CNN Goes Full-Propaganda On Obama's "Budget"...

...hey, even the AP had the common courtesy to call it what it was: A political document.  But maybe in fact CNN did in fact see it the same way.  But instead of pointing out the inherit flaws in the document, they jumped to the defense of their ideological doppelganger by lying about the budget's bottom line.  Via the Daily Caller:

On CNN’s Monday broadcast of President Barack Obama’s speech about his budget proposal in Annadale, Va., the network’s chyron said that the president would cut $4 trillion in spending and raise $1.5 trillion in taxes over 10 years, suggesting $5.5 trillion in deficit reduction.

However, the White House doesn’t even make that claim. Obama says his proposal makes reductions of $4 trillion — $1 trillion agreed upon last year and $3 trillion in this budget. But since only $3 trillion are in this budget (including the $1.5 trillion in tax hikes), the CNN interpretation falls short by $2.5 trillion ($5.5 trillion – $3 trillion = $2.5 trillion off).

And that’s based on the Obama administration’s numbers.

However, if you base it on analysis from the Senate Budget Committee Republicans, there’s only $273 billion in deficit reduction, not $3 trillion or $4 trillion, making the CNN report incorrect by $5.2 trillion...

Well, hopefully the people stuck in airports waiting for connecting flights - CNN's primary viewing audience these days - weren't too confused. CNN was simply doing their master's bidding. Hey, lying on behalf of the president and the Democratic party has worked wonders for NBC...

Obama's Budget: The AP Seems Rather Unimpressed....

...wonder how this got through the standards filters at the AP.  Someone must be asleep at the switch.  Would be surprised if the verbiage holds through the night.  Still, for a moment, accuracy and sanity peers out from beneath the madness:

Obama's budget: Government still getting bigger

Taking a pass on reining in government growth, President Barack Obama unveiled a record $3.8 trillion election-year budget plan Monday, calling for stimulus-style spending on roads and schools and tax hikes on the wealthy to help pay the costs. The ideas landed with a thud on Capitol Hill.

Though the Pentagon and a number of Cabinet agencies would get squeezed, Obama would leave the spiraling growth of health care programs for the elderly and the poor largely unchecked. The plan claims $4 trillion in deficit savings over the coming decade, but most of it would be through tax increases Republicans oppose, lower war costs already in motion and budget cuts enacted last year in a debt pact with GOP lawmakers...

Obama's budget blueprint reprises a long roster of prior proposals: raising taxes on couples making more than $250,000 a year; eliminating numerous tax breaks for oil and gas companies, and approving a series of smaller tax and fee proposals. Similar proposals failed even when the Democrats controlled Congress.

So it's a...politcal manifesto?  The AP almost comes out and says it. 

Wow.

You Know What's Better Than A "Jobs-Training" Program"?

Actual jobs.

The government can't create those, however - as Barack Obama has finally learned, almost a trillion dollars too late - so they do what they feel, sadly, is the next best thing:

President Obama will announce Monday an $8 billion commitment to forge partnerships with community colleges and businesses to train two million high-skilled workers, the White House said.

The President will discuss the program at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Va. The plan will provide funding to community colleges and states to partner with businesses to train workers in areas such as health care, transportation and advanced manufacturing.

Driving around New York City, you'll see an occasional "job training" facility. They are usually newer buildings, named after that particular district's congressperson. And they are uniformly empty. Much like the storefronts of the buildings around them, or the eyes of the occasional passer-by.

But hey: If they won't cut taxes and/or give us a "refund" of what is already ours, they have to show they are doing something with the money, right?

I feel like we're living in Blazing Saddles, with Barack Obama as Governor William J. Le Petomane, and Valerie Jarrett as Hedley Lamarr:

Governor William J. Le Petomane: We have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here, gentlemen! We must do something about this immediately! Immediately! Immediately! Harrumph! Harrumph! Harrumph!
Governor William J. Le Petomane: [pointing to a member of his cabinet] I didn't get a "harrumph" out of that guy!
Hedley Lamarr: Give the Governor a harrumph!
Politician: Harrumph!
Governor William J. Le Petomane: You watch your ass...

Are We "Extremely" Brainwashed?

I found this, ah, extremely disconcerting:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 35% of Likely Voters say it would be more accurate to describe the agenda of Republicans in Congress as mainstream, while 52% feel extreme is a more accurate description.

Have the American people been so conditioned by the media and the Democrats to associate any type of "Republicanism" as extremism that all thought in this matter is no longer necessary, that any notion put forth by the Republicans is de facto "extremist", and thus they require no thought or examination whatsoever, only condemnation?

If that is the case - if a simple attempt to balance the budget in 20 years is now an extremist agenda - then the Right is marooned in an ideological Dunkirk, surrounded by our advancing foes on one side and the deep blue sea on the other.

We can go backwards, and drown. We can surrender, and work with our adversaries to see to it that our nation is destroyed. Or we can fight like we have never fought before, voraciously, challenging every argument against us as if it may be our last, with new tactics and weapons, knowing that should we lose, there will be no safe haven for us to fall back to.  We can work to gain converts to our cause along the way, convincing them through word and deed that our course is true and just, and that the "extremism" lies on the other side.

If we fail now, America as we know it is gone forever.

I hope General Romney has the stomach for the fight...


UPDATE: In the same vein, see this piece from RS McCain...

Because A "Command Economy" Worked So Well For The Soviets...

...that their empire collapsed, and its people have never recovered, subsisting on vodka and third world services while crony capitalists make billions by paying off the right people in a not-quite-democratic government.

This is the model, incidentally, that Barack Obama and the Democratic party are so eager to follow.  And trust me, they know where it will lead.  That's the point, of course.

The Wall Street Journal gently reminds us of a little flaw in Obama's compromise on the HHS mandate forcing religious organizations to pay for "birth control"- you know, the compromise that says employees of these organizations can/must receive free "contraception" coverage from their insurer if their employer refuses to cover it:

There is simply no precedent for the government ordering private companies to offer a product for free, even if they do recoup the costs indirectly.

Ah - so now we see what "transformative change" really is - working for free to fulfill the agenda of the Obama Administration. Incidentally, when other nations engage in this practice, it's called "forced labor"...

The Weekly Standard:

...what would give the federal government the authority to order private companies to offer a products for free? Could such a mandate really be justified under Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce? Is there really no difference between regulating commerce and mandating that it be free?

Moreover, of all the products or services that companies could feasibly be required to provide for free under such an extraordinary conception of federal power, why birth control and abortifacients? Why not bread, or books, or actual medical care for actual diseases?

Good question. The mind reels at the potential answers, none of which are comforting...


Tangent/rant:
But given the way a command economy works, I can see Obama passing a decree that the medical community must cure cancer by November 2012, and then claiming credit on the campaign trail for eradicating the disease. Sounds crazy, but as a precedent, the Administration is bragging about "raising fuel economy standards" when all they did was "order" that it be made so. In response, car manufacturers are making vehicles lighter, stripped down, and more expensive. Which will cause more death, disability and (economic) destruction as cars become less affordable. Which will lead to another Obama directive demanding that Americans buy more cars, with government subsidies being offered for people below a certain income level. Which will be paid for by raising taxes on those people who make too much money to afford a subsidy but not enough to buy a new car. Which will lead to more economic disruption....

Which brings us full circle back to the Soviet model, and its outcome...

Scarlett Johansson: Deep Inside The Mind Of A Liberal

...yeah, I know, like searching for bacterium in a cave.  But her mentality, mindset, worldview, and moral judgement are so typical of the genus "Liberal" that they are worth examining,  despite their overall ickiness. Hand-washing is mandatory afterwards.

Scarlett spoke the other day on Rick Santorum's now-iconic sweater vests:

'Oh gosh, so sad,' the actress said when asked about the former US Senator for Pennsylvania's favourite fashion item. She added that 'my dad wore them.'

But wait, it gets better...is there anything more out-of-touch than the second part of this sentence?

Johansson continued: 'I mean, sweater vests are, I guess, charming for family photos and dinner with the grandparents... But I think you (can) wear a sweater vest ironically, right? Just go to the Lower East Side!'

Dude?

Because Americans off all stripes debate whether to rock an "ironic" style, no doubt. Or in other words, if you wear huge glasses, drink Pabst Blue Ribbon, and smoke "American Spirit" cigarettes in Williamsburgh, Brooklyn you are unbelievably hip; but if you do it in downtown Des Moines, you're unbearably "sad".

Hipster trap.  Not humane...

These are the people who run the country, by the way. Does the ruin around you make sense now?

Johansson made these remarks while doing a fashionista fund-raiser for Barack Obama. When the RNC pointed out the intellectual disconnect of the Democrats -the party claiming to be for "the little guy" - holding a 'ritzy' and 'celebrity-filled' event while 12 milion Americans were out of work, Scarlett replied with all of the depth at her disposal:

Johansson responded to the RNC: 'Why would they say that? They are all so unfashionable. Let them say what they want!'

Style over substance. A bit too revealing, perhaps?

Paging Mr. McCain? Hello,  Rule 5! 

More from Scarlett:

President Obama and his wife, however, were in a different league, she felt. 'I think they both have a casual cool about them.

Fascists always seem to have that. Or at least it is attributed to them, so that each generation's tragically hip have an excuse for embracing the hate.

 That's why they get emblazoned on t-shirts, I suppose, and we never do...

In Which Barack Obama Betrays Israel (Again)

Oh, what a headline it was yesterday:

Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran's nuclear scientists, U.S. officials tell NBC News

Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran’s leaders.

U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Obama administration is aware of the assassination campaign but has no direct involvement.

Two senior U.S. officials confirmed for NBC News the MEK’s role in the assassinations, with one senior official saying, “All your inclinations are correct.” A third official would not confirm or deny the relationship, saying only, “It hasn’t been clearly confirmed yet.” All the officials denied any U.S. involvement in the assassinations.

So NBC's sources were multiple senior officials. No doubt then that this information was a planned release to a left-leaning media outlet with the president's blessing. NBC does their master's bidding well here, smearing the Israelis at every turn while going through a litany of the MEK's past abuses, even stooping so low as to question whether or not Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually ever called for Israel to be wiped from the Earth. (Video here,  with Mahmoud sating they will be "wiped off the map".  NBC, apparently, went with the Arabists distortions and lies instead)

Gary Fine in the Minneapolis Star Tribune points out the double-standard:

If the Obama administration can publicly pride itself for assassinating Bin Laden as a non- US state sponsored terrorist action, then how can the US administration rightfully encourage the media to infer that Israel’s unconfirmed antiterrorist actions in assisting the elimination of Iran’s nuclear scientists,(thus reducing Iran’s nuclear bomb capacity) borders on state sponsored terrorism?

With full knowledge of the repercussions, why did the Obama Administration purposely out Israel to a negative media attack?

Oh, it could be for any number of reasons.  Because the president is an academic anti-Semite, hiding his loathing of Jews behind detached sympathy for the Palestinian "cause".  Because he has been made to look the fool on numerous occasions by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.  Or perhaps because he so egotistical, so determined to see "his way" in "dealing"  with Iran succeed (negotiations, sanctions, talks, and when all else fails and Iran gets the bomb - containment mixed with appeasement),  that he is willing to risk the security of the entire Middle East, and that of our closest ally, on the alter of his self-gratification and personal fulfillment.

Whatever the reason is, it has nothing to do with America's national security, our America's best interest.  That is such a Republican way to look at the world, after all.  Just ask the Canadians...

In Which Barack Obama Betrayed The Archbishop (and still expects no comeuppance)

I mean, lying to the American people is one thing - we expect it from our politicians, even as Barack Obama has set records of quantity and quality - but to lie to the face of a popular American Archbishop, soon to be named a Cardinal?  That takes balls.  Or a total lack of any morality whatsoever. Combined, of course, with a complete lack of belief in any punishment afterwards.

Let's here Archbishop - and Cardinal-designate - Timothy Dolan's side of the story:

Speaking on ”CBS This Morning” Dolan said he met with the president weeks ago in the Oval Office to talk about the law. Dolan said the president gave his promise the provision would go away, but it hasn’t.

“It seems to be at odds with very sincere assurances that he gave me, that he wanted to continue to work with the church in these endeavors and views and projects he shared a passionate interest in, so I can’t figure it out,” Dolan said.

“When I left the Oval Office, where I was very grateful for his invitation to be there, I left with high hopes. That nothing his administration would do would impede the good work that he admitted and acknowledged in the church,” Dolan said. “And I’m afraid I don’t have those sentiments of hope now.”

Sources close to the Cardinal-designate tell CBS 2 that Dolan feels betrayed...

Don't worry, Archbishop, you'll figure it out soon enough. It takes quite a man to lie to and betray one of America's highest-ranking religious leaders... it takes a man who has absolutely zero respect for religion whatsoever, and who will manipulate it and its representatives in an attempt to force it to serve him and his own ends. Thankfully, we don't see many of these.  But, as Peter Wehner posits:

....a stronger case can be made that this act — which is so aggressive, so indefensible, and so at odds with the American creed — is a window into the mind and soul of America’s 44th president...

Evangelical pastor Rick Warren - who gave the invocation at Obama's inauguration - has had the scales removed from his eyes:

I’d go to jail rather than cave in to a govement mandate that violates what God commands us to do. Would you? Acts 5:29

The verse he references:

But Peter and the other apostles replied: "We must obey God rather than men!

Obama has put himself above the Throne of God. To whom will America kneel?  Thus will our fate be determined....

"Dogma:"

Loki: My God... I've heard a rant like this before.
Bartleby: What did you say?
Loki: You sound like the Morning star.
Bartleby: You shut your fucking mouth!
Loki: You do! You sound like Lucifer, man! You've fucking lost it! You're not talking about going home, Bartleby, you're talking about fucking war on God! Well, fuck that! I have seen what happens to the proud when they take on the Throne!

Obama About To Find Out The Answer To Stalin's Greatest Question

“How many divisions does the Pope of Rome have?”
-Josef Stalin, 1944

No longer can insurance companies discriminate against women just because you guys are the ones who have to give birth... They have to cover things like contraception as preventive care, no more out-of-pocket costs. And while it will take a couple of years for all the reforms to fully take place...
-Barack Obama, October 2011

More:

President Obama “reinforced” his stance on the controversial contraception mandate while speaking at the Democrats’ annual retreat at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. today, Senate Democrats said.

The retreat was closed to media.

“The power to decide whether or not to use contraception lies with a woman – not her boss,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. “What is more intrusive than trying to allow an employer to make medical decisions for someone who works for them?”

Oh, I don't know - forcing them to comply with government diktats that are against their strongest-held religious beliefs, on the threat of being forced into bankruptcy, personal ruin, public humiliation, and every other plague a vindictive government can assault them with?

We are about to find out the answer to Stalin's famous question, by the way. The battle is set for November 6th, 2012, and the forces of both sides will be arrayed against each other, with the battlefield tilted towards Stalin's ideology, thanks to a non-stop carpet bombing by his (media and "intellectual") allies. The Pope's forces, should they be large enough and committed enough, can overcome the built-in disadvantages of the terrain.

We'll see soon enough...

NJEA Head Sneers At Poor: "Life's Not Fair - No Vouchers For You!"

Vincent Giordano, the head of the New Jersey Education Association, let his guard down in a moment of frustration, and let the truth slip out. He's on the New Jersey Capitol Report, with the issue being school vouchers for the poor who wish to get out of failing New Jersey public school. Can't have that, as Giordano explains (video at the link):

Host: The issue of fairness, I mean this is the argument that a lot of voucher supporters make. People who are well off have options. Somebody who is not well off and whose child is in a failing school, why shouldn't those parents have the same options to get the kid out of the failing school and into one that works with the help of the state?

NJEA boss Vincent Giordano: Those parents should have exactly the same options and they do. We don't say you can't take your kid out of the public school. We would argue not and we would say 'let's work more closely and more harmoniously' …

Host: They can't afford to pay, you know that. Some of these parents can't afford to take their child out of these schools.

Giordano:  Life's not always fair and I'm sorry about that.

Funny how liberals always talk about fairness as it relates to their policies of shaking down the upper and middle classes in order to redistribute funds to their politically favored groups. But when fairness involves giving the poor an option to take their education to a non-union school, well...it seems like liberals don't really care much about the poor, do they?

Guess they agree with Mitt Romney. Although I'll doubt highly that this revelation will get 1/1000th of the coverage of Mitt's honest response...

Want to see how a conservative views the relationship between the poor and their schools, and how a liberal sees it? Compare and contrast Chris Christie with Vincent Giordano:



Via MoreMonmouth Musings...

Jonathan Tobin at Contentions weighs in to remind us who's really running this crooked game:

Obama and his teachers union allies are determined to defend the public school monopoly at all costs and oppose all efforts to allow parents to use state aid to educate as they think best. Their top down model suits the unions and their liberal political allies but not the nation’s children. Their answer to the needs of the poor who are victimized by failing public schools is always a form of the “life’s not always fair” answer given by Giordano even when it is not uttered with such shamelessness.

The question that must be put to them remains the same that advocates of choice have been asking for decades: Are not the children of the poor made in the image of God the same as that of the wealthy? And if so, how dare our nation’s leaders and educators value their liberal ideological prejudices in favor of state schools over the best interests of the children?

Sierra Club Reveals Its True Intentions, New York Times Is Shocked, Shocked...

Well, better late to the party than staying home, convincing yourself all the cool kids are doing the same, while sipping guilt-free lattes and listening to NPR.  Joe Nocera at the NYT gets some truth from the Sierra Club, and all I can say is I wish I could have seen the look on his face when he received it.  Must have been cinematic:


As it turns out, the environmental movement doesn’t just want to shut down Keystone. Its real goal, as I discovered when I spoke recently to Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, is much bigger. “The effort to stop Keystone is part of a broader effort to stop the expansion of the tar sands,” Brune said. “It is based on choking off the ability to find markets for tar sands oil.”

This is a ludicrous goal. If it were to succeed, it would be deeply damaging to the national interest of both Canada and the United States. But it has no chance of succeeding. Energy is the single most important industry in Canada. Three-quarters of the Canadian public agree with the Harper government’s diversification strategy. China’s “thirst” for oil is hardly going to be deterred by the Sierra Club. And the Harper government views the continued development of the tar sands as a national strategic priority.

Thus, at least one country in North America understands where its national interests lie. Too bad it’s not us.

Well, if Joe wanted to be completely honest, he would say that it's not the country that doesn't get it, it is their president, one Barack Hussein Obama.  But baby steps, baby steps...

Abyss

If the federal government can succeed in forcing people to violate their faith, it will have the power to force anyone to do anything.

Read that here.

Obamacare, passed in the dead of night, sloughs foward towards its destiny. And ours, as a nation.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

And takes your measure...

Barack Obama's Last Prayer (Breakfast)

It's part of Obama's War Against The Throne (of God):  Force the Church to kneel to him via government dictate (using the regulatory power of  HHS mandates, for instance, to coerce Catholics into renouncing the tenets of their faith), while simultaneously trying to seduce its more public faces.

That's what Obama was attempting to do at his appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast last week, where he he made his much-mocked claim that his faith in Jesus compelled him to tax the rich.  But less reported on (actually, barely mentioned anywhere, and you'll soon see why) was the keynote address given immediately prior to the president's speech.  It was delivered by author, scholar, and philosopher Eric Metaxas, and it was a brutal take-down of Barack Obama's twisted view on faith.  In reading through excerpts presented by Mark Foster, it almost seems as if Metaxas had already read through Obama's speech, and wrote a pre-rebuttal to the president's false claims of religious fidelity:

Standing no more than five feet from Obama whose binder had a speech chock full of quotes from the Good Book, Metaxas said of Jesus:

“When he was tempted in the desert, who was the one throwing Bible verses at him? Satan. That is a perfect picture of dead religion. Using the words of God to do the opposite of what God does. It’s grotesque when you think about it. It’s demonic.”

“Keep in mind that when someone says ‘I am a Christian’ it may mean absolutely nothing,” Metaxas added for good measure, in case anybody missed his point.

More truth to power:

Surrounded by three of the most powerful supporters of the right to choose, Obama, Vice President Biden, and former speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi — two Catholics and a Protestant — Metaxas said:

“Wilberfoce suddenly took the Bible seriously that all of us are created in the image of God, to care for the least of these.”

After carefully describing the inhumane treatment of both Jews and Africans by those claiming to be Christians, he asked then answered a question:

“You think you’re better than the Germans of that era? You’re not,” adding: “Whom do we say is not fully human today?”

Obama then went on to speak...and claimed to be a Christian, while throwing out bible verses and saying what's the big deal - Judaism/Christianity/Islam - it's all the same thing.

But back to Metaxas:

...one got the feeling that this was a modern-day, and perhaps more humorous version, of what Old Testament prophets regularly did to Kings of Israel: deliver brutally honest messages from Yahweh with little regard for their personal safety. Only this time, there were no beheadings, only the difficult-to-watch spectacle of seeing a president forced to uncomfortably read a speech which had just been shredded to pieces by a man who couldn’t possibly have known what was coming. And as he did so, the audience in that room likely left with Metaxas’s four-word condemnation, intentional or not, of the 44th president of the United States ringing in their ears:

“God is not fooled.”

And neither are the American people. As Metaxas notes, Obama is not the first to toss around bible verses in the service of things far less than holy...

Will Andrew Cuomo Turn New York Into Pyongyang?

For a brief time, New York's governor was seen as the heir apparent to the 2016 Democratic presidential throne.  Now that he's gone back on every word he's ever spoken about fiscal sanity and "getting tough on unions", he's been demoted back to the status of  "liberal governor v1.0", and talk of his ascendancy to national leadership has pretty much ceased.

Deservedly so.  For the governor is about to take the state of New York - struggling already - and its flagship city and drive it down to third-world status, in order to placate the environmental lobby.  Via the Washington Free Beacon:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is hard at work ensuring the closure of the Indian Point nuclear power plant that helps power New York City – and some of his closest political allies stand to profit significantly from the deal.

Records show that Cuomo has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from individuals funding a competitor to the nuclear power plant, as well as from individuals who object to its existence on ideological grounds.

Indian Point, owned by the Entergy Corp., is applying to the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for renewal of its reactors’ operating licenses, which expire in 2013 and 2015. Though the plant provides roughly 25 to 30 percent of New York City’s energy, Cuomo wants the site closed because of “safety concerns".

But there are no safety concerns, as the article lays out, save for the meltdown fantasies that are both the fantasy and fetish of the environmental Left.  What will happen for sure, should this plant close, is the loss of millions of tax dollars, thousands of jobs, and most importantly, the lack of a power supply to run the state:

The New York Times reported that it would “take years and require a long-term energy strategy” to replace the 2,000 megawatts of private-sector energy that Indian Point provides to homes and businesses throughout New York City and Westchester County.

A leaked preliminary draft of a report by New York City’s Department of Environmental Conservation predicts dire results stemming from the plant’s closure: The city’s energy costs would rise up to 10 percent and citywide reliability problems would begin within a year of the second reactor’s expiration.

Despite these concerns, the governor refuses to back down.

Because this is not about reason, or rationality - it is about one man's greed, one man's ambition, one man's desire to keep the money flowing - to himself. And the destruction of the city of New York will merely be collateral damage in his rise to power.

While he preens for the Left, New Yorkers will suffer brownouts and rolling blackouts as the state frantically searches for power sources.  The financial giants will leave downtown, ending the free ride for New York's welfare state.  A declining quality of life - long waits in stalled subway trains, stifling nights with no air conditioning, lack of business or industry - will send the population fleeing.  Huge segments of the city will be simply abandoned and the tax base will plummet, leaving the poor to fend for themselves, as the government they have lived off of for so many years will no longer have the means to care for them.

Alas for Andrew, destruction of a great city does not quite qualify one for higher office. Otherwise, we'd be picking our next president from Detroit's City Council....

Congress Pays For Two-Month Payroll Tax Cut With Ten-Year Mortgage Fee

Does this not say it all?

"Your pocketbook is being raided in order to pay for a tax policy issue decided at the last minute by probably people who didn't understand fully what they were legislating on."

The details are ugly. It's a crime scene, with the heinous act perpetuated by those who have sworn to represent us, who have chosen instead to loot us, as part as the gang-rape and pillage of what little wealth remains in the United States of America:

Just before Christmas, American workers got a rare gift from Washington politicians - the current payroll tax cut would be extended for two more months.

At the time, both President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner lauded the move to avoid a tax increase for millions of working Americans.

But there's something the politicians weren't bragging about - the fact that they're paying for the two-month tax cut with what has turned into a brand new fee on home buyers.

The new fee is a minimum of one-tenth of 1 percent on Fannie Mae- and Freddie Mac-backed loans, and is likely to go much higher.

It will be imposed for the next 10 years on most mortgages and refinancings and it lasts for the life of the loan.

For every $200,000, it amounts to an extra $15 dollars a month.

It's bad news for Patty Anderson, who's buying a home in Virginia.

Anderson will save a couple hundred dollars from having her payroll tax cut extended but her mortgage broker told her the new fee would cost her almost $9,500.

"I was absolutely startled that it would add up to that much," she said.

The $35.7 billion collected in fees won't go into the Social Security fund to replace the lost payroll tax. It goes to the general treasury where Congress can spend it however they please.


How is this in any way, shape or form defensible? I expect this from Democrats, but if Republicans were complicit...

Tar. Feathers. NOW...

Why People Hate Politicians: Exhibit A - Loretta Weinberg

She's a Jersey Democrat, and leader of the state Senate - NJ's own Nancy Pelosi, as it were -so you know where this is going...

Bob Ingle at the Asbury Park Press reports on her latest liberal tomfoolery:

...she introduces a bill to change the lyrics of Rutgers’ school song, “On the Banks of the Old Raritan.” She wants the 139-year-old song to change lyrics that say “My father sent me to old Rutgers, and resolv’d that I should be a man.” She points out half the student body is women. There are numerous serious problems faced by New Jersey, one of them being it’s harder for young folks to afford a college education. Weinberg should work on that. And if the students and faculty at Rutgers really have a problem with the lyrics, let them work it out amongst themselves.

Agreed - this is a Rutgers issue, and a relatively minor one at that. The fact that Loretta Weinberg is getting involved is maddening enough - as Ingle notes, it's not as if Jersey is in any kind of great shape whatsoever. But the fact that she feels entitled to get involved, to believe the situation warrens her interference, the idea this "issue", if it even is one, cannot be resolved without Loretta Weinberg and the Democrats writing new laws to address it - well, that's what makes citizen grit their teeth, grab their pitchforks, and start lighting their torches...

Judging by the comments on the Scarlet Nation message board, the Rutgers student body seems smarter than those who claim to be their citizen leaders:

Are you kidding me? With all of the problems in NJ this is her focus? I'm a die hard independent, but I guess I should not be surprised that this is coming from a democrat

...at what point do forsake all tradition to become 100% PC? Let's modify Kennedy's speech to eliminate 'mankind'

...I understand our society has changed... and in many cases for the better. But is this REALLY that offensive? I just don't see why certain individuals feel so compelled to take away harmless traditions so that they can prove some point. I mean it’s not like we are the Rutgers Redskins doing a Sentinel chop.

....I'm a big time liberal but I have two major problems with this:
1. How about worrying about higher education is funded and now how it's sung. Anyone who actually believed in education and not political grandstanding would see that.

2. What's wrong with the alma mater as is. It's a song about the history of the university. Historically it was a men's school.

...if the ....0001% of females are offended they can say their own words in replacement. In the meantime, they will spend money on focus groups and meeting in the Rutgers student center using student fees on such a trivial subject

Along with some suggestions for replacing the "offending" lyrics:

The lifeguards sent me to Old Rutgers,
And resolved that I should get a tan….

The A Team sent me to Old Rutgers,
And resolved that I should have a plan….

Wolves sent me to Old Rutgers,
And resolved that I should kill a lamb….

Chi-Chi’s sent me to Old Rutgers,
And resolved that I should eat some flan….


Rutgers was originally chartered in 1766, one of nine pre-Revolutionary "colonial colleges".   It has withstood natural disasters, war, and all of the ills New Jersey could throw its way.  But can it withstand Loretta Weinberg, and political correctness?

The founders - ministers of the Dutch Reform Church - are spinning in their graves.  Probably under exit 14A on the New Jersey Turnpike...

Obama Tries To Reclaim His Lost Youth

Since Inauguration Day, the president’s approval rating with the 18-to-29 crowd set a record for the most precipitous drop in Gallup Poll history, from 77 percent approval to 48 percent.

Ah, youth.  You think it's going to be there for you forever, but one day you wake up and realize it's gone.  Sure, you can still see vestigial traces of it when you gaze at your reflection, but suddenly you have to look harder and harder and peer closer into the mirror to convince yourself you still are who you thought you were.

And this is the point, of course, when some men will buy a new sports car - a convertible, in flaming red.  Or a woman will take a younger lover (half her age plus seven, right?).  Or, if you're a president, it's a moment when you offer silly proposals to your former paramours, hoping that with it, youth will return.

It is as awkward as it sounds:

No recent promise is more disingenuous than Summer Jobs+. The labor Department of Labor purports to have “180,000 job commitments” from private-sector companies, but only 38 percent (70,000) of these “jobs” pay money. The rest are unpaid internships — a category that Nancy Leppink, an Obama appointee at Labor, declared not “in compliance with the law” as recently as 2010.

The abrupt reversal doesn’t make these positions “jobs.” The 70,000 paid positions offered by the private sector won’t be nearly enough to employ the 1.7 million students who will graduate from college this year.... These 70,000 or even 180,000 new positions promised by the Obama administration wouldn’t even employ 5 percent of the young people now seeking work.

Then there’s the Obama call to expand the student-aid program — mostly through a massive increase ($1 billion to $8 billion) in the Perkins student-loan program.

Making it easier to get a student loan now is as devious as making it easier to get a mortgage a decade ago — the government is encouraging people to take on more debt than they can handle.

Many recent graduates face the same situation as the people who took out subprime loans from 1998 to 2007; the government encouraged them to take out massive loans that they now can’t afford. Student-loan defaults hit a record-breaking 8.8 percent last year.  Growing the student-loan program means dooming more graduates to this same fate...

And the Millennials say to Obama:  No thanks, and keep moving, creep, before I call campus police...

Barack will not recover his Lost Youth.  They may not flock to Mitt Romney, either, but they are smart enough to have learned their lesson, and they won't go back to the man who has already betrayed them.  They'll probably stay home on election night instead.  Which - once he realizes it - will age the president even further, and push those bygone days of "young love" even further into the rear-view mirror...

Giants vs. Patriots: Who's Got The Hotter Chicks?

(updated at bottom with Madonna's s*&%$#...)

Well, the New England Patriots do have cheerleaders, unlike the Giants.

But some would say that is just having to"pay for it", while the Giants get it for free:

Gotta go with the Jints, I think...!

UPDATE:  The Giants win, proving the best things in life are free...or maybe not.  Or perhaps proving there is nothing more unseemly than a 50 year old woman flashing her cooz at 50 million people?  Ladies and gentlemen, straight from the Super Bowl, we bring you....Madonna's Vagina:

Newt Gingrich: Ugly In Defeat

I know there's not a lot of blog traffic in knocking Newt, but I am a big believer in following the masthead on RS McCain's blog: "One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up."

Newt came in like a lion, and is going down like a bitch. Victor Davis Hanson:

Newt Gingrich’s post–Nevada caucus speech included about three minutes of inspired moments about issues and ideas in his usual imaginative and intellectually robust style. So why does he not just stay with that? Instead, he now turns ad nauseam to the tired reasons why he loses — yes, including lots of Mormons in Nevada — and ends up as Richard Nixon not going to get kicked around any more.

But whether he knows it or not, Gingrich is becoming a caricature of petulance: no concession in Nevada, no call to Romney, no awareness that his inability to raise money at levels of a political rival or to match a competing campaign organization is not necessarily unfair. That’s politics, and Gingrich knows it...

And lest you think the link to The Corner is indicative of my link to the establishment (although I think Mr. Hanson bona fides as a genuine intellectual are unimpeachable), here's Jonathan Tobin at Contentions:

...after watching Gingrich’s bizarre 11 pm presser, it would appear that the new positive Newt bears a strange resemblance to the old nasty Newt. Gingrich spent most of his session with the press venting his bitterness at Mitt Romney. While vowing to continue his presidential campaign, the main focus of his remarks was not his differences with President Obama but the anger he feels toward the GOP frontrunner.

As he did after losing in Florida, Gingrich again failed to congratulate Romney for winning in Nevada. But, if anything, his rage about being beaten in the pre-Florida primary debates has only grown. Calling Romney a liar, Gingrich piled on the abuse...

 And while I would never accused the tenacious Professor Jacobson of adopting a Gingrichian (hmmm..."patent pending" on that verbiage!) manner, I am surprised to see his ire raised by this:


The big story was the revelation in The NY Times that the Romney campaign, both directly and through Jewish emissaries, has been trying to convince Sheldon Adelson to cut off further funding of a pro-Newt SuperPAC...Romney apparently is deeply hurt by the negative ads the SuperPAC has been running with Adelson’s funding...You have got to be kidding me. It’s not enough for Romney to outspend Newt several times over, he has to try to cut off Newt’s funding?


With all due respect, this is, as Hanson says, politics. I have no doubt that donors like Sheldon Alderson are being wooed all the time by their candidate's competitors, explaining why his man can't win but their man can, while offering the opportunity to "invest" early with the winning team, and perhaps reap large dividends down the road.

Won't Obama be doing the same thing in the general? I'd rather have a guy who will fight on Obama's chosen turf and defeat him with his own weapons, than sport a candidate that will lose with respect, like Senator John McCain. But if all Gingrich can do is complain, it certainly conveys the impression that he's already run low on serious body-piercing ammunition.

I'm not saying Newt should step out, but he should step forward. Whining is not a winning strategy, and lately, it seems as if it is all Gingrich has left...

Nevada Caucus Results