama, as if right-wingers are lying ?!?!?!? Huh ? Here's what ThinkProgess maintains:

[Former VP] Cheney also echoed former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) and chastised Obama for “prosecuting” the intelligence officers who tortured detainees. “These men deserve to be decorated, they don’t deserve to be prosecuted,” he told Wallace, calling it “an outrage that we would go after the people who deserve the credit for keeping us safe for seven and a half years.” While the Obama administration in fact decided long ago not to prosecute any CIA agents involved in torture, Cheney nevertheless suggested Obama has been so relentless in going after those responsible that “these guys…have to look over their shoulder.”

Who is telling the truth here ? Hint – It's not ThinkProgress (no surprise there). While Obama did say he wants to look forward and not backward regarding the CIA interrogations, Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a Special Prosecutor in August 2009 to look into possible illegal activity by CIA interrogators. That investigation is ongoing, and ThinkProgress is misleading it's readers, as usual.

I understand why Left-wingers are so misinformed. They make the gigantic mistake of believing whatever phlegm the Leftosphere coughs up on any particular day, not realizing it is nothing but a collection of conjecture, half-truths, and outright lies. I only wonder why Left-wingers are gullible enough to believe it all (other than because they want to). I read ThinkProgress for two minutes and realize it's a bunch of crap. Why don't they ? They have an entire internet to ferret out the truth. Why don't they ? When crap comes from the Right, like with the Birther stuff, I check into it and find out it's crap. Why can't Lefties do the same ? It's not very difficult.

When it comes to economic issues, Republicans and Democrats see things very differently.

Liberal Democrats bill themselves are being pro-little guy. Liberals want to, as President Obama said to Joe The Plumber, spread the wealth around. Specifically, they want to take from the rich and give to the poor, like Robin Hood. Liberals concern themselves with the redistribution of wealth. That's why liberals engage in class warfare tactics, and believe massive government programs and government spending are needed to carry out their wealth redistribution dreams.

Conservative Republicans bill themselves as being pro-business. Conservatives believe that if the business sector prospers, that is what creates jobs for the little guy, thus enabling him to prosper too. Conservatives believe economic growth is the key to prosperity. That's why conservatives favor tax cuts, and believe government often gets in the way of economic growth with burdensome regulations, interference with business, high taxes, etc.

This is the crux of the ideological battle on the economy. Neither of these opposing belefs is bad or evil or necessarily wrong, though you'd certainly think they were if you listen to all the political rhetoric that is shoveled on a daily basis. Liberals call conservatives heartless, racist, only caring about the rich, etc. Conservatives call liberals marxists, anti-liberty, etc.

Anyone who has read this blog knows which side of the argument I favor, for a variety of reasons. I'm with the conservative pro-business, pro-growth, pro-liberty side, and I'll tell you why.

I'm not against "helping the little guy", as liberals favor, but I think liberals have a blind spot when it comes to the creation of wealth and the creation of jobs. Those things come from the private sector, not the government. Wealth creation, jobs, the resultant rise of the middle class, and even government revenue ultimately comes from private sector BUSINESS. Therefore, being antagonistic to the business sector, as liberals so often are, is counterproductive. Putting it in the simplest terms, if our businesses aren't profitable and growing, as conservatives desire, then there won't be any wealth for liberals to spread around later. That's why making our businesses successful is Job One. You don't accomplish that by taxing them heavily, holding them down with burdensome regulations, placing one financial burden after another on them, and in general making it more difficult to do business in this country. You especially don't want to do that when our businesses are competing in a world economy, because we will be the losers with such an attitude. Our jobs will continue to disappear. In my view, helping business IS helping the little guy. I want our businesses to make money, lots of money. The more the merrier. Though liberals demonize profits for some reason, they are only exhibiting their blind spot again when they do so. Those business profits are what provide more jobs, more investment, and more economic growth. Those jobs are also what provides revenue to the government for the government services liberals love. When I see liberals demonizing business and profits, I only see them shooting themselves in the foot.

It's not business profits that are the problem in this country. As I said before, those profits are what creates jobs. No, the problem isn't profits. The problem comes when business profits end.

If you want to see what happens when businesses fail in this country, you don't have to look very far, because we just went through one such period, known as the Great Recession. Business profits plummeted, Wall Street crashed, unemployment rose dramatically, government revenue diminished, and we went much deeper in debt. That's what happens when American businesses don't succeed. Our economic Jenga tower collapses.

Therefore, it should be obvious we'll be better off if we implement policies that help our businesses thrive, because every other economic plus flows directly from them. The CEO of the 3M Corporation, George Buckley, who called Obama "anti-business" a couple months ago, put it in stark terms:

"Politicians forget that business has choice. We're not indentured servants and we will do business where it's good and friendly. If it's hostile, incrementally, things will slip away. We've got a real choice between manufacturing in Canada and Mexico — which tend to be pro-business — or America," [Buckley] told the Financial Times.

Lots of business people view Obama as being anti-business. When business people hear "redistribution of wealth", which raises specters of marxism, they get very nervous. Marxism is, by definition, anti-business. Even former Obama supporters in the business world have begun backing away from him. Harry Alford, head of the National Black Chamber Of Commerce, said voting for Obama was "the worst mistake I ever made in my life". Because Alford is black, I'd like to take a little subject detour into matters of race for a minute. I'm hearing a constant drumbeat from liberals these days about how conservatives are racists for being anti-Obama. No, liberals, that's not it. I'm sure there are right-wing racists, just as there are left-wing racists, independent racists, and racists of all colors and nationalities from all walks of life, but liberals are missing the boat. The right-wing opposition to Obama isn't due to his race, it's due to right-wingers perception of Obama's leftist beliefs. There's no way conservatives WON'T be opposed to that. They aren't going to suspend their own beliefs and withhold their criticism just because Obama is black. In my own view, Obama seems like a pretty nice guy personally. I'd hang out with him, but I've been highly critical of him because I disagree with his politics. I basically think he's in over his head, and though he's plenty intelligent enough, he didn't have the necessary experience to be the President. As a result, he has floundered about. I'd be pretty offended if anyone thought I believed these things because I'm a racist. In my eyes, race has nothing to do with anything. The racism charge is just an easy and convenient accusation for liberals to make, so they make it…constantly.

Sorry for the diversion, but I had to get that off my chest.

Getting back to business, as the 3M CEO said, business has choices. As we all know by now, companies don't have to manufacture in America. A lot of them have moved overseas. A lot of our jobs have moved overseas with them. I'm all for keeping as many of those jobs here as possible, but there's a problem. Many companies move away to take advantage of cheaper overseas labor, and the last thing we want here is to pay slave wages to our own workers. Obama might call that scenario a "race to the bottom", which I don't want either. We want to keep wages up.

How do we keep wages up and jobs in America at the same time ?

What I would do is make it more attractive for companies to do business in America in different ways. First of all, I'd END corporate income taxation. As I say this, I picture liberal heads spinning in circles like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, because liberals complain that corporations don't pay enough in taxes, especially the evil ones like Exxon (the oil industry employs millions of people and generates tons of tax revenue for the government). Sorry liberals, but I'd rather have the jobs. The taxes will come from the incomes and economic activity of all the employed workers. The second thing I'd do is to remove the skyrocketing health care cost monkey from companies backs. Liberals complain about wages not rising fast enough in this country. Well, those health care costs are a major reason why. If you add in a companies health care contributions, which are part of an employee's compensation package, I bet you'd see that compensation HAS risen.

Those are two big ways to attract businesses to this country. I have many more, but this post is getting rather lengthy, so I'll stop here.

The despicable people over at ThinkProgress wasted no time in politicizing the deadly tornados that have killed 300 people in Alabama and other states. In a piece called Storm Kills Over 250 Americans In States Represented By Climate Pollution Deniers, the renowned liberal climatologists at StinkProgress blamed the tornados on global warming climate change. Here's an excerpt:

“Given that global warming is unequivocal,” climate scientist Kevin Trenberth cautioned the American Meteorological Society in January of this year, “the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warming rather than the inane statements along the lines of ‘of course we cannot attribute any particular weather event to global warming.’”

The congressional delegations of these states — Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky — overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous. They are deliberately ignoring the warnings from scientists.

In other words, those southern sh*tkickers (to use one of my liberal blogger pal the Reverend's favored adjectives for describing people from southern states), had it coming for not believing in the religion science of global warming, and for voting Republican, of course. Such people basically deserve to die. Also, notice that the climate scientist quoted by StinkProgress is promoting the 'all weather is attributable to global warming now' hypothesis. I describe this "scientific" belief system as follows…

If it's hot, it's global warming.
If it's cold, it's global warming.
If it's windy, it's global warming.
If it's calm, it's global warming.
If it rains, it's global warming.
If it's dry, it's global warming.

With this belief system, the global warmers have conveniently closed the circle, because there is now NO weather pattern they can't attribute to global warming. Thus, their hypothesis can NEVER be disproven, and never needs to be proven either. They have reached the 'if it's weather, it's climate change' stage of omnipotent inviolability. And they wonder why I refer to this as more of a religion than a scientific pursuit.

Fortunately, not all climatologists kneel down before the global warming gods in such knee-jerk fashion as do the StinkProgress types. When tornados appear in a region of the country that has long been known as 'Tornado Alley', those with common sense don't immediately attribute it to global warming and warn the tornado victims to repent or die. No, instead, they attribute the tornados to springtime:

US meteorologists warned Thursday it would be a mistake to blame climate change for a seeming increase in tornadoes in the wake of deadly storms that have ripped through the US south.

"If you look at the past 60 years of data, the number of tornadoes is increasing significantly, but it's agreed upon by the tornado community that it's not a real increase," said Grady Dixon, assistant professor of meteorology and climatology at Mississippi State University.

"It's having to do with better (weather tracking) technology, more population, the fact that the population is better educated and more aware. So we're seeing them more often," Dixon said.

But he said it would be "a terrible mistake" to relate the up-tick to climate change

Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), also dismissed Thursday climate change as a factor in the deadly tornadoes: "Actually what we're seeing is springtime," he said.

"Many people think of Oklahoma as 'Tornado Alley' and forget that the southeast United States actually has a history of longer and more powerful tornadoes that stay on the ground longer."

The stronger-than-usual tornadoes affecting the southern states were actually predicted from examining the planet's climatological patterns, specifically those related to the La Nina phenomenon.

"We knew it was going to be a big tornado year," he said. But the key to that tip-off was unrelated to climate change: "It is related to the natural fluctuations of the planet."

The StinkProgressers would all probably shout "heretics !" at this information and refer to their fellow scientists as 'deniers" of the true faith, but enough with the religious fervor of global warming disciples. I want to return to some global warming data from a couple years ago. Informed people know the 2001 UN hockey stick graph was wrong from the moment it was published, and informed people also know about the Climategate scandal from a couple years ago, where the pre-eminent global warming promoters, the CRU from East Anglia, were attempting to fix the global warming data. The CRU's "findings" figured prominently in the UN's global warming findings. The problem is, that data was a joke. I want to put forth something I've never mentioned before, and have never seen reported on television. It's commonly known as the Harry_Read_Me file, and it contains 274 pages of frustrated e-mails from a CRU computer programmer who is attempting in vain to extract the information the CRU global warmers want from a mountain of data. Time and again, the programmer fails to get the desired CRU conclusions, so he finally just more or less makes up what the global warmers want to hear. These e-mails are absolutely damning, and if any of you are programmers out there, as I am, reading enough of this nonsense will make you realize exactly how damning they are. The e-mails are way too long to quote, and much of it is in computerese, so I'll give you some of the highlights. These are some of the e-mail statements from the CRU programmer, only a fraction of the information:

“But what are all those monthly files? DON’T KNOW, UNDOCUMENTED. Wherever I look, there are data files, no info about what they are other than their names. And that’s useless …” (Page 17)

- “It’s botch after botch after botch.” (18)

- “The biggest immediate problem was the loss of an hour’s edits to the program, when the network died … no explanation from anyone, I hope it’s not a return to last year’s troubles … This surely is the worst project I’ve ever attempted. Eeeek.” (31)

- “Oh, GOD, if I could start this project again and actually argue the case for junking the inherited program suite.” (37)

- “… this should all have been rewritten from scratch a year ago!” (45)

- “Am I the first person to attempt to get the CRU databases in working order?!!” (47)

- “As far as I can see, this renders the (weather) station counts totally meaningless.” (57)

- “COBAR AIRPORT AWS (data from an Australian weather station) cannot start in 1962, it didn’t open until 1993!” (71)

- “What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh yeah — there is no ’supposed,’ I can make it up. So I have : – )” (98)

- “You can’t imagine what this has cost me — to actually allow the operator to assign false WMO (World Meteorological Organization) codes!! But what else is there in such situations? Especially when dealing with a ‘Master’ database of dubious provenance …” (98)

- “So with a somewhat cynical shrug, I added the nuclear option — to match every WMO possible, and turn the rest into new stations … In other words what CRU usually do. It will allow bad databases to pass unnoticed, and good databases to become bad …” (98-9)

- “OH F— THIS. It’s Sunday evening, I’ve worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done, I’m hitting yet another problem that’s based on the hopeless state of our databases.” (241).

- “This whole project is SUCH A MESS …” (266)

Any questions ? There's an old saying in the computer programming world, 'garbage in, garbage out'. It means that if your input data is faulty, your output results will be worthless. I've never seen a better example of 'garbage in, garbage out' than the data the CRU programmer was working with, and I spent 26 years in the programming business.

The global warming research scientists all subsequently closed ranks around CRU and each other, saying there was no impropriety at CRU, naturally, but…are we really supposed to believe that ? Their funding and careers depend of global warming being real and a serious threat, and the facts speak for themselves.

Finally, it's not my purpose to discredit the science of global warming, but I am skeptical. I'm not sure how that is a bad thing. I thought science was SUPPOSED to be skeptical as it searched for more and better answers, especially when the data is in serious question. Without skepticism, there is no scientific advancement. When I get worried is when scientists start saying "the science is settled", when there is so clearly much more to learn. That's when I start questioning their motivations. I get even more worried when politicians start dreaming up grand ideological plans to fix the "problem", that involve draconian government controls and increases in energy prices that will harm the economy, and harm the average person the most. And I get most worried of all when politically-driven people like those at StinkProgress start treating skeptics as if they are sub-human heretics who deserve to die. If I wanted intractable religious absolutism, I'd move to Iran.

"Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe [$6-$7 per gallon]" – Obama Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

As the price of gas reaches $4 per gallon in some parts of the United States, placing additional financial hardships on all of us, it is worth remembering that high gas prices have been promoted by liberals (because liberals are for the working man, or something). Liberals believe high gas prices are the way to wean us unenlightened neanderthal-like human knuckle-draggers off of our fossil fuel addiction and onto alternative energy sources, like electric cars. No word from liberals on where the additional electricity for all those electric cars will come from. Liberals mumble a bit about solar and wind power, but that is little more than a pipedream fantasy. Those energy sources don't come close to providing the necessary energy requirements. I rather doubt they ever will, not that I'm against them. I'm not. I'm for them, but they are marginal energy sources. We need major energy sources.

Let's review the major energy sources…

We have nuclear energy, but liberals are against that.

We have offshore oil drilling and additional American onshore oil drilling (such as in Alaska), but liberals are against that.

We have natural gas, but that requires drilling, so liberals are against that.

We have reams of potential oil from oil shale in this country. We have the world's largest deposits, but that requires mining, so liberals are definitely against that.

We have coal, but that also requires mining, so liberals are against that.

We have ethanol, which I think liberals support, but that's more expensive than oil, and also requires putting our food supply into our gas tanks, which may end up causing more problems than it solves. But at least we'll be able to drive our hybrids and Nissan Leafs to the grocery store, though the grocery store won't have any food on the shelves, or if it does, an ear of corn will cost five bucks. Bonus ! And it's not just the drivers of the Nissan Leaf that will be able to drive to empty grocery stores. The ten people who bought the Chevy Volt will also be able to drive there. As an additional bonus, it takes more energy (gas and electricity) to produce a gallon of ethanol than the ethanol produces. No wonder liberals are for it. It doesn't make any sense at all.

Basically, liberals are against any major energy sources that….work.

But there is one energy source that has been largely overlooked by liberals. It's renewable and doesn't emit any scary armaggedon-inducing carbon, though it does leave a footprint…

That's right, liberals ! We can go back to the green future by riding horses. Now, that's what I call progressive. We'll progress right back to the 19th century to solve all our modern energy problems. The answer is so simple, I'm only surprised liberals didn't think of it sooner. And think of all the green jobs that riding horses would create. Why, the pooper scooper jobs alone…I bet it wouldn't be long before the Democrats created the Federal Department Of Sh*t…well, never mind, though the notion seems fitting. And when Republicans wanted to cut funding for the Department Of Sh*t, the Dems could wail about how the GOP is trying to kill people and wants sh*t to pile up in the streets. Think of the possibilities, Democrats. This sh*t could happen.

Oh, wait. I forgot about PETA. Darn. It turns out liberals are against horses too. Man, what a picky bunch. Looks like it's back to the drawing board. Sh*t. I thought I was onto something.

Even though liberal "elites" have been pressing for higher gas and energy prices for years (remember when Obama said energy prices would "necessarily skyrocket" under his Cap And Trade plan ?), now they are complaining about high gas prices. Go figure. You'd think they'd be happy now that they are getting what they asked for, but no. The would-be energy price skyrocketer Obama is pretending to be outraged, and has ordered his Justice Dept. to investigate possible abuse by oil speculators, though he doesn't have any evidence of illegal activity:

On Thursday, my attorney general also launched a task force with just one job: rooting out cases of fraud or manipulation in the oil markets that might affect gas prices, including any illegal activity by traders and speculators. We’re going to make sure that no one is taking advantage of the American people for their own short-term gain. And another step we need to take is to finally end the $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies we give to the oil and gas companies each year. That’s $4 billion of your money going to these companies when they’re making record profits and you’re paying near record prices at the pump. It has to stop

Don't be surprised when Obama's "investigation" comes up with nothing. This is just another populist ploy by the President. His own preferred policies would lead to the same high energy prices he is complaining about. As I stated in my last post, our President is just a politician, nothing more. He adopts whatever policy will put him in the most favorable light come election time, even if he contradicts himself in the process. This is yet another example of it.

I do have one surefire method for reducing gas prices by about 50 cents per gallon – the government could stop taxing the hell out of gasoline. Click on the link to view per gallon gas taxes by state.

At the preceding link, you'll find that Ohio's government gas taxes come to 46.4 cents per gallon. That's about the average. Liberal California's gas taxes are the highest at 66.5 cents per gallon, with liberal New York running a close second (it's because liberals are for the little guy, or something). Conservative Texas only charges 38.4 cents per gallon (because conservatives only care about the rich, or something). Alaska has the lowest gas taxes at 26.4 cents per gallon (probably because Sarah Palin is a hate-mongerer, or something. Liberals, like children, say the darnedest things).

What's interesting is how gas prices vary around the world. Our current gas prices look pretty good to Europeans, who pay about twice what we pay. The big oil-producing countries in the Middle East pay a fraction of what we pay. In Saudi Arabia, gasoline costs like 45 cents per gallon. Maybe it would be a GOOD idea for America to produce as much of it's own oil as we can, you know ? China pays less than we do, which leads me to the devaluation of the dollar. We've been printing money like crazy in this country and borrowing money like crazy. That devalues our fiat currency, which is backed by nothing other than the "full faith and credit" of the United States (which ain't saying a lot these days). When the dollar is devalued, prices go up, and that's what is happening. We find ourselves in the debt-riddled economic doldrums with prices rising at the same time. Food prices were already rising beyond economic growth before the oil price spike, and now things will only get worse. An old word from the 70's is beginning to creep back into my mind – stagflation, but this time with the additional economic burden of crushing debt. I wish I could be more optimistic….but….as I also stated in my last post…we're the Titanic, and the iceberg approaches. It's getting very near. I sure wish we had a leader, but unfortunately, we're stuck with Obama, for now at least.

On the bright side, Obama has finally released his original Birth Certificate, not that I give a damn. It's about time. Maybe now the Birthers will shut up so the media can focus on something meaningful for a change, not that I actually hold out much hope for that. Then again, maybe the Birthers will claim the Birth Certificate is a forgery. Enquiring minds want to know…or something.