Sacre Bleu! Obama To Celebrate Independence Day In...France?

Bad enough that the guys can't bother to stick around on native soil during our greatest national holiday, but to flee overseas in order to raise some money for his foundering re-election campaign?  And to France, no less, scorners of all the fruits of our free land?  Breitbart:

Apparently tiring of US soil as a source of campaign dollars, the Obama campaign is headed overseas -- with its celebrity friends in tow. The European Obama campaign starts next week in Paris on July 4 with a reception organized by various fundraising heavy-hitters. Independence Day fundraisers in Paris – now that’s a flag-waving campaign.

The Obama campaign will host events in Geneva, Switzerland in August as part of their “European outreach effort.” George Clooney will headline a fundraiser there, with 150 tickets going for $20,000 per piece.


Now wait, I know what your thinking: "Wow.  It really is all about him".  But that could not be further from the truth.

Actually, Obama is making a great sacrifice here.  You know he and Moochelle would love to spend the 4th of July kicking back at a barbecue, scarfing down hot dogs and ice cream and drinking sweet, syrupy sodas. But Obama is going through great pains here to re-enact a great scene in American history:  He is none other than the re-incarnation of Ben Franklin, and he is re-enacting 'ol Poor Richard's 1776 trip to France, undertaken to raise money to sustain the American Revolution.

And here we have Barack, bringing history alive 236 years later, as he goes to the French begging for money to help sustain his particular revolution, hoping to find a sympathetic hearing among the Continent's socialists.  A latter-day Founding Father, he is! ( Really - note all the  "adjustments" he's made recently  to the Constitution as well...)

He's not disrespecting America by turning his back on us on Independence Day; that's just FOX News talk. He's actually just trying to educate and enlighten our people by replaying a great historical event...you ignorant f*cking racist.  If only the American people weren't so dumb, they'd  be grateful to have a great man like Barack Obama, sacrificing his holiday in order to help them.

And himself.  To plenty of foreign money.   But that's a patriotic story for another day...

John Roberts Accepts The Wages Of Appeasement...

...but it is we who will pay them.

Certainly, the circumstantial evidence leads one to believe that Chief Justice John Roberts either changed his mind on the ObamaCare vote, or worked out a deal with the liberal justices to keep the legislation intact in exchange for gaining their co-operation in reducing the impact of the Commerce Clause and eliminating the federal government's attempt to blackmail the states on Medicare expansion.

The bizarre way he justified the constitutionality of ObamaCare  - by making the argument that the government  mandate is indeed a massive tax hike -   is so out of character with the Chief Justice's previous philosophical predilections, and is presented with such faulty reasoning, one can only squirm when parsing the texts.  John Podhoretz:

In a beautiful turn of phrase, the four dissenting justices said Roberts’ contortion on this matter “carries verbal wizardry too far, deep into the forbidden land of the sophists.”

Roberts’ grotesque offense against elementary logic is so bald-faced, I’m almost tempted to believe he left it there on purpose, either out of perversity or as a not-so-hidden message that he had ulterior motives for upholding the constitutionality of ObamaCare.


When our (often false) gods let us down, we tend to prescribe a greater motive for their apparent failings, an overarching rationale that we the people will not grasp until some distant time in the future, when all will unfold as our hero has foreseen.  So too are the claims being made on behalf of Justice Roberts, as his defenders speak of the framework he has set up for limiting government while allowing this monstrous legislation - which will surely enlarge it - to stand.

I ascribe no piety to our Chief Justice ("Put not your trust in judges​—​nor in other berobed or bejeweled personages"), but instead put my faith in a much simpler hypothesis:   That Roberts was bullied by the Democrats and the media into upholding clearly unconstitutional legislation.  Told over and over again that a 5-4 decision would render the court "radical", political" , and "failed", that it would lose the trust of  the American people, and perhaps lead to tremendous civil unrest, Roberts caved.  He extracted a high price for his appeasement, as mention above, but in the end, gave his vote to the side that warned him "vote our way...or else".

Caving in to uncivil discourse, threats, and bullying only begets more of the same.  Such is the legacy that Justice Roberts has bequeathed to us.

We must now fight an unnecessary battle, against a president who will certainly use extralegal means to implement ObamacCare as quickly and permanently as possible, and a media who will beat an incessant drumbeat about how heartless, savage conservatives wish to deprive the American people of the new "rights" granted to them by Barack Obama. The concepts of loss of liberty, a radically expanded government,  and an additional crippling financial burden will not be allowed to enter the public conversation.

We will fight on.  But one traitor to the truth, and to the Republic, has made it a much more uphill climb.

Somewhere, Neville Chamberlain is sitting  - at a table for two, sipping wine, perhaps, and awaiting a new guest....

Obama on ObamaCare: "I Won...So Suck it!"

And takes a victory lap in his usual classless manner...via SCOTUS blog:

"Today the Supreme Court also upheld the principle People who can afford health insurance should take the responsibility to buy health insurance"

...or else the government will now force you to buy it. At gunpoint. Suck it, bitches!


"The highest court in the land has now spoken. We will continue to implement this law."

 ...Whew! Praise Allah, I almost read off my "the Supreme Court is a radical, discredited branch of the Tea Party" crib notes!. So...bend over and take it, bitches!


"Today I am as confidence as ever, that when we look back 5 years from now, or 10 years from now, or 20 years from now, we will be better off because we had the courage to pass this law and keep moving forward."

..and by "we", I mean "me". I AM THE ONE!  So suck it, bithces!


And on a related note, it is reported that "Roberts was red-eyed and unhappy as he read” the Obamacare decision from the bench.  So must have been many of the observers, for the Chief Justice added:

"...it is not our job to save the people from the consequences of their political choices."


William Kristol: 

Put not your trust in judges​—​nor in other berobed or bejeweled personages. To the degree you trust anyone: Trust the people.

True, that. So here we all are...


UPDATE:   Provided courtesy of Patrick Gaspard, executive director of the DNC:

Also DNC staffer Greg Greene tweeted — and then appears to have deleted — this: “Overheard in the office: “TAKE THAT MOTHER******S!!”"

The ObamaCare Ruling: Obama is Screwed

If the Supreme Court had ruled ObamaCare unconstitutional, the president could have - with the help of an all-to-willing media - gone after Justice Roberts & the Court with gusto, and demanded to know how the Republicans intended to fix the "health care crisis" they have "ignored" for decades.  Now that ObamaCare is officially the law of the land, is becomes the #2 campaign issue, behind the economy (whose lackluster performance is tied into the uncertainties of the ACA).

And despite the House vote on the ACA held on Christmas Eve, despite the procedural maneuvering to use arcane legislative rules to pass this bill with a one-vote majority in the Senate, despite the warning shot across the bow - ignored - by the people of Massachusetts via the election of  Scott Brown - Obama now is forced to put the the federal government's takeover of the nation's heathcare industry to a vote before the entirety of the American people.

And his biggest problem - his declaration that HCR was not a tax, now quite problematic as that was the only reason the SCOTUS could find to uphold it:  Remember this?

STEPHANOPOULOS: [I]t's still a tax increase.

OBAMA: No. That's not true, George. The — for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase. People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I'm not covering all the costs.


Another false analogy from The One!  Meanwhile, more from Ann Althouse on the problems for Barack:

1) Obama imposed a huge new tax on working people.
2) Obama deceived the American people by saying it was not a tax, when it was.
3) The law made it look like money would go to insurance companies — in the form of new premiums — that would keep premiums low as the companies were required to take on people with pre-existing conditions, but now we find out that the money is really going to go to the federal government. [ So get ready for your premiums to spiral up and/or for insurance companies to be ruined.]



Jen Rubin sees the water gathering around Barack's ankles:

The problem here of course is the Obama administration swore up and down it was not a tax. The Supreme Court in effect held that the Democrats imposed a tax on every American, something Obama swore up an down he’d ever do. (Only tax the rich, he promised) In that regard the opinion is a tribute to Obama’s utter disingenuousness.

As for the political fallout, Obama is in quite the pickle, defending a nation-wide tax and a law a majority of Americans don’t like. Mitt Romney will be able to argue that he was right insofar as the Commerce Clause doesn’t allow this extraordinary extension of power. He will also be able to fight tooth and nail against Obamatax, raising all of the policy arguments.


And Chris Christie is already on board:

Today’s Supreme Court decision is disappointing and I still believe this is the wrong approach for the people of New Jersey who should be able to make their own judgments about health care.  Most importantly, the Supreme Court is confirming what we knew all along about this law – it is a tax on middle class Americans.”  

More to follow...

The "Miami Heats"? So Obama Lied About Being A Sports Fan, Too...

"A slip of the tongue"?  Sheet, this guy has had more slips of the tongue than Gerald Ford had slips on the tarmac.

Clueless:




Rush Limbaugh wonders if the slip wasn't deliberate:

Limbaugh believes it was an intentional insult to Miami Heat fans, likening it to Obama flipping them the middle finger.

“I think what you need to know is, this is how, in certain sectors, you insult people,” Limbaugh explained. “You mispronounce the name of their team. You remember, you’ve seen during the campaign in 2008, Obama would scratch his face only with his flip-the-bird finger while talking about McCain? That’s what this was. He was flipping the bird to Heat fans by calling them the Heats.”


Not sure about that one.  But like his "autobiography" seems to suggest, Barack will say whatever it takes to fit in with whomever is in the room.  Unfortunately, when pressed for specifics, well...

Remember, the president even wore a White Sox cap during his ceremonial first pitch at the Washington Nationals. What a loyal guy! Except, of course, when asked who his favorite White Sox players were later during the broadcast (for some reason MLB Advanced Media has pulled the video from YouTube), Obama answered, "You know uh ..... I I ... I thought that ... uh .... you know, ... the truth is a lot of the Cubs I like too! But, uh ... I did not become a Sox fan until I moved to Chicago. Because I uh .... I was growing up in Hawaii so I ended up actually being an Oakland A's fan."

Yeah, whatever, pal.  Obama reminds me of no one more than Mr. Burns, who also needs to fake it when trying to slum with the common man...





"Hey there Mr....d'uh....Brown Shoes! How bout that local sports team, eh?"

Democrats Don't Believe Their Own Polls. Maybe We Shouldn't, Either...

...Which is odd on the face of it, as the party seems to take many of its talking points directly from the editorial pages of the national dailies, which tend to conduct many of these surverys.  But there's a lot of strange stuff going on right now.  First, there's these polls, which seem hard to square with reality:

Nationally, Barack Obama is at 47 percent and Mitt Romney is at 44 percent, according to the new NBC/WSJ poll.

 A trio of swing states polled by Quinnipiac University shows more bad news for Romney:
Florida: Obama edges Romney 45 – 41 percent; 
Ohio: Obama over Romney 47 – 38 percent; 
Pennsylvania: Obama tops Romney 45 – 39 percent.

Democrat firm Public Policy Polling, however, gives Obama just a 3-point lead in their poll this week of the Buckeye State. Not shockingly, PPP also shows Obama leading by 8 points in Oregon.

These numbers surprised me - all the news about the economy, foreign affairs, and the future of the nation are relentlessly bad, yet Obama - the man who refuses to do anything about it all - is leaping in the polls?  Seems counter-intuitive, at best.

But if those polls ran true, why would Democrats be fleeing from the president?

There may be some extra hotel space in Charlotte, N. C. come the beginning of September, as several Democratic elected officials have announced that they will not be attending the Democratic National Convention this year.

Earlier today, Talking Points Memo reported that Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill will not be attending the convention, becoming the third Democratic senator, and eighth Democratic member of Congress, to opt out of the event.

However, her decision to stay away is significant because she was an early endorser of Obama in 2008, and a big surrogate for his campaign...


Could be that the red states will just be more red this year, and the "Blue Dogs" need to disassociate themselves from anything Democratic in order to survive.  Or maybe not:  Because the next oddity is this comment from the head of the DCC itself:

The man responsible for getting Democrats elected to the Congress this fall has a message for his party’s candidates: Stay away from the Democratic National Convention in September. 

 “If they want to win an election, they need to be in their districts,” New York Congressman Steve Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told the Reuters Washington Summit on Tuesday...


WTF???

So what is really going on out there?

Are things worse than polling indicates?  Are Democrats expecting to see a Bradley Effect, or even worse, a Walker Effect, is which the embattled Republican governor defeated his opponents by almost double the final polling figures?

Not sure.  But the animals in the barn are getting mighty skittish right about now.  And sometimes it just seems as if they are the first to know when something bad is about to go down...

Justice Scalia Issues A Remarkable Warning...

...in his dissent from a portion of the Court's decision in Arizona vs. The United States.  The last two paragraphs (page 52 of the document) read as follows:

Arizona bears the brunt of the country’s illegal immigration problem. Its citizens feel themselves under siege by large numbers of illegal immigrants who invade their property, strain their social services, and even place their lives in jeopardy. Federal officials have been unable to remedy the problem, and indeed have recently shown that they are unwilling to do so....

 Arizona has moved to protect its sovereignty—not in contradiction of federal law, but in complete compliance with it. The laws under challenge here do not extend or revise federal immigration restrictions, but merely enforce those restrictions more effectively. If securing its territory in this fashion is not within the power of Arizona, we should cease referring to it as a sovereign State.


Related, from the New York Post:

Barack Obama doesn’t listen to anyone who disagrees with him. He sees his election as a blank check that carries near-absolute power and freedom from all restraint. Congress, the courts, voters, whole industries — if they are not with him, they are obstacles that must be crushed or circumvented.


Justice Scalia sees the game for what it is.  Alas, the media is unlikely to discuss or even report his remarks, despite the implications of his dissent.  No doubt they are aware that most of the electorate would likely agree with Scalia, and they fear bringing this jurist's thoughts to light would "angry up the blood" of the American people even further.

Can't have that. Not with an election on the horizon, ones whose outcome is far from certain.  For the media, it is Obama über alles.

Which echos the ethos of our president, of course.

Justice Scalia is aware of that, too....

Obama Spikes The Baseball, Gets Booed In Beantown

So these folks poured their hard-earned money into the Obama 2012 re-election campaign, and The Man himself appears, in order to...taunt them for it.

There's a lesson here, you know....but there's also a sucker born every minute, which means Obama will still get crowds (albeit slimmer and slimmer ones) to his fundraising events

True story:

President Obama tried to tweak Bostonians Monday as he thanked the Red Sox for trading Kevin Youkilis to his hometown Chicago White Sox, but instead he triggered a chorus of boos from fans still a bit raw over the deal.

Making a light-hearted jab as he delivered a series of thank-yous at the start of a fund-raising speech, the president added: “Finally, Boston I just want to say – thank-you for Youkilis.”

The infielder was traded on Sunday for righthanded relief pitcher Zach Stewart and utility fielder Brent Lillibridge.

As boos swelled up from the floor and down down from the double balconies at Symphony Hall, Obama chuckled.

“I’m just saying, he had to change the color of his socks,” the president said with a building grin.



“I didn’t anticipate boos out of here,” he added as some of the boos turned to the low rumble of “Y-o-o-u-k.”


"I didn't anticipate" has been pretty much Obama's theme for his 2012 campaign, hasn't it?  But I'll bet a lot of Americans are thinking the same thing about the alleged "moderate" they elected president....

And based on the sneering disgust that Dear Leader showed for his biggest sycophants, I'm wondering if an Obama fundraising event is any different than this concert scene from The Wall, where a fascist stand-in of sorts questions the loyalty of his followers:



So ya 
Thought ya
Might like to 
Go to the show. 
To feel that warm thrill of confusion,
That space cadet glow.
I've got some bad news for you sunshine, 
Pink isn't well, he stayed back at the hotel 
And they sent us along as a surrogate band 
We're gonna find out where you folks really stand...

....that one in the spotlight, he don't look right to me.
Get him up against the wall.
And that one looks Jewish, and that one's a coon.
Who let all this riffraff into the room?

In A Rational World, Adam Carolla Would Already Have His Own Political Talk Show...

...and he'd be kicking the shit out of Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, Steven Colbert, CNN, and MNSBC.

Carolla explains why it's unlikely to ever happen:

“I think it’s possible for that [conservative] comedian to be popular because I think the country probably is more in line with the way he thinks than the way that Bill Maher thinks, but I don’t think the executives are going to give that guy a shot at that show,” Carolla said

 “You know, it’s a small little clan of sort of, you know, progressive hipsters who never stop stroking each other.”


Love that last line.  Can be applied to almost anything Hollywood produced these days.  Or almost anything that comes out of a celebrity's mouth.  Change "hipsters" to "pseudo-intellectuals", and you have the explanation for the existence of the media's "liberal bubble" - a place where only a limited range of thought is deemed praiseworthy, creating an illusion of  a general conformity of opinion.  Of course, in reality, a maelstrom rages outside the boundary...

Carolla's right, for the most part, about why Hollywood won't ever give him a shot, regardless of how much money he's make for them.  But there is another network, known to have a more conservative bent, who in the past hasn't been afraid of pushing the envelope and trying  out ideas once mocked as unworkable.

Anyone seen Rupert Murdoch lately?

If you have, show him this:

“I think they [Americans] tend to think more like Bill O’Reilly than they do Keith Olbermann, and thus there is this disparity in ratings. … Glenn Beck made $80 million last year — and Keith Olbermann’s looking for a job. Like — okay, so I’d say America’s spoken...

E.J. Dionne Regresses, And Then Digresses

The regression is from pseudo-intellectual thoughtful liberal to a mere teenage emo chick. Bemoaning the imminent SCOTUS  slap-down of Obamacare, he reverts to a sullen schoolboy's threat, entitling his piece Will we love the health-care law if it dies?

Pathetic.

Or maybe he's more of a spurned lover?

 Were the health-care law to be eviscerated, those who battled so hard on its behalf might draw at least bittersweet comfort from what could be called the Joni Mitchell Rule, named after the folk singer who instructed us that “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”


 The self-pitying lament of the angry loser. The anger being directed at us, the American people. The Police (back when they were a groundbreaking band, and before Sting left to become a world-class liberal ass) sketched the character so well: 

I guess this is our last goodbye 
And you don't care so I won't cry
But you'll be sorry when I'm dead 
And all this guilt will be on your head
I guess you'd call it suicide 
But I'm too full to swallow my pride 
I can't, I can't 
I can't stand losing 
I can't stand losing you


Oh, what will we do without the Left to kick around anymore?  Sorry E.J., that's still not a valid reason for us to support Obamacare. Go hang yourself metaphorically from the tree, we're still not going to love you or your wacky government programs.

Dionne snaps out of his angst long enough, though, to tell us what the American people need to be fed in order to fall for government health care: More propaganda.  Seriously:

And here is where the court’s reintroduction of the health-care issue into the political debate could be turned into a blessing by allies of reform, provided they take advantage of the opportunity to do what they have never done adequately up to now. They need, finally, to describe and defend the law and what it does.


Because it is always the messenger, or the message, that is to blame. It is never their implausible, unpopular remedies for non-existing problems that are at the root of the nation's ire towards the Left. Lord, no! It just needs to be explained slower, clearer, with smaller words, maybe with pretty pictures and comic books.

Like a stubborn child, Dionne and his ilk are incapable of looking in the mirror and comprehending that the fault may not lie in the stars - or the American people -  but in themselves...

That Ivy-League Degree You Proffer Is Not Worth The Parchment It Is Printed On...

Writing at NRO, Mario Loyola takes apart a ludicrous op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Obama senior economic policy adviser Jeffrey Liebman.  After making mincemeat of Liebman's faulty analysis of the current economic downturn, as well as the trite political tropes he offers as remedies, Loyola makes this observation:

Indeed, if this op-ed is any guide, the Obama team has no idea what the causes of the economic downturn are, and are not even listening to what conservatives might have to say on the subject. That leads me to the most fascinating aspect of Liebman’s op-ed: He is a longtime Harvard professor of economic policy, former chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget, and holds bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in economics from Yale and Harvard.


Loyola goes on to call Obama and his cronies "the most economically illiterate administration since the New Deal", a truth I have been beating to death on this blog for almost four years.  But how is such a thing possible, you may ask, with so many of the president's advisers having that Ivy League pedigree?

Let's re-phrase that a little to get your answer, and possibly the one Loyola is hinting at.  It is because Obama is taking his advice from so many Harvard/Princeton/Yale alums that the nation is in this mess, and finding itself, after three-plus years of clawing, deeper in the ditch then we should imaginably be.

What the fuck are they teaching in these places?  Liberal politics?  Racial theory? Feminist studies? Karl Marx?  Probably all of the above, but they sure as shit ain't teaching any real-world, big-boy math and economics, that's for sure.

Because these guys run Wall Street, the big banks, and the entire financial sector of the economy.  How's that been working out?

They also run the government, holding influential posts and radically altering policy to put their prescriptives into place to alter the course of the American economy and our society.  How's that been working out?

It's time to stop the hero-worship of the Ivy League grad, and start the mocking.  Their overpriced education has failed them, and failed America, as their degrees no longer represent any qualification or certification whatsoever.  It is merely paperwork that verifies that the holder of said sheepskin has been thoroughly indoctrinated in liberal thought, speech, and attitudes, and can be expected to implement them with no intellectual flexibility regardless of what the professional situation may call for.

Product of the "Ivy League"...

We should be running from them -  not accepting them into our lives eagerly-  based on their record of failure on an unprecedented scale. Perhaps we should rename this group of once-illustrious schools the "Poison Ivy League"?  They certainly have acted as such upon the people, and institutions, of our once-great nation...

Obama Hails The Destruction Of The American Male...

...and no doubt many of the female gender will join him.  Later, of course, they will wonder openly where all the good men are, and complain about their inability to find a guy who can support them & fulfill their desire to raise a family.  After living a life as an office drone, shepherding a couple of cats, and prepping to die alone, they'll wonder why they are so deeply, spiritually unhappy.  After all, they were liberated women, and they were supposed to "have it all".  How can they wind up with...nothing?


Barack Obama can explain:

In an op-ed published Saturday in Newsweek, President Barack Obama marked the 40th anniversary of the enactment of Title IX — which bars gender discrimination in education — and noted that more women in the United States are now graduating from college than men, which he characterized as “a great accomplishment” for the nation.

“In fact, more women as a whole now graduate from college than men,” Obama wrote. “This is a great accomplishment — not just for one sport or one college or even just for women but for America. And this is what Title IX is all about.”

According to the Census Bureau, 685,000 men and 916,000 women graduated from college in 2009 (the latest year for which statistics have been published). That means 25 percent fewer men received college degrees than women...

Don't worry, guys.  The government will provide plenty of "green jobs" for you - building windmill rotors, polishing solar panels, harvesting pond scum....that is, until the taxpayer's money runs out. By about 2016, latest.


Another "great accomplishment" by Barack Obama.  Not sure how many more of these we can take...

Jon McNaughton's Artwork: Unpatriotic Dissent?

"Since when has it been part of American patriotism to keep our mouths shut?" - Hillary Clinton 2006
"Dissent is the highest form of Patriotism" - Hillary Clinton 2006
 "Blind faith in bad leadership is not patriotism" - Hillary Clinton 2006

"Except when the leadership is a Democrat - then dissent is racist, if not outright treasonous" - the mainstream media/the Democratic party


Thanks for the clarification.  At least we know where to classify Jon McNaughton. Buzzfeed:

Popular conservative artist Jon McNaughton has released a new painting, the latest in his controversial series of anti-Obama artwork.

The Empowered Man—which shows President Obama watching in horror as a thirty something white male, standing in front of the White House holds up the U.S. constitution in one hand and a wad of cash in the other—was released this week.

Both paintings feature the same “everyman” character, who in McNaughton’s telling, has chosen to break off the chains of an oppressive federal government.

The Provo, Utah based painter has struck artistic gold with his series, tapping into a widespread libertarian distrust of Washington, as well as a deep-seated hatred of President Obama, which critics says is animated by racial bias.


No evidence for that statement, though.  Apparently none is necessary.  All right-thinking people know it to be true...

Bias highlights are mine.  Scare quotes around the word "everyman" are courtesy of Buzzfeed.  Hypocrisy courtesy of the Hillary Clinton, the media, and liberals nationwide....

Want to piss them all off?  Purchase some of McNaughton's artwork here.

Obama's Gay Pals Disrespect White House, Reagan...

It's been called "the people's House", but I know for certain that some of Barack and Michelle's "people" would not be allowed to behave as they did in my house without having the door hit their ass as they were unceremoniously tossed into the gutter.

But given the behavior of  Bill Ayers and Reverend Wright, the actions of this bunch of B&M's pals is par for the course...via The Weekly Standard:


Last Friday, an attaché of important gay people from Philadelphia made a trip to Washington D.C. as invited guests of President Barack Obama for the White House’s first-ever gay pride reception...some of them took advantage of photo opportunities to give the late President Ronald Reagan the middle finger.

“It’s not a gesture that I would use in the White House when representing our city and our community,” opines Philadelphia Gay News publisher Mark Segal (center), who opted for a sarcastic thumbs-up pose in front of the portrait of George W. Bush over the more vulgar one demonstrated by his Reagan-loathing peers, Matthew “Matty” Hart (left), the national director of public engagement at Solutions for Progress, and self-taught photographer turned toast-of-the-town Zoe Strauss (right).

But his counterparts couldn’t seem to care less. Hart posted his photo on Facebook with the caption, “Fuck Reagan.” Strauss simply posted hers without commentary. After all, the murderous facial expression and double-barreled bird-flipping seem to speak for themselves.


You know, guys -  these antics may get you props from your "poofter posse", but they won't endear you to your fellow Americans any, whose support you will need if you wish to continue mainstreaming homosexuality.  Maybe a little class would have been more useful to the cause than a public, puerile outpouring of hate?

But I'll bet Barack is OK with these photos and the sentiment behind them as well.  He'll be flipping off Ronald, pissing on W, and crapping of Washington if we give him the "flexibility" he desires in a second term...

Gallup, Rasmussen Agree: Obama At 43%

T.S. Eliot was wrong - June is the cruelest month, not April, and especially if you are Barack Obama.

Gallup's daily tracking poll has Barack Obama at a 43% approval rating.  Rasmussen lays it out even clearer:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows Mitt Romney attracting 48% of the vote, while President Obama earns 43%


And how lost at sea is Politico?

Obama looks to capitalize on shift in presidential race’s momentum

President Obama will look to cap a week in which momentum in the presidential race appeared to shift in his favor with a Friday address to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) in Florida.

Even MSNBC is using the "angry Obama" picture now...

Obama will speak to the group one week after his surprising decision to halt deportations of illegal immigrants brought to the nation as children, a move that caught opponent Mitt Romney flat-footed, forcing him to play defense all week on the issue.


Looks like either Romney plays pretty good "D", or the American people threw a flag on Obama's Hispanic play..."illegal proceduire", perhaps?

Fast & Furious: Media Laughs In Jay Carney's Face...

There are some lies so outrageous that even the mainstream media -  straining itself to fall in line behind the Obama administration -  cannot swallow them.

Case in point:  Yesterday's press conference with Press Secretary Jay Carney - when he tells the assembled reporters that Obama's claim of executive privilege on the Fast & Furious documents is "entirely about principle", they burst out in unrestrained, unrehearsed laughter.  At the very beginning:





When even your most loyal, sycophantic adherents are walking out, shaking their heads, you know the bottom   is about to fall out...

The Debt Crisis: Europe Faced With An Inconvenient Truth...

Via Matt Labash, some delicious irony:

Whatever the various micro-causes of the European debt crisis – real estate bubbles bursting, the unsustainability of members of the Eurozone playing by different rules, obscenely expensive public sector commitments, banking bailouts, general profligacy – the horror is amplified due to one incontrovertible fact: this is the first major crisis since World War II that Europe has been forced to face with the sobering knowledge that the U.S. can’t do anything to save it. At this point, we’re lucky if we can save ourselves.



They always wanted us to get on board with Socialist platform; and we finally did.  They clamored "USA out of Everywhere!", and we finally are.

So how's that working out for you, Europe?

Don't worry, you guys still have one strong actor left on the Continent - the Germans!  Nothing can possibly go wrong there, right?

We may be going under (the election of 2012 will determine that for sure), but if so, the collapse of Europe will occur before America's fall.  That won't make our landing any softer, just smugger...

Taxation: The Socialist Paradox

The French assume a familiar position: Head buried in the sand.  Hot Air:

Over the weekend, the citizens of France elected a new socialist majority into the lower house of parliament, completing the trifecta of socialist governance along with their already-socialist Senate and their newly-elected socialist president. Part of President Hollande’s campaign platform was a promise of higher taxes on the wealthy and on big businesses in order to help pay down the country’s debt (but of course, more government spending and more entitlements are also on the docket).


How's that working out for your neighbors? Oh, what's that? No need to look, it'll all work out just fine?

Anyway - it's the last sentence of the piece that intrigued me:

General political wisdom prescribes that if you want to discourage a certain behavior, you can tax it. Why anyone thinks its a good idea to tax success at a higher rate than everyone else, I’ll never understand.


Hence the existence of taxes on cigarettes, and liqueur.  And soda and "junk food", in the not-to-distant future.

So if they really aren't "anti-business", and actually want to see the private sector grow, why are liberals constantly claiming that successful companies and their owners must be taxed at a considerably higher rate?  And since higher rates of taxation have proven to be poisonous to business and  investment - the same way other punitive taxes have hurt "sin" industries - how can you continue to insist on them, when the inevitable result will be higher prices, job loss, and fleeing capital?

A paradox?  Only until liberals take on a more honest name for themselves:

May I suggest..."Postmodern Locusts"?

 A plague of locusts is a devastating natural disaster. These infestations have been feared and revered throughout history. Unfortunately, they still wreak havoc today. Locust swarms devastate crops and cause major agricultural damage and attendant human misery—famine and starvation. They occur in many parts of the world...locust plagues may threaten the economic livelihood of one-tenth of the world's humans....

Welcome to Detroit...

I Believe Mitt Romney Has Found His Inner Chris Christie...

..as the video below demonstrates.  Heckle at your own risk, you're only playing right into the future president's hands:




I'm starting to like the cut of this Romney fellow's jib...

Ironically, the Democrats are paying these "protesters" to embarrass themselves, as true believers apparently are getting harder and harder to find.   So are good hecklers, apparently, if this ragtag bunch is the best the Democrats can come up with...

Obama's Amnesty Nets Him Nothing In The Polls

..because Americans of any stripe don't like to see their Constitution trod upon. And the Hispanic community is not a single-issue voting bloc.  IBD reports with a sneer:

Obama's dramatic illegal immigration non-amnesty amnesty did nothing politically for the Chicagoan in the polls. Zip. Nada. Rien.

On the day before his immigration remarks, Gallup's seven-day rolling average of about 3,000 registered voters in a hypothetical Obama-Romney match-up had the Republican ahead 46-45.

Four days later the rolling average was exactly the same, 46 Romney 45 Obama.


Rasmussen backs the data up this morning:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows Mitt Romney attracting 47% of the vote, while President Obama earns 45%.


Exactly as it was prior to his "press conference interruptus". A real man of genius, that Barack Hussein Obama...

Getting back to the Hispanics, this blogger works with quite a few of them in New York. And the majority of them do not want to see unquestioned amnesty.  Especially the women.

Turns out that many illegal aliens will hide out in Hispanic neighborhoods in order to blend in. Who'd a thunk it?   Some of them are good people, no doubt.  And others may not be.  But, as they are undocumented, who can say?

And some of these girls I work with, they express concern, you know?  That maybe the apartment down the hall, which is meant for four people but is housing at least ten, might hold some men who are not nice people.  Who are a bit creepy, even.  Who they won't even get into the elevator with, should they cross paths.

It's not comfortable to be afraid of your neighbors.  It's even worse to know that the government will do absolutely nothing to remove them, or protect you, and is intentionally turning a blind eye to your predicament.

But hey - they are not Barack Obama's neighbors.  Or Janet Napolitano's.  But they may be future Democratic voters.  So what's the problem?

Alice Walker: Jew-Hatin' Anti-Semite !

Maybe it is just a membership requirement for Pulitzer prize winners. Walker did win one for The Color Purple, a tale of racism and misogyny set in (where else but) the Deep South.

Or maybe some victims of racism can't overcome the shame they feel inside, and alleviate it by acting hatefully towards another racial group, but only in a way that is somehow still socially acceptable. Or to a people that is it still socially acceptable to hate.

Like Jews.

Jonathan Tobin with a nauseating tale:

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that in a letter posted on a site supporting the boycott of Israel, Walker said she was refusing to allow the translation in order to boost support for the movement to boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) the Jewish state because of its alleged mistreatment of Palestinians. But in saying she doesn’t even wish her work to appear in Hebrew, Walker is making a broader statement than a mere critique of Israeli policies. This sort of a boycott is an attempt to treat Jews and Hebrew, which is the national language of the Jewish people, as beyond the pale.

Walker is seated, in the center.  In Gaza with Code Pink wackos...

... In Walker’s world, Israelis are not just the bad guys in a fictional morality play in which the Palestinians are victims, but the very language they speak — the language of the Bible and the foundation of Western religion, values and morality — is to be treated as unworthy of being spoken or read.

...to discriminate against the language of the Jewish people in this manner is pure anti-Semitism.

It is possible to criticize Israel without being an anti-Semite. But Walker has crossed the line from an already indefensible economic war against the Jewish state to a cultural war against Jewish identity.


But her vicious Jew hatred is nothing new. Here she alludes positively, as I see it, to the extermination of Israel:

"There are differing opinions about this, of course, but my belief is that when a country primarily instills fear in the minds and hearts of the people of the world, it is no longer useful in joining the dialogue we need for saving the planet."

An even worse assertion:

"This is one reason I understand the courage it takes for some Jews to speak out against Israeli brutality and against what they know are crimes against humanity. Most Jews who know their own history see how relentlessly the Israeli government is attempting to turn Palestinians into the “new Jews,” patterned on Jews of the holocaust era, as if someone must hold that place, in order for Jews to avoid it."


Is she implying that Jews are breeding Palestinians in order to have them be slaughtered in their stead, when the next Holocaust comes calling? Can she really be that deluded, or that sick?

Or is she just repeating the bile and hatred of the Palestinian people (perhaps the only things produced in Gaza) verbatim?

Hamas lawmaker Huda Naim (above, with Walker) stated Saturday that the Israeli occupation government is still persistent in stealing the Palestinian people’s history, Judaizing their holy sites and displacing them in an attempt to create a fake history for itself on the land of Palestine...


If you are as wise as you believe, Ms. Walker, you will back off this ugly path you have chosen to tread.  For it will tarnish all you have done, and all you will ever do...

We Are All Potentially Roger Clemens...

Look, I hate the guy's guts; never forgave him for throwing a bat at Mike Piazza in the 2000 World Series (or the gutless umpire who allowed Clemens to stay in the game after assault with a deadly weapon).  But the government stepped over the line in prosecuting Clemens, and got its hand slapped.

The problem is that this kind of stuff happens to ordinary citizens all the time.  The feds need to show a "return on their investment", so to speak - when time/money is spent working on a case, they need to show results - either cash (via fines or seized property) or jail time.  And while Clemens was charged with perjury, very often the feds will use "providing false information to a federal officer" as their hook.  And they have wide latitude here.  Should the FBI show up at your front door with questions, and you say, "Oh, I deposited that check on Tuesday", and it was actually Wednesday...Bam!  You are facing time.  Seriously.

Contentions calls it the arbitrary use of government power in this piece about the Clemens non-conviction.  Except it is not that all that arbitrary:

The ability of the federal government to put an individual in peril of the law is virtually unlimited. Congress can force a celebrity to testify on matters that are of no material interest to the nation’s legislature. If the individual refuses to play along with the morality play narrative desired by the politicians who seize the spotlight, they can be charged with obstruction of justice or perjury and then paraded before a federal court and jailed. But sometimes the egregious nature of this charade is so great that the process is exposed as a sham. That is what happened on Monday when the Justice Department’s second attempt to imprison former baseball great Roger Clemens collapsed as he was acquitted on all six counts relating to his testimony before Congress on steroid use.

...the Clemens case illustrated as well as any of the recent celebrity prosecutions the perils of the arbitrary use of federal power against an individual citizen. Though it is difficult for most of us to identify with a snarling millionaire whose arrogance made him tough to root for even as he won 354 games and struck out 4,672 batters during his career, Clemens was the victim here, not the villain. The point is not whether he took certain drugs but that if the government can single out a Roger Clemens and devote its efforts to finding a pretext to putting him in jail simply because he is famous and unpopular, then it can do the same to anyone, including those without the ability to hire high-priced legal help. Clemens’ acquittal is a blow not so much to the drug rules as it is the misuse of government power. Let’s hope the government learns its lesson from this circus and never again repeats this egregious misuse of prosecutorial power.


Unlikely.  When the beast is not fed, it only grows more ravenous, when his hand is slapped, he only grows more enraged...

Right Wing Conspiracy Theorist? Or Former Democratic VP Nominee?

On the day of the indictment, the two shared a surreal phone call as a newspaper reporter banged on her door in Charlotte, while the man she refers to as "Johnny" throughout the book called her cell phone to say that he was also being pursued. 

 "'I've got helicopters circling my house,' Johnny said."


-From Rielle Hunter's soon-to-be-released memoir, "What Really Happened: John Edwards, Our Daughter and Me"

"Johnny".  Heh.

Also worth noting:

New York publishers had said they were not interested in Hunter's book, citing her negative image, so it is instead being released through a Dallas-based boutique publisher, BenBella Books, on June 26.


Of course they weren't interested.  Keep rockin', and all that...

The New York Times' Latest Sin Of Omission

I suppose you get used to it, when the subject is politics or anything relating to it.  Refuse to investigate Barack Obama's shady past, give no coverage to scandals like Climategate, ignore the controversy over Obama appointees like Van Jones, report on only the administration's side of cover-ups like "Fast & Furious"...when it involves Times' ability to turn their backs on inconvenient news,the list is virtually endless.

But on a "human-interest" level, especially involving stories in which individuals have made the greatest personal sacrifice one can make - their lives in the line of duty -  one would naturally assume the Times would report on it, even if in a perfunctory fashion.  And certainly when the story involves New York, the city name still attached to the paper's masthead.  But even when the story involves slain heroes (citizens of the city the Times calls home), weeping families, and solemn invocation, the so-called "paper of record" can still turn their back, as they finally prove their ultimate goal is to maintain the narrative, over all else.

This omission is truly a sin:

Here’s the way to grasp The New York Times’ coverage of the New York Police Department. The paper sees the NYPD as another version of the Catholic Church.

As with the church, which the paper reduces to pedophile priests and stonewalling bishops, the Times finds nothing good to say about the NYPD. Historic low crime rates and incredible feats of bravery are vastly overshadowed by phony controversies and excessive attention to bad apples.

The distorted picture came clear when the former newspaper of record was the only major paper in New York to skip the annual Medal Day Ceremony. It was an especially poignant event, with a posthumous Medal of Honor awarded to two officers killed in the line of duty last year.

Detective Peter Figoski, gunned down when he responded to a Brooklyn robbery, was lauded by Commissioner Ray Kelly as “a role model for other officers...”

Detective Figoski’s four daughters, Christine, Caitlyn, Caroline and Corinne, whose loss led to an outpouring of generosity, were there, too.

Brooklyn Officer Alain Schaberger also was awarded the Medal of Honor, which was presented to his mother, May. Responding to a domestic-violence call, he was pushed over a railing and died...

Yet not a word, not a photo, made it into the Times. Instead, the next day’s edition ran a long column attacking Kelly and the mayor on stop-and-frisk and an article on a proposal for another investigator to focus on the police....


So the next time this piece of fish-wrapping masquerading as a newspaper omits a story that might paint Democrats or liberalism in a less-than-positive light, or slurs your favorite politician or cause, do not take excessive umbrage.  Just remember how low they are willing to go in order to keep a falsified story line intact...

Obama Suspends The Constitution. Reporters Have No Questions.

John Yoo, on Obama's decision to suspend enforcement of America's immigration law:

When presidents such as Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR said that they would not enforce a law, they did so when the law violated their executive powers under the Constitution or the individual rights of citizens.

The president’s right to refuse to enforce unconstitutional legislation, of course, does not apply here.

So what we have here is a president who is refusing to carry out federal law simply because he disagrees with Congress’s policy choices. That is an exercise of executive power that even the most stalwart defenders of an energetic executive — not to mention the Framers — cannot support.


Victor Davis Hanson on the revolutionary (not in a good way) nature of Obama's announcement yesterday:

If one individual can decide to exempt nearly a million residents from the law — when he most certainly could not get the law amended or repealed through proper legislative or judicial action — then what can he not do?

When you collate this recent act with the class-warfare rhetoric, the “punish our enemies” threats, the president’s and Eric Holder’s serial racialist statements, the huge borrowing, the national-security leaks, the takeover of health care, the push for redistributive taxes, and even the trivial appointments like a Van Jones, Anita Dunn, or Armendariz, you can fairly conclude that Obama most certainly did not like the way the United States operated for the last 30 or so years, and has tried his best, through hook or crook, to change America in ways that simply were not possible through legislative or even judicial action. Give the president credit. He has thrown down the gauntlet and essentially boasted: This is my vision of the way the new America should work — and if you don’t like it, try stopping me in November, if you dare.


Great choice of words.  And when Obama, with a triumphant sneer, ripped up the Constitution before a select group of witnesses - picked for their alleged impartiality but all known to be devotees of the president's agenda - they all abandoned the pledge of their profession. None of them said a word.

Except for Daily Caller reporter Neil Munro, who shouted a question - perhaps not even the appropriate one - at the president, who didn't take kindly to anyone actually picking up said gauntlet:

Munro yelled, "Why'd you favor foreigners over Americans?”
“Excuse me, sir. It’s not time for questions," Obama said.
"No, you have to take questions,” Munro said.
“Not while I’m speaking.” Obama said.

A few seconds later:

 “And the answer to your question, sir — and the next time I’d prefer you let me finish my statements before you ask that question — is this is the right thing to do for the American people,” Obama said, before Munro shouted out again. The president added: “I didn’t ask for an argument. I’m answering your question.”


One can't argue an indefensible position.  The president knew that, and so did the assembled media, who obligingly sat dumb.

One man did not, and he is now being cast as the villain, for daring to point out the emperor had no clothes.

When the history of this dark moment is written, Munro will be recast as the hero.  The only man willing to stand up and shout as he saw the law of the land being erased from existence.

We can use more men like Neil Munro.  But alas for us, there are precious few on the horizon...

Obama's DREAM Decree Gets An Assist From The Media...

I wrote this immediately after the first Republican presidential primary debate, held in the very beginning of January:

Plenty of well-deserved outrage over the past few days over the debate performances of George Stephanopoulos and Diane Sawyer. Gay rights, abortion, contraception - why in the world would two alleged "reporters" waste the nation's time with such crap?

Oddly enough, within a few weeks, contraception became a big issue in the campaign, as the Democrats rolled out Sandra Fluke and declared her need to get laid daily was more important that the First Amendment right of Catholics to follow the dictate of their faith.  And about six-odd weeks later, gay "rights" became the story of the day, as the president decided he had "evolved" on the issue - fortunately, right before a set of fundraisers being hosted by homosexuals.


Coincidence?  Or a pattern? A year earlier, we noted:

From a White House pool report, on the day of his State of the Union President Obama was seen heading for a lunch with TV anchors and pundits, including Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer, Diane Sawyer, Brian Williams, and George Stephanopoulos.

Still not sure if there is any co-ordination between the media and the president, and he doesn't send them out to either float trial balloons or soften up the American people before he drops another unconstitutional bomb on them?

Check out this week's issue of Time Magazine, out for about 48 hours:

Funny timing, that.  If you were unconvinced, or uniformed, you might have picked this up yesterday, and be cheering the president as we speak.  Or, if you are staggering around blindly today, and saw this at a newsstand, you might think that Barack got one right after all.

No doubt about 8 - maybe 12 - Americans actually fell into this trap.  But as time went on, well...it sure seems like there is more support swelling behind the Catholic Church than Sandra Fluke, doesn't it?  And Obama's "evolution" seems to have cost him the entire state of North Carolina, and more than a few wavering independents nationwide.

I predict this pathetic propaganda ploy won't help matters for the president.  Much like his gay marriage move seems to have turned off two people for every one it attracted, his decision to usurp the Constitution and essentially grant amnesty to approximately 800,000 illegal aliens will hurt him more than it helps him.  George Stephanopoulos and Time Magazine notwithstanding.

Expect Obama's DREAM of re-election to be denied...

25% Of May's New Jobs Created In New Jersey; Media Seethes...

Wanna know why Chris Christie's approval ratings are in the stratosphere? Check it:

New Jersey added 17,600 jobs in May, a bump in employment championed by Republican Gov. Chris Christie Thursday as he seeks to show the state’s economy is on the rebound.

The job growth accounted for 25% of all the jobs created in the nation last month, Christie said during a press conference announcing the job figures derived from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The governor took a shot at the state's Democrats, who continue to work tirelessly to thwart his effort to reform the state's finances:

“Folks down the hall are dithering right now. It’s simply wrong,” said Christie, referring to Democrats meeting in the Statehouse Thursday. “They don’t want to cut taxes because they only know how to raise taxes.”


True, that.  But think of how much Chris Christie is actually helping Barack Obama -without his tax-cutting, pro-business model of governance,  the May jobs number would have gone from bad to horrific.  Come to think of it, Obama owes a debt of gratitude to Rick Perry as well.  And the frackers of Pennsylvania, for that matter.  And Montana's oil wildcatters...

Actually, without the help of all the people whom Obama professes to hate (on a daily basis, it seems), we'd be mired deeply in Recession II already, and Obama's dismissal in November would be a foregone conclusion.

If he were a smarter man, he would have learned something by now.

But fear not, distressed liberals!  New Jersey's left-wing media is still there for you.  The Newark Star- Ledger gives Christie's success a small paragraph or two - in between a barrage of bile:

Discounting the barrage of negative news about New Jersey’s fiscal picture — including an increase in the unemployment rate — Gov. Chris Christie today touted numbers that show the state created 17,600 new jobs in May.

During the 12-minute announcement, he did not address a deal Democrats are expected to hammer out today that could make a tax cut contingent on revenue growth or another economic trigger. [False - see above]

He framed the state's 0.1 percent uptick in unemployment to 9.2 percent as a good thing...

He made no mention of a report released this week by the National Association of State Budget Officers that shows in the current year New Jersey is one of 13 states with lower-than-expected revenue collections. In addition the report shows Christie is projecting higher spending increases than any other governor in the country for next fiscal year. [since when is this a problem for the Star-Ledger?]

Also absent from the announcement was the gulf between the Republican governor’s projections and those of the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services. The Christie administration expects a $705 million revenue shortfall, while the OLS expects collections to come up $1.4 billion short. [The Ledger ignores, from their own reporting, “Why would anybody with a functioning brain believe this guy,” Christie said of David Rosen, the budget officer for the Office of Legislative Services. “How often do you have to be wrong to finally be dismissed?”]  

Instead, the Republican governor painted Democrats in the Legislature and former Gov. Jon Corzine with the same brush. 

Yet Christie called Democrats “pessimistic"...


Note the shock in that last sentence. How dare he see the glass as half-full!  How dare he think that adding 25% of the nation's new job is somehow a positive thing, unless it is coupled with tax hikes?  We'll get him for that by reporting every negative rumor the Democrats have issued about New Jersey's finances as truth!

You want truth? 17,600 new jobs, 25% of the nation's total in May.  That's the truth.  All the Star-Ledger has are speculations from those who have a professional and ideological ax to grind with the governor's success.

You bitches ought to know when to shut the f*ck up.  Christie is saving Obama's sorry ass, whether he wants to or not.  Keep complaining, and you'll queer the deal...

Obama's Psychodrama

Remember when George W. Bush was president, and armchair liberal psychologists spilled tons of digital ink claiming his current actions were really about his father, his college days, his National Guard service, or his own insecurities?

But now that we have a president who is actually acting in a somewhat bizarre and disconnected manner, all the amateur shrinks seem to have disappeared. Too bad, because Barack Obama certainly could use one right about now.

Peter Wehner gives it a good try, though:

Obama, having presided over what at this stage must qualify as among the most inept presidencies in American history, is complaining because he’s being held accountable.

What is fairly astonishing in all this is the utter lack of self-awareness by the president. A jolting collision is occurring between his own self-conception (Obama views himself as a world-historical figure and Great Man) and the multiple and multiplying failures of his presidency. Obama appears incapable of processing the truth or coming to grips with reality. And so he’s spinning tales day after day, including his fantastic (and thoroughly discredited) claim that “Since I’ve been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years.”

Obama has now entered a world all his own. It’s a world where up is down, hot is cold, north is south, and Barack Obama is fiscally responsible and blameless.

In its own way, it’s a fascinating psychodrama that’s unfolding. Given that there are still 146 days until the election, it’s hard to imagine where the president will eventually end up.


Personally, I find it more terrifying than fascinating.  Like being in the back seat of a car traveling down a steep, twisting road, only to realize it is being driven by a delusional drunken driver...

Recovery? Not. Try Recession II...

All the Hollywood money in the world is unlike to save Obama now.  Or us, as things appear to be going from bad to worse...

The number of Americans filing requests for jobless benefits rose by 6,000 last week to 386,000, the Labor Department said Thursday.

Claims from two weeks ago were revised up to 380,000 from 377,000....The average of new claims over the past four weeks, meanwhile, increased by 3,500 to 382,000, the highest level in six weeks...


JP Morgan's analysis :

After today’s retail sales report our best estimate is that second quarter real GDP is currently tracking a 2.0% annual growth rate, lower than our prior projection of 2.5%. Moreover, we see some downside risk to our new forecast...first quarter GDP, which currently prints at 1.9%, looks to be tracking closer to 1.7%. Given the weaker momentum in first half growth, achieving our second half outlook for 2% growth will require more things to go right than wrong, which hasn’t been the case recently.


Same link:

The current White House forecast of 3% GDP growth this year looks hopelessly out of reach. And growth this anemic is probably not fast enough to generate enough sustained job growth to bring down the unemployment rate.

This is all terrible news for U.S. workers suffering from both high unemployment and flat-to-falling incomes.

It’s also not so hot for the Obama reelection campaign. The unemployment rate might well be higher on Election Day than it was at the start of the year. And when I plug the current numbers into the highly regarded Fair-Yale election forecast model, I get a 52-48 Mitt Romney victory.


But don't worry!  Obama's going to give an "economic" speech today, in which he will blame Bush for our woes, ask Congress to pass a second stimulus, and plead for another four-year term to get it right.

Really.

Expect a further southward dip once Obama utters his banalities and inanities. The passengers on ship adrift upon stormy seas are not reassured when they realize there is no one at the helm...

Polls: Wisconsin, Michigan, Jews Turning Against Obama

A "preference cascade" in the making? Sure looks that way.  Sayeth Rasmussen:

The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely Voters shows Romney with 47% of the vote to Obama’s 44%. Five percent (5%) prefer some other candidate, and four percent (4%) are undecided.


Seems like the Rust Belt can't be bought with a bailout:

An EPIC/MRA poll of Michigan registered voters released last week shows Romney leading Obama, 46 to 45 percent, with only 41 percent viewing the president favorably.


And the Jews finally appear to be living up to their reputation as "smart":

President Obama's support among Jewish voters in the state of New York has dropped 22 percentage points in only a month, according to the results of a just released poll.

The poll, conducted by Siena College, finds that currently President Obama has the support of 51 percent of Jewish voters, while 43 percent are opposed to him. Five percent are undecided.

Those polled were responding to this straight forward question: "If the election for President were held today, who would you vote for if the candidates were [Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, or Don't know]?

Additionally, Jewish voters in New York overwhelmingly believe that America is "headed in the wrong direction" as opposed to "the right track," by a margin of 62 percent to 31 percent.


And that's in New York, the homeland of the liberal Jew.  You can even throw in the possibility that things might be worse than the polling suggests - I am not sure if the Orthodox Jews pick up the phone much, but they do vote en masse, and lately they have been tossing out Democrats in districts the donkey have literally owned for generations.

Obama's estimated percentage of the Jewish vote in 2008 was 78%.  Knock off 20%+ of that figure, and wither Obama in Florida?  Or even in Pennsylvania?  Add Ohio to that list as well:

Ohio has far fewer Jews than Florida, but they could play a pivotal role in the outcome of the election there as well. Exit polling showed Romney soundly carrying the counties with large Jewish populations. Nathan Diament, head of the powerful Orthodox Union government affairs office in Washington, D.C., notes that “given the Jews turn out at an 80 percent turnout rate, if you swing the Jewish vote 10 percent in Ohio, that could give you Ohio.” Furthermore, this year the Republican senatorial nominee is Ohio state Treasurer Josh Mandel, a Jewish conservative who has kindled great enthusiasm among his co-religionists. Mandel’s Jewish coattails might carry swing thousands of additional Jewish votes to the Republican presidential ticket.


Maybe Obama will hold his nose and finally take that trip to Israel after all. Although it might not make any difference in the end, as every day brings us a new poll telling a similar story to the ones above.

Obama may be dancing as fast as he can, but he's failed to notice that the music's stopped, the lights have gone down, and the audience has dwindled to a disinterested few...