Hyscience

AP FAct Check: Obama Way Off On Thrifty Spending Claim

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:12:37 -0500

When even the liberal, Obama-loving, AP finds that Obama's claim of being thrifty on spending isn't even close to being true, and neither is that laughable Market Watch Analysis he's quoting as fact ... then you damn well know that the claim Obama keeps repeating over and over is indeed a big lie.

Meanwhile, with no regard whatsoever for the truth, Barack Hussein Obama continues out on the campaign trail repeating the lie over and over - and doing so with a straight face.

The No Growth Zero Sum Pie

Fri, 25 May 2012 21:08:57 -0500

Has America reached the stage where we all stand in a circle and take turns holding a constantly shrinking dollar?

If our Dear Leader and the Daley led Outfit wins re-election next year perhaps a few more people will see the hand writing on the wall. Though the Constitution is undeniably the greatest work to come from the hand of man, though it provided the safe haven of freedom for generations it is today a dead letter. If after the coming November election the Democrats tax storm sweeps us down the economic drain and inflation kicks in those dazed by the success of the Chicago system in re-electing the first anti-American president then the silent majority will be ready to hear the watchmen on the walls.

We have sold our birthright for a bowl of entitlements. We have stood silently by while corrupt politicians have looted our posterity of opportunity and hope. We have allowed our Federal Government to assume powers never delegated to them by the Constitution. We have spent the revenues of the future for a present that no longer resembles the last best hope of mankind. We have followed the pipers from the Land of the free and the home of the brave onto the road to serfdom and we are about to learn that he who pays the piper calls the tune.

While our nation wallows in the Great Recession which our Progressive leaders and their water boys in the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media keep trying to tell us is over China keeps eating our lunch. Starting with NAFTA both Democrats and Republicans have agreed to free trade deals that aren't free and have suppressed our trade. For these economic geniuses who think they can centrally plan the largest economy in the history of the world let me spell this out slowly and clearly:

If you buy more than you sell you have a negative balance of trade
If you spend more than you make you eventually go bankrupt

AND ....

Everyone else except you seems to know these two simple truths.

Maybe our economic geniuses should try Economics 101. They want us to accept that America has become a no growth zero sum pie. It doesn't fit their game plan to take their foot off the throat of the economy. If they did it would roar to life as the liberty and opportunity which is our heritage, and once again prove that free people making free choices is the best way to grow the pie and enrich the people.

A new book calls President Obama an amateur, and at first glance he may appear to be one. However he does not stand alone. He is the front man for a triumphant Progressive Movement which has successfully implemented a strategy that has taken more than a century to mature. Starting in the 1890s they set their sights on education capturing the universities and then training generations of teachers, journalists, and lawyers. These people have infiltrated every aspect of our lives dumbing down successive generations while Progressive politicians have worked at getting a majority of the voters addicted to government handouts. Then in the1960s the Cloward and Piven Strategy was embraced as a way to spend the country into oblivion so that it could be remade in a Progressive image. Step by step, inch by inch, line upon line these webs have been woven, and as the average American twists and turns trying to find some avenue of escape from the shabby future these want to be commissars have planned, all they see is the party line on the major networks telling them everything is coming up roses.

It is time to WAKE UP! It is time to prepare as if the world we have known will end and expect major dislocations in every aspect of life. Even an overwhelming defeat for President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the rest of their fellow travelers will only mean this train wreck is slowing down. The so-called draconian Ryan Budget never gets to a balanced budget for 40 or 50 years. More than 30 years out the national debt is still growing. Projections show that by 2025 the interest on the debt alone will begin to consume any hope of getting out of the trick bag they have spent us in to. Our elected leaders have no plan to reverse the decline. They merely want to manage it in a more orderly fashion.

Each of us must decide what is most important. Each of us must either prepare for the coming contraction or hit the wall like a crash dummy.

Personally I have decided that family is more important than career, food is more important than convenience, and honor is more important than status. I have left the tenured halls and headed for the hills. I have abandoned friends of many years to be surrounded by family. I have embraced the soil to grow my own food. In other words, I believe I have been to the top of the mountain, I have seen what is coming, and I have taken my own advice.

When I was the Dean of a School of Christian Ministries I used to tell my students to prepare as if there was no Holy Spirit and preach as if there were no notes. Today I advise my readers, prepare as if the America we have known and loved is about to be transformed before our eyes into a social democracy of European proportions, and live as if there is still hope.

For as long as we believe there is still hope we will not be hopeless.

So we come to the ultimate message: hope in Christ and you will never be disappointed. All things must pass and only those things done in Christ will last. All empires fall. It is our place in History to watch the slow motion fall of a mighty empire: Western Civilization. But if we hold on to what is true, if we stand for what we believe, though a thousand fall on our right and ten thousand fall on our left it will not come upon us.

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion for Southside Virginia Community College. He is the author of the History of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com View the trailer for Dr. Owens' latest book @ YouTube, Robert R. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens.

Friday, May the 25th: It's BlogBurst Friday for Free Speech Day - Also Known As "Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day" (Updated And Bumped)

Fri, 25 May 2012 19:00:37 -0500

Original title: Re: 'Free speech blogburst: Show solidarity for targeted conservative bloggers' (Updated and bumped - initially posted on May 24)

Michelle Malkin has the details about the ongoing nightmare for bloggers who dare speak of the criminal past of convicted Speedway bomber Brett Kimberlin who appears to be ever-so-willing to persistently abuse the civil and criminal legal system. Over the past year Aaron Walker, Patterico, Liberty Chick and now Stacy McCain have been stalked and terrorized by convicted Speedway Bomber Brett Kimberlin because they dared to mention his criminal past or assisted others who did as well.

From The Other McCain (Via The Noisy Room):

FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
Convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin on Monday continued his effort to silence those who write about his criminal past by contacting my wife's employer, claiming that I was "harassing" him. The resulting security concern required immediate relocation if I was to be able to continue writing about the case of Kimberlin, a violent felon, perjurer and admitted tax cheat who is employed as the director of a 501(c)3 non-profit that has collected $1.8 million in contributions since 2005.

Kimberlin was convicted of multiple federal felonies in 1981 and sentenced to 50 years in prison after he terrorized a small Indiana town in a brutal crime weeklong bombing spree. Law enforcement officials told the Indianapolis Star they believed the bombings were committed in an attempt to distract authorities investigating the 1978 murder of a 65-year-old grandmother, a crime in which Kimberlin was a suspect.

In recent months, Kimberlin has used a strategy of legal intimidation and workplace harassment in an apparent attempt to silence his critics, including blogger Seth Allen, Virginia attorney Aaron Walker and Los Angeles deputy district attorney Patrick Frey.

And ...

Kimberlin is a known associate of Neal Rauhauser, a Democrat campaign consultant who has described himself as a computer "hacker." Kimberlin, director of the tax-exempt Justice Through Music Project, is also involved in another tax-exempt group, Velvet Revolution, which has gained national attention by demanding criminal prosecution of high-profile figures including Republican strategist Karl Rove, U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue, and the late Internet news entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart. Kimberlin's name also surfaced last year in connection with the so-called "Anonymous" international hacker conspiracy. Kimberlin has pursued numerous strategies to harass journalists and bloggers who have attempted to call attention to his criminal past and his notorious dishonesty -- a "top-flight con man," as Publisher's Weekly called him in a review of award-winning journalist Mark Singer's 1996 book, Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin.

From Patterico:

First, this isn't about dredging up a crime that happened 34 years ago. Kimberlin has done plenty since then. He made claims about selling pot to Dan Quayle -- claims that the lefty author of a book about Kimberlin believes are false. He deceptively avoided paying a wrongful death judgment to the widow of the man he blew up. He sued a small-time blogger in 2011 for telling the truth about him, and made several false statements about his history under oath in an effort to win a large cash judgment. He made several provably false statements regarding his encounter with Aaron Walker, in an effort to get the State of Maryland to prosecute Walker. He has regularly defamed, harassed, and stalked people who criticized him.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, folks.

From askmarion:

Brett Kimberlin is an American terrorist who stops at nothing to silence his critics, including intimidation and murder. He is also a liberal activist (surprised?) who has been funded by George Soros' Tides Foundation, the Barbara Streisand Foundation and Teresa Heinz Kerry ( &Senator John Kerry) Foundation. Yes that is right, this violent convicted terrorist bomber has been given million$ by progressives ... and is now terrorizes bloggers. Must-read Matthew Vadum, Front Page Magazine for more on who's financially aiding and abetting -- "Brett Kimberlin and the Hall of Fame of Leftist Terrorists."

Aaron Worthing exposed the harassment he experienced from Kimberlin, and his post is most definitely well worth reading.

Lee Stranahan provides some basic background on Kimberlin in a video (hat tip - Michelle Malkin):

As Bob Owens so appropriately asks: Why are Maryland Democrats letting the "Speedway Bomber" get away with terrorism? (And why do radical leftist terrorists keep turning up around Barack Obama?).

Taking A Stand Against Terrorism in the Blogosphere!

Even if you don't blog, you can help fight back against terrorism in the Blogosphere and fight FOR Free Speech and Conservatives. Write 'truthfully' about Brett Kimberlin on Facebook, post in comment threads and on message boards (remember - be truthful and refer only to trustworthy sources). Tweet about him (#BrettKimberlin). Email links about him to your friends. Help show Kimberlin through our words that we will NOT be intimidated by his B.S. attempts to intimidate bloggers and squelch free speech.

Update: Blogger Aaron Walker tells Glenn Beck his story on Brett Kimberlin terrorism:

Marc A. Thiessen: 'Forget Bain - Obama's public-equity record is the real scandal'

Fri, 25 May 2012 10:37:09 -0500

in his Washington Post opinion piece today, Marc Thiessen thoroughly picks apart President Barack Obama's own private equity record and the tremendous cost incurred by the American taxpayers as a result of his poor investment decisions.

Since taking office, Obama has invested billions of taxpayer dollars in private businesses, including as part of his stimulus spending bill. Many of those investments have turned out to be unmitigated disasters -- leaving in their wake bankruptcies, layoffs, criminal investigations and taxpayers on the hook for billions. Consider just a few examples of Obama's public equity failures:

Raser Technologies. In 2010, the Obama administration gave Raser a $33 million taxpayer-funded grant to build a power plant in Beaver Creek, Utah. According to the Wall Street Journal, after burning through our tax dollars, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012. The plant now has fewer than 10 employees, and Raser owes $1.5 million in back taxes.

ECOtality. The Obama administration gave ECOtality $126.2 million in taxpayer money in 2009 for, among other things, the installation of 14,000 electric car chargers in five states. Obama even hosted the company's president, Don Karner, in the first lady's box during the 2010 State of the Union address as an example of a stimulus success story. According to ECOtality's own SEC filings, the company has since incurred more than $45 million in losses and has told the federal government, "We may not achieve or sustain profitability on a quarterly or annual basis in the future."

Worse, according to CBS News the company is "under investigation for insider trading," and Karner has been subpoenaed "for any and all documentation surrounding the public announcement of the first Department of Energy grant to the company."

Nevada Geothermal Power (NGP). The Obama administration gave NGP a $98.5 million taxpayer loan guarantee in 2010. The New York Times reported last October that the company is in "financial turmoil" and that "[a]fter a series of technical missteps that are draining Nevada Geothermal's cash reserves, its own auditor concluded in a filing released last week that there was "significant doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern."

First Solar. The Obama administration provided First Solar with more than $3 billion in loan guarantees for power plants in Arizona and California. According to a Bloomberg Businessweek report last week, the company "fell to a record low in Nasdaq Stock Market trading May 4 after reporting $401 million in restructuring costs tied to firing 30 percent of its workforce."

Abound Solar, Inc. The Obama administration gave Abound Solar a $400 million loan guarantee to build photovoltaic panel factories. According to Forbes, in February the company halted production and laid off 180 employees.

Beacon Power. The Obama administration gave Beacon -- a green-energy storage company -- a $43 million loan guarantee. According to CBS News, at the time of the loan, "Standard and Poor's had confidentially given the project a dismal outlook of 'CCC-plus.'" In the fall of 2011, Beacon received a delisting notice from Nasdaq and filed for bankruptcy.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. A company called SunPower got a $1.2 billion loan guarantee from the Obama administration, and as of January, the company owed more than it was worth. Brightsource got a $1.6 billion loan guarantee and posted a string of net losses totaling $177 million. And, of course, let's not forget Solyndra -- the solar panel manufacturer that received $535 million in taxpayer-funded loan guarantees and went bankrupt, leaving taxpayers on the hook.

Read the whole thing. As Thiessen goes on to aptly point out, amazingly ... Barack Obama had the unmitigated gall to declare that all the projects received funding "based solely on their merits." But clearly, the only "merit" the decisions were based on is that it wasn't the decision makers' money they were 'investing' (using the term here quite loosely) -- it was the taxpayers' money!

And now this clown of a president, the man who made Solyndra a household name and whose administration has used taxpayer dollars to fund so many failures has the chutzpah to say that Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital is what this campaign is going to be all about?

Go figure!

Meanwhile, don't be surprised if some of Thiessen's content doesn't quickly show up in a Romeny ad.

Video: SBA List's "Womanhood" Ad - Welcome to the Bureau of Womanhood Conformity

Fri, 25 May 2012 09:46:45 -0500

The Susan B. Anthony List created this short (<2 mins) YouTube video called "Womanhood." It's an Orwellian portrait of Team Obama's real war on women, including a haunting depiction of the "Bureau of Womanhood Conformity." It's rather powerful stuff, indeed.

From the YouTube posting:

If it feels like 1984 in real life, it should. The threats to our religious liberty and conscience rights are very real. The question that needs to be asked of this president is "who decides"? Time and time again, President Obama has affirmed that it is the government who decides -- government who decides what women want and think.

President Obama and his allies in Congress and the abortion lobby must stop the "War on Women" who don't agree with them!

It's President Obama's job to protect the freedom of all women and men to practice their beliefs. Yet, an all-out assault has been launched by this administration on people of faith and conscience. Our rights are at stake and we must do something to stop it now. We must expose him!

Learn more at www.respectmyvoice.com

Hat tip - Monica Crowley

More On Obama's Spending Binge

Fri, 25 May 2012 08:32:52 -0500

In my post yesterday titled Barack Obama Is Indeed A Big Spender, And Convoluted Logic And Ignoring Facts Can't Change The Truth -- numerous debunkings of 'nutty' Rex Nutting's Obama propaganda piece published at Market Watch were pointed out. Nutting's piece essentially had David Axelrod's gleeful stamp of approval written all over it, and given that we're talkin' CBS here ... I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it actually was instigated by Axelrod.

As readers may recall, White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One on Wednesday to "not buy into the B.S. that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this administration," and then cited Rex Nutting's preposterous MarketWatch column that claimed to show that "under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s." Carney then went so far as to say "I simply make the point, as an editor might say, to check it out." Unfortunately for Carney and the rest of the Obama administration, many people did exactly that -- they "checked it out" ... and found to to be complete B.S.

Today, Conn Carroll adds some additional perspective and facts:

[Nutting's] most productive trick is to assign all of fiscal year 2009's spending to President Bush. Nutting doesn't start the clock on Obama's spending until fiscal 2010.

In most cases, that would be fair, because presidents typically sign the next year's spending bills in the calendar year before they leave office. But not in 2009. The Democratic Congress, confident Obama was going to win in 2008, passed only three of fiscal 2009's 12 appropriations bills (Defense; Military Construction and Veterans Affairs; and Homeland Security). The Democrat Congress passed the rest of them, and Obama signed them.

So whereas Bush had proposed spending just $3.11 trillion in fiscal 2009, for a 3 percent increase, Obama and the Democrats ended up spending $3.52 trillion, for a 17.9 percent increase in spending -- the highest single-year percentage spending increase since the Korean War.

By the end of Obama's first year in office, spending as a percentage of GDP was 25.2 percent, the highest it has ever been since World War II. As Obama's stimulus spending has receded, spending as a percentage of GDP has gone down, but only slightly. Under President Bush, spending averaged 19.6 percent of GDP. Under President Clinton, it was 19.8 percent. The historical post-war average is 19.7 percent. In 2012, after four years of Obama's fiscal leadership, it is expected to be 24.3 percent.

Even The Washington Post isn't buying Carney and Nutting's B.S. WaPo Fact checker Glenn Kessler reports this morning: "Carney suggested the media were guilty of "sloth and laziness," but he might do better next time than cite an article he plucked off the Web, no matter how much it might advance his political interests. The data in the article are flawed, and the analysis lacks context -- context that could easily could be found in the budget documents released by the White House." (Emphasis added)

Also today, Investor's Business Daily "pimp-slaps" Nutting (via Doug Ross) -- and does so with a simple, but contextually accurate (unlike Nutting's), chart:

You wouldn't think that, after adding $5 trillion to the U.S.' debt, President Obama would seriously claim he's a fiscal hawk. But thanks to a misleading article on CBS' MarketWatch site, that's just what he's doing.

"Since I've been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years," Obama said on Wednesday. "Think about that."

Obama didn't turn to his own Office of Management and Budget to support this fact, or even the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

Instead, he went to a CBS MarketWatch column by Rex Nutting, which claims spending under Obama has risen by an average of just 1.4%.

"Federal spending," he wrote, "is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s."

Nutting even posted a chart to "prove" his case, which appears to show average annual spending hikes under Obama coming in well under that of his predecessors.

Not surprisingly, this "fact" lit up the left-wing blogosphere, with the White House quickly parading the article to dismiss GOP attacks.

There's just one problem. Nutting had it wrong ... In fact, he made two significant mistakes that have the effect of hiding Obama's huge spending spree, mistakes that even Nutting's conservative critics missed ...

IBD goes on to point out that, aside from the Stimulus scam and the litany of frivolous spending Obama pushed through a compliant Congress, TARP and GSE spending were incorrectly accounted for in Nutting's analysis. In other words, Nutting made giant mistakes, small mistakes, and everything in between -- and the White House was all too happy to repeat his faulty logic, assumptions, data, and conclusions without checking them, hoping that just saying it would somehow make it so.

Unfortunately, the WH is, more likely than not, bound to just keep repeating the same lie as long as there are enough gullible voters out there to lap it up.

$3 Raffle Ticket Can Win You Dinner With Mitt and Donald

Thu, 24 May 2012 20:01:06 -0500

A chance to have dinner with Mitt Romney and Donald Trump can be yours, for the low low starting donation of just $3.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The Mitt Romney campaign unveiled a contest Thursday to raffle off dinner with Mr. Trump and Mr. Romney, along with a stay at the Trump International Hotel & Tower in New York. The date of the dinner wasn't announced.

"Mitt is tough, he's smart, he's sharp," Mr. Trump said in endorsing Mr. Romney back in February.

A raffle to raise campaign funds? Sounds like a great idea, after all, as the piece goes on to note -- Obama's re-election campaign raised a whopping $15 million through a fundraiser at actor George Clooney's house.

About $6 million of that came from big-bucks donors invited to attend, with the rest from a raffle of two invitations to the event, which also started at $3 an entry. Two women won, and they each brought their husbands.

According to the donation site, Donate today and you are eligible for a chance to win:

Airport transportation in the Trump vehicle.

Stay at the Trump International Hotel & Tower New York.

Tour of Trump Tower.

Dine with Donald Trump and Mitt Romney.

Well worth the 3 bucks (or more if you wish), if you win. And if you don't win, the money goes toward helping defeat Barack Obama ... and in my mind, that's just as important as winning dinner with Mitt and the Donald.

Chart Clearly Shows Barack Obama's (lack of) Fiscal Restraint

Thu, 24 May 2012 12:44:42 -0500

In response to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney's urging of reporters on Wednesday to, "not buy into the BS that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this administration. I think doing so is a sign of sloth and laziness," Philip Klein decided to make the following chart documenting all the progress that's been made toward getting public debt under control during the Obama era of fiscal restraint, based on CBO historical data and the White House's own estimates of President Obama's budget through 2022.

That's the Obama administration's version of fiscal Restraint? Little wonder our national debt has grown beyond what we or even future generations will ever be capable of paying back and our economy has remained so stagnant. It proves that the Obama administration has no real understanding of not only economics, but is also oblivious to the fact that if we don't stop spending ... we could soon be the next Greece.

(Video) Romney: 'Why Is Obama Attacking Capitalism?'

Thu, 24 May 2012 12:13:53 -0500

Clearly happy to keep talking about Bain Capital!, Mitt Romney proudly rolled out Bain's investment history, in which their businesses succeeded in boosting profit and viability in 80% of the cases -- keeping in mind that private-equity firms and especially Bain tend to focus on already-troubled firms. Only 5% of their bets resulted in bankruptcy later, which is a rather remarkable record for a private-equity firm. In attacking that kind of success, Romney argued on Fox News this morning, Barack Obama has resorted to nothing less than an attack on capitalism itself. The best moment in the video comes at the 20-second mark when Romney scoffs at Obama's understanding of "productivity" in the economy. Romney pronounces himself "amazed" at Obama's ignorance on the topic after more than three years as President, and then patiently explains exactly what it means and why it matters (hat tip - Ed Morrissey):

The Hill reports that Romney argued on Fox News this morning, Barack Obama has resorted to nothing less than an attack on capitalism itself:

Mitt Romney accused President Obama of "attacking capitalism" and defended the record of Bain Capital as "solid" in a rebuttal Thursday to the president's critique of his tenure at the private-equity firm.

Romney argued that Bain had an overall record of economic success and was an example of American capitalism at work.

"With regards to Bain Capital, they just put a report out about their record, the Bain Capital guys did, they noted they've made about 350 investments since the beginning of the firm, and of those investments, about 80 percent grew their revenues. So I'm pretty confident that the overall record of the enterprise I helped begin is pretty solid," Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, told Fox News.

In his comments, Romney was responding to three central criticisms advanced by the Obama campaign this week: that Romney's venture capital firm had exploited companies for the economic gain of executives, that Romney was advocating failed Bush-era economic policies and that Romney had equated productivity with personal income to suggest Americans weren't working hard enough.

... "There's no question but that he's attacking capitalism, in part, I think, because he doesn't understand how the free economy works. He's never had a job in the free economy; neither has Vice President Biden," Romney said.

In answer to the question, 'Why Is Obama Attacking Capitalism?,' Andrew Kaczynski produces a flier (via Ed Morrissey) from an Obama appearance at a socialist rally in 1996, when Obama ran for the state legislature. And n even more revealing answer as to why Obama's attacking capitalism is this lengthy list of Barack Obama's communist connections.

Two Questions For The President, And Why Bain matters (But Not In The Way Obama Wants Voters To Think It Does)

Thu, 24 May 2012 11:36:07 -0500

Two must-read pieces today together make clear the ridiculousness and absurdity of Barack Obama's attacks on Bain Capital and his claims that Romney's private sector experience has not prepared him for the presidency.

First, Peter Kirsanow has two key questions for the president:

Over the last few days you have derided the value of Mr. Romney's private-sector experience in preparing him for the presidency.

Last weekend Senator Marco Rubio said this about you: "We have not seen such a divisive figure in modern American history as we have over the last three and a half years." Governor Chris Christie added, "He is the most ill-prepared person to assume the presidency in my lifetime." (Governor Christie was born in 1962.)

Which of the above two quotes do you disagree with more? If it's Governor Christie's statement, who among the following was more ill-prepared than you to assume the presidency: John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, or George W. Bush?

Which of your previous positions best prepared you to be president? How did it do so?

Secondly, Conn Carroll explains why Bain matters, but not in the way Barack Obama wants voters to think it does.

After referencing (with excerpts of Romney's responses) Time Magazine's transcript of Mark Halperin's interview with Mitt Romney about his tenure at Bain in which Halpern pressed Romney on his claim that his business experience gave him "a perspective on how jobs are created -- that someone who's never spent a day in the private sector, like President Obama, simply doesn't understand," Carroll put the issue into a clear perspective using energy as an example:

If you are an entrepreneur deciding where to locate your new manufacturing business, an eight-fold increase in energy costs is going to drive you away from creating jobs in the United States. That is what Mitt Romney, business man gets, and what President Obama, community organizer, still doesn't understand.

Meanwhile, the most ill-prepared person to assume the presidency, and the most divisive in history, continues to claim that a man that is likely one of the best prepared men to assume the presidency in the last half century, a man that strongly supports capitalism and the free market -- and certainly no fan of class-warfare (ergo in no way divisive), is somehow ill-prepared to replace him as president.

Go figure!

Castro's Daughter Says She Would Vote for Barack Obama

Thu, 24 May 2012 10:37:58 -0500

The AFP reports:

Fidel Castro's niece on Wednesday hailed Barack Obama's support for gay marriage and the loosening of US-Cuba travel restrictions, saying: "I would vote for President Obama."

Mariela Castro, the daughter of President Raul Castro, also lamented the "small group of delinquents" whom she said were preventing the warming of ties between Washington and Havana.

"I think he's sincere and speaks from the heart," Castro -- whose US trip has been denounced by opposition Republicans -- said of Obama's recent public endorsement of gay marriage.

"I think it's something that he truly believes in ... If I were a US citizen, I would vote for President Obama," she added, speaking via an interpreter at her first public event in a trip to San Francisco.

The decision by the Obama administration to issue a visa to Mariela Castro, Raul Castro's daughter, is so politically unpopular in Florida that even the loony DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, as well as Democratic Florida senator Bill Nelson, have denounced it:

Yes, the Bush administration did the same thing a decade ago, but she wasn't so appreciative then and she certainly didn't say she'd vote for Bush. And as Capital Hill Cubans reports:

The fact is that two wrongs don't make a right -- both the Bush and Obama Administrations erred in doing so.

But it's actually worse now.

Prior to Raul Castro becoming dictator-in-chief in 2006, few non-Cuba observers even knew that Raul had a daughter (let alone two more, Deborah and Nilsa).

Since that time, the Cuban dictatorship has turned Mariela Castro into its most prominent public relations figure.

She has now been traveling the world defending her family's brutal dictatorship, attacking peaceful pro-democracy activists as "despicable parasites" and justifying the arbitrary taking of an American hostage, Alan Gross.

Just try to stomach this 30 minute interview.

Moreover, to his credit, President Obama announced in August 2011 that human rights would become a central focus of his visa policy -- specifically identifying "prolonged arbitrary detentions" as unacceptable violations (a Raul Castro specialty).

So actions should speak louder than words.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration has just denied political asylum to a former Cuban military official that turned on the Castro regime and served almost two decades in prison.

Even worse yet.

Here's Marco Rubio's response to Obama's decision to give a visa to Castro:

(Video) New Romney Ad: 'Day One, Part Two'

Thu, 24 May 2012 10:24:02 -0500

The Romney campaign's new TV ad stresses that from the very first day of the presidency, Mitt Romney will work to reduce the deficit, ax regulations that affect job creation, and push back against China's current policies affecting trade:

Barack Obama Is Indeed A Big Spender, And Convoluted Logic And Ignoring Facts Can't Change The Truth

Thu, 24 May 2012 08:51:59 -0500

Why is it that liberal-progressives and Democrats (but I repeat myself) have such a propensity for simply making sh*t up, then saying it over and over believing that if they say it loud enough and repeat it enough times, it makes it so? Why is it that they have such a propensity to twist facts and contrive such implausible arguments to such a degree that their claims become outright laughable?

Rex Nutting, one of the biggest BS artists on the internet, wrote a 'nutty' piece on Market Watch yesterday under the title: "Obama spending binge never happened." He began with:

Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree. ... Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an "inferno" of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children's future. Even Democrats seem to think it's true.

But it didn't happen.

So, where on Earth does Nutting get the idea that Obama has been a miser when it comes to the federal budget?

First of all, Politifact points out that the chart that probably began this preposterous claim was originally posted by Nancy Pelosi, and it was shopped to the news media by MoveOn.Org.

Politifact also notes that the Pelosi chart has one minor 'error.' It starts with January 2010, instead of January 2009. Which is effectively the same 'error' that Nutting made as well. He just tried to dress it up a little.

So, what Nutting did to arrive at such a ridiculous, implausible, claim was simply ignore and discount the unprecedented spending spree that Obama engaged in during his first year in office. Nutting's 'evidence' consists of a chart showing that the annualized growth of federal spending from 2010-2013 is 1.4 percent, compared with 7.3 percent from 2002-2005 during George Bush's first term and 8.1 percent from 2006-2009 during Bush's second term

Barack Obama was quick to pick up on and attempt to take advantage of the 'nutty' and highly implausible assertion (based upon a completely illogical and thoroughly debunked thesis) by subsequently claiming at a fundraiser for his re-election campaign in Denver that the conventional Republican wisdom that his administration has been defined by excessive government spending was completely false and that he was not a big spender.

From ABC News:

"I'm running to pay down our debt in a way that's balanced and responsible. After inheriting a $1 trillion deficit, I signed $2 trillion of spending cuts into law," he told a crowd of donors at the Hyatt Regency...

"My opponent won't admit it, but it's starting to appear in places, like real liberal outlets, like the Wall Street Journal: Since I've been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years. Think about that."

Obama was referring to an analysis released this week by Rex Nutting, a reporter for CBS MarketWatch who is also affiliated with the Wall Street Journal. Nutting concluded that Obama has presided over the slowest growth in federal spending in decades.

Unfortunately for Obama and Nutting, Peter Suderman (and many others) were just as quick to completely debunk Nutting's (and subsequently, Obama's) laughable claim:

Nutting has a half a point: Federal spending did rise considerably during the 2009 fiscal year: Between 2001 and 2008, federal outlays (spending) rose from $1.8 trillion to $2.9 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office's historical spending data. That's a steep enough rise. But it's nothing compared to what happened during the next year: In 2009, outlays spiked, rising from the $2.9 trillion spent in 2008 to $3.5 trillion.

But what Obama did in subsequent budgets was stick to that newly inflated level of spending. Outlays in 2010 were just a hair short of $3.5 trillion. In 2011, they rose further, approaching $3.6 trillion.

So even if you absolve Obama of responsibility for the initial growth spike, he still presided over unprecedented spending that was out of line with the existing growth trend. Obama's average spending is far higher than under Bush or Clinton on both adjusted dollar levels and as a percentage of the economy. James Pethokoukis of The American Enterprise Institute has a handy graphic comparing annual Obama's spending as a percentage of the economy to George W. Bush's average spending as a percentage of GDP:

As Suderman goes on to note, George W. Bush was undoubtedly a tremendous spender, and he deserves some of the non-credit for making Obama's federal budget binge possible, especially during Obama's first year. But Obama and his fellow Democrats share the responsibility for allowing a spending spike to continue on at newly high levels, for posting record outlays and running record deficits -- and for taking few if any effective steps to get the nation's economic and fiscal houses in order.

Over at Powerline, John Hinderaker sums it up quite nicely:

... Let's redo the math, putting responsibility for the Democrats' spending extravaganza in 2009 where it belongs.

In 2009, Obama and the Congress increased spending by $535 billion over the FY 2008 baseline. Spending dipped slightly in 2010 as fewer stimulus dollars were spent, and has risen again since then. If you add up the amounts by which spending in FYs 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 has exceeded the FY 2008 baseline, it is $2.44 trillion, almost exactly one-half of the $5 trillion in new debt that has been racked up during the Obama administration.

Federal spending in FY 2008 was $2,983,000,000 (rounded). In FY 2012, it is projected to be $3,796,000,000 (rounded). I am using budget, not off-budget numbers; if you add the off-budget numbers, they are worse for Obama. That means that on Obama's watch, spending has increased by $813 billion, or 27% over the 2008 baseline. Annualizing that growth in a crude fashion, we get 6.75% per year, rather than Nutting's 1.4%. This is, in other words, a classic case of using bogus numbers to deceive one's readers. Barack Obama is indeed the drunken sailor that virtually every American takes him for.

As a commenter at Powerline pointed out, in 2008-09 the recession caused spending to jump to 25% of GDP, as opposed to the normal ~20%. Obama has taken this 1 year anomaly and made it the new baseline. Obama is spending 23-24% of GDP. And Obamacare hasn't kicked in yet.

And to get a real perspective of just how big a lie Obama and friends are pushing, here's a stunning chart by James Pethokoukis that shows the Obama spending binge really happened:

But will the fact that Nutting's and Obama's claims are thoroughly groundless, outright lies, and based on twisted logic stop the Democrats from continuing to repeat the claim that Obama is not the biggest spender in recent history?

We only need to look at their track record to know the answer to that question.

Re: 'Free speech blogburst: Show solidarity for targeted conservative bloggers' (Updated and bumped)

Thu, 24 May 2012 00:30:36 -0500

Lee Stranahan provides some basic background on Kimberlin here (hat tip - Michelle Malkin):

As Bob Owens so appropriately asks: Why are Maryland Democrats letting the "Speedway Bomber" get away with terrorism? (And why do radical leftist terrorists keep turning up around Barack Obama?).

Taking A Stand Against Terrorism in the Blogosphere!

Re: 'Obama Neuters War on Islamic Terrorists'

Wed, 23 May 2012 22:16:35 -0500

Highly disturbing ... and very dangerous:

[...] Dr. Sebastian L. v. Gorka, Military Affairs Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said on Tuesday that the Obama Administration is rapidly revising federal counter-terrorism training materials in order to eliminate references to Jihad and Islam.

Government bureaucracies usually take a long time in changing a policy. In this case, he said, "I have never, ever seen such a wide ranging review executed with such alacrity."

Although he blamed Quintan Wiktorowicz, a member of Obama's National Security Council, for implementing the Obama Administration's new overall policy of accommodating radical Islam, including the pro-terrorist Muslim Brotherhood, Gorka said Spencer Ackerman of Wired Magazine had helped sparked the review of federal counter-terrorism training materials through a series of controversial articles. One of those articles ran under an inflammatory headline about "Islamophobia" supposedly characterizing the federal government's response to global Islamic terrorism.

As a result of this kind of coverage and the new policy, Gorka said the Obama Administration today forbids the use of the word "Jihad" to describe the terrorists that target America for destruction, even though they are members of the Muslim religion and openly declare their Islamic aims. What is happening in terms of redefining the threat is "unprecedented" and dangerous, he said.

More here. AS bad as it sounds so far ... it gets much worse.

One can't help but wonder, as noted in the article, whether President Obama's Islamic background, as discussed and acknowledged by Jeremiah Wright, is playing a role in the transformation of U.S. foreign policy in a direction that favors the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Jihadists.