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.

Here are your public education tax dollars at work:

Great job, teacher's unions. Great job.

We had a pretty good jobs report in January, with 243,000 jobs created. That's a good sign…but only if it continues. If we created 240,000 jobs every month, that would be 2.88 million jobs created over a year's time. Not too bad. If that continues for several YEARS, we'll be in decent shape, so I'm not going to get overly excited yet. Still, it's a good bit of news in what have been some bleak economic years.

Our economy is supposed to create jobs. That's normal. I looked at some jobs data going back through history, and every presidential administration since Calvin Coolidge has created jobs, with two exceptions – Herbert Hoover from 1929-1933 (the Great Depression), and Barack Obama. The only other President beside Hoover and Obama who didn't have net job creation during his first term was George W. Bush.

While job creation is great, the unemployment rate is not falling due to America's great job creation numbers, because they haven't been that great.

The unemployment rate is falling because record numbers of people are leaving the work force. We have the lowest labor participation rate in 30 years, as per the chart below (from Bloomberg):

What this means is that so many people are unemployed over the long term or dropping out of the work force for other reasons that they no longer show up in Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data as being unemploymed (BLS only counts those receiving unemployment benefits as unemployed).

In January, a record 1.2 million people left the labor force. They don't have jobs, but they are no longer counted as unemployed. The smaller labor participation rate is the primary reason the official unemployment rate (8.3%) is falling. If we were to recalculate the unemployment rate using the work force participation rate from December 2007, it would be 11% instead of 8.3%.

Here's the even more depressing part. To get our labor force back to the participation rates we had prior to the recession, we'd have to add about 5.7 million more jobs above the rate of population growth. With current rates of population growth, it takes about 1.6 million new jobs created every year JUST TO BREAK EVEN. To date under the Obama administration, we have not done that. We still have a net loss of 2 million jobs under Obama. Still, things are turning around somewhat. In his SOTU speech, Obama said, "in the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs". That's roughly accurate, but it doesn't really mean the employment picture is getting better. It just means it's not getting worse. It means it's keeping about even with population growth.

We have a LONG way to go.

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.

We already know about the failure of Obama's stimulus investment in Solyndra, which cost the American taxpayers $535 million.

We found out a few days ago about the failure of Ener1, another Obama stimulus-funded alternative energy company, which has filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The taxpayers put up $118 million for that one.

Another stimulus-funded alternative energy company, Beacon Power, also failed. The taxpayers lost $43 million on that deal.

That's three failures in less than three years…how many more will there be ?

And now this – the inspector general for the Labor Dept. is calling for an end to Obama's green job training program. Why ? Because it isn't working. There aren't enough green jobs:

House Republicans are expanding their probe into the Obama administration's energy programs, investigating $500 million in green job training grants that placed just 10% of trainees in jobs, according to a government report.

The program's goal was to train 124,893 people and put 79,854 in jobs. But 17 months later, 52,762 were trained and 8,035, or roughly 1 in 10, had jobs. Those numbers come from an audit by the Department of Labor's inspector general, which recommended that the administration end the program and return unspent money.

Sounds like those green jobs aren't panning out so well, but some disagree:

Assistant Secretary of Labor Jane Oates defends the initiative, saying the inspector general's audit used old numbers and that it was never designed to provide immediate results.

"It's like coming to me three days after I join Weight Watchers and yelling at me because I didn't lose 62 pounds yet," she said. More recent numbers are still being compiled, Oates said.

Okay, but it's been 17 months, not three days, and if "more recent numbers are being compiled", whose fault is that ? It's not the Inspector General's fault for using the numbers the Labor Dept. gave him.

Here's one example of the green job shortfall:

One group Issa singled out is the Pathstone Corp., a Rochester, N.Y. non-profit that spent $2.3 million of its $8 million grant and had trained only 25 people — far short of its 660 goal, auditors found.

Those numbers are "extremely outdated," said Pathstone's Jeffrey Lewis. But he conceded that job placements have been much slower than anyone would have liked. "This grant came just as the recession heightened," he said.

I'm starting to sense a defense mechanism at work here, the "numbers are outdated" excuse. That raises this question – why don't the recipients of stimulus-funded training dollars know how many people they trained with the money ??? Why doesn't the Dept. Of Labor know ??? Where's the accountability ??? Or are they merely engaging in obfuscation ???

As it turns out, the government's own bureaucracy has gotten in it's way:

Bureaucracy also slowed the process. As part of its grant application, Pathstone needed to line up employers to take its graduates. But by the time it won the grant, one employer in Scranton, Pa., stopped hiring after a moratorium on natural gas drilling…

And who implemented the natural gas moratorium ??? President Obama did, though it seems he might now be reversing course, according to comments from his State Of The Union speech:

In his speech, Obama said America’s natural-gas reserves could meet the nation’s energy needs for 100 years and provide 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade.

“The development of natural gas will create jobs and power trucks and factories that are cleaner and cheaper, proving that we don’t have to choose between our environment and our economy,” Obama said.

Good move for energy production and job creation, but there will be controversy here, and it's name is "fracking":

The Bureau of Land Management estimates 90 percent of natural-gas drilling on public lands involves hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in which a mixture of chemicals, sand and water is injected into shale formations to open fissures and allow the natural gas to come to the surface.

Environmental groups are against fracking (environmental groups are against EVERY method of energy production that will actually work to supply America with the energy it needs):

Groups such as Protecting Our Waters say hydraulic fracturing — in which a mix of water, sand and chemicals are shot underground to break apart rock and free gas — is tainting drinking water and causing more pollution than is cut by the cheap gas. The broad new federal legislation and regulation the groups advocate would tangle up fracking in miles of red tape, industry leaders counter.

The EPA agrees that fracking causes groundwater pollution, and because the EPA is basically an autonomous government authority answerable to nobody who can make it's own law, the "miles of red tape" prediction sounds likely. In fact, I think America's energy policy of the last thirty years should be called "miles of red tape". Nothing much ever seems to get done.

In summary, Obama's grand prediction of "millions of green jobs" seems far from becoming reality, but not to worry, the government has plenty of YOUR money to burn on Obama's quest. Speaking of which, the CBO just said the federal deficit will top a trillion dollars again in 2012. That makes four straight years with deficits over a trillion under President Obama. Funny how he didn't mention that in his State Of The Union speech. It's a pretty big deal. I guess he just forgot.

Our President, the Great Prevaricator, likes to mislead people. I suppose that shouldn't be a surprise. That's what prevaricators do, they mislead. Obama's statements about who pays their "fair share" of taxes have received lots of press, as have Obama's statements about billionaire Warren Buffett paying less in taxes than his secretary. Let's examine these claims.

According to 2010 tax data, the top 1% of earners made about 24% of the national income (if you include capital gains) and paid nearly 40% of the income taxes. Thus the rich, as a group, are paying nearly double their "fair share" according to the data. The Great Prevaricator conveniently forgets to tell us that part.

Here's Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to elaborate on the point:

"We have to start with the facts on whether the rich are paying their fair share. We hear that over and over again, 'the rich are not paying their fair share,'" Paul said on CNN's "State of the Union." “The top 1 percent, the millionaires in our country, pay on average 29 percent of their income. That's what they pay on average. The average carpenter who makes $50,000 to $75,000 a year pays between 15 percent and 18 percent. The top 50 percent of wage earners pay 96 percent of the income tax."

These numbers are known as "facts", something the Great Prevaricator would prefer you not know. Instead of dealing with the actual facts, the Great Prevaricator talks about individuals, whose tax burdens can vary widely. That's why Warren Buffett and his secretary become the Obama talking point regardless of the facts. If we're dealing with facts, our tax code is progressive. The rich pay more.

But I'll indulge the Great Prevaricator. Let's talk about Buffett and his secretary for a minute.

First of all, Warren Buffett pays a LOT more in taxes than his secretary does. Let's have no confusion there. On Warren Buffett's 2010 tax return, he paid nearly $7 million in federal income tax. Unless Buffett's secretary is the highest paid secretary in the history of the universe, I guarantee you she pays nothing close to that amount.

The part of Buffett's tax bill Obama wants you to concentrate on is the percetage of taxes paid compared to income. For Buffett in 2010, that came to 17.4% of his income. This is where Obama and liberals become outraged. Obama wants it to be a minimum of 30% for those earning a million bucks or more, and I imagine most Americans would agree with that.

But there are other considerations. If Warren Buffett's earnings were taxed as regular income, he'd pay at a 35% rate (maybe 30% after deductions). I haven't pored through Buffett's tax return, but I'm going to guess a substantial amount of his earnings come from long term capital gains, which are taxed at a rate of 15%. There are reasons why capital gains are taxed at a lower rate. Here are some of those reasons:

The term “capital” refers to produced goods used to produce future goods. Even a corner lemonade stand could not exist without capital; the lemons and the stand are the essential capital that makes the enterprise operate. A recent study by Dale Jorgenson of Harvard University discovered that almost half of the growth of the American economy between 1948 and 1980 was directly attributable to the increase in U.S. capital formation (with most of the rest a result of increases and improvements in the labor force).

Investment (capital) is what fuels our economy. The more capital we invest, the more economic growth we will have. In a free country (which stands in contrast to the centralized Obamacracy the President described in his State Of The Union speech), that capital comes from and is invested in the private sector. Why would we want to discourage it by taxing it and sending that money to the federal government ?

Next, liberals like Obama make the same economic mistake over and over again, by thinking capital only makes rich people rich. That's crazy thinking, because capital investment benefits everyone via job creation and a rising standard of living:

Between 1900 and 2000, real wages in the United States quintupled from around fifteen cents an hour (worth three dollars in 2000 dollars) to more than fifteen dollars an hour. In other words, a worker in 2000 earned as much, adjusted for inflation, in twelve minutes as a worker in 1900 earned in an hour. That surge in the living standard of the American worker is explained, in part, by the increase in capital over that period. The main reason U.S. farmers and manufacturing workers are more productive, and their real wages higher, than those of most other industrial nations is that America has one of the highest ratios of capital to worker in the world.

If capital investment wanes, so does our standard of living, and so does the middle class.

The third reason long term capital gains are taxed at a lower rate is inflation:

capital gains are not indexed for inflation: the seller pays tax not only on the real gain in purchasing power, but also on the illusory gain attributable to inflation. The inflation penalty is one reason that, historically, capital gains have been taxed at lower rates than ordinary income. In fact, Alan Blinder, a former member of the Federal Reserve Board, noted in 1980 that, up until that time, “most capital gains were not gains of real purchasing power at all, but simply represented the maintenance of principal in an inflationary world.

If you bought a stock in 1990 and sold it for 50% more than you paid for it, you might have actually LOST purchasing power, and that's BEFORE the government takes it's 15%. Let's also not forget that investment is capital at risk, and if you lose a million dollars on an investment, that money is just gone. You don't get to reduce your tax burden by a million. You just bet and lost. The end.

The Great Prevaricator doesn't want you to know any of these things. Here's something else he doesn't want you to know – the government doesn't get that much revenue from capital gains taxes to begin with, and…raising the capital gains tax rate may result in LESS federal revenue. Obama's own administration has estimated that increasing the capital gains tax rate from 15% to 20% would bring in $100 billion in federal revenue over ten years. That's $10 billion per year, and that's only if the capital gains tax rate was hiked for EVERYONE. What is $10 billion per year going to accomplish when we have a $1.23 trillion deficit ? Not much, even if the Obama administrations guesstimates are correct. They could easily be incorrect, because there's another thing about capital gains taxes Obama doesn't want you to know – they are the easiest taxes in the world to avoid. When the capital gains rate goes up, you can avoid the tax by holding onto your investment, or even worse, by investing overseas, which the wealthy can do whenever they wish. Thus, a higher capital gains tax rate would have the effect of driving investment AWAY from America. Not too smart.

The Great Prevaricator conveniently forgets to tell you any of these things. He's some piece of work, that guy. We deserve a much more honest President. I can't take much more of people repeating his lies and distortions. If he wants to be an education President, he could start by not making the public dumber and more misinformed himself.

Enough about capital gains. Let's turn to Warren Buffett's secretary. Obama recently claimed she payed twice the tax rate that Buffett did, which by my calculations means she payed an income tax rate of nearly 35%. If what Obama said is true (most of what he says isn't), that would make HER one of the rich, because she'd be in the top tax tier of 35%. What is Obama complaining about ? She'd be one of the people he wants to tax, but Obama says she represents the middle class. If so, I agree with the President. 35% is way too high a federal income tax rate for a middle class person to pay. Let's cut her tax rate to 15% IMMEDIATELY. I'm FOR the middle class. How about you, Mr. President ? Why are you punishing the poor hard-working woman with such confiscatory tax rates ?

In any case, here's another question to ask yourself.

Where does Buffett's secretary get her salary from ???

Answer – It comes from Warren Buffett !!! Thus, in reality, since Buffett is paying her entire salary, he is paying her taxes too, as well as the taxes of all the employees he hires. Obama thinks we're too stupid to make the connection, but we're not all part of the Occupy movement, Mr. President.

And Warren Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway, pays taxes too. Obama doesn't mention that part either. If Obama was being honest, he'd say Warren Buffett is generating a tremendous amount of revenue for the federal Treasury through both direct and indirect means. But that's only if Obama was being honest, which he isn't…or maybe he's just a dunce. It seems hard to believe, but he talks like a dunce.

There's one other rather curious thing about Warren Buffett. While he pimps for more taxes for Obama by calling for "shared sacrifice" from the rich, his company, Berkshire Hathaway, owes an alleged $1 billion in back taxes to the federal government, and is threatening protracted litigation with the IRS while Buffett tries to cut a deal to pay less. I'm thinking that if Buffett really believes he should pay more, he would pay it instead of hiring attorneys, ya know ?

My final point about the Great Prevaricator's class warfare tax shuffle is this, and it's a doozy – there aren't enough millionaires in this country to come anywhere near to plugging our $1.2 trillion budget deficit. In 2009, there were 236,883 households that had an income over a million dollars, and only 8,274 made over $10 million. If we took another million bucks away from all these rich folks (which would mean we'd be taxing most of them at a tax rate near 100%), it would rake in $237 billion for the federal treasury, leaving us still with a budget deficit of a trillion dollars. According to the CBO, Obama's 30% millionaire tax proposal would bring in $453 billion over ten years. That's a deficit reduction of $45 billion per year, which would take this year's $1.23 trillion dollar deficit down to $1.78 trillion. Big fricking whoop. Nothing at all would change. Nothing. That's what all the Great Prevaricator's screaming and wailing is basically about…NOTHING. It's all phony cover for all the spending increases Obama wants.

What we really need to do is cut federal spending, like the Republicans keep saying. Spending is at a record-high, and it's why we have record deficits. The Great Prevaricator doesn't want you to know that either. Contrary to his words, Obama isn't putting together "an economy built to last". He's building an economy that cannot possibly last.

Anybody But Obama in 2012. I beg you.

I know I'm supposed to write about politics here, but I've been having some minor intestinal problems and my doctor told me to avoid stress. He also scheduled a colonoscopy for me, to which I replied, "I thought you said you wanted me to AVOID stress !".

And then one of my "friends" e-mailed me the following column from Dave Barry. This is too funny not to share, though it's somewhat less funny when you have a colonscopy looming on the horizon. Without further ado, here's Mr. Barry:

ABOUT THE WRITER
Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humour columnist for the Miami Herald.

Colonoscopy Journal:

I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy.

A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis.

Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner.

I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!'

I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America's enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous.

Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor.

Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons). Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes – and here I am being kind – like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose, watery bowel movement may result.'

This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but, have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep.

The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, 'What if I spurt on Andy?' How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep.

At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point.

Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand.

There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, 'Dancing Queen' had to be the least appropriate.

'You want me to turn it up?' said Andy, from somewhere behind me.

'Ha ha,' I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling 'Dancing Queen, feel the beat of the tambourine,' and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood.

Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that IT was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.

On the subject of Colonoscopies.

Colonoscopies are no joke, but these comments during the exam were quite humorous….. A physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominately male) while he was performing their colonoscopies:

1. 'Take it easy, Doc. You're boldly going where no man has gone before!'
2. 'Find Amelia Earhart yet?'
3. 'Can you hear me NOW?'
4. 'Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?'
5. 'You know, in Arkansas, we're now legally married.'
6. 'Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?'
7. 'You put your left hand in; you take your left hand out…'
8. 'Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!'
9. 'If your hand doesn't fit, you must quit!'
10. 'Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.'
11. 'You used to be an executive at Enron, didn't you?'
12. 'Gosh, now I know why I am not gay.'

And the best one of all:

13. 'Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?'

Oh well, what's a guy to do ? Besides, could a colonoscopy really be that much worse than Obama's State Of The Union speech ? I'll have to get back to you on that one.

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.

According to ABC News, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said he "probably" pays about 15% in federal incomes taxes:

Romney said he “probably” pays only about 15 percent in federal taxes because most of his earnings come from capital gains, which is taxed at a lower rate than traditional income. This means the super wealthy Romney pays a significantly lower tax rate than most middle income Americans.

I was a bit surprised by this, because I know Romney still receives income from Bain Capital, which I figured would be taxed at regular income rates, not the lower capital gains tax rates.

As it turns out, that is not true. Due to a tax loophole, Bain Capital and other private equity firms are taxed at the lower capital gains tax rates for income they receive for managing other people's money:

Managers of private equity firms like Romney are often paid under an arrangement in which they receive both a set fee for their management, as well as a share of the profits that the firm makes for investors. While their management fees are taxed at normal income tax rates, the share of investor gains that go to a private equity manager (called "carried interest") are treated as capital gains, and thus taxed at a top rate of 15 percent. (Hedge fund managers and partners in real estate ventures also benefit from receiving carried interest.)

Here's the problem with that. The argument for taxing capital gains at a lower rate than regular income is that it spurs investment, which leads to economic growth and job creation. I'm completely on board with that concept. The last thing I want to do is punish investment and risk taking, but what's happening with the "carried interrest" of private equity firms being taxed at the lower rate is different. Private equity managers like Romney was are receiving a tax break for income derived from investing other people's money, not their own, and that's a key difference. Because the equity manager is not putting his own money at risk, it seems the income the manager derives from his services should not be considered a capital gain at all, it should be considered regular income. The manager is receiving a fee for services rendered, regardless of how it is structured.

Here's how Peter Orszag put it:

Former Office of Management and Budget Director and current Citigroup Vice Chairman of Global Banking Peter Orszag said that the carried interest loophole is akin to a famous actor's portion of a movie's revenue being taxed as capital gains, a proposition that most people would hopefully find absurd. Citizens for Tax Justice opined that carried interest "is clearly compensation for services and not a return on investment," and that private equity managers "should pay income taxes at ordinary rates on their compensation, just like everyone else, from the folks who sweep their floors or answer their phones to CEO's exercising stock options and professional athletes getting playoff bonuses."

I can't argue with that. Sounds right to me.

Here's why it affects Romney's tax burden:

Thanks to a lucrative retirement package, Romney is still making millions from Bain, much of which is likely being taxed as carried interest. (While Romney has refused to make his tax returns public, he's said that all of his income is taxed at investment rates.) Analysts have estimated that Romney's tax rate is about 14 percent, lower than that of many middle class families.

Romney isn't doing anything wrong, but this tax loophole should go away.

So, why hasn't it gone away ???

The House Of Representatives passed a bill to remove this tax loophole in 2010, but the bill died in the Senate, as it has for three years in a row. I don't have the numbers (I'm not enjoying this Wikipedia blackout), but it seems to me more Democrats are on the right side of this issue than are Republicans, and needless to say, money managers are lobbying hard against it. With our astronomical deficit and debt numbers, this would be one good place to enhance revenue. You won't hear me condone tax increases very often, but in this case, it really does have to do with the rich paying their "fair share", because they aren't.

In trying to decide who should be our next President, we first have to ask if our current President deserves a second term. This should be based upon his performance in office, not on the political party to which he belongs.

Does Obama deserve a second term ?

Let's look at his record.

I have to start in February 2008, when then candidate Obama brought his campaign roadshow to Ohio. I went to see him speak at Youngstown State University. The three biggest cheers Obama received from Ohioans that day were when he 1) promised to rework NAFTA, 2) promised to close Guantanamo Bay within 12 months, and 3) promised to end the Iraq War in 2009.

Needless to say, none of those things happened. Obama never had any intention of reworking NAFTA. He forgot that promise the minute he left Ohio. As President, Obama has pushed for more free trade agreements, and recently signed free trade agreements with South Korea, Panama, and Columbia. These were the largest free trade deals signed by the United States since NAFTA.

Guantanamo Bay is still open.

The Iraq War ended, but it ended under the timeline established by Obama's predecessor, President Bush. It definitely didn't end in 2009, as Obama promised Ohioans.

Obama lied to my face and to every Ohioan that day in 2008. An inauspicious start. I knew he was lying then, that he was the kind of guy who would tell people whatever they wanted to hear in order to become President. I don't trust those kinds of politicians, which is why I voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary. Obama was not only as inexperienced a politico as any who ever ran for President, with zero prior management experience, but he was dishonest as well. I did what I could to defeat him, but alas, it didn't work, and now we're in the toilet.

Obama did keep some of his 2008 promises to Ohioans, like ObamaCare. He also promised to increase federal spending by $874 billion per year that day at Youngstown State, though he didn't put it into those words, because the electorate would have had a negative reaction to that type of honesty. Instead of putting price tags on his spending binge, Obama made all sorts of promises about "investing" in this, that, and almost everything, while never mentioning the costs. This President has never met any spending he doesn't like. Obama has "accomplished" every bit of his spending increase promise, which leads me to the primary reason we shouldn't give Obama a second term in office…he is the most fiscally irresponsible President in American history, bar none.

We have had annual deficits over $1 trillion ever year Obama has been in office. He has run up $4.6 trillion in debt in only 3 years in office. This far outpaces the previous "most fiscally irresponsible" President, George W. Bush, who ran up $4.8 trillion in debt over 8 years in office. Anybody who would vote for a second Obama term after such a record should have his/her head examined. The only people who should be supporting Obama's fiscal recklessness are citizens of China, who stand to gain from our destruction.

And what has all Obama's fiscal insanity accomplished ??? Unemployment is STILL at 8.5%, and it has been over 9% for the majority of Obama's presidency. If you recall, it was 7.6% when Obama took office. We have a huge net job loss during Obama's reign, though to hear him tell it, he is creating all kinds of jobs. That's one reason of many I call him the Great Prevaricator. Unemployment was mostly in the 5% range when Bush was President. Great job, Barry. Not only are you spending us into oblivion and wrecking the future of our country, but we aren't even gaining any temporary benefit from it now. You have managed to be the worst of both worlds. Most amazingly of all, the new ObamaCare spending hasn't even kicked in yet. That starts in full force in 2014. Federal spending is already the highest in the history of the country (barring WWII), and Obama's BIG spending program hasn't even started yet. We are borrowing 43 cents of every dollar the federal government spends WITHOUT ObamaCare spending in place. Imagine what it will be AFTER ObamaCare.

While I'm on the subject of ObamaCare, let's not forget that the Obama admimistration lied about it's costs and effects on the debt. The Great Prevaricator claims ObamaCare will decrease the debt, but he made that calculation by having the CBO measure ten years of revenue against only six years of benefits. That is profoundly dishonest, and sadly typical of the way our government misleads us.

Then the Great Prevaricator has the audacity to pretend increasing taxes on the rich by 5% is going to pay for all his crazy spending increases. That may be his most egregious lie of all. There is NO WAY his numbers come anywhere close to adding up, but I rarely hear a peep about this from the mainstream media. Perhaps there would be a few more media types peeping if 90% of them weren't Democrats. We'd be hearing the truth about the high speed rail to fiscal destruction we are on if the President was a Republican. Of that I have no doubt, but when a Democrat sits in the catbird seat, all we hear about is taxing the rich. I hate to break it to you America, but everyone's taxes will have to go through the roof in one way or another to pay for all this spending and government growth. Those are the facts, even though your illustrious media doesn't want to clue you in to the facts. The prevarication goes far beyond just the White House.

Somebody will also have to explain to me exactly how we are supposed to create jobs in this country going forward when our government spending and taxation levels, our unpaid-for entitlement explosion, and our building Mount Everest of debt are going to drain our pocketbooks and decrease consumer demand for generations to come. How does that work, exactly ??? The unvarnished facts there are, it DOESN'T work. At all. It would be real nice if we had a President who would level with us about these things, rather than the performing circus clown we have in office now.

Just say NO-bama. Change starts at the top. Obama has had his chance, and he failed miserably. It's time to try someone else.

Alternately, you could oppose Mitt Romney and support Obama's reign of destruction because Romney's a Mormon, Romney worked for Bain Capital, or because Romney changed his position on abortion and health care…..but that would make you somewhat of a self-destructive fool, wouldn't it ? We already KNOW Obama is a failure. Romney hasn't had his chance yet. If Romney turned out to be as bad as Obama, we'd be breaking even. But there's a very good chance Romney's policies would be better for the country. I don't know about the rest of you, but when my car falls apart and won't run, I don't try to keep driving it. I get a new one. 2012 is definitely the time for a new car. The Obama-mobile is a lemon.

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.

President Obama is urging Republicans to pass a two-month extension compromise of his payroll tax cut. From the White House:

In the afternoon, the President will continue to urge House Republicans to do what’s right for the American people by allowing a vote on the short term bipartisan compromise passed by almost the entire Senate. If Congress fails to extend the payroll tax cut, the typical family making $50,000 a year will have about $40 less to spend or save with each paycheck.

The President is also pulling at heartstrings:

Obama will point people to a new section of the White House website where they can “share what a $40 paycheck means to them.” In addition, he’ll urge them to make use of a new Twitter hashtag, #40dollars.

The White House has also rounded up a group of citizens “who would see their taxes go up” to appear alongside Obama. Unclear if they’ll recite their assuredly heart-rending tales of prospective woe.

Republicans don't want the two-month extension. They are saying they want the payroll tax extension to last another year, which makes a lot more sense than a two-month extension.

This is all the usual partisan dance, of course, but what I find interesting is when Democrats go on record supporting tax cuts. You see, Democrats are generally the party that increases taxes. Republicans are generally the party that cuts taxes (and Democrats howl every time they do). Obama has turned that reality on it's head, which to me is an acknowledgement by the head Democrat that tax increases DO have a negative effect on people's lives. Obama is in effect advocating a REPUBLICAN position on taxes, thus admitting that the Republicans have been right all along. Obama is admitting that tax cuts stimulate the economy, just as Republicans have said all along. Obama is admitting that tax cuts increase demand, just as Republicans have said all along. Obama is obviously correct about these things. It's basic mathematics. If you have more money in your pocket (via less taxes), you will spend more. It's that simple, so I wonder why Democrats have devoted so much time and energy to denying it ??? Obama has ripped away the ongoing Democrat lie about tax cuts. I only wonder if he realizes he's done it, and how is he going to switch gears and start defending the huge tax increases he proposes starting in 2013 ??? That should be some magic trick. Only the Great Prevaricator has a snowball's chance of pulling it off (with the reality-blurring help of his fawning, Democrat-dominated mainstream media). Should be interesting.

Under the Democratic vision for this country, the only way out of our economic mess is enormous tax increases, precisely the opposite of what Obama is trying to feed us with his payroll tax cut. Let's start with Obama's own ten-year budget proposal, which assumed all the Bush tax cuts would expire. That would be a $3.8 trillion tax increase right there (and Obama's ten-year plan STILL added $8-9 trillion to the debt over a decade). Nothing like having huge tax increases AND a $20 trillion debt, eh ? But maybe the Democrats will abandon that plan, and only promote repealing the Bush tax cuts for the rich, thereby bringing in a whopping $75 billion per year to address our trillion dollar deficits. My calculator says that math doesn't add up at all, but Democrats keep pretending it does. It seems to be their main (phony) talking point, so it must be fooling somebody. "Fair shares" and all that rot.

The Democrats have all kinds of tax increases up their sleeve. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has even proposed paying for Obama's payroll tax cut with a, drumroll please,…TAX INCREASE. Weird:

…Harry Reid's plan to finance a one-year payroll tax cut with a 3.25% income tax surcharge on upper-income Americans that would last for at least 10 years. Mr. Reid knows it can't pass the House, and as we went to press it looked likely to fail even in the Senate.

Reid's plan won't pass the House or Senate, but Democrats like it for it's class warfare value. "Fair shares" and all.

Who would Reid's tax increase affect ??? Here's who:

Mr. Reid's surcharge—which would hit incomes of $1 million and above—would slam small business job creators. Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that taxpayers will declare about $1.2 trillion of business income in 2013. Only a fraction of those small business owners and Subchapter S companies will have a net income above $1 million, but Joint Tax finds that 34% of that $1.2 trillion is on tax returns with "modified AGI [adjusted gross income] in excess of $1 million." This means about $400 billion of business income would be subject to Mr. Reid's profits surtax.

Mr. Obama's own Treasury Department examined 2007 IRS data and found 392,000 returns with incomes above $1 million. Some 311,00, or more than three out of four, were classified by Treasury as "business owners." Perhaps Democrats can explain how taking money from employers is going to lead them to hire more workers.

We're back to the old Democrat snake oil, where Dems pretend they can fix the economy and create jobs by increasing taxes on the job creators. Duh. Liberal Democrats are good at class warfare, but not so good at implementing policies that will create jobs, which is what really helps the economy. Tricking Americans into believing Democrats are for the "little guy" seems to be their priority, even if the Dem policies end up hurting the little guy the most by eliminating jobs. If the choice is between handouts from Democrats or a job, this little guy will take the job every day of the week and twice on sunday.

Imagine a little over a year from now. 2013 arrives, unemployment is still over 8%, and the national debt is over $16 trillion. Obama is re-elected (cringe) to a second term. Is he really prepared to increase taxes by trillions of dollars ? Is he then prepared to increase taxes by $1.5 trillion more to implement ObamaCare ? Is he really prepared to nuke the economy all over again as it struggles to regain it's footing ? Everything I hear from the Democratic leadership says "Yes We Can". Every fiber of my being says "You Better Not".

I spent the last week in Las Vegas, where I purposely avoided television, the internet, talk radio, and newspapers. I didn't even check in on my own blog. All things political were jettisoned from my life for an entire week. It was fantastic. I'd be quite happy to remove politics from my life completely, but alas, I cannot…not while the systematic destruction of the U.S. Constitution is underway in this country…not while the fascists leading our government are hell-bent on destroying the underpinnings of American liberty…not while our so-called leaders are busy destroying our collective economic future. I can't simply sit back and ignore these things, much as I'd like to.

It seems I missed a lot in my week away. On the plus side, the Iraq War ended. Thank goodness for that. I'm happy our troops are finally coming home, even if warmongering politicians like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) are not happy. That war should never have been waged. It took the lives of 4,500 Americans and 100,000 Iraqis to get rid of the evil Saddam Hussein. There had to be a better way.

On the down side, the Bill Of Rights is about to take another big hit. The House voted in favor of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), 283-136, which eliminates the Due Process clause from the Bill Of Rights. The NDAA would allow Americans to be detained indefinitely without trial, and President Obama made sure Americans were included in the "you don't have no stinking rights !" group:

As [Senator Carl] Levin (D-MI) said last week, it was the White House itself that demanded Section 1031 apply to American citizens.

“The language which precluded the application of Section 1031 to American citizens was in the bill that we originally approved...and the administration asked us to remove the language which says that U.S. citizens and lawful residents would not be subject to this section,” said Levin, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

Obama was insistent on nullifying the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, a curious position to take for a man who is allegedly an expert in Constitutional Law. Then again, Obama already has a history of ignoring the Constitution, as he did when he perverted the Commerce Clause by signing ObamaCare into law. The President is not alone in wanting to discard those quaint old rights found in our Constitution. 93 of his fellow Democrats also voted to discard them by voting for the NDAA. This is what Democrats means when they talk about a "living" or "evolving" Constitution. They mean they want to destroy it when it gets in the way of their political goals.

Even more interesting is the way the alleged limited government advocates on the Republican side of the aisle voted. The small government Constitution-adhering GOPers in the House voted FOR the NDAA by a margin of 190-43. What a bunch of phonies. Here's the money quote from Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC):

“It is not unfair to make an American citizen account for the fact that they decided to help Al Qaeda to kill us all and hold them as long as it takes to find intelligence about what may be coming next,” remarked Graham. “And when they say, ‘I want my lawyer,’ you tell them, ‘Shut up. You don’t get a lawyer.’”

And here I thought Kim Jong Il died. Guess not. He's a Senator from South Carolina. We should build a Lindsay Graham Memorial in D.C. with the words "Shut up. You don't get a lawyer" inscribed on it to inspire future generations of fascist Americans.

The only bad thing about voting the totalitarian Obama out of office is that one of these Graham-like Republicans will probably take his place, assuming Ron Paul (R-TX) can't win the GOP nomination, which he probably can't, despite the fact that he's currently leading in Iowa.

When the Great Prevaricator, Obama, isn't eliminating our Constitutional rights, he's busy regulating us into submission. The Great Prevaricator does this while simultaneously pretending that the GOP wants to strip away all regulations and turn the country into the Wild West all over again. Obama says the Republicans want "dirtier air, dirtier water, less people with health insurance" to cover up for the fact that regulations have exploded during Obama's tenure in the Oval Office. The Wall Street Journal exposes the truth:

A lack of regulations is not the problem, despite what the Great Prevaricator would have us believe. Our problem is the control freak nature of the Obama administration.

Coming next, those skyrocketing electricity rates Obama promised us a few years ago:

In the next few days, President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is expected to issue another final regulation directed at electricity utilities. This rule, known as the Utility MACT, will impose an estimated $11 billion each year in new costs on our economy. It will threaten electricity-generating capacity in many parts of the country. And it’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this administration’s runaway rulemaking.

Obama's three-step plan for our economy is 1) Regulate 2) Control 3) Repeat.

And it doesn't matter how many jobs it costs us. It doesn't matter how negative are the effects on the economy. Those like Obama will use the negative effects of their policies to call for yet more control, more regulation, and less Constitutional restrictions on their power. That's the way totalitarians roll.

Newt Watch: With Gingrich leading in the Republican primary polls, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) threatened to release a thousand pages of material from Gingrich's 90's ethics investigation. Unfortunately for Mrs. Pelosi, Gingrich quickly pointed out that it would be a violation of House ethics rules were Pelosi to release that information. Oops. How ironic. Caught with her pants down, Pelosi is now backtracking, and trying to say she didn't say what she said.

I mentioned before on this blog that Gingrich pled to one House ethics violation in the 90's, though Gingrich contended he didn't do anything wrong. There was a question about funding for a class Gingrich taught being a violation of that organization's tax-exempt status. The House ethics investigation was widely reported. What I didn't report before, and what was not widely reported, was that the IRS subsequently cleared the organization, and thus Gingrich, of all wrongdoing. From the Washington Post:

The Internal Revenue Service has cleared an organization of charges that it violated its tax-exempt status when it helped fund a college course taught by former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), the organization said yesterday.

The IRS, concluding a three-year investigation, ruled that the Progress and Freedom Foundation's donations to Gingrich were "consistent with its stated exempt purposes," and Gingrich's course and course book "were educational in content."

In its ruling, the IRS said the content of Gingrich's course "was educational and never favored or opposed a candidate for public office."

It said the foundation "did not intervene on behalf of candidates of the Republican Party merely by promoting" themes in the course.

Funny how Pelosi didn't mention that. Must have slipped her mind.

Presidential Polling: With Ohio being a key election swing state, a new Quinnipiac poll is pretty interesting. Quinnipiac has Gingrich leading Romney in the Ohio GOP primary, but both Gingrich and Romney lead Obama in Ohio, though the numbers are very close. The swing state poll also included Florida and Pennsylvania:

Florida: Romney with 45 percent to Obama's 42 percent; Obama at 46 percent to Gingrich's 44 percent.
Ohio: Romney at 43 percent to Obama's 42 percent; Gingrich with 43 percent to Obama's 42 percent.
Pennsylvania: Obama edging Romney 46 – 43 percent; Obama tops Gingrich 48 – 40 percent

As of today, the presidency is in play.

The Class Warfare Speech: President Obama gave his class warfare speech a couple days ago in Kansas. The speech included Obama's recurrent theme that everything is the Republicans fault. Same old, same old. Basically, Obama said America was losing it's middle class, and that Republicans think "we are better off when everyone is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules". I always thought fending for yourself was a basic requirement in life, but I guess not, according to Obama. The President gave us a brief history lesson on the decline of the American middle class, which he attributed to "inequality"…and the Republicans, of course:

Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. And it leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them – that our elected representatives aren’t looking out for the interests of most Americans.

More fundamentally, this kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise at the very heart of America: that this is the place where you can make it if you try. We tell people that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, hard work can get you into the middle class; and that your children will have the chance to do even better than you. That’s why immigrants from around the world flocked to our shores.

And yet, over the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk. A few years after World War II, a child who was born into poverty had a slightly better than 50-50 chance of becoming middle class as an adult. By 1980, that chance fell to around 40%. And if the trend of rising inequality over the last few decades continues, it’s estimated that a child born today will only have a 1 in 3 chance of making it to the middle class.

So, from the 50's until today, the middle class has been steadily slipping away, along with opportunity in America, according to Obama. He contends this has happened because we haven't had ENOUGH government, that the Republicans' "on your own" economic philosophy is the culprit. Does this strike anyone else as being extremely disingenuous, and exactly the opposite of what has really happened over the last 50 years ? Over the last half-century, there has been an unprecedented explosion in government spending, anti-poverty programs, and entitlements. The number of government subsidy programs has been soaring. There hasn't been any "on your own" philosophy in play at all. It's been just the opposite. Bigger and bigger government has been the trend. The size of the federal government has doubled every ten years. That sure doesn't sound like "on your own" to me. If Obama wants to equate a disappearing middle class with the activities of the government, that sure isn't an indictment of small government. It's an indictment of big government, the kind Obama promotes.

What policies would Obama pursue to rid ourselves of this inequality and foundering middle class ? More government, of course. He'd return tax rates to Clintonian levels for the wealthy (which would barely make a dent in the deficit much less end income inequality). He'd have the government invest (spend) more on education, infrastructure, and new technology (I guess this is supposed to stand in opposition to all those crazy right-wingers who are against education, infrastructure, and new technology, though I don't know any of those people, because they don't exist outside Obama's imagination). And he'd create more regulations and more entitlements. That's his entire plan. More of the very same things we've been doing for the last 50 years, the very same things that are bankrupting us. Brilliant.

Four months ago, one of the largest Tea Party groups, Freedomworks, created a Tea Party Debt Commission to address the red ink in which this country is drowning. Because our current non-leader is doing nothing but fiddling while Rome burns, I'm happy to present the results of the Tea Party's work, the Tea Party Budget.

Here's what the Tea Party Budget will do to our debt picture in comparison to non-leader Obama's non-plan, and in comparison to the House GOP plan.

The ten year Tea Party Budget plan would balance the budget in four years, and then start paying off the debt, reducing it to 75% of GDP by 2021 (as opposed to non-leader Obama's Greece-like 120%). Gone would be the trillion+ dollar deficits. Gone would be America's high-speed rail to fiscal destruction. Gone would be the crippling of our children's futures.

And the Tea Party does it without raising taxes.

Here are some of the features:

“Cuts, caps, and balances” federal spending.

Balances the budget in four years, and keeps it balanced, without tax hikes.

Closes an historically large budget gap, equal to almost one-tenth of our economy.

Reduces federal spending by $9.7 trillion over the next 10 years, as opposed to the President’s plan to increase spending by $2.3 trillion.

Shrinks the federal government from 24 percent of GDP — a level exceeded only in World War II— to about 16 percent, in line with the postwar norm.

Stops the growth of the debt, and begins paying it down, with a goal of eliminating it within thisgeneration.To achieve these goals, our plan, among other things:

Repeals ObamaCare in toto.

Eliminates four Cabinet agencies — Energy, Education, Commerce, and HUD — and reduces or privatizes many others, including EPA, TSA, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac.

Ends farm subsidies, government student loans, and foreign aid to countries that don’t support us— luxuries we can no longer afford.

Saves Social Security and greatly improves future benefits by shifting ownership and control from government to individuals, through new SMART Accounts.

Gives Medicare seniors the right to opt into the Congressional health care plan.

Suspends pension contributions and COLAs for Members of Congress, whenever the budget is in deficit.

The Tea Party budget contains a Balanced Budget Amendment to prevent future Obama-like non-leaders from embarking on courses of fiscal lunacy. It makes the Bush tax cuts permanent.

Here's a very brief description of what is wrong with our federal government:

At the root of these problems is our own federal government — its size, its reach, and many of its policies. Washington is simply too big. Our government is doing too many things it can’t do well, or shouldn’t do at all, with money it doesn’t have. We are borrowing 43 cents of every dollar we spend. Waste and duplication abound. A report published this past March by the Government Accountability Office counted no fewer than 47 job training programs, 56 financial literacy programs, 80 economic development programs, 18 food assistance programs, 20 programs for the homeless, 82 teacher-quality programs spread across 10 agencies, and more than 2,100 data centers. All told, we have nearly 2,200 federal programs. What human being could ever know or monitor them all? Who’s minding this mess?

Perhaps the best summation of this lamentable state of affairs came at our field hearing in Indianapolis,from a young lady named Chloe Minor, age 15: “Government today is making a mess of things. My generation has absolutely no say in the matter. Each of us owes over $44,000 to pay off the national debt. It is obvious to me what is needed in this country is some teenage supervision!”

Yes, when our federal government acts more irresponsibly than any random 10-year old, perhaps teenage supervision is called for. The federal government is a monstrous bureaucratic maze of waste, propped up solely by the continuing rape of hard-working taxpayers. There will NEVER be enough money to feed the ravenous maw of ideologically-driven non-leaders like Obama. The only sane course of action is to rein in our own government. Otherwise, we're headed for the same fiscal collapse that is now threatening Europe. Who could possibly want to follow that path ?

Contrast the Tea Party budget with the failure of the Not-So-Super Committee's weak efforts:

..if the Super Committee succeeds, it will reduce spending by about $1.2 trillion over the next decade, from a steeply rising baseline. Our plan, by contrast, would reduce spending by eight times that amount, $9.7 trillion. Or to put it in percentageterms, assuming they meet their full charge without gimmicks or double-counting, the Super Committee plan would slightly reduce ten-year spending from $44 trillion to $43 trillion, a 2.3 percent trim. Our plan would reduce ten-year spending from $44 trillion to $34 trillion, a 23 percent reduction.

This is what is needed to get our nation off the financial suicide train.

The Tea Party budget was based upon principles in the Tea Party's Contract From America platform, as follows:

1. Protect the Constitution
2. Reject Cap & Trade
3. Demand a Balanced Budget
4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform
5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government
6. End Runaway Government Spending
7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-Run Health Care
8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above’ Energy Policy
9. Stop the Pork
10.Stop the Tax Hikes

All the savings details are too long for me to list here, but you can find all the details at the Tea Party Budget link above.

Because no balanced budget or debt reduction is possible without touching the third rail of politics, the Tea Party budget does address Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. Here's what they do with Social Security:

The Challenge. Social Security is going broke, and beginning about 25 years from now will only have enough funds to pay about 75 percent of promised benefits. Benefits are also comparatively meager, and cannot be passed down to one’s heirs, should one die before reaching retirement age.

Our Answer. Successful experiments have proved that we can make this program sustainable and actually improve benefits. How? By harnessing the power of compound interest.Three decades ago, Chile embarked on a bold transformation of its retirement security system. Today, that system is the envy of the world, giving seniors far better benefits than the old, government-run system ever did. Soon after the Chilean reform got underway, three Texas county governments opted out of Social Security in favor of personal accounts. Today, county workers in those three jurisdictions retire with much more money and have significantly more generous death and disability supplemental benefits than do Social Security participants. And those three counties—unlike almost all others in the U.S.—face no long-term unfunded pension liabilities. All state and local governments should have the option of opting into the “Galveston model.” And all young people should have the option of opting into a better future with personal accounts like those found in Chile. The Tea Party Budget embraces the Chilean/Galveston approach, specifically by enacting a modified version of Rep. Jeff Flake’s (R-AZ) SMART Act. That bold reform allows new workers born after 1981 to invest one-half of their payroll taxes (7.65%) in a SMART Account, which they can use to fund their retirement and health care costs in retirement. If they prefer, they can give up their account and opt back into traditional Social Security at retirement.Thanks to this modern approach, our plan:

Improves benefits.
Doesn’t increase the retirement age.
Doesn’t means-test benefits.
Doesn’t cut benefits for people in or nearing retirement.
Doesn’t touch the existing Social Security Disability Insurance program.
Shores up the long-term solvency of traditional Social Security by slowing the growth of benefits (with “progressive price indexing”).
This reform — which we expect to be very popular — reduces federal payroll tax receipts by about $500 billion over the ten-year period—an excellent investment on a better system, and one that is fully paid for in this plan.

This would mark the beginning of the end for the government-run S.S. scam. No longer would the government be able to steal your retirement funds, then turn around and jack up your payroll taxes in Ponzi-like fashion to cover up their misdeeds. I not only say "yes", I say "hell yes !"

There's lot more to say here, but this is getting rather lengthy. I urge you all to read the details of the Tea Party budget. It's the best plan I've heard to date for fixing this mess, though there's still some room for improvement. Maybe I'll address more aspects of the budget in a future post.

One other interesting note. After the Tea Party produced their plan, they were going to present their recommendations to Congress…until the Senate Rules Committee, headed up by Chuck The Schmuck Schumer (D-NY), took away their microphones and locked them out minutes before the hearing was scheduled to start. Fascist jerk.

While the Occupy movement sits around in drum circles spouting inanities like "Capitalism Is Evil" and "Abolish Money", the Tea Party is actually doing work and coming up with solutions. The only problem I see with the Tea Party people is, there aren't enough of them…YET.

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.

In reference to cutting government spending, President Obama likes to say we should use a "scalpel" instead of a "machete".

Obama couldn't be more wrong. We should be using a howitzer instead of a machete on government spending. Using a scalpel just ain't gonna git her done, because we're on an unsustainable fiscal path straight to economic hell.

Unfortunately, we have two political parties of big spenders. We just witnessed the complete failure of 12 members of those big spending parties (the Not-So-Super Committee) to agree on $1.2 trillion in future cuts to future spending increases. The game those two parties played was, they both made offers they knew the other side would reject, then after the Super Committee failed, they both hoped to gain politically by blaming the other side. This is how our leading politicians act when the future of America is on the line. They look after themselves and their party instead of the people. If the two parties, can't even agree on something so minor, what hope is there they will ever implement the changes necessary to put this country back on a sustainable fiscal path ?

It seems the worst thing that can happen in Washington D.C. is for one party to gain complete power.

When Obama and the Democrats gained complete control in 2009-2010, they rammed through unprecedented spending increases and created the largest new entitlement program (ObamaCare) since the creation of Medicare in 1965. They did this with the full knowledge that our current entitlement programs were unsustainable. They did this despite warnings from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that ObamaCare would bend the health care cost curve up instead of down. They did this despite the fact that Medicare was already our largest unsustainable entitlement liability going forward, the single biggest future government expense. ObamaCare will add trillions in new spending, and add tens of millions of people to the Medicaid rolls when the states are already struggling to pay for existing Medicaid spending. The Democrats did this when the country was in a major recession with unemployment at 9%. The Democrats made our unsustainable entitlement picture even more unsustainable, and they did it against the will of the American public. The Democrats also made trillion dollar plus deficits routine, and Obama has run up debt faster than any other American president in history. We just passed the $15 trillion debt mark, with no signs of the red ink slowing. Democrat control was a complete and utter failure.

Prior to Obama, we had President Bush and the Republicans in complete control from 2001-2006. What were the results when the so-called "conservative" party was in power ? Massive spending increases, an unnecessary war, and…a new entitlement program (Medicare Part D, the Prescription Drug program) !!! Defense and social spending both rose rapidly under Bush, and Bush accumulated $5 trillion in debt over eight years. Federal spending skyrocketed during the Bush years. If this is what we're calling "conservative" these days, no thank you. Real inflation-adjusted military spending is twice what it was a decade ago, yet the "conservative" Republicans are resisting major defense cuts, as are the Pentagon and the Obama administration. The leading Republican presidential contenders are all acting like hawks, and so is the Obama administration.

It's time for a major reality check for both political parties. While they play their partisan reindeer games, America is going down the tubes. We literally can't afford all this government spending any longer. We can't tax our way out of the problem, and we sure as hell can't "tax the rich" to pay for it all, which is the canard the Democrats keep pimping. Reversing the Bush tax cuts for the rich would add maybe $75 billion in new revenue over the next year. How does that address our $1.2 trillion deficit ? It doesn't. The Democrats are talking economic gobbledygook, and even though the American people agree with increasing taxes on the wealthy, it doesn't get us anywhere near to solving our economic sustainability problem. Not to mention that increasing taxes during this Great Recession would be galactically stupid and take even more money out of the hands of struggling American taxpayers and job creators. Lots of those "rich" people are business owners. The Democrats need to be reminded that those are the people who employ workers. Putting more expenses on their backs will only make matters worse. We're losing enough jobs as it is already.

It's time to refocus our Defense budget on what it is supposed to be for, DEFENSE…of America, not the defense of every country around the world. We can't afford to be the world's policeman any longer. This should be pretty obvious when the federal government is borrowing 43 cents of every dollar it spends. We can't justify spending $900 billion on the military when our Social Security and Medicare programs aren't funded. What does that say about our priorities ? The Republicans need to get off the neocon bandwagon already and admit this. It's indefensible, no pun intended.

The only way to get spending in line is to address the main drivers of current and future spending, and those are – Defense, Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, and interest payments. Here is a pie chart of the 2012 federal budget:

From the above chart, we see that defense, entitlements (health care/pensions/welfare), and interest consume a whopping 88% of the federal budget. Even if Rick Perry could remember all three of the federal departments he wants to close, that 88% in spending would still remain, and nothing would change. Interest payments may seem relatively small at 6%, but they are growing so fast due to our massive deficits/debt that if we don't get our budget under control, the CBO estimates interest payments will soar to $800 billion per year by 2020. That is a tremendous amount of taxpayer money to flush down the toilet, money that could be used for other things, such as Social Security, Medicare, etc. Our unrestrained debt is stealing the future away. Obama and Congress are doing a great job, but only if the goal IS to destroy the country. Otherwise, we need some major changes, and we need them very soon. It's a shame that all we seem to get is the same old partisan rhetoric leading to nowhere, the same old false choices, the same old entrenched interests, the same old choices of Democrat poison or Republican poison. I'd say we deserve better than that, but I'm not sure we do.

Some day people may realize that the libertarian impulses were right, but I fear it will be too late by then. Many people seem to believe the ideas of limiting government and maximizing liberty are too radical, which actually makes me laugh (instead of cry) considering how extremely radical our current fiscal picture has become. How can things get more radical than pursuing policies of national economic suicide ??? It boggles my mind, as does the massive entitlement mentality that has taken over much of this country. We've become warring special interests instead of a united people. That is something else that has to change before we can hope to address our problems. I'm not optimistic.

Good luck, America. You're going to need it.

I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving.

On the Black Friday front, I saw half a dozen tents pitched in front of Best Buy Thanksgiving morning at 7:30am. People were camping out there. They weren't Occupiers. They were shoppers. I drove past Best Buy at 10:30pm, and there was a line going from the front door around the side of the building. The parking lot was packed, and I estimate at least 150 people were standing there waiting, 90 minutes before the store opened. Unreal.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
===
The global warming data manipulators are back in the news, as 5,000 new e-mails have been made public:

A new batch of 5,000 emails among scientists central to the assertion that humans are causing a global warming crisis were anonymously released to the public yesterday, igniting a new firestorm of controversy nearly two years to the day after similar emails ignited the Climategate scandal.

Three themes are emerging from the newly released emails: (1) prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions; (2) these scientists view global warming as a political “cause” rather than a balanced scientific inquiry and (3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.

That doesn't sound too good. What do the new e-mails say ?

Emails between Climategate scientists, however, show a concerted effort to hide rather than disseminate underlying evidence and procedures.

“I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI [Freedom of Information] Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the process,”writes Phil Jones, a scientist working with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in a newly released email.

“Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we get – and has to be well hidden,” Jones writes in another newly released email. “I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.”

The Dept. Of Energy is "happy" about not releasing the data ??? What possible reason could there be for them to be happy about keeping it secret ? Perhaps the data doesn't match the global warming rhetoric being spewed by certain politicians at the top of the D.C. food chain, like that megalomaniac who told us his inauguration marked "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the planet began to heal" (link).

The original Climategate e-mails illustrated how the scientists were intent on destroying "inconvenient" data, and the new e-mails reveal that the work of the global warming scientists is politically motivated:

“The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s included and what is left out” of IPCC reports, writes Jonathan Overpeck, coordinating lead author for the IPCC’s most recent climate assessment.

“I gave up on [Georgia Institute of Technology climate professor] Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she thinks she’s doing, but its not helping the cause,” wrote Mann in another newly released email.

The "cause" ??? Since when do scientists have a cause other than arriving at the truth ?

These cause driven, global warming advancing, data destroying scientific crusaders also tried to discredit those who disagreed with them:

“I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose” skeptical scientist Steve McIntyre, Mann writes in another newly released email.

These new emails add weight to Climategate 1.0 emails revealing efforts to politicize the scientific debate. For example, Tom Wigley, a scientist at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, authored a Climategate 1.0 email asserting that his fellow Climategate scientists “must get rid of” the editor for a peer-reviewed science journal because he published some papers contradicting assertions of a global warming crisis.

It gets worse. The new e-mails exposes the rank dishonesty of the global warming scientists. Their data was telling them one thing and they were reporting something entirely different:

“Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary,” writes Peter Thorne of the UK Met Office.

“I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run,” Thorne adds.

“Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive … there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC,” Wigley acknowledges.

Who needs honesty when there's a political agenda to pursue ? Not the warmers, apparently.

Whatever one's view of anthropogenic global warming, this behavior is entirely unacceptable. It is a mockery of the scientific process.

And they haven't even gone through all the newly released e-mails yet.

As expected, the Super Committtee failed. Gee, what a shocker. This is about as surprising as the sun coming up this morning. Here's part of the statement from the chairs of the Super Failures, congratulating themselves for their failed work and stressing their commitment to future failed efforts:

"After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline.

"Despite our inability to bridge the committee's significant differences, we end this process united in our belief that the nation's fiscal crisis must be addressed and that we cannot leave it for the next generation to solve. We remain hopeful that Congress can build on this committee’s work and can find a way to tackle this issue in a way that works for the American people and our economy.

"We are deeply disappointed that we have been unable to come to a bipartisan deficit reduction agreement, but as we approach the uniquely American holiday of Thanksgiving, we want to express our appreciation to every member of this committee, each of whom came into the process committed to achieving a solution that has eluded many groups before us. Most importantly, we want to thank the American people for sharing thoughts and ideas and for providing support and good will as we worked to accomplish this difficult task.

That's sweet, Supers. As to the committee's "significant differences", there is basically only one I'd call a deal breaker. Democrats wanted a trillion dollar tax increase, and Republicans didn't. The Republicans offered two deals (a plan, and a backup plan) that contained revenue increases of hundreds of billions of dollars. The Republicans bent some on their no-tax pledge, but it wasn't enough for the Democrats. They wanted the big tax enchilada or nothing. As for the Super plan of the Democrats, they proposed the same "grand bargain" plan Republicans have been rejecting for the last year, and then they didn't budge an inch. The end.

Now we get to watch the two dysfunctional political parties blame each other and try to use the Super failure to gain a political edge for the coming elections. Oh joy.

The good news, if there can be such a thing as good news when our country is on the road to economic ruin, is that there are still spending cuts on the table. This is called sequestration. As part of the debt ceiling deal, automatic spending cuts of $1 trillion take place in the likely event of a Super flameout of the Superfriends Committee. These cuts consist of half in entitlement cuts, and half in defense cuts. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans really want the sequestration cuts to occur, so it will be interesting watching them try to snake their way out of them. President Obama, who provided no leadership during the Super Committee discussions other than the normal and endless Democrat cries to "tax the rich", is now saying he will veto attempts to stop the sequestration cuts.

If you're counting, we now have the following debt reduction committee results to date under the current administration:

1) President announces Simpson/Bowles deficit reduction commission – The commission worked for a year to come up with it's deficit reduction measures, and then both Congress and the President completely ignored them.
2) Debt ceiling deal – Produced the Super Committee to come up with future cuts in spending increases in exchange for raising the debt ceiling
3) Super Committee fails to do it's job and agree to cuts

Great job, Congress. No wonder your approval rating is 12%. Btw, who are these 12% who actually think Congress is doing a good job ? Those folks must be scary stupid.

Meanwhile, the United States Of America goes $4 billion deeper into debt…every…single…day.

But when it comes time for Congress to spend money, well hell, money's no object, whether they have it or not (and they don't).

Who do these sons of b*tches think they are ?

Why do we let them keep stealing money from our children and grandchildren ???

What kind of people does that make us ???

Obama Fails Geography And Economics:

Here's President Obama answering a question about budget cuts during a press conference in Honolulu, Hawaii last week:

"When I meet with world leaders, what's striking — whether it's in Europe or here in Asia — the kinds of fundamental reforms and changes, both on the revenue side and the public pension side, that other countries are having to make are so much more significant than what we need to do in order to get our books in order".

Three things. First – Hawaii, our 50th state (out of 57 or 58 states, according to Obama), is obviously not in Asia. You'd think Obama would know this, seeing as how he was born in Hawaii and lived there for about 13 years. Second – if Obama believes the needed U.S. budget changes to "get our books in order" are not so "significant"…then why can't we make them ? Third – how scary is it that we have a President who believes $1.3 trillion deficits and $15 trillion in national debt is not "significant" ? The federal government is borrowing 43 cents out of every dollar it spends. I'd sure call that significant.

I hope the Birthers don't start citing this as Obama admitting he was born in Asia. As Obama's grandmother has already stated, Obama was born in Kenya (which must be somewhere outside Honolulu). In related news, President George W. Bush, the famous Texan, was born in Connecticut. Senator John McCain, Obama's 2008 presidential opponent, was born in the Panama Canal zone, and was born again hard in Vietnam. Obama's prior military experience consisted of playing with a G.I. Joe doll as a child.
===

Obama's Head Start BS:

As part of his "we can't wait" initiative to bypass the "do-nothing" Republicans in Congress, Obama has taken the initiative to implement a Head Start program:

“The Republicans in Washington are trying to gut our investments in education. … We can’t wait to give our youngest children the same basic opportunities we give all children,” [Obama] told the assembled cameras and reporters.

White House officials billed the campaign event as another opportunity to highlight the 2012 campaign’s ‘We Can’t Wait” theme. That theme seeks to portray the president as actively helping Americans while partisan, self-interested Republicans block beneficial government action.

There's one teensy, weensy little problem with Obama's "it's the Republicans fault" narrative here. The Head Start program Obama is talking about was already made law…by the Republicans:

[Obama is] actually implementing a modest children’s education reform signed into law by Republican President George W. Bush in 2007.

The event “is a photo-op for the implementation of a law that has already passed,” said John Hood, director of the John Locke Foundation in North Carolina.

The Bush-signed reform is titled the “Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act.” The reform law was unanimously approved by the [Republican-controlled] Senate and overwhelmingly supported by the [Republican-controlled] House of Representatives 381 to 36, before it was signed by Bush in December 2007…The reform has been underway for more than three years, and the first changes to grant holders [they may be changed if they underperform] may be announced next month.

Oops. Another perfectly good Obama fiction goes out the window.

But at least the little children are going to be helped, right ?

Not according to a study conducted by the Obama administration:

“The advantages children gained during their Head Start and age four years yielded only a few statistically significant differences in outcomes at the end of 1st grade for the sample as a whole,” concluded a Health and Human Services study of almost 5,000 kids. The study, released by the Obama administration in January 2010, is titled the “Head Start Impact Study.”

The federal government has spent more than $100 billion on the program since 1965

A 2006 study by the Brookings Institute reached this conclusion:

"Head Start "has no demonstrable impact on [students'] academic, socio-emotional, or health status at the end of first grade. That's right. If you were a mother who lost the lottery, couldn't get your child into Head Start, and had to care for her at home, she was no worse off at the end of first grade than she would have been had she gotten into Head Start."

Nothing like wasting a $100 billion on a program that doesn't work.

But these are mere facts, and we don't need no stinking facts when Obama has an election to win and Americans to mislead.

===
Gabrielle Giffords' Great Idea:

A few days before Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was wounded in an attack by a crazed liberal anarchist metalhead druggie burnout (in other words, it was Sarah Palin's fault), Rep. Giffords proposed that Congress slash it's pay by 5%. Now, she is reminding the Super Committee of that proposal as the Committee discusses ways to trim $1.2 trillion from future spending increases. Cutting the pay of Congress would save $50 million over ten years.

In a letter to the debt-reduction supercommittee organized by Giffords’ Washington office, 25 lawmakers urged the supercommittee to cut lawmakers’ salaries to reduce the federal deficit.

The letter, sent Thursday and signed by 11 Republicans and 14 Democrats, said a paycut would be a “commonsense” way to cut the required $1.5 trillion from the federal budget, as well as “a powerful message to the American people that Congress should not be exempt from the sacrifices it will take to balance the budget.”

Kudos to Mrs. Gifford. I would go a bit further. As someone else said recently (can't remember who it was), if you want Congress to balance the budget, write a law that says Congress doesn't get paid UNLESS it balances the budget. That's the least we should expect from them. Let's put that referendum on the ballot in all 50 states and see what the voters have to say about it.

Because I have spent the last two posts going after Newt Gingrich to an extent, in fairness I am providing a link to Gingrich's website, where he answers recent charges made against him. I report, you decide (hmmm. Where have I heard that phrase before ? Sounds familiar).
===
Larry Elder Treats Chris Matthews Like Chris Matthews And Every Other MSNBC Host Treats Conservative Guests…And Matthews Doesn't Like It One Bit:

Payback is a you-know-what, Mr. Matthews.
===
House Rejects Balanced Budget Amendment (link):

The U.S. House of Representatives rejected a proposal Friday to amend the Constitution to require a balanced budget, seen by many as the only way to force lawmakers to hold the fiscal line and reverse the flow of federal red ink.

The 261-165 vote, though a clear majority, was 23 votes short of the two-thirds required to advance a constitutional amendment. Democrats voted overwhelmingly against it, apparently swayed by the arguments of their leaders that a balanced budget requirement would force Congress to make devastating cuts to social programs.

Four Republicans joined the Democrats in opposing the measure: House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.), Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas.).

$15 trillion in national debt, annual trillion dollar deficits, and Congress doesn't have the votes for a balanced budget amendment. Yet another sign of our destruction.

I expect Democrats to vote against fiscal sanity, but….did I see that right ? Rep. Ryan voted AGAINST the balanced budget amendment ? What's up with that ? Here's Ryan's explanation:

Ryan said he was worried the version of the amendment could pave the way for more taxes, instead of reducing spending, to balance the budget, The Hill reported.

“Spending is the problem, yet this version of the BBA makes it more likely taxes will be raised, government will grow, and economic freedom will be diminished,” Ryan said. “Without a limit on government spending, I cannot support this amendment.”

Can't say I agree with Ryan's logic there. Tax increases may be bad, but this out-of-control debt bomb is far worse.

This is the first balanced budget amendment vote in 16 years. In 1995, a balanced budget amendment passed the House, when Republicans and 72 Democrats voted for it. That effort failed to pass the Senate by one vote, thanks to Democrat obstruction. Think of how much better off this country would be today if we had passed that amendment in 1995, and had not accumulated $10 trillion in new debt since. Thanks for nothing, Dumb-o-crats. This time around, only 25 Democrats in the House voted for a balanced budget amendment. I guess the Democratic party prefers national bankruptcy. In fact, I think that should be Obama's 2012 campaign slogan. DEBT FOREVER ! VOTE OBAMA.
===
White House Shooter Made Videos:
I've been wondering why Oscar Ortega-Hernandez, the man suspected of shooting at the White House in an assassination attempt (his bullet was stopped by bulletproof glass), hated Obama so much. Ortega-Hernandez has referred to himself as a modern day Jesus, and called Obama the anti-Christ. As it turns out, Ortega-Hernandez made a video in hopes of being on Oprah's show:

VIDEO: Alleged White House Shooter Oscar Ortega-Hernandez: MyFoxDC.com

I wonder where our modern day Jesus/assassin got that "war for oil" stuff ??? Any liberals out there wish to hazard a guess ? I know how concerned y'all are about political rhetoric leading to violence.

In related news, the Occupy San Diego dumbsh*ts held a moment of silence to express "solidarity" with the shooter, because authorities thought Ortega-Hernandez may have been hanging out with the Occupy D.C. crowd (which seems now not to be the case).

Real brainiacs, those Occupiers. The Occupier arrest count now tops 3,600.
===
My, How That Hope Did Change:

Here's candidate Obama in 2008, castigating Bush (justifiably) for Bush's debt accumulation:

"The problem is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents, [and] number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt."

Obama called Bush's spending and debt runup "unpatriotic" then, but now he calls Republicans unpatriotic because they won't spend and runup even more debt. Go figure. Obama has added $4.5 trillion to the debt in less than three years. It took Bush nearly eight years to do the same. If the debt trajectory continues and Obama is elected to a second term, he will add more to the national debt than every other President in U.S. history COMBINED. That is called epic fail, my friends.

Here's the rest of the scoop on Newt Gingrich's not-so-conservative positions, from the Cato Institute:

Gingrich's campaign nearly imploded this summer when he dismissed Rep. Paul Ryan's, R-Wis., Medicare reform plan as "right-wing social engineering." But that gaffe was a window into Gingrich's irresponsible approach toward entitlements.

In 2003, Gingrich stumped hard for President George W. Bush's prescription drug bill, which has added about $17 trillion to Medicare's unfunded liabilities. "Every conservative member of Congress should vote for this Medicare bill," Newt urged.

And in his 2008 book Real Change, he endorsed an individual mandate for health insurance.

It's also unclear why anybody looking to distance himself from Pelosi would plop down on a love seat with her to call for government action on climate change — as Gingrich did in a 2008 television commercial.

It was a season of bipartisan chumminess for Newt. "Kerry and Gingrich Hugging Trees — and (Almost) Each Other," the Washington Post described a 2007 global warming event Gingrich headlined with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

In 2009, the ethanol lobby paid his firm $312,000, and in 2006, the former speaker scored a $300,000 fee from Freddie Mac, one of the government-sponsored enterprises that helped pump up the disastrous housing bubble.

In addition, we have Gingrich's advocation of those "death panels" conservatives don't like, and here's a bit more on his ties to the pharmaceutical lobby:

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA)is one of the largest lobbying organizations in the country, and it was a leading advocate of Bush's Medicare drug bill, which provides billions of dollars in subsidies for seniors to buy drugs, while prohibiting Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices.

A source who worked for PhRMA at the time told me that Gingrich was being paid by "someone in the drug industry" — either PhRMA, some other industry group, or a specific drug company — as a consultant during the debate over the drug benefit. My source double-checked this with a former PhRMA colleague, who had the same recollection. The Gingrich Group operates the Center for Health Transformation, through which Gingrich publicizes his health care policy proposals.

"He received a monthly retainer," the former PhRMA employee recalls, saying Gingrich's price was "at the high end."

I don't want to pick on Newt, but he has some baggage, and I haven't even mentioned his divorce issues or his ethics violation that resulted in him resigning as Speaker Of The House and Congress. What can't be denied is that Gingrich is a beltway insider, has often acted like one, and profited from being one. As you can see from the above, Gingrich has endorsed big government policies in the past. He has also done some great work, as he did during the Clinton years when he helped write the Contract With America. When Gingrich was Speaker Of The House, the federal government balanced it's budget (more or less). That is no small achievement, and look where we've gone since he left his leadership role in Congress. We've gone into the dumper, and we now have a President who is leading us on the path of self-destruction. Even with his baggage, I would vote for Gingrich over Obama without a second thought.

In this election cycle, President Obama needs to manufacture something on which to run his campaign, because he sure can't run on his dismal record. If the American people ask themselves – Are we better off than we were four years ago ?, the answer is a resounding 'NO', and Obama will be out the door. Thus, Obama needs to distract the voters with some type of sideshow to win a second term. That sideshow will almost surely consist of the politics of division, in the form of Obama blaming a "do-nothing" Congress and Republican "obstructionism" for his failures as President. He'll also use his usual class warfare tactics. That approach will work with Democrats, but it won't work with Republicans and Independents. Obama needs more acts in his sideshow arsenal to distract voters from the reality of his presidency. He needs to be able to show that his policies are indeed the correct ones, and he can point to the items I just mentioned in Gingrich's record as proof that they are. Romney has some of the same problems to overcome, mainly with RomneyCare, but if conservatives are really looking for an anti-Romney candidate, the so-called "real conservative", shouldn't he at least BE an anti-Romney candidate ? I see Romney and Gingrich as being somewhat similar types, but Newt is actually the one with the most baggage to overcome, not Romney. I haven't heard a hint of scandal about Romney, and, unlike Obama, Romney has a proven track record of success in both the public and private sectors. Romney has some big advantages over Obama, and a challenger for the presidency needs those advantages. It is very difficult to defeat an incumbent, because the President has the bully pulpit, and he's going to have a boatload of money. As proof of how difficult it is to beat the incumbent, since FDR only three Presidents lost their bids for re-election (Bush Sr., Carter, and Ford), and Ford wasn't elected in the first place. He took over after Nixon resigned. That means only two elected incumbent Presidents have lost re-election since the 1930's. Beating Obama will be a formidable task.

Romney has also shown an ability to attract voters across the aisle. How else could he have become Governor in one of the most liberal states in the country, Massachusetts ? Gingrich's record is more divisive. He shouldered much of the blame for the government shutdown in the 90's (not a problem for me, but it is for others). If I was a Democrat opposition researcher, I'd have an easier time discrediting Gingrich than I would Romney.

I know this post is coming across as an ode to Romney and a swipe at Gingrich, and it sounds a bit harsher toward Newt than I actually feel, and a little more adoring of Romney than I actually feel. I like Newt. He is a good debater and he comes up with lots of interesting ideas. He comes up with more good ideas in a month than Obama has in his entire life. He's a policy wonk, a fighter, and if the Republicans make him the nominee, I will vote for him.

But what I want above all else is to defeat Obama. If we don't accomplish that…..this country is in BIG trouble. BIG trouble. I see the coming election as the most important one of my lifetime, and we can't afford to get it wrong this time. We can't afford to lose to Obama. As of today, I think Romney has the best chance to beat him, in my humble opinion.

In his 2011 book, "To Save America", GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich wrote the following (from Bloomberg):

[The two companies, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae] “are so thoroughly politicized and preside over such irresponsible lending policies that they need to be replaced with smaller, private companies operating without government guarantees, whose leaders focus on making a profit, not manipulating politicians".

I certainly agree with that. As I've detailed on this blog, government manipulation of the mortgage market is what led to our current financial crisis. The government created the housing casino market over a period of many years.

But Newt has some 'splainin' to do to Republican primary voters, and most especially to Tea Partiers who want to dismantle the ties between government power and private enterprise that transform free markets into government-manipulated markets, resulting in markets driven by politics rather than sound business decisions. Newt has to explain why his consulting firm, The Gingrich Group, was paid between $1.6-$1.8 million over a period of eight years for consulting services Gingrich rendered to none other than Government Sponsored Enterprise (GSE) Freddie Mac. Freddie and big sister GSE Fannie Mae got into big trouble in the housing market, and the taxpayers have bailed them out to the tune of $150 billion and counting. Fannie and Freddie are both asking for more bailout money, even as Congress is slamming F&F for paying millions of dollars in bonuses to F&F executives, as F&F lives on the taxpayer dole. F&F are poster children for crony capitalism.

Gingrich had this to say about some of his consulting fees from Freddie:

When asked at the debate what he did to earn a $300,000 payment in 2006, the former speaker said he “offered them advice on precisely what they didn’t do,” and warned the company that its lending practices were “insane.”

If that's true, good for Newt…but unnamed Freddie Mac officials are disputing that account:

None of the former Freddie Mac officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said Gingrich raised the issue of the housing bubble or was critical of Freddie Mac’s business model.

We should withhold judgement until we find out who these anonymous Freddie Mac officials are. After all, Gingrich is running for President, and the anonymous officials could be Democrats looking to derail Gingrich's presidential train. We've already seen what happens to GOP presidential contenders when they make a significant showing in the polls. When Perry was riding high, there was the ridiculous charge about the racist word on a rock at his family's hunting lodge in the 1980's. When Cain reached the top, all of a sudden 14-year old charges of sexual harrassment arose. And how many more times does the media have to discuss the fact that Romney is a Mormon ? That has become particularly nauseating.

There is one former Freddie official who has spoken about Gingrich's work with Freddie on the record:

Gingrich’s first contract with the mortgage company was in 1999, five months after he resigned from Congress and as House speaker, according to a Freddie Mac press release.

His primary contact inside the organization was Mitchell Delk, Freddie Mac’s chief lobbyist, and he was paid a self- renewing, monthly retainer of $25,000 to $30,000 between May 1999 until 2002, according to three people familiar with aspects of the business agreement.

During that period, Gingrich consulted with Freddie Mac executives on a program to expand home ownership, an idea Delk said he pitched to President George W. Bush’s White House.

“I spent about three hours with him talking about the substance of the issues and the politics of the issues, and he really got it,” said Delk, adding that the two discussed “what the benefits are to communities, what the benefits could be for Republicans and particularly their relationship with Hispanics.”

That sounds like a pretty far cry from Gingrich calling Freddie policies "insane", and it's no secret that Bush was on board with the goal of increasing home ownership as part of his Ownership Society initiative.

The Bloomberg account makes it clear that Gingrich was never a lobbyist for Freddie Mac, but in the early years of his association with the GSE, it sounds like Gingrich wasn't raising any red flags. It sounds like he was working in concert with Freddie Mac's goals.

As for the later years of Gingrich's Freddie association:

Former Freddie Mac officials familiar with his work in 2006 say Gingrich was asked to build bridges to Capitol Hill Republicans and develop an argument on behalf of the company’s public-private structure that would resonate with conservatives seeking to dismantle it.

He was expected to provide written material that could be circulated among free-market conservatives in Congress and in outside organizations, said two former company executives familiar with Gingrich’s role at the firm. He didn’t produce a white paper or any other document the firm could use on its behalf, they said.

Gingrich's mission was to "build bridges" with disapproving conservatives of the wisdom of Freddie's policies ??? Hmmm. It seems to me that Gingrich SHOULD HAVE BEEN one of those disapproving conservatives.

In summary – AFTER the housing meltdown, Newt Gingrich became a big critic of Fannie and Freddie's loose lending practices. Lots of politicians with their fingers in the wind fall into that category, and we shouldn't trust them for obvious reasons. Newt's problem is, he might be one of them.

Not-So-Super Committee: The congressional Super Committee is tasked with cutting $1.2 trillion from future deficits over the next decade. They can accomplish this by cutting spending or raising taxes. They have 9 days left to complete their mission before automatic cuts to defense and entitlements go into effect. Thus far, the Super Committee has been unable to reach an agreement.

If anything illustrates the ineffectiveness of Congress (and a failure of leadership by the President), this it it. Think about it. Over the last ten years, the federal government has spent about $28 trillion. Over the next ten years, federal spending is projected to be $45-50 trillion. All the Super Committee has to do is cut $1.2 trillion out of the next $45-50 trillion in spending, a miniscule percentage. The Super Committee's job isn't even about cutting spending. They are only talking about cutting the rate of future spending INCREASE. I could cut that much out of the budget in a day, if it took me that long. In fact, I'll do it right now, in about ten seconds. We could cut $1.2 trillion out of the military budget over ten years. That would come to $120 billion per year, out of a defense budget that is already larger than the defense budgets of all the other countries in the world COMBINED, a defense budget that costs almost $1 trillion per year when all associated costs are tallied. There. We're done. That wasn't so hard, was it ?

If the Super Committee can't even agree on these small cuts ($120 billion per year out of future $4-5 trillion budgets), what hope is there that Congress can close our annual trillion dollar deficits ? There is no hope, not with our current Congress, and not with our current President. Ron Paul sounds better all the time.

CBS Sucks: Speaking of Ron Paul, CBS held a 90-minute GOP presidential debate on foreign policy. CBS aired 60 minutes of that debate, and candidate Paul got a grand total of 89 seconds to speak on air. Paul advocates a non-interventionist foreign policy (see – defense spending cuts). Apparently, CBS didn't want to hear it. Paul wasn't the only GOP contender complaining, and CBS's excuse was that they gave the most air time to the candidates highest in the polls. It is not the job of CBS to decide which candidates are legitimate and which are not. That's the job of the voters, and the voters can't make a sound choice if certain candidates are cut out of the debate process. It's the job of CBS to give each candidate an equal chance, and CBS failed miserably.

Cain-wreck: I thought Rick Perry forgetting which government deparments he wanted to eliminate was about as bad as it gets for political flubs. I was wrong. Watch Herman Cain trying to answer a question about whether he agreed with Obama's policy in Libya:

Ouch. That was actually painful to watch. 'Let's see…Libya…that's a country, isn't it ? Golly, there are so many countries that it's hard to keep track [even though we've been at war in Libya for months and it was all over the news]. Libya's trying to develop nuclear weapons, right ? No, that's China…or is it Iran ? Wait, no, Libya is where Qaddafi was at, correct ? Whatever it is, I'm disagreeing with Obama's policy on it, because…I have to…even if I have no idea what I'm talking about'.

Give me a break already. Cain sounded like a college student who didn't study for the entire semester and then stayed up all night cramming for the final. So much information "twirling around" inside his head. Thanks for playing Presidential Jeopardy, Mr. Cain, and please accept this wonderful parting gift, dinner for two at Olive Garden. But please spare us any more of your "views" on foreign policy. Cain would have been better off if he just said, 'hell if I know. I'm a businessman. I don't even know where Libya is'.

Given Cain and Perry's recent responses, I'm starting to think maybe I could run for President. There don't seem to be any qualifications for the job.

Supreme Test For ObamaCare: The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the lawsuit challenging ObamaCare. This is huge. We should find out next year whether we have a constitutional government or a totalitarian government. If the ObamaCare insurance mandate is upheld by the Supremes, the government would be granted almost unlimited power over the citizenry. The government could then tell us what products we have to buy from private companies, what we have to eat and drink, what we have to wear, you name it. There would be no limits to governmental authority. The ObamaCare mandate to purchase health insurance or be fined is an assault on our basic rights and freedom, and possibly the most unconstitutional law passed since the 1930's, when several unconstitutional FDR laws were struck down by the courts.

There have been calls for Justices Thomas and Kagan to recuse themselves from the proceedings. Justice Thomas' wife has been involved in campaigns to repeal ObamaCare, and Justice Kagan worked for Obama and is on record cheering the passage of ObamaCare. It doesn't really matter if they recuse themselves, unless only one of them does, which would swing the balance of the court. We pretty much already know the entire liberal wing of the court will vote for a totalitarian government and approve the unconstitutional ObamaCare mandate. The conservative wing of the court will vote to uphold the Constitution and liberty, and that leaves…Justice Kennedy, the swing vote who will decide the future of freedom in this country. The eventual ruling is almost certainly going to be 5-4 one way or the other. My view is that any Justice who votes to uphold the ObamaCare mandate should be immediately kicked off the Supreme Court for violating his/her oath of office.