The Stoning of Dr. Ben Carson

How dare anyone disagree with Obama?

Liberals continue their hysteria over remarks made by Dr. Ben Carson at the National Prayer Breakfast last week. Carson, a prominent pediatric surgeon from Johns Hopkins University, dared to weigh in on healthcare — something he knows something about, and certainly knows better than Barack Obama. In the liberal mind, Carson committed a grave transgression; he had dared to disagree with Obama, and in Obama’s presence.
In a discussion of Carson’s moral effrontery, Candy Crowley, host of CNN’s State of the Union, asked her panelists whether they were offended by Carson’s comments. “He [Carson] was talking about the idea of, you know, weaving the Bible into some objections he appears to have with the president’s approach,” said Crowley, as if the president would never likewise do anything so outrageous. Count Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky among the offended. She told Crowley: “I think it’s… not really an appropriate place to make this kind of political speech and to invoke God as his [Carson’s] support for that kind of point of view.”
In truth, what the likes of Crowley and Schakowsky object to is the mere fact that someone publicly disagreed with Obama on healthcare, and especially in the context of faith. This was sheer blasphemy. For liberal Democrats, conservative Republicans are never permitted to use their faith to disagree; no, only liberal Democrats enjoy such freedoms. I could give a thousand examples illustrating the point; I’ve written entire books doing so. For now, however, here are some particularly salient examples involving Obama, liberals, and healthcare reform:
From the very first year of Obama’s presidency, the Religious Left (Obama included) incessantly claimed God’s support for their vision of healthcare reform. This was no surprise whatsoever, just as it was no surprise that the liberal press was not only not outraged but silently supportive. There was nary a whimper of protest from liberal journalists, let alone their usual howls (when a Republican cites his faith) of “separation of church and state!”
For instance, in August 2009, Obama addressed a “virtual gathering” of 140,000 Religious Left individuals. It was a huge conference call to liberal Christians, Jews, and other people of faith. Obama told them that he was “going to need your help” in passing healthcare reform. Christ-like, Obama penitently invoked a period of “40 Days,” a trial of deliverance from conservative evildoers. He lifted up the brethren, assuring them, “We are God’s partner in matters of life and death.”
Like a great commissioning, in the 40 Days that followed the Religious Left was filled with the spirit, confidently spreading the word, pushing for — among other things — abortion funding as part of an eternally widening “social justice” agenda. A group called the Religious Institute, which represented 4,800 clergy, urged Congress to include abortion funding in “healthcare” reform. To not help poor women secure their reproductive rights was unjust, declared the progressive pastors. As the Rev. Debra Hafner, executive director of the Religious Institute, complained, federal policy already “unfairly prevents low-income women and federal employees from receiving subsidized” abortions.
Here we see the Religious Left’s continued perversion of “social justice.” Behold: social justice abortions.
Other Religious Left faithful joined Obama’s crusade.
A group of 59 leftist nuns sent Congress a letter urging passage of Obamacare. This was in direct defiance of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which insisted the bill “must be opposed” because of its refusal to explicitly ban abortion funding. The liberal media cheered on the nuns, gleefully exaggerating the sisters’ influence. In a breathtaking display, the Los Angeles Times beamed, “Nuns’ support for health-care bill shows [Catholic] Church split.” Amazingly, the Times reported that the nuns’ letter represented not 59 nuns but 59,000. Like Jesus with the loaves, the Times (normally militantly secular) had demonstrated miraculous powers of multiplication. Hey, anything for Obama.
The nuns’ brazenness was matched by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Roman Catholic, who, in March 2010, invoked the Solemnity of the Feast of St. Joseph on behalf of Obamacare. She urged American Catholics to “pray to St. Joseph” — earthly guardian of the unborn son of God.
All of that was prelude to what happened the evening of March 21, 2010, A.D., with a rare vote not merely on a Sunday — God’s day — but the final Sunday in Lent, the week before Palm Sunday that initiates the Lord’s Passion. Obama’s healthcare bill was passed by his Democratic Congress. To Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and the Religious Left faithful, Jesus had gotten his healthcare package, and they had been his faithful handmaidens.
Amid that process, secular liberals in the press suddenly got religion — modern-day Sauls on the road to Damascus. Their political soul mates in the Democratic Party had spearheaded this “change” in the name of Jesus Christ, and liberal journalists found themselves moved to tears at the inspiring display. It was a rather radical departure from the eight years they had just spent scourging George W. Bush every time he merely confessed that he prayed. At long last, there was room for Jesus in the inn, so long as the Savior stood in “support” of the Democrats’ “progressive” agenda.
If all of that seems hypocritical enough from liberals, in light of their castigation of Dr. Ben Carson, consider this final glaring double standard:
The coup de grâce from Obama came in no less than the National Prayer Breakfast two years ago, February 3, 2011. Obama stated: “But sometimes what I can do to try to improve the economy or to curb foreclosures or to help deal with the healthcare system — sometimes it seems so distant and so remote, so profoundly inadequate to the enormity of the need. And it is my faith, then, that biblical injunction to serve the least of these, that keeps me going and that keeps me from being overwhelmed.”
Yes, Barack Obama, at the National Prayer Breakfast, had invoked his faith and the Bible on behalf of healthcare reform — much like he has done on behalf of gay marriage and a litany of other liberal agenda items.

Cont. Reading

By Paul Kengor

The Coming Obamacare Recession

Actually, we already saw it last quarter and there’ll be no escaping it this year.

To the shock of many, U.S. GDP shrank in the fourth quarter of 2012 by 0.1%. Immediately, however, economists and commentators flooded the media with reassuring explanations. Super Storm Sandy reduced economic activity in the areas it ravaged; worries about the fiscal cliff and sequestration dampened business spending and government defense spending; businesses let inventory levels dwindle. Even the Federal Reserve commented that the GDP drop was the result of “weather-related disruptions and other transitory factors.” All this is true, to some extent. But none of the reporting I saw even mentioned the elephant in the room that not only depressed economic activity in the fourth quarter of 2012, but will continue to depress economic activity through 2013 and beyond. That elephant is the “Affordable Care Act,” aka “Obamacare.”
Some of the negatives from the fourth quarter will reverse in the first quarter of 2013. Sandy reconstruction will kick in, and the big drop in defense outlays was probably an anomaly. But business inventories fell in the fourth quarter not because businesses were too pessimistic about demand and let inventories fall too much, but because they had been too optimistic earlier in the year and allowed them to get too high. The idea that business will have to start increasing inventory levels in the first quarter of 2013 in order to meet increasing demand is purely theoretical, and right now, there is precious little evidence to support that theory. On the contrary, lackluster holiday sales do not auger well for consumer spending, and the Conference Board’s index of consumer sentiment fell from a reading of 66.7 in December to 58.6 in January, its lowest reading since November 2011.
The January employment report, which cheered Wall Street due to the upward revision in November and December employment, showed only an increase of 157,000 jobs, which was slightly below expectations and not even high enough to keep up with population growth. Surely, many optimists have argued, the stronger fourth quarter employment numbers show that there must be something wrong with the fourth quarter GDP report and it will surely be revised upwards. Initial GDP reports often do get revised, and it would be no surprise if the fourth quarter is revised upwards, but the employment numbers are not a harbinger of that outcome. An equally valid interpretation of the data is that employers were hiring in the fourth quarter in anticipation of greater economic growth that did not materialize, and if it doesn’t materialize soon, much of those employment gains may be reversed out in 2013.
The American economy is resilient, full of entrepreneurial spirit, despite the best efforts of the Obama administration. The American economy wants to grow, and after four years of recession and faint recovery, a release of pent up demand has resulted in higher spending on autos and on business software and computer systems. But will that continue and will it be sufficient to counter the roadblocks the Obama administration has set up that have proved so effective in retarding economic growth?
Consumer and business spending, which have been rising modestly, will continue to rise if consumers and businesses have confidence in the future. The new year, however, brought with it higher taxes, and not just the increases on income over $400,000 recently won by the Obama forces. Many Obamacare taxes became effective January 1, 2013, including a 0.9% increase in Medicare Taxes and an extra 3.8% tax on investment income, including dividends, interest, capital gains, and rent income, for households earning more than $250,000.
Some of the ugly details of Obamacare, the most far-reaching piece of legislation to be passed without a single member of Congress having actually read it—indeed not even having been allowed a serious chance to read it—have only been gaining attention in recent months. Looking forward to 2014, employers are now looking at an additional $63 per insured employee fee to compensate insurance companies for the added costs of covering previously uninsured people with pre-existing conditions. That’s supposed to phase out by 2017, but if you believe that you probably also bought the line that Obama is in favor of a “balanced”approach to deficit reduction.
Better known is the $2,000 per employee charge that any business with more than 50 full-time employees will have to pay for every full-time employee to whom that business does not provide an Obama-approved health package (though the first 30 such employees are exempted). With all the concern expressed in the media about how the uncertainty posed by the fiscal cliff negotiations negatively affects business, it is odd that so little attention has been focused on the certainty of Obamacare costs that businesses now have to face. Many companies, large and small, have pointed to these provisions, explaining that this is why they won’t be hiring, or won’t be hiring nearly as much in 2013 as they would otherwise. Abbott Labs, Boston Scientific, Welch Allyn, and many other companies have even reported they will be laying off workers directly as a result of Obamacare.
I’m in the commercial real estate business, and have managed commercial properties for more than 20 years. A friend of mine has been in the real estate services business, providing everything from janitorial services to window washing to parking lot repairs for about as long. In fact, the company I work for was his first account. In the last 20 years, he has expanded from a handful of full-time employees to 150 full-time employees. I recently discussed with him his concerns about the effect of Obamacare on his business. Most of his employees are in lower-skill occupations and so only earn $10 - $15 per hour. He cannot afford to tack on health care benefits equal to another $3.50 to $5.50 per hour without going broke. His more affordable alternative would be to pay the $2,000 per employee fee, which would effectively erase his entire 2012 profit from his business. In essence, this one provision is the equivalent of a 90% - 100% tax on his typical net business income. Worse yet, since the law does not allow the $2,000 per employee charge as a deductible business expense, he’ll have to pay federal income tax on approximately $240,000 of business income he didn’t get. Implicit in the law (or perhaps it is explicit) is the notion that it is the responsibility of employers to provide health insurance to their employees, and if they don’t they are bad people, greedy capitalists exploiting the working class, and deserve to be punished.
What is my friend to do? He can raise his prices and risk losing business from people like me who will then need to cut back on his services, or who will go to his smaller competitors with fewer than 50 employees who are not (yet) subject to the fee. Or he can cut back the hours of his employees until he has fewer than 50 working full-time. Or he can fire most of his employees and tell them they are on their own as independent contractors, and he may be able to subcontract with them from time-to-time for specific jobs. None of these alternatives are good for the business owner, his customers, his employees, or the economy in general.
This is what you get when people sheltered all their lives in government and community organizing, with little knowledge of how businesses actually operate, are put in charge of crafting far-reaching economic policies. This is what you get from people who don’t recognize businesses as the drivers of employment, economic growth, and higher standards of living, but see them as entities that need to be regulated, managed, and controlled by government for the “public good.” This is what you get from people who deride the idea that successful businesses are created by their owners working long hours, developing good ideas, and putting capital at risk, but instead are the creations of government and the community at large.
The iniquity of the law, in that it places a much higher burden, as a percentage of payroll costs, on companies in lower-skilled/lower-wage industries versus companies in relatively higher-skilled/higher-wage industries, is one argument against Obamacare. But there is no question that the law delivers pain to almost everyone. Unions, for instance, are now complaining that the requirement to eliminate annual and lifetime benefit caps, a feature in many policies, including many administered by unions, by itself will, by the estimate of one Atlanta area Sheet Metal Workers Union representative interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, push the price of union labor up by $0.50 to $1.00 per hour to cover the extra costs associated with eliminating those caps. Perhaps unions, being friends and supporters of the Obama administration, will be successful in obtaining federal subsidies or further waivers from the law (equality under the law has not been a hallmark of this administration), but the cost will just be shifted somewhere else, such as on to employers or taxpayers, with the same depressing effect on economic activity.
How the economy performs will be determined by more than just Obamacare. There will be other negative factors, such as Europe, which will continue to have bouts of economic turmoil. But there will be positives, as well. The U.S. economy is fundamentally sound and dynamic. It is poised to grow, and has been for years. American corporations, on the whole, are sitting on large cash reserves, looking for opportunities to put that cash to productive use. It will be Obamacare, however, that I fear will be the weight that will matter most. The consensus among economists is that GDP will rebound in the first quarter of 2013 and that GDP growth for the year will be about 2.0%. Unfortunately, I believe that even that dreary prediction will prove too optimistic, and 2013 is more likely to be the year of the Obamacare recession.


By Brandon Crocker

Obama, have you no decency? Have you no shame?

 

 



Hiding Behind the Children

Why Obama is exploiting them to gain support for gun control.

My Name is Cash

America’s growing underground economy — a necessity in the
age of Obama.

Barter is as old as human history. According to a story in theWall Steet Journal, it is yet practiced as a facet of the 21st century global economy. Germany, for example, “sends coal to Brazil for coffee, and imports cattle from Denmark in return for agricultural implements. Finland sends timber to the U.K. for coal. Argentina trades grain to Spain for railway equipment.” And so on.

It's Been a Hard Year !!

In some ways nightmarish — and what was Romney thinking?

Sunday

Here it is the next to last day of 2012. This has been a nightmare year. It started off with threats of litigation which were alternately comical and astounding. Some day I’ll write the full story. Suffice it to say, yes, you can get sued for telling an unemployed person to get a job instead of mooching. Suffice it to say, you can get sued (or have lawsuit threatened) over allegations of acts that are demonstrably physically not possible. And being a tiny bit famous and a tiny bit well off (a really tiny bit) makes you a target for bad people.
I was fortunate. I had a great lawyer and a fully supportive wife. I pity those who have neither.
This was also the year that someone I love, someone close to me, as close as can be, had a nervous breakdown, extraordinary delusions and paranoia, and went off the rails of mental balance. Luckily, this person also has a great wife and loving parents and excellent doctors, but mental illness in someone close to you is no joke. It isn’t funny and it’s deeply upsetting. As far as I can tell, there is no cure, just day by day palliation.   Read More
 
By Ben Stein

God Help Us

 

A massacre that has turned the world upside down.

Sunday I learned about the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school while we were setting up at Fox News to tape Cavuto on Business. The news was so horrible that we all felt as if we had lost our legs and could no longer stand. It was such horrible news that it simply turned the world upside down.
It still is that kind of news, and it’s incredibly depressing about the nature of humanity. And my wife and I pray all day for the souls of those dear children and for the peace, if there ever will be peace, of their families… and for the souls of the adults and the peace of those who knew and loved them.
As usual, the smartest comment about the whole subject came from John R. Coyne, Jr. “There is evil in the world. It’s beyond mental illness, beyond gun control. It is evil.”
The killer got his weapons from his mother, who apparently had bought them legally and registered them. That tells us something about what anti-gun laws would do, although maybe the mother should not have had them either. In this world, a killer devil can kill his mother and steal her guns to kill six year olds. That’s what some humans are and I am not sure what laws will stop them.
Second, I read that the killer was socially awkward (putting it mildly) and “reserved.” I know what that often means. He spent much of his miserable life playing shoot ’em up video games on line or on machines. I see a troubled young man doing that often.
Up close and personal.
In these games, the “player” just spends his whole day attempting to exercise and exorcize his loneliness and low self-esteem by shooting imaginary creatures and creating damage all day long.
At a certain point, just “killing” on the console blurs into doing it in real life. “Killing” is just what the kid does all his life. How much of a stretch is it for him to shoot into a movie theater or a political gathering or a kindergarten in “real life”if his life is so pitiful that he does not know what’s real and what is not? If you are looking for a villain, try shoot ’em up games.
Third, what motivates “great” deeds? So that a man’s name will not be forgotten and he will be sung about even after his death, goes the ancient saying. That’s what you get if you slaughter 26 totally innocent people at a grade school. If you want another villain, try the media itself, which has now given Adam Lanza fame beyond what he could have dreamt of. It is impossible to blame the media, but evil men like Adam Lanza have gamed the system to perfection.
Fifth, why are these killers always men? What is it that we teach our young men in this world that makes them think it’s a mark of manliness to kill the unarmed and innocent? Whatever it is, it’s disgusting. It’s not manly to kill any unarmed human. It’s miserable, crawling cowardice.
Finally, a comment that will enrage the beautiful people. The whole world is rightly overwrought and crazed with grief over the murder of twenty totally innocent and blameless souls last Friday in Newtown. It was and is a catastrophe for the ages.
But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promises to kill every Jew in Israel and then in the whole world, including babies… and he had his defenders, even at the Democratic National Convention. And it was daily life in Nazi-occupied Europe from 1939 to 1941 to kill thousands of Jewish children every day. But powerful, intelligent men and women in this country defended Hitler, spoke up for him and for keeping America from even sending arms to Britain when England stood alone. What are we to make of that? No one even mentions, no one even knows about the horrendous Armenian genocide by the Turks in 1915, when well over a million of the most talented people on the planet were wantonly murdered — and the world has still not officially called it genocide — and Hitler explicitly said it was a model for him. Who today even talks of the purposeful mass starvation of millions of beautiful Ukrainian children by Stalin? The U.S. did not say one word about it as a government. The U.S. still will not confront Turkey seriously about the Armenian children.
Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge killed roughly one third of all of its people, including children, from 1974 to about 1977 — and it was U.S. policy to avoid doing anything to stop them — because they were opposed to the North Vietnamese Communists and Communist Vietnam, which had just taken over South Vietnam — our ally. What can we say to that? We cheered the deposing of the President —Richard Nixon — who would have stopped the Khmer Rouge from taking power. There is plenty of Cambodian blood on our hands. There is plenty of blood of all kinds on our hands, especially of the most innocent and blameless among us… real babies, truly innocent.
God help us. Man is made of such crooked stuff that it is impossible to set him straight, said a famous philosopher. God help us.

By Ben Stein
 

Does Obama Doom America?

The question so many people are asking.

The refrain started many weeks, even months, before the election, but its frequency and intensity has
increased nearly exponentially since Nov. 6.

The Five Stages of a Conservative's Grief

A painful adjustment to last Tuesday's election.

 

 

 

 

By David Catron

 

Last Tuesday evening I went to bed in denial, thinking that there must be some mistake. I declined to believe that a majority of the voters were stupid enough to re-elect a President whose incompetence makes Jimmy Carter seem Washingtonian by comparison, whose mendacity far surpasses that of a pathological liar like Bill Clinton, and whose administration is so corrupt that it actually evokes nostalgia for the Nixon era. I was sure that, when all theactual votes had been counted, they would reveal that the voters of Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Colorado had been sensible enough to send this cheap grifter back to Chicago.
On Wednesday, forced to face the grim reality of the election results, I became angry. My seething thoughts turned first to the "news" media, whose behavior during this election cycle would have brought a blush to the cheek of the most cynical Pravdapropaganda merchant. Then I thought of domesticated conservatives like Ann Coulter, who wrote that the media were pushing alternatives to Romney "because they are terrified of running against him." In reality, the delusions of Coulter and the GOP establishment notwithstanding, Romney was the man the media and the White House desperatelywanted to run against.

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An Embarrassment to the Nation

How did Obama and Petraeus keep their scandal secret?
By Ben Stein
General David Petraeus is roughly one thousand times the man I am. He is braver, tougher, more self-sacrificing, smarter, more unselfish, more patriotic, far more disciplined, apparently able to keep up sexually with a woman twenty years younger than he is who is also an Ironman woman superstar. He is almost a superman. But not quite. Now, let me get this straight: I do not think a man usually should have been fired for having sex with a woman not his wife. To me, that is just what men and women do. It is a part of life. But this is a highly unusual situation in every way...
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The Historic Winston vs. Barack Debate

By Andrew B. Wilson

Winny wins big -- Demos cry foul.

The debate you are about to witness will not be televised, but it is indeed historic and it will provide some of the fireworks that were missing in the three presidential debates.
This is not said to disparage Mitt Romney's achievement as the clear winner of those debates.
In taking total command of the first debate, he connected with the American people for the first time. He showed that he wasnot the cold, heartless plutocrat pictured in the Obama ads and the mainstream media. He demonstrated that he could outthink and outtalk the president in any discussion of economic and foreign policy issues. And he looked and acted presidential. Barack Obama went from dopey and disengaged in the first debate to snarling and aggressive in the next two. But he didn't make up an inch of ground. More and more, over the course of the debates, menand women came to like and respect the challenger… and see the incumbent as the real impostor.
As good as that was, many Romney supporters were hoping for more. What Romney did not do during the three debates was to treat the thick-headed liberal/progressive mindset with the derision that it so richly deserves. The Obama administration has learned nothing from -- and cares nothing about -- its habitual mistakes and misjudgments, regardless of how costly they turn out to be. Why -- Bill Clinton pointedly asked -- is this election even close?

Cont. Reading

Benghazi Obama's Core Deceit

Is anyone really going to vote for this?

By Peter Ferrara

The basic, important facts about the Benghazi disgrace are in the public record now. American Ambassador Chris Stevens started requesting additional security as early as February. The Obama Administration not only refused additional security, it actually cut security, removing a well armed unit from the Libyan embassy in August.
The Obama Administration should have known that the danger would increase on the anniversary of September 11. But it sent no additional security for that day either. The reasoning seemed to be that President Obama did not want to inflame Muslim sensibilities with a show of American force even to defend our own diplomatic missions overseas, which are legally considered American, not foreign, soil. So he seems to have decided to rely primarily on security to be provided by the fragile, new Libyan government, which has not stabilized full control of the country. Obama's own Ambassador Stevens explicitly told the Obama Administration that Libyan security was not sufficiently reliable.
On September 11, there were no spontaneous mob protests at U.S. diplomatic missions in Libya, as President Obama and other Administration officials have tried to tell us. That is documented by records of activities at the U.S. Libyan missions, and by real time video of events, including from one or more drones flying overhead in response to developments. Around 4 pm Washington time, terrorists associated with an Al Qaeda affiliate, Ansar Al Sharia, began a well-coordinated, pre-planned, heavily armed attack with mortars and rocket propelled grenades on the American consulate in Benghazi. That whole attack was witnessed live through the video in real time in Washington DC, at the White House, at the State Department, at the Pentagon, and at the CIA.
Two nearby Navy seals, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, communicated that they were on their way to the consulate to provide help. They received orders from Washington to stand down! Knowing that American lives were at stake at the embassy, they went anyway. They ended up like General Custer hopelessly outnumbered by the attackers. But they held out for 7 hours after the attacks began, and saved many lives of diplomatic personnel, killing many terrorist attackers in the process.
During the attack, American diplomatic officials on the ground in Libya, and even the two Navy seals themselves, requested back up and rescue. Vastly superior U.S. military forces were available and ready to go less than one hour flight time away in Italy and Crete, including helicopter gunships and jet fighter planes. One security agent at the Benghazi consulate had the terrorist mortar attackers layered, which means they could have been blown away by guided missiles.
But Washington dishonorably refused to send the rescue. Again, apparently, the policy was to avoid offending the Muslim world by a further American show of force. So Navy Seals Woods and Doherty were finally overwhelmed and killed at their guns. American Ambassador Chris Stevens was captured, sodomized, and brutally murdered, dragged bloody and half naked through the streets. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton afterward thanked the Libyan people for taking the Ambassador to the hospital.
How Stupid Do They Think We Are? And that was just the beginning of the cover up and lies by President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and other Obama minions. For nearly two weeks, Obama and his cronies espoused to America and the world the fiction that the violence and murders in Benghazi were not terrorist attacks, but the result of Muslim rage over an unknown YouTube video trailer produced by a recent immigrant recluse in the U.S. That was to serve the broader Obama narrative that Obama had routed Al Qaeda ("he" killed Bin Laden after all) and supposedly restored Muslim respect for America, as well as to cover up the dereliction of duty in failing to provide security and send in the military rescue in Benghazi.
President Obama actually weaved this fairy tale before the whole world in a now retrospectively foolish speech at the United Nations. Later, he sent out U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on the Sunday talk shows to spin the same yarn.
The harsh reality for America, making the truth about Obama harder to discern, is that so much of our nation's media have fully devoted themselves to Democrat party partisanship. That starts early in school for so many so-called "journalists," who devote themselves in adolescence to "change the world" by going into such "journalism." The first stage of any third world Marxist revolution is for the guerillas to seize the radio and TV stations and announce that they are the new government. That effectively has already happened in America. Sure there are alternative outlets where the truth is propagated, such as talk radio, Fox News, theWall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, and other publications such as this one. But the public has to grope through the fog of denunciation by the Democrat party-controlled media to find them.
This media is now in full cover up mode for Obama's Benghazi lies, coverup, and dishonorable dereliction of duty. This was revealed in one of the most brazen episodes in American political history, where President Obama went on the national stage in debate 2 to propagate cover up lies about his Benghazi fairy tale lies. Obama bragged at that debate, "The day after the attack, Governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we're going to hunt down those who committed this crime."
The ever sharp Mitt Romney immediately caught the lie, sputtering, "the President just said something which -- which is that on the day after the attack he went into the Rose Garden and said this was an act of terror." Obama lied, "That's what I said." But Romney was stuck on the truth, "I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the President 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror." Obama's ready response, "Get the transcript."
The supposed moderator Candy Crowley of Democrat party-controlled CNN took her transparently prearranged cue and interrupted Romney to say, "He did in fact sir." Then before the entire nation, live on TV, making the pre arranged ambush too obvious, Obama ordered his minion like she was a White House press spokesman, "Can you say that a little louder, Candy?" Obeying the Boss, Crowley piped up and added "He did call it an act of terror."
But the transcript of Obama's Rose Garden comments on September 12, posted at the White House website, does not mention the words terror, terrorist or terrorism. Here is what Obama said in the video of the event on September 12:

Yesterday was already a painful day for our nation as we marked the solemn memory of the 9/11 attacks. We mourned with the families of those who were lost on that day. I visited the graves of troops who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hallowed grounds of Arlington Cemetery and had the opportunity to say thank you and visit some of our wounded warriors at Walter Reed. And then last night we learned the news of this attack in Benghazi. As Americans let us never ever forget that our freedom is only sustained because of our people who are willing to fight for it, willing to stand up for it, and in some cases willing to lay down their lives for it. Our country is only as free or as strong as the character of our people, and the service of those both civilian and military who represent us around the globe. No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values we stand for.

These words do not back up what Obama said at the debate. He did not call the Benghazi murders a terrorist act the very next day. Obama was referring to terrorism in general, including the original 9/11 attacks in New York. Obama in fact continued to maintain for another two weeks the fiction that the murders resulted form overflowing, spontaneous, Muslim anger, later telling that fairy tale to the whole world at the UN.
Cont. Reading

Au Revoir, Mr. President

By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
We shall be getting a new government next week.
WASHINGTON -- Reviewing the last few months of this tumultuous presidential campaign, I see the debates as having a wondrous salience. The first was the most momentous since Nixon vs. Kennedy, though that 1960 confrontation was mostly a matter of cosmetics. Listening to it on radio, many in the audience came away thinking that the participant with the five-o'clock shadow had won. That would have been Richard Nixon. In debate this time around, Mitt Romney hammered Barack Obama mercilessly. Under the ongoing assault Obama's knees buckled and he repeatedly looked glassy-eyed. If the contest were a prizefight, the referee should have stepped in. Actually, I felt sorry for Obama. My tax-bracket notwithstanding, I did not want to see Mitt hit him again, but he did: the economy! the national debt! joblessness! However, the debate was not a prizefight. It was the first of three presidential debates, and though restrained in the next two contests Romney accomplished just what he wanted. The debates left him looking reasonable, informed, competent, and presidential.
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Back When Democrats Knew Economics

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Ralph R. Reiland on 10.25.12 @ 6:07AM

Who warned that "increasing federal expenditures" would "demoralize both the government and our economy"?

Eleven months before he was assassinated as he rode with his wife in the back seat of an open convertible in a motorcade through downtown Dallas, President John F. Kennedy delivered a major address to the Economic Club of New York at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on December 14, 1962.
The unemployment rate that month was 5.5 percent. The annual inflation rate was 1.3 percent.

The sticker price on a new Chevy Impala convertible was $2,919. Gas was 31 cents a gallon. A morning coffee and newspaper was 15 cents -- a dime for the coffee, a nickel for the paper. Cheeseburgers were 20 cents.
The minimum wage in 1962 was $1.15. For 50 weeks at 40 hours per week, that's $2,300 a year -- 79 percent of the price of a new Impala convertible.
The 1962 federal deficit $7.1 billion, more than double the $3.3 billion in federal red ink in 1961.
The $7.1 billion deficit was 1.3 percent of GDP. For 2012, the Office of Management and Budget projects that the federal deficit will hit 8.5 percent of GDP, over six times higher than in 1962, relative to the size of the economy.
President Kennedy began his address to the Economic Club of New York by stating that U.S. security is directly linked to the strength of the nation's economy.
National security "will not be determined by military or diplomatic moves alone," he stated. "It will be affected by the decisions of finance ministers as well as by the decisions of Secretaries of State and Secretaries of Defense, by the deployment of fiscal and monetary weapons as well as by military weapons, and, above all, by the strength of this nation's economy as well as by the strength of our defenses."
To strengthen the economy, Kennedy called tax cuts on business and all income groups, a less expansionary government, a simplified tax code that downsized loopholes and special privileges, and the removal of obstacles to private initiative.
The "most direct and significant kind of federal action aiding economic growth is to make possible an increase in private consumption and investment demand -- to cut the fetters which hold back private spending," he asserted.
In contrast, a course of "increasing federal expenditures more rapidly than necessary," he warned, "would soon demoralize both the government and our economy."
Kennedy called for "an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes" in order to reduce "the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our current tax system" -- a federal tax system that "exerts too heavy a drag on growth," "siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power," and "reduces the financial incentive for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking."
Kennedy's bottom line? "In short," he stated, "to increase demand and lift the economy, the federal government's most useful role is not to rush into a program of excessive increases in public expenditures, but to expand the initiatives and opportunities for private expenditures."
And the impact of tax cuts on deficits? "Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large federal deficits on the other," he declared. The"paradoxical truth" is that "tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now."
Those were the good old days, a time when Democrats and liberals understood that it's economic growth, not redistribution, that delivers overall increases in a nation's standard of living, across all income groups.  Cont. Reading

what happened in Benghazi wasn't incompetence -- was it ideology?

Obama Knew

By Jeffrey Lord

Did ideological soft spot for Sharia keep U.S government from protecting Benghazi consulate?

Obama knew. Say again, Obama knew. So. The question. If what happened in Benghazi wasn't incompetence -- was it ideology? Did Sharia kill Ambassador Chris Stevens, Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, and two Navy SEALs? And is Hillary Clinton's insistence yesterday that the leaked State Department e-mails were "not evidence" yet more evidence that indicates the Obama White House not only knew what was going on but deliberately turned a blind eye to Benghazi because of that ideology?

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The Deadly Arithmetic of Nuclear Proliferation

 

 

 

 

 

 

By John C. Wohlstetter from the October 2012 issue

How hard is it to build a bomb? Mr. Biden might want to pay attention.

THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS brought to global public consciousness the fear that rogue nations might use nuclear weapons or transfer them to terrorist groups, or that terrorists might themselves make a nuclear bomb. The first fear has far more foundation than does the second. The good news is that it is very hard to make bombs; the bad news is that it is not impossible.
The magnitude of the nuclear threat posed by a terrorist state or a terrorist group sponsored by such a state can be shown via certain metrics—call them metrics of mass destruction. But let’s begin with baseline concepts.
In the parlance of proliferation, there are three significant nouns that the adjective “nuclear” commonly modifies: “weapon,” “device,” and “capability.” A nuclear weapon is compact and light enough to fit into a missile warhead, or the business end of a bomb or artillery shell.
A nuclear device is the kind of bomb we have been worrying about since 9/11: one too large to be delivered by traditional military means, but which can be put into a van, truck, or shipping container.
And a nuclear capability is the wherewithal to make either of the above.

Uranium Enrichment Math

AT FIRST GLANCE IT SEEMS a huge leap for a potential proliferator state to get from low-enriched, commercial uranium Fuel for a power reactor all the way up to highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium fuel for a bomb. But simple arithmetic gives a counter-intutive result: commercial-grade fuel is perilously close to weapons-grade fuel.
Recall that significantly less than 1 percent of mined uranium is fissile U-235; the less desirable, non-fissile isotope U-238 makes up 139 out of every 140 uranium atoms. In order to run a reactor or build a nuclear weapon, the ratio of U-235 to U-238 must be much higher.
Commercial-grade fuel is at minimum 3.5 percent enriched—it has one atom of U-235 for every 27 of U-238. The next important step is 20 percent enriched fuel—one atom of U-235 for every four of U-238—that can run a medical research reactor. Weapons-grade uranium is about 90 percent enriched.
The key is that the process is not linear. To illustrate, start with raw uranium, which contains one atom of U-235 for every 139 of U-238. Enriching to 3.5 percent requires removing 112 of the U-238 atoms. At this stage you have done 80 percent of the isotopic separation needed to build a full weaponsgrade bomb of the kind in the U.S. arsenal.
Moving from 3.5 percent to 20 percent enriched requires removing only an additional 23 of the U-238 atoms. At this stage, you have done 97 percent of the isotopic separation work needed to make a full weapons- grade nuclear bomb.
One conservative estimate for Iran in early 2012, made by scholar Maseh Zarif of the American Enterprise Institute, showed how enrichment times accelerate:
• Start with 14,000 kilograms (15 tons) of natural unenriched uranium ore.
• It takes 331 days to enrich that to 1,400 kilograms of 3.5 percent commercial-grade fuel.
• It takes 37 days to enrich the commercial fuel to make 116 kilograms of 20 percent medical research-grade fuel. Cont. Reading




 

Obama's Hope Fades in Virginia

 

 

By Robert Stacy McCain on 10.18.12 @ 6:10AM

Republicans seek to score a decisive win in the Old Dominion.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia -- The Romney-Ryan "Victory Center" here is on Highway 29 a few miles north of the University of Virginia campus, and the phone-banking operation Wednesday night was in full swing. More than 15,000 calls are made per week from the campaign office that covers not only Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle County, but also a 10-county area of north-central Virginia. Most of the volunteers in the office Wednesday were UVA College Republicans, who have already made more than 60,000 calls as part of a get-out-the-vote effort aimed at maximizing the GOP vote in this area, not only to help Mitt Romney win Virginia, but also to help elect George Allen to the U.S. Senate.
The director of the Charlottesville office is Nick O'Boyle, a slim 22-year-old who graduated from George Mason University this spring -- an awfully young fellow to be trusted with such a large responsibility. Much depends upon the labors of O'Boyle and other eager young Republicans across the Commonwealth, whose work may help determine the fate of the nation. Virginia is one of the 11 battleground states in this year's presidential election currentlyrated a "toss-up" by Real Clear Politics, and it may well be that as Virginia goes, so goes the country. Polls close in Virginia at 7 p.m. -- one of the first battlegrounds to report on Election Night -- and if the GOP can win the state by enough of a margin that the networks call it early for Romney, that encouraging news may have a ripple effect westward in Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa and Nevada.  Cont. Reading

Submitted by : Claire gooski

 

The Democrats' Rough Re-entry Into Reality

If Obama loses, will they resist blaming him for their own demise?
Is there a limit to self-delusion? And if there is, what happens when the limit is exceeded?
New York Times columnist Gail Collins began her column last week as follows, "When Democrats run into each other on elevators, they exchange glances and sigh. Or make little whimpering sounds." She went on to observe that "Democrats are going bipolar. Democrats spend all their waking hours thinking about the swing states. If Wisconsin starts looking wobbly, their day is ruined." It makes you wonder what their days are going to be like if Obama loses the actual election.
Liberals are angry and frustrated with Obama. He, however, is not the real object of their anger. Someone once observed, "Our strongest anger is reserved for ourselves." (If you doubt that, just ask any golfer.) Liberals are angry and frustrated with themselves because they bought into the fantasy of Barack Obama.
For the past four years conservatives have been asking themselves, "Why can't more people see what a fraud this guy is?" That may be an impossible question to answer, but the population of those who see him for who and what he is seems to be growing.
One of the things that makes Hans Christian Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes" such an enduring parable is how it is both absurd and painfully true. The emperor was naked, but no one wanted to be the first to admit it. A kind of mass hysteria affected the citizens. Once a child spoke the obvious truth, the delusion was shattered. If there were not a lot of truth about human nature reflected in the story, it wouldn't be such a classic.
Obama's nakedness is not physical but rather intellectual. Timemagazine's Joe Klein said recently, "Anyone who says Barack Obama is not intelligent is either crazy or bigoted." What makes Klein so certain that Obama is intelligent? The evidence is all in the opposite direction. Forrest Gump famously said, "Stupid is as stupid does." The corollary is also true. Smart is as smart does. Was choosing Joe Biden as someone to be a heartbeat away from the presidency a smart decision? If you think so, you need to watch the video of last week's vice-presidential debate.

By RON ROSS

read more:
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/10/19/the-democrats-rough-re-ent...

The Essential Obama

 

By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.

So I wasn't insane.

WASHINGTON -- Well, apparently I am not crazy after all. The polls have caught up with me, and they -- après le débat-- are coming around to my point of view. Governor Mitt Romney is ahead in the race for the White House, and let me add he will probably be residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 2013.
I have been saying it for weeks, recognizing that the polls are weighted too heavily toward the Democratic candidate, employ too small a sampling -- as little as nine percent of the electorate --and do not take into account the most important issue, that being the economy. Still, before the debate the polls were heavily against me, and my colleagues were beginning to question my judgment. No, make that my sanity. Now they are again reassured. I am allowed to work alone in my ninth-floor office with the window open. The polls show Romney pulling ahead even in battleground states after he demonstrated in debate last week that we need something more than a ceremonial president in the White House. It is a dangerous world that we live in.
President Barack Obama looked great at most official functions. But beginning with Ron Suskind's fine book, Confidence Men, and continuing on to Bob Woodward's recentThe Price of Politics, it has been increasingly apparent that this president does not sit through meetings -- even national security briefings! -- does not know how to make or implement policy, and much prefers to gabble on and on, preferably with the assistance of a Teleprompter. And to think the official party line on Obama has been that he is eloquent. I think the wind came out of that legend when in debate the other night Romney said, "Look, I've been in business for 25 years. I have no idea what you're talking about." All true blue Obama fans -- and even I --expected the President to come back with any one of a half-dozen witty zingers. How about a rude reference to Bain Capital? Yet Obama looked glassy-eyed and the ref, Jim Lehrer, stepped in. Moreover, Obama continued to be wobbly and evasive in response to Romney's challenges. Some Obama fans blamed the ref, though if not for him Obama could have suffered bodily injury.
After nearly four years in the White House our ceremonial President is presiding over the weakest recovery of modern times. He presides over low growth, high unemployment, and trillion dollar deficits every year of his presidency. All he is offering the electorate in the next four years is more of the same. Jimmy Carter could not get reelected with such a shaky strategy, and neither will Obama. Furthermore, last month his foreign policy wentpoof right in front of him. His nonsense about leading from behind, deferring to international organizations, and paying obeisance to Arab militants has been seen for what it is, a warrant for invading our diplomatic installations in foreign lands. In Libya the animals slaughtered our ambassador, and the evidence is clear, to wit, the ambassador was seeking more security at the time of his death and being rebuffed. Remember Benghazi!
The debate last week was a classic. Romney put together the finest showing of any presidential candidate in the history of televised debates. He did it in speaking of his record and in speaking of Obama's record. Yet he did something more. James Rosen of Fox News noticed it and remarked lapidarily: Romney "delivered one of the great defenses of the free market ever given to an audience of this size. Obama seemed intimidated and adrift with the material. His constructions were lengthy and complex, whereas Romney's were clear and commanding and fluid. Even if Romney loses on November 6, this still goes down as an epic electronic-age primer on various models of economics that Ronald Reagan couldn't even deliver; and Milton Friedman never addressed an audience of this size. At all points, Romney returned to the theme of competition as a driver of reduced costs and improved quality." And Rosen concluded: "Romney also delivered the sharpest elbow of the night, with the reference to Obama's campaign contributors: the closest thing to the pressing of a charge of corruption."
Now let me make a prediction. Romney will not lose on November 6. Obama will continue to perform wretchedly in debate. He is not going to do better. What you saw last week was the essential Barack Obama, community organizer, part-time senator.

Ben Stein's Diary

Ben Stein's Diary
It's Later Than Any Dare Think By Ben Stein
When republics fall, it's not always slow.
Sunday Let's start with a few facts. A man made a cheesy movie about the being that Muslims call the Prophet Mohammed. That man has a criminal record and seems to be a marginal character, at best. But that man is an American. He is operating in America. He has the full protection of the Constitution, including freedom of expression. So he is supposed to be allowed to say whatever he likes barring libel of living persons and exposure of state secrets. The man made the movie some months ago and nothing happened about it. Now, Muslim radicals have gotten their marching orders from al Qaeda or whomever. They are rioting all over the Muslim world. As we all know, a super well-armed group of them murdered the U.S. Ambassador to Libya a few days ago, using that old movie as an excuse. So, here we have it in a nutshell: murdering innocent people is a crime as we view it in this country. Making a movie is not a crime. We start with that...
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The Problem With Obama's Polls

The Problem With Obama's Polls

By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. on 9.13.12 @ 6:09AM

Do not let them fool you. Previous Democrats led by more and still lost.

WASHINGTON -- Nuts. The Democratic National Convention is over. Watching Bill Clinton, Jean-François Kerry, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and all the other preposterosities -- not least being the widely under-depreciated Sandra Fluke -- I fell under a spell. I thought the convention would go on forever. There would be no need for horror movies, action movies, X-Treme sports, cockfights, or soap operas. I could enjoy them all in the comfort of my own home. All provided by the Democratic National Committee, safely watched over by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department and probably select units of the North Carolina National Guard. Yet the convention ended, and now comes the surprise. President Obama actually received a bump in the polls, a modest but a bump.
CNN was up 6 points. Gallup was up 5 points. ABC News/Washington Post was up 1, and so it went until I came across something called SurveyUSA/Civitas. That poll had Mitt Romney up by 10 points, but I do not know who they were polling or why? Possibly they were pulling our leg.
Remember, these polls came after the Democrats in convention assembled voted against mentioning God in their sacred document. Oh, sure, on the third voice vote the mayor of Los Angeles, standing rather unwillingly at the podium, gave the vote to God, but we all heard the vote. God lost. And there was the bloody business about Jerusalem. The Democrats want Israel's capital elsewhere. Where I wonder. Finally, there was the Democrats' contrived controversy about a procedure that has been uncontroversial among Americans since the 1960s, birth control! Do the Democrats really believe that Romney is going to deny them their birth control devices, even colored condoms? Those devices are the Republicans' one foolproof way to ensure suppression of the Democratic vote. It is even more effective than returning illegal aliens to their home country.
Frankly, the Democrats who came to Charlotte were about the most unsightly mob observable in these United States in years. Any breadline in the 1930s would have appeared more well dressed, and certainly its members would be more representative of mainstream America. Only an occasional group of Occupiers could have outdone the Charlotte Democrats in sartorial splendor, and most of them are certifiably deranged.
Yet in the end the President got his bump, and it came a day or so after the Friday economic news came, all of it highly unfavorable to him: job creation, down from July; Americans seeking jobs, down from July, the percentage of Americans working or seeking work, down to a 30-year low. As for foreign policy, while Mr. Obama was wowing the gullible last week with his listless poetry the Chinese and the Russians were snubbing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on her Syrian initiative.
Do not let these polls fool you. In 1980 similar polls showed Jimmy Carter leading the Old Cowboy almost to the very end. Carter was ahead of Governor Ronald Reagan by 4 points in late September, by 8 points in October, and the Gallup polls had him ahead of Reagan by 6 points in last days of the election. Reagan won by 9 points, sweeping 44 states. In 1988 Governor Dukakis at one point led Vice President George H. W. Bush by 17 points. He lost by almost 8 points.
How to explain it I cannot say with certainty. Some evidence suggests that the pollsters poll a higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans. Moreover, a recent poll from the Pew Research Center is suggestive. The electorate is growing impatient with pollsters calling them for their views on everything from deodorants to odors. According to Pew, "the response rate of a typical telephone [political] survey was 36% in 1997 and is just 9% today." My suspicion is that political polling has not been reliable for years. Increasingly those who sit down with the pollster are politically committed respondents.
So here is yet more evidence of the Taranto Principle. Just as the media give Democrats the impression they are in the majority so do the great polling organizations. So keep it up, Mr. President: no to God, no to Jerusalem, and whatever message you want to send out about birth control. Your foreign policy is a masterpiece, especially in the Arab world. Your economy, well it is still Bush's economy.