Like Slimey Cockroaches & their crooked President, Liberals Spread Disease

[Warph]

                 

Just Open Up Your Eyes And Look - 65 Signs That The Economic Collapse Is Already Happening

Do you want to know when the "economic collapse" is going to happen?  Just open up your eyes and take a look.  The "economic collapse" is already happening all around us.  So many people talk about the coming economic collapse as if it is some massively hyped event that they will be able to point to on the calendar, and a lot of writers spend a lot of time speculating about exactly when it will happen.  But as I have written about before, the economic collapse is not a single event.  The economic collapse has been happening, it is happening right now, and it will be getting a lot worse.  Yes, there will be moments of great crisis. 

We saw one of those "waves" back in 2008 and another "wave" is rapidly approaching.  But all of the waves are part of a process that is continually unfolding.  Over the past 40 years, the United States and Europe have piled up the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and now a tremendous amount of pain is heading our way.  Economic conditions in the United States and Europe have already deteriorated badly and they are going to continue to deteriorate.  Nothing is going to stop what is coming.

But many people are still in denial about our economic decline.  Some people still believe that everything is going to be just fine.  Way too often I get comments on my site that go something like this....

"I just don't know what you are talking about.  Where I live everything is just fine.  The malls are packed, the restaurants are full and everybody I know is going on vacation this summer.  Personally, I am doing great.  I just bought a 60 inch television and a new boat.  Every year all the 'doom and gloom' types such as yourself proclaim that an economic collapse is right around the corner but it never happens.  And you know what?  It is not going to happen.  Those in charge know what they are doing and America has the greatest economy on earth.  We have overcome challenges before and we will be able to handle whatever comes this time.  Your lack of faith in America and in the American people astounds me.  Everything is going to be just fine, so why don't you just *************************************."

You get the idea.

I definitely understand that most Americans are terribly self-involved these days, but when I read comments like this I am once again amazed at just how delusional some people can be.

Why can't people just open their eyes and look at the evidence of economic collapse that is all around us?

Yes, there are wealthy enclaves all over the country where things may seem better than ever, but that is not the reality for most Americans.

All over the country, our infrastructure is in shambles.

All over the country, our once proud cities are being transformed into hellholes.

All over the country, formerly middle class families are living in their cars.

There are dozens and dozens of economic statistics that clearly show that we are in the midst of a long-term economic decline.  I have listed 65 of them below, but I could have easily doubled or tripled the size of the list.

I simply do not understand how anyone can believe that things are "great" or that the U.S. economy is going to be "just fine".

We are living through a complete and total economic nightmare, and hopefully we can get more Americans to wake up from their entertainment-induced comas so that they can begin to understand exactly what is happening to this country.

The following are 65 signs that the economic collapse is already happening all around us....


1. Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the number of long-term unemployed Americans has doubled from 2.7 million to 5.4 million.

2. The average duration of unemployment in the United States is nearly three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.

3. The unemployment rate in the U.S. has been above 8 percent for 40 months in a row, and 42 percent of all unemployed Americans have been out of work for at least half a year.

4. Unemployment in the eurozone has hit another brand new record high.  It is now sitting at 11.2 percent.  It has risen for 14 months in a row.

5. The U.S. economy lost more than 220,000 small businesses during the recent recession.

6. The percentage of Americans that are self-employed fell by more than 20 percent between 1991 and 2010.

7. Overall, the number of "new entrepreneurs and business owners" dropped by a staggering 53 percent between 1977 and 2010.

8. The unemployment rate in Spain is now up to 24.6 percent.

9. Morgan Stanley is projecting that the unemployment rate in Greece will exceed 25 percent in 2013.

10. Since Barack Obama became president, the price of a gallon of gasoline has risen from $1.85 to $3.49.

11. The average American household spent approximately $4,155 on gasoline during 2011, and electricity bills in the U.S. have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

12. About three times as many new homes were sold in the United States in 2005 as will be sold in 2012.

13. While Barack Obama has been in the White House, home values in the United States have declined by 12 percent.

14. According to AARP, 600,000 American homeowners that are 50 years of age or older are currently in foreclosure.

15. Right now there are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing.  That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.

16. According to Gallup, the current level of homeownership in the United States is the lowest that they have ever measured.

17. Federal housing assistance increased by a whopping 42 percent between 2006 and 2010.

18. In some areas of Detroit, Michigan you can buy a three bedroom home for just $500.

19. All around us our cities are crumbling.  According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, 2.2 trillion dollars is needed just to repair critical infrastructure in the United States.

20. The unemployment rate in New York City is now back up to 10 percent.  That equals the peak unemployment rate in New York City during the last recession.

21. Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.  Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

22. The U.S. Postal Service is about to default on a 5.5 billion dollar payment for future retiree health benefits.

23. According to Graham Summers, "when we account for all the backdoor schemes Germany has engaged in to prop up the EU, Germany's REAL Debt to GDP is closer to 300%."

24. According to the Federal Reserve, the median net worth of families in the United States declined "from $126,400 in 2007 to $77,300 in 2010".

25. The U.S. trade deficit with China during 2011 was 28 times larger than it was back in 1990.

26. The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

27. During 2010 alone, an average of 23 manufacturing facilities permanently shut down in the United States every single day.

28. The U.S. government says that the number of Americans "not in the labor force" rose by 17.9 million between 2000 and 2011.  During the entire decade of the 1980s, the number of Americans "not in the labor force" rose by only 1.7 million.

29. Eight million Americans have "left the labor force" since the recession supposedly ended.  If those Americans were added back into the unemployment figures, the unemployment rate would be somewhere up around 12 percent.

30. Approximately 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed last year.

31. At this point, one out of every four American workers has a job that pays $10 an hour or less.  If that sounds like a high figure, that is because it is.  Today, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.

32. Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs.  Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

33. According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 declined by 27 percent after you account for inflation.

34. In 2007, the unemployment rate for the 20 to 29 age bracket was about 6.5 percent.  Today, the unemployment rate for that same age group is about 13 percent.

35. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, health care costs accounted for just 9.5% of all personal consumption back in 1980.  Today they account for approximately 16.3%.

36. Medicare spending increased by 138 percent between 1999 and 2010.

37. Over the next 75 years, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars.  That comes to $328,404 for each and every household in the United States.

38. Back in 1990, the federal government accounted for 32 percent of all health care spending in America.  Today, that figure is up to 45 percent and it is projected to surpass 50 percent very shortly.

39. Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid.  Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid, and things are about to get a whole lot worse.  It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

40. Since 2008, the U.S. economy has lost 1.3 million jobs while at the same time 3.6 million more Americans have been added to Social Security's disability insurance program.

41. Since Barack Obama entered the White House, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen by 6.4 million.

42. The number of Americans on food stamps has risen from 32 million to 46 million since Barack Obama became president.

43. Right now the poverty rate for children living in the United States is 22 percent, and approximately one-fourth of all American children are enrolled in the food stamp program at this point.

44. The number of children living in poverty in the state of California has increased by 30 percent since 2007.

45. Child homelessness in the United States has risen by 33 percent since 2007.

46. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 36.4 percent of all children that live in Philadelphia are living in poverty, 40.1 percent of all children that live in Atlanta are living in poverty, 52.6 percent of all children that live in Cleveland are living in poverty and 53.6 percent of all children that live in Detroit are living in poverty.

47. Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be either "low income" or impoverished.

48. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans living in "extreme poverty" is now sitting at an all-time high.

49. In the United States today, somewhere around 100 million Americans are considered to be either "poor" or "near poor".

50. It is now being projected that about half of all American adults will spend at least some time living below the poverty line before they turn 65.

51. Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.

52. Total consumer debt in the United States has risen by 1700 percent since 1971.

53. Recently it was announced that total student loan debt in the United States has passed the one trillion dollar mark.

54. According to one recent survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time at this point.

55. In 1983, the bottom 95 percent of all income earners in the United States had 62 cents of debt for ever dollar that they earned.  Today, the bottom 95 percent of all income earners in the United States have $1.48 of debt for every dollar that they earn.

56. The United States was once ranked #1 in the world in GDP per capita.  Today we have slipped to #12.

57. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives benefits from the federal government.  Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.

58. Incredibly, 37 percent of all U.S. households that are led by someone under the age of 35 have a net worth of zero or less than zero.

59. Today there are approximately 25 million American adults that are living with their parents.

60. The U.S. dollar has lost more than 96 percent of its value since 1900.  You can thank the Federal Reserve system for that.

61. During the Obama administration, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that Bill Clinton took office.

62. Overall, the U.S. national debt has grown by nearly 10 trillion dollars over the past decade.

63. The U.S. national debt is now more than 22 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.

64. 40 years ago the total amount of debt in America (government, business and consumer) was less than 2 trillion dollars.  Today it is nearly 55 trillion dollars.

65. As Financial Armageddon recently point out, so many homeless people are pooping on the escalators at San Francisco's Civic Center Station at night that the escalators are breaking down and repair teams have been called in to clean up the mess.  As the economy gets even worse, will scenes like this start playing out in all of our cities?

[Warph]

         

On Message: Obama Really Likes China - Again

By John Ransom
9/5/2012

I've hit Barack Obama so many times for being only partially formed person that it seems almost trite for me to bring it up again. It's not just that his personality is rather plastic, but it's also that he seems to want to conceal the real man deep inside of himself.

This duality of Obama has been so well-documented that it needs little exposition.

But over the weekend, the Big Zero made such a startling admission for one seeking the presidency for a second time that it's notable for what it reveals about Obama's true feeling and what it reveals about our country.

Speaking with a reporter in Colorado, Obama gave himself a grade of incomplete when asked to grade himself on the economy. And then, in almost an aside, he made an admission of a very different order.

While most commentators are focused on his grade, it's not his admission of the economic failure of the administration alone that disqualifies for a second term.

Rather it's his admiration for one of the most despotic, authoritarian regimes in history that should give every American pause.

"You know I would say incomplete," Obama told us about his economic performance. "Historically after these big financial crises, where a lot of people are dealing with debt or a collapse of a housing market you know that creates a bigger challenges and we're seeing this not just in the United States but around the world. I mean Europe is going through a difficult time, parts of Asia, even China [Editor's emphasis] are going through a difficult time right now."

Even China?

Nothing displays the disconnect between Obama and most of the country than the phrase "even China."

At what point did China become the measure of all things American? Or economic?

Oh, yes: It was the moment we elected a guy who thinks the American Dream is a government-sponsored sleep experiment conducted by the National Institutes of Health.

This is not the first time that Obama has mentioned China wistfully, either.

As the New York Times reported in March of 2011: "Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China. As one official put it, 'No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao's words in Tahrir Square.'"

Yeah, it would be so much easier if Obama didn't have to self-censor his comments either. That way, he could just be himself and let it all hang out. Instead he thinks things that we will likely never know.

Because the biggest problem Obama has isn't his poor handling of the economy. It's that many voters don't trust that he believes in things that historically have made America great, like industry and entrepreneurship; self-reliance and innovation.

I mean here's a guy who has dusted of the antique economic theories that were relegated to the dustbin of history in the last 25 years of the 20th Century.

"Many of the bedrock assumptions of American culture -about work, progress, fairness and optimism," writes David Leonhardt, "are being shaken. Arguably no question is more central to the country's global standing than whether the economy will perform better in the future than it has in the recent past."

And as usual Obama has the equation all wrong.

China lives- as does the rest of the world- off the engine of the American economy, not the other way around.

For the rest of us besides Obama, there really isn't much to admire about China except sheer population numbers. Their population of 1.3 billion people – 4 times the population of the US) produces a GDP that's roughly half of the output of the United States. While the growth rate of GDP in China over the last decade is certainly impressive, it's a measure of how communism mostly missed the developments of the 20th Century, rather than a spectacular feat of economics or innovation by China.

China is still a country where mass arrests happen and forced labor is a punishment meted out for political dissent.

And unlike Obama, I believe that China faces a reckoning because of the rapid transformation that is taking place in the country. No country can take the great leap forward that China is trying without a certain amount of dislocation. And in a society where freedom is hampered as severely as is the case behind the bamboo curtain that dislocation will come with all the warning of an earthquake and many times the force.

We, in the United States, used to know these things about the wages of tyranny and freedom.

Imagine if Harry Truman had said: Sure, things are tough in the United States, but even the Chinese are struggling?

Every time Obama steps from behind the protection of his teleprompter shield and reveals what's really on his mind, we find a man not in sympathy with his times

But the applause of the ruling elite that rings in Obama's ears when he says such foolish things however is of more moment.

One day we shall be rid of this president- by term-limit, if not election. But the attitudes of our new nobles will be much, much harder to shake.[/b]

[Warph]

Obama's (Un)American Auto Bailout

By Michelle Malkin
9/5/2012

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Cue "Fanfare for the Common Man" and rev up the Government Motors engines. Wednesday is Great American Auto Bailout Day at the Democratic National Convention. Party propagandists have prepared a prime-time-ready film touting the "rescue's" benefits for American workers. UAW President Bob King will sing the savior-in-chief's praises.

But like all of the economic success stories manufactured by the White House, the $85 billion government handout is a big fat farce.

"I said I believe in American workers, I believe in this American industry, and now the American auto industry has come roaring back," Obama bragged on the campaign trail. Here's the inconvenient story they won't tell you:

GM is once again flirting with bankruptcy despite massive government purchases propping up its sales figures. GM stock is rock-bottom. Losses continue to be revised in the wrong direction. According to The Detroit News, "The Treasury Department says in a new report the government expects to lose more than $25 billion on the $85 billion auto bailout. That's 15 percent higher than its previous forecast."

The claims that GM paid back its taxpayer-funded loans "in full" -- a story peddled in campaign ads narrated by Hollywood actor Tom Hanks -- were debunked by the Treasury Department's TARP watchdog this summer. GM still owes nearly $30 billion of the $50 billion it received, and its lending arm still owes nearly $15 billion of the more than $17 billion it received. Bailout watchdog Mark Modica of the National Legal and Policy Center adds: "In addition to U.S. taxpayers anteing up, Canada put in over $10 billion, and GM was relieved of about $28 billion of bondholder obligations as UAW claims were protected. That's an improvement of almost $90 billion to the balance sheet, and the company still lags the competition."

While the Obama administration wraps the auto bailout in red, white and blue, it's foreign workers and overseas plants that are reaping redistributive rewards.

GM has increased its manufacturing capacity in China by an estimated 55 percent after the bailout, according to industry watchers. GM's Dan Akerson crowed at the Beijing auto show earlier this year: "One of our aims is to help grow a new generation of automotive engineers, designers and leaders right here in China." The U.S. auto giant's ventures with the Communist regime include Shanghai OnStar Telematics Co., Ltd.; GM China Advanced Technical Center; FAW-GM Light Duty Commercial Vehicle Co., Ltd., in Harbin, Heilongjiang; FAW-GM's Changchun plant in Changchun, Jilin; FAW-GM Hongta Yunnan Automobile Manufacturing Co., Ltd., in Qujing, Yunnan; and Shanghai Chengxin Used Car Operation and Management Co., Ltd.

In Europe, the UAW's appointee to the Government Motors Board of Directors, Steve Girsky, recklessly pushed the feds to hold onto GM's failing German-based Opel AG. The Great American Auto Bailout has been subsidizing this hemorrhaging enterprise while Obama failed to deliver on his 2008 campaign promise to salvage plants like the one in GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan's hometown of Janesville, Wis. According to Forbes magazine, "GM Europe, comprised mostly of Opel and its sister brand, Vauxhall, lost $617 million in the first half of 2012, on top of a $747 million loss in 2011 and a $1.8 billion loss in 2010. In all, GM has lost almost $17 billion in Europe since 1999."

While Team Obama lambastes GOP rival Mitt Romney for outsourcing, Government Motors is now planning to invest $1 billion over the next five years -- not in America, but in Russia. That's on top of $7 billion total in China, close to $1 billion in Mexico, and $600 million for a shirt sponsorship deal with Manchester United, the British soccer club.

The DNC will put a rank-and-file U.S. autoworker on stage to back up Big Labor's cheerleading of the deal. Rest assured, this human shield will not tell viewers how Obama and the union bosses colluded to pervert bankruptcy law and shaft some 20,000 nonunion Delphi auto parts workers. The forgotten victims saw their pensions erode by up to 70 percent; their health benefits disappeared. The first lady is radio silent. Obama consigliere Valerie Jarrett ducked questions about the Delphi injustice from The Washington Times here in Charlotte.

Only in a fantasyland where America has 57 states, "JOBS" is a three-letter word and bailouts are "achievements" does Obama's rescue math add up. "Now I want to do the same thing with manufacturing jobs, not just in the auto industry, but in every industry," Obama vows.

God help the American worker.

[Warph]

             

'Bait and Switch' Taxes

By Thomas Sowell
9/5/2012


We have heard many times from President Barack Obama how he plans to raise taxes on "millionaires and billionaires," but not on the middle class. Apparently, if you don't happen to be a millionaire or billionaire, you don't have to worry.

But the numbers say otherwise -- and say so big time.

The actual tax increase plans being proposed by Obama do not start with people who have an income of a million dollars a year. They start with people with incomes of $250,000 and up.

That is more than most people make, but it is far short of a million dollars, and miles away from a billion dollars. How many of the people who stand to get hit with Obama's higher tax rate plan are in fact either millionaires or billionaires?

According to the Internal Revenue Service, there are more than 2,700,000 people who earn $250,000 a year or more -- and fewer than one-tenth of them earn a million dollars or more. So more than nine-tenths of the people who would be hit with the higher taxes supposedly aimed at "millionaires and billionaires" are neither.

When businesses advertise one thing and then actually sell something else, that is called "bait and switch" advertising. That is exactly what President Obama is doing with his proposed tax increases on "millionaires and billionaires."

It gets worse when you look at the potential economic consequences of the tax rate increases being proposed. The small proportion of the people targeted for Obama's higher tax rates who are in fact millionaires and billionaires have the least likelihood of actually paying the higher tax rates.

People with annual incomes in the millions or billions of dollars can live pretty high on the hog on a fraction of their income, leaving them with plenty of money to invest. And they can invest it in ways that keep it away from the tax collectors. In addition to tax-exempt bonds, they can invest in other countries that have lower tax rates.

Hard facts show this happening as far back as we have had a federal income tax.

The Constitution of the United States had to be amended in 1913 to permit the federal government to collect income taxes. Almost immediately, very high tax rates on people with very high incomes led to their taking steps to avoid paying those taxes.

In 1920, Secretary of the Treasury David Franklin Houston in the Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson pointed out that the taxable income of people with incomes of $300,000 and up had been more than cut in half, just from 1916 to 1918. He did not believe that this was because the rich were becoming poorer but "almost certainly through investment by the richer taxpayers in tax-exempt properties."

President Woodrow Wilson himself urged Congress to reconsider whether very high tax rates are in fact "productive of revenue" to the government. He said that, beyond some point, "high rates of income and profits taxes discourage energy, remove the incentive to new enterprise, encourage extravagant expenditures, and produce industrial stagnation with consequent unemployment and other attendant evils." That sounds a lot like where we are today.

Both Democratic and Republican presidents once warned that high tax rates can reduce economic growth. And Secretaries of the Treasury under both Democratic and Republican administrations once pointed out that higher tax rates do not necessarily bring in more tax revenues than lower tax rates. Yet this lesson from more than 90 years ago has still not been learned by those who advocate higher taxes on "the rich" as the answer to our fiscal problems.

In today's global economy, it is even easier for genuine millionaires and billionaires to escape high tax rates by investing in other countries. Not so for the other nine-tenths of the people hit with higher tax rates, such as small business owners or independent professionals such as dentists or realtors, whose sources of income are necessarily local.

Those hardest hit by high tax rates that drive jobs overseas are likely to be those who are unemployed and need jobs here. Ironically, millionaires and billionaires may have the least to lose from higher tax rates on "the rich." But Barack Obama has the most to gain from class warfare rhetoric that wins votes from gullible people.

[Warph]

                                  

The DNC's Bold Lies

By Jeffrey Lord on 9.4.12 @ 6:09AM

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/09/04/the-dncs-bold-lies

DNC website caught lying about party's civil rights record: Wasserman Schultz, Virginia Senate nominee Kaine involved.

The lies are big, bold and prominent.

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has been caught. And the website scandal may also impact the Virginia U.S. Senate race that has former Governor Tim Kaine as the Democrats' nominee against ex-Senator and Governor George Allen. Why?

As reported in all manner of media outlets in September of 2010 (here at the Huffington Post, here on The Today Show and here in a 25-minute presentation at George Washington University posted on YouTube) it was then-DNC Chairman Kaine on whose watch the new DNC website was launched.

Now the fibs are the centerpiece of the Democratic National Committee's revamped Obama-saluting website as the Democrats gather for their Charlotte convention. And Wasserman Schultz, of course, is the DNC chair -- succeeding Kaine --by the grace of the Obama White House. Which certainly had the ability to block or change the contents -- and hasn't.

What are the lies?

Lie Number One: Check the "Our History" section, found here of the DNC's website. See it? The history section -- now written to reflect the history of the Obama administration -- begins with this breathtakingly bold lie:

For more than 200 years, our party has led the fight for civil rights.....

Lie Number Two: Then check here to see the DNC's "Issues" section on civil rights. That section begins with a second bold lie. This one:

Democrats have a long and proud history of defending Civil Rights and expanding opportunity for all Americans.

The DNC website in both its history and issues sections is literally wiped clean of any reference that this is the party that spent platform after platform after platform building a culture of racism.

Playing the race card, as it is politely called today.
There is zero indication on the revamped DNC website that not only are those first lines in each section blatant untruths, but that in those "more than 200 years" the party was a ferocious supporter of every race-judging idea imaginable, including slavery, segregation, and lynching.

Kaine even agreed to a short video version that begins by briefly saying:

Democrats are the party of Jefferson, who declared that we are all created equal. And we worked long and hard to make that real.

The video immediately skips from Jefferson -- to the 1900s.

Hmmmm. What might have happened between the time Jefferson left the White House in 1809 -- and the time the video picks up -- in 1920?

Specifically, neither the new history and issues sections of the Obama-controlled, Wasserman-Schultz-run DNC website, not to mention the video, ever whispers a hint that the Democrats:

Supported slavery in 6 platforms from 1840-1860.

Opposed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution that successively wiped out slavery and gave both legal rights and voting rights to black Americans.

Supported segregation actively or by silence in 20 platforms from 1868-1948.

Opposed anti-lynching laws, specifically supported by the GOP in four platforms between 1912 and 1928.

Opposed the GOP-sponsored Civil Rights Acts of 1866, which focused on legal equality for blacks.

Opposed the GOP on giving voting rights to blacks in the District of Columbia in 1867. The legislation was passed over the Democrats' objection.

Nominated an 1868 presidential ticket of New York Governor Horatio Seymour and ex-Missouri Congressman Francis Blair. The Democrats pledged they would declare the Civil Rights laws passed by the GOP "null and void" and would refuse to enforce them. They lost to Ulysses Grant.

Opposed the Enforcement Acts, three laws passed by the GOP between 1870 and 1871 targeting the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and making it a federal crime to block the right of blacks to vote, hold office, serve on juries and have equal protection of the laws with whites.

Opposed the GOP Civil Rights Act of 1875, which prohibited discrimination of blacks in public accommodations.

Used the Ku Klux Klan as what Columbia University historian Eric Foner calls "a military force serving the interests of the Democratic Party." Nor is there reference to University of North Carolina historian Allen Trelease's description of the Klan as the "terrorist arm of the Democratic Party." Nor is there mention of the infamous 1924 Democratic Convention -- the "Klanbake" as it is known to history because hundreds of the delegates were Klan members. The Klan-written platform mixed the traditional Democratic message of progressivism and racism in the Klan-written platform.

Repealed the Civil Rights laws enacted by GOP Congresses and presidents, already damaged by the Supreme Court. When Democrats gained control of both Congress and the White House in 1892, the Democrats' President Grover Cleveland signed the repeal on February 8, 1894.


None of this stark, vicious and frequently violent racial history, much of it detailed in Bruce Bartlett's Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past, is mentioned on the new website.

There is no polite way to put it. This DNC website presentation is a lie. A deliberate, willful and very big lie. Hiding from the young, the innocent and the unwary the cold, hard and true facts of the Democratic Party's horrific racial history.

As we noted in this space four years ago when the Democrats were preparing to nominate then-Senator Obama, America's liberal party was ruthless then when it came to concealing the long, ghastly tale of their culture of racism.

Here's the party's history section as preserved on their website in 2008. Alas for the DNC, this fancy-tale is still findable on the web here.

As we wrote at the time, the 2008 party history skips neatly from pre-Civil War 1848 and picks up again when "the 19th Century came to a close." Effectively skipping all the history noted above. This is the same formula adopted by the 2010 video, except the video moves the clock further back to Jefferson's presidency before performing the same trick of skipping to the dawn of the 20th century.

The party made another version of this same lie when redoing their website for 2010, saying, as captured by the Romantic Poet's Weblog:

"Democrats are unwavering in our support of equal opportunity for all Americans. That's why we've worked to pass every one of our nation's Civil Rights laws...."

Now.

Given the sheer boldness of the lie -- literally akin to writing a history of Germany that ends in 1933 and resumes in 1946, neatly skipping those historic trivialities of Adolf Hitler, the Nazis, and the mass murder of six million Jews (not to mention that small skirmish called World War II) -- why is there any surprise, any surprise at all, at the recent repeated surfacing of the culture of racism -- judging others by skin color -- by Obama media allies and politicians?

This cultural rot has been the backbone of American liberalism and its political party the Democrats -- for 212 years.

No wonder the DNC feels it has to lie.

[Warph]

Obama takes us backward in the worst speech of his career
By: John Hayward
9/7/2012 09:23 AM


The Democratic National Convention was such a tedious flop that the third night was all reruns. It was like watching a "clip show" episode of an old sitcom.

Yet another failed governor, Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, rolled onstage to yell class-warfare bromides at the audience. Like every other befuddled Democrat speaker, Granholm appears to be under the mistaken impression that General Motors did not go bankrupt, and that our $30 billion taxpayer loss was actually some sort of profitable investment. The combined ignorance and dishonesty of these people explains a lot about our current economic malaise.

Then Joe Biden clumsily ran through all the old talking points one last time – the baby-talk "4.5 million jobs created" nonsense Democrats get by simply omitting the first two years of the Obama presidency, MediScare lies, the "equal pay" obsession, the financial crisis that Democrats are really happy you don't remember their role in creating, the boundless compassion that would erase Obama's failures if his unworthy subjects weren't such bitter clingers, the cobwebbed line about "bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive," outsourcing lies, a relatively oblique reference to abortion, and of course Blame Bush. Once again, illegal aliens were casually conflated with legal immigrants, an insult Democrats never tire of flinging at legal immigrants.

Of course, Joe Biden is an buffoon, so he had to pepper his speech with improvised abuses of the word "literally" to show how sincere he was, and he very awkwardly dragged in the phrase "fallen angels" to describe American soldiers killed in action. But don't let his clownish buffoonery make you forget what a vicious partisan attack dog Biden is. Last night, he selectively edited a quote from Mitt Romney to make it sound like Romney didn't want to track down Osama bin Laden, claimed Republicans are talking about job training and college education when they refer to "dependency," and shamelessly lied about Romney wanting to raise middle-class taxes so he could give rich folks a tax cut.

Then we got to Obama, whose much-repeated claims of burning patriotic fervor were difficult to square with inviting a man who once compared American soldiers with Nazis to introduce him. And there isn't really much to say about Obama's flaccid speech, because you've heard it all before. To borrow a Bidenism, it was literally scotch-taped together from his stump speeches and 2008 campaign promises – an open, somewhat embarrassing play for nostalgia, inviting the audience to remember how swell they felt when voting for Hope and Change four years ago.

Bill Clinton used his speech to say that Obama's 2008 promises were unrealistic, and no one could possibly have delivered them. 24 hours later, Obama took the stage to make the same promises all over again.

But you can trust him this time! And remember, if he should win re-election and you hold any of these promises against him in 2016, you'll get the same treatment Paul Ryan got when he made the mistake of taking Obama's promises in Janesville, Wisconsin seriously.

The President who promised us 5 percent unemployment if he got his trillion-dollar stimulus, and warned of 6 percent unemployment without it, once again asked us to forget the last four years and believe his projections will be accurate this time. He promised more "green jobs," which is almost gut-bustingly funny to anyone familiar with the string of firecracker bankruptcies his previous "green jobs" boondoggles have become. A sad and desperate attempt to latch onto Bill Clinton's faded glory from the 1990s was made, as Barack Obama – who once assured us he understood that "you don't raise taxes in a recession" – promised us that jacking up taxes would somehow bring back the 90s tech bubble. Obama actually felt it necessary to remind the audience that "I'm no longer just a candidate, I'm the President" – a matter that might actually be in doubt among the Democrat faithful, if they've been taking Obama's endless whining about the enduring power of George Bush seriously.

Obama even had the nerve to put on his tattered "deficit hawk" costume for a while... in a speech where the man who piled more debt on America than most of his predecessors combined threw out programs that must add up to at least another trillion dollars in spending, while claiming that balancing the budget depends on a tax increase that might bring a quarter of that sum, at best.

And yes, Obama still wants more money for "infrastructure." His fingernails-on-a-blackboard portrayal of America as a Third World country in need of rebuilding, "nation-building at home," was back. No, you're not allowed to ask what happened to all that "stimulus" money. One of the few changes in this speech from the past few years of Obama rhetoric is that he conspicuously avoided talk of high-speed rail. That might have been the only sign of Obama's awareness that he's running out of other people's money to spend. Curiously, he didn't have much to say about his "signature achievement" ObamaCare, either.

You will search this speech in vain for any acknowledgement of error, any sense that Barack Obama understands what he has done wrong, or indeed has the faintest clue why his economy teeters on the edge of recession. We just have to try his failed ideas a little harder, with a fresh infusion of cash, and they'll suddenly start working. And if you want to scale back his irresponsible spending – why, you want to "gut education," and let companies release "toxic pollution into the air your children breathe." As always, the bloated bureaucracies and billion-dollar crony deals are hidden behind teachers, cops, firefighters, and children.

"Over and over, we have been told by our opponents that bigger tax cuts and fewer regulations are the only way; that since government can't do everything, it should do almost nothing," said Obama. That's the second-most important line of his speech, because it's the absurd reduction of his entire campaign. It's either unlimited debt and huge tax increases to fuel a massive regulatory state and enrich Obama's top contributors, or anarchy in the streets. Does any rational person look at the Romney-Ryan platform and believe, even with a dash of hyperbole, that it amounts to a government that does "almost nothing?" Obama expects his voters to swallow a very high dosage of absurdity. It's interesting that he literally cannot make his case without resorting to such nonsense.

BO-RAT OBUMA

The first most important line of the Obama speech was this odious defense of Big Government's tender sensibilities: "We don't think government can solve all our problems. But we don't think that government is the source of all our problems – any more than are http://www.toonpool.com/user/496/files/shovel_ready_jobs_494165.jpg, or corporations, or unions, or immigrants, or gays, or any other group we're told to blame for our troubles. Because we understand that this democracy is ours."

That's another way of restating the theme of the campaign video embarrassed Democrats were racing to disavow on Tuesday: Government is the only thing we all belong to. It's the Rousseau ideal of "general will" that has provided the moral foundation for every bloated bureaucracy and totalitarian nightmare of the past century: the State is the avatar of our collective will, acting with our unimpeachable combined moral authority. Question the State and you're attacking immigrants and gays.

And I know that Obama's speech is no place for logic or memory, but I'd like to ask two questions of whichever bumbling scriptwriter came up with that passage:

1. Can't bad government policies logically be blamed for making our problems worse, even if government is not the original "source" of them?

2. Who, exactly, was the one blaming corporations that make ATMs and corporate jets for his problems a few months ago?
The downsized crowd stuffed into Obama's reduced speaking venue applauded at the right moments, but their overall reaction was noticeably subdued. Obama's media cheerleaders were downcast, spending much of the evening fighting the urge to blurt out that Bill Clinton's speech was a lot better. I saw an account on Twitter of reporters asking each other to brainstorm ideas for positive things they could write about the speech. When later asked if they'd enjoyed the "great convention," most of the crowd didn't cheer, so they had to be asked again.

And the next morning, we learned that another 368,000 people dropped out of the American workforce last month, bringing it to a 31-year low. Several Democrat speakers tried to sell Americans on the notion that Obama was making America better, because 168,000 jobs were created in July. Well, only 96,000 were added in August – a horrifying crash that will be very difficult to blame on George Bush. (And the July number got downgraded to 141,000 to boot.)

Obama gave a lousy campaign speech Thursday night, but as a farewell address, it will do.

[Warph]

         

Surprise! HHS pilot program to send 2 million poor seniors from Medicare into ... voucher programs

September 8, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/08/surprise-hhs-pilot-program-to-send-2-million-poor-seniors-from-medicare-into-voucher-programs/

I know that every campaign promise Barack Obama makes has an expiration date ... but this is ridiculous. The confetti is barely off the floor at the Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, North Carolina after Obama's acceptance speech, and already we find out that he's flip-flopped. Remember this part of the speech, in which he attacks the Paul Ryan plan to apply free-market reform and cost controls to Medicare?

Obama: "And I will — I will never turn Medicare into a voucher."

No American should ever have to spend their golden years at the mercy of insurance companies. They should retire with the care and the dignity they have earned. Yes, we will reform and strengthen Medicare for the long haul, but we'll do it by reducing the cost of health care, not by asking seniors to pay thousands of dollars more. And we will keep the promise of Social Security by taking the responsible steps to strengthen it, not by turning it over to Wall Street.
Expiration date — the very next day:

In his convention speech in Charlotte, President Obama vowed to block the Republican Medicare reform plan because "no American should ever have to spend their golden years at the mercy of insurance companies."

But back in Washington, his Health and Human Services Department is launching a pilot program that would shift up to 2 million of the poorest and most-vulnerable seniors out of the federal Medicare program and into private health insurance plans overseen by the states.

The administration has accepted applications from 18 states to participate in the program, which would give states money to purchase managed-care plans for people who are either disabled or poor enough to qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid. HHS approved the first state plan, one for Massachusetts, last month.

Bear in mind that Ryan's plan made the vouchers optional; seniors could choose the traditional government-run Medicare plan or opt for a private insurance plan from a federal exchange of approved insurers. Ryan also allows all seniors to choose, and didn't force the poorest seniors to take the voucher option. Not only will Obama push just the poorest seniors into this plan, in some states they'd have to know to opt back in to traditional Medicare:

California is already counting on more than $500 million in budget savings from its own program this year. Most states are proposing to automatically enroll people. Those who don't want to participate would need to opt out. The Massachusetts plan includes that feature.

Talk about leaving seniors — the poorest seniors! — "at the mercy of insurance companies." And why has HHS decided to roll out this pilot program? As Paul Ryan has argued all along, the competition will drive down costs, especially given the headaches associated with government bureaucracy for dual-qualified seniors:

Potential cost savings are a big incentive for states. Patients who qualify for both federal health programs are a costly population and include many who need nursing-home care or other expensive services. About 40 percent of Medicaid's costs go toward patients who are also eligible for Medicare. Advocates of the pilot program also say it could lead to better coordination of care for patients who often struggle to navigate the two different programs.

Don't get me wrong — this sounds like a good program to test. In fact, it sounds a lot like the Medicare Advantage program that Obama gutted to pay for his Medicaid expansion in ObamaCare. It's similar to the approach Ryan wants to use to drive down costs, except that Ryan didn't propose to use the poor as guinea pigs to test it out. And he certainly didn't propose his plan quietly while hypocritically railing against private insurance and Wall Street just as the program got ready to start.

[Warph]

Eastwood says his convention appearance was 'mission accomplished'

By PAUL MILLER

Published: September 7, 2012

AFTER A week as topic No. 1 in American politics, former Carmel Mayor Clint Eastwood said the outpouring of criticism from left-wing reporters and liberal politicians after his appearance at the Republican National Convention last Thursday night, followed by an avalanche of support on Twitter and in the blogosphere, is all the proof anybody needs that his 12-minute discourse achieved exactly what he intended it to.

"President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," Eastwood told The Pine Cone this week. "Romney and Ryan would do a much better job running the country, and that's what everybody needs to know. I may have irritated a lot of the lefties, but I was aiming for people in the middle."

Breaking his silence
For five days after he thrilled or horrified the nation by talking to an empty chair representing Obama on the night Mitt Romney accepted the Republican nomination for president, Eastwood remained silent while pundits and critics debated whether his remarks, and the rambling way he made them, had helped or hurt Romney's chances of winning in November.

But in a wide-ranging interview with The Pine Cone Tuesday from his home in Pebble Beach, he said he had conveyed the messages he wanted to convey, and that the spontaneous nature of his presentation was intentional, too.

"I had three points I wanted to make," Eastwood said. "That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left, that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who's not doing a good job. But I didn't make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it."

Eastwood's appearance at the convention came after a personal request from Romney in August, soon after Eastwood endorsed the former Massachusetts governor at a fundraiser in Sun Valley, Idaho. But it was finalized only in the last week before the convention, along with an agreement to build suspense by keeping it secret until the last moment.

Meanwhile, Romney's campaign aides asked for details about what Eastwood would say to the convention.

"They vet most of the people, but I told them, 'You can't do that with me, because I don't know what I'm going to say,'" Eastwood recalled.

And while the Hollywood superstar has plenty of experience being adored by crowds, he said he hasn't given a lot of speeches and admitted that, "I really don't know how to." He also hates using a teleprompter, so it was settled in his mind that when he spoke to the 10,000 people in the convention hall, and the millions more watching on television, he would do it extemporaneously.

"It was supposed to be a contrast with all the scripted speeches, because I'm Joe Citizen," Eastwood said. "I'm a movie maker, but I have the same feelings as the average guy out there."

Eastwood is a liberal on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion, but he has strongly conservative opinions about the colossal national debt that has accumulated while Obama has been president, his failure to get unemployment below 6 percent, and a host of other economic issues.

"Even people on the liberal side are starting to worry about going off a fiscal cliff," Eastwood said.

Last minute decisions
But what — exactly — would he say to the Republican delegates about the $16 trillion national debt and 8.3 percent unemployment rate?

Friends and associates weren't as much help as he had hoped.

"Everybody had advice for me, except the janitor," Eastwood said.

Early Thursday morning, when Eastwood left San Jose Airport on a private jet headed for Florida, he was still making up his mind. And even with his appearance just a few hours away, all Eastwood could tell Romney's campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, and his aides, was "to reassure them that everything I would say would be nice about Mitt Romney."

It was only after a quick nap in his hotel room a few blocks from the convention site, Eastwood said, that he mapped out his remarks — starting with his observation about politics in Hollywood, then challenging the president about the failure of his economic policies, and wrapping up by telling the public "they don't have to worship politicians, like they were royalty or something."

But even then, with just an hour before he appeared on stage, it still hadn't occurred to Eastwood to use an empty chair as a stand-in for the president.

"I got to the convention site just 15 or 20 minutes before I was scheduled to go on," he said. "That was fine, because everything was very well organized."

After a quick trip through airport-style security, he was taken to a Green Room, where Archbishop Dolan of New York sought him out to say hello. Then he was taken backstage to wait for his cue. And that was when inspiration struck.

"There was a stool there, and some fella kept asking me if I wanted to sit down," Eastwood said. "When I saw the stool sitting there, it gave me the idea. I'll just put the stool out there and I'll talk to Mr. Obama and ask him why he didn't keep all of the promises he made to everybody."

He asked a stagehand to take it out to the lectern while he was being announced.

"The guy said, 'You mean you want it at the podium?' and I said, 'No, just put it right there next to it.'"

Then, with the theme song from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" as a musical introduction, and a huge picture of him as Josey Wales as the backdrop, Eastwood walked out to tremendous applause.

"The audience was super enthusiastic, and it's always great when they're with you instead of against you," he said.

'Enjoying themselves'
Speaking without any notes, Eastwood recalled the good feelings the whole nation had when Obama was elected, but said they had been dashed as the economy stayed in the doldrums despite massive stimulus spending. He decried the "stupid idea" of closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay and putting terrorists on trial in New York City, joked about Vice President Joe Biden's intellect and quizzed empty-chair Obama about what he says to people about his failed economic policies. He pretended Obama told Romney to do something "physically impossible" to himself, said it's time to elect a "stellar businessman" as president instead of a lawyer, and, as a final point, told the people, "You own this country."

When an elected official doesn't "do the job, we've got to let 'em go," he said, and the crowd ate it up.

"They really seemed to be enjoying themselves," Eastwood said.

Originally, he was told he could speak for six or seven minutes, and right before he went on, he was asked to keep it to five, but he said, "When people are applauding so much, it takes you 10 minutes to say five minutes' worth."

Also, there were no signals or cues of any kind, so "when you're out there, it's kind of hard to tell how much time is going by."

He also said he was aware he hesitated and stumbled a bit, but said "that's what happens when you don't have a written-out speech."

As he wrapped up his remarks, he was aware his presentation was "very unorthodox," but that was his intent from the beginning, even if some people weren't on board.

"They've got this crazy actor who's 82 years old up there in a suit," he said. "I was a mayor, and they're probably thinking I know how to give a speech, but even when I was mayor I never gave speeches. I gave talks."

Backstage, it was all congratulations and glad-handing, he said. And then he returned to the Green Room, where he listened to speeches by Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney. It wasn't possible for him to watch the media coverage of his presentation.

But the country was listening as the television reporters and commentators covering his speech reacted to it. And they hated it.

"I have to say, as a fan, a movie fan, this was exceedingly strange. It just seemed like a very strange, unscripted moment," said a shocked Andrea Mitchell on NBC.

"That was the weirdest thing I've ever seen at a political convention in my entire life," said Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, barely concealing the condescension in her voice.

Bob Schieffer of CBS said it was "a big mistake to put Clint Eastwood on before Mitt Romney."

On the Washington Post website, reporter Chris Cillizza wrote that "'awkward' may be the kindest term we can think of" to describe Eastwood's speech.

"He hemmed. He hawed. He mumbled. He rambled," Cillizza wrote.

And on CNN, Piers Morgan said Eastwood was "going bonkers" on the stage and said his presentation "looked like complete chaos." He pressured his guests with questions like, "Weren't you in pain while he was up there?"

But Eastwood wasn't aware of any of it, and after the speeches were over, Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, came backstage to thank him.

"They were very enthusiastic, and we were all laughing," Eastwood said.

When he went outside to his car, a large crowd cheered and chanted lines from his speech.

An overnight rebellion
Back at his hotel, Eastwood had a room service dinner and went to bed. The next morning, he got up early and went straight to the airport, still unaware that his appearance was the No. 1 political topic in the nation.

"I read the Tampa newspaper, and every article said something negative about the convention, but there wasn't much about me," Eastwood said.

He had no idea that overnight, a rebellion had erupted online against the media's condemnation of him, with thousands of bloggers, Twitterers and commentators calling him, "a genius," "1,000 times more brilliant than the media," and saying he's "only gotten better with age."

They also started posting their own versions of Eastwood's empty chair in droves ("eastwooding"), and, on YouTube, replays of his remarks at the convention were being viewed millions of times.

Even into his 80s, Eastwood has an unprecedented record of success in Hollywood, and is still making two movies a year. He's currently starring in "Trouble with the Curve," and is about to direct a remake of "A Star is Born" — things he obviously couldn't do if he were a befuddled senior citizen. To locals who know him, the idea that he is uninformed or senile is laughable.


Nevertheless, the bitter criticism has continued.

On Tuesday, Democratic Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, called Eastwood "the perfect icon of the Republican tea party: an angry old white man spewing incoherent nonsense."

Eastwood said people, including reporters, who were shocked by his remarks "are obviously on the left," and he maintained that, while many Americans didn't like the way he handled his convention appearance, millions more have something else on their minds.

"A lot of people are realizing they had the wool pulled over their eyes by Obama," Eastwood said.

[Warph]

The DNC As I Saw It

By Derek Hunter
9/9/2012


I spent this week in Camp Vagina, aka the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. I call it Camp Vagina because attendees heard more about genitals than any ideas on how to fix President Obama's broken economy. Overall, for a convention to promote a campaign with the theme of "Forward," Democrats sure spent a lot of time looking backwards.

Trying to get the audience to look backwards makes perfect sense when you consider the endless parade of parasites and degenerates who marched across the stage.

Here's a diary, of sorts, of what I saw:

Tuesday
The DNC was gaveled to order by convention Chairman Tony Villar.

You probably know him by another name – Antonio Villaraigosa, mayor of Los Angeles ... the man who, just the Friday before, told the media Republicans couldn't just trot out speakers with Hispanic sir names and expect to win Hispanic votes.

Tony knows well what's in a name, particularly an Hispanic name. He was Tony Villar, regular guy, for his entire life until he entered politics and added his wife's maiden name to his in an attempt to appeal to the large Hispanic vote in California. The story goes he added his wife's name as a sign of his love for her. He loved her so much he soon thereafter was caught in an affair with a local TV reporter. But when measured against the cast of characters the Democrats trotted out there, Villar was par for the course.

Other speakers on the night included former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid – two people almost as responsible as President Obama for the economic mess in which we find ourselves. Naturally, they were received as heroes.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel took time off from the busy job standing idle while an alarming number of shootings plague his city to come and party for the week. Were he to have an R after his name, the media would've crucified him. But he doesn't, so let the good times roll.

Lilly Ledbetter, self-appointed champion of equal pay for women, took to the stage to extoll the virtues of the Obama administration ... which pays women in the White House significantly less than male employees. The irony went both unnoticed by the crowd and unmentioned by the media.

Nancy Keenan, President of NARAL, then spoke to remind everyone of how committed Democrats are to making taxpayers cover the cost of abortions. She loves abortions. The crowd loved abortions. I half expected Keenan to call for a law mandating women get pregnant so they could be forced to have one. But the Democrats aren't there ... yet.

There was this generation's Tommy Chong, Kal Penn of Harold and Kumar fame. OK, fame might be a bit of a stretch, but he was on House. He came off like an idiot and left the national consciousness the second he was out of frame.

There was the obligatory tribute to dead Kennedys on the video screen. Not the punk band; that would've been cool ... but the womanizing band of brothers from Massachusetts. For a convention celebrating women, it made sense to pay tribute to men who slept with more of them than just about anyone but Bill Clinton.

From HBO's The Wire, Tommy Carcetti, er, I mean Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley came out to make up for admitting the Sunday before that we're not better off than we were four years ago.

Then, in an attempt to make Tony Villar look even dumber, San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro was trotted out to give a speech praising his radical, extremist mother.

Then came the main event – First Lady Michelle Obama. She told us how much she loved Barack ... as if that were justification for re-electing him. Every speaker that day – hell, every speaker every day -- regaled the crowd with "We were so poor" and "Our parents didn't have money but they loved us" stories that you'd think there was a prize for the most absurd. Michelle's involved a rusted car and how Barack was an amateur dumpster-diver but turned down the big bucks on the pro circuit to serve the community by writing two autobiographies before he was 40 ... or something.

Wednesday

The second day was marred by reality. Democrats, who the week before were treating the Republican Party platform as the Gospel According to Mitt, as if he'd personally carved every word into stone tablets, had a little trouble of their own. Liberals always have disliked God and Israel, but they were never dumb enough to put it in writing – until 2012.

Once the President Obama-approved platform was read and controversy erupted over the omissions of Israel and God, the platform became the immaculate document – written by no one.

Democrats panicked like a fat kid caught with chocolate smeared around his mouth – It wasn't me, I didn't do it!

But they did do it, and now that the world knew the truth, they had to undo it. Enter four-time failer of the California Bar Exam, Tony Villar. On order of the president, Villar called for a voice vote on amending the platform to add a mention of God and Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. When it was clear he didn't have anywhere near the two-thirds majority needed to pass the amendment, Villar did what every good Democrat does when they don't get their way – he pretended he did and declared victory.

Then it was DNC Chairwoman Debbie WashHerHair Schultz's turn to make herself look like an even bigger fool than normal. She blamed the whole thing on a "technical" mistake, declared there never had been a controversy and that those in favor of changing the platform absolutely had a two-thirds majority.

It was enough to cause CNN's Anderson Cooper to suggest she lives in an alternate universe. She does. It's a universe in which the Israeli ambassador told her Republican policies would be a disaster for Israel, another spectacular lie of the week. It's one where people like her, believe her and take her seriously. I can see why she'd want to live there. It's a nice change of pace.

There also were the usual parade of speakers accusing Republicans of racism, obstructionism and any other isms they could think of. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka even left his luxury suite long enough to tell everyone how bad workers have it – not because a chunk of their salary goes to pay for his exorbitant lifestyle and bloated salary, but because Republicans exist. He did this in a non-union right-to-work state chosen by the man he was praising.

The longest-serving woman in the U.S. Senate, Maryland's Barbara Mikulski, rolled her weeble-self out on stage with every Democrat Senator who uses the ladies room.

Then it was time for everyone to get royally Fluked! Sandra Fluke, champion of people too worthless to afford $9 a month for birth control and too childish to accept responsibility for this, gave a stilted speech that made the acting of Cameron Diaz look method. I half expected her to remove the podium and replace it with a cross so she could nail herself to it.

She lamented her fate as a "private citizen" being attacked by a public figure. I never would've expected such a full-throated criticism of President Obama for his slimy attacks on the Koch brothers ... but, of course, she's a hypocrite and cares only about people like herself – the parasite class. A group proud to have made everyone pay for their birth control should've chosen a champion attractive enough to have a use for it.

But the main event of the night was former President Bill "put some ice on that" Clinton, a man who would do anything for women ... except remain faithful to them. If you listen closely, he's still speaking.

He gave a good speech – if you discount reality. But it was far too long. I suspect it was a passive/aggressive swipe at a president with whom he's still angry for playing the race card on him in 2008. Clinton kept Obama waiting backstage for nearly an hour, till long after prime time ended and people went to bed. Clinton's narcissism can explain only some of that – animosity explains the rest. (The link on each day is to a more in-depth I wrote on it. This piece was already too long to rehash everything. Check them out.)

Thursday

Predictions of overcast skies with a chance of the moon breaking through the clouds and reflecting light on thousands of empty seats caused the president's speech to be moved from Bank of Panther Stadium to the much, much smaller Time Warner Arena. President Downgrade downgraded his own convention.

Tony Villar re-nominated Joe "Joey Plugs" Biden as vice president, and the vice president gave a speech that demonstrated his range – all the way from whispering to yelling. The factually challenged speech – what else is new? – woke up the old crowd, who had suffered hearing loss from a performance of the Foo Fighters and a bout of narcolepsy from the winner of the least-compelling-speaker-on-Earth award, Caroline Kennedy. But even Biden's laughable gaffes couldn't save him. He and his unnaturally white teeth mercifully left the stage.

Finally, it was time for President Obama to take the stage and lay out his vision for the future. But in what I can only assume was a teleprompter malfunction, he ended up giving a speech that could, and should, have been delivered in 2008. Aside from the occasional reference to the future, it was a backward-looking speech.

It was small, made smaller by the venue and President Clinton's speech the night before. I had a copy of the speech a half-hour before Obama took the stage, and I can tell you he stuck to the script nearly word for word, even down to his declaration of love for his wife and kids. Why a man would need to read that, why he couldn't just speak from his heart, is a testament to his inability to think on his feet.

Many lies and many delusions and about 40 minutes later, he was done. He proposed nothing new, offered no solutions, took no responsibility. It was just empty rhetoric and vacant words. He turned "Yes We Can" into "I Guess We Couldn't, At Least Not In 4 Years and $5 Trillion in New Debt." The crowd loved it, but they would've loved it if he'd come out and burped into the microphone. The people at home saw a man in over his head, out of ideas and desperate to hold onto power.

A small man gave a small speech in a small venue better suited to a challenger, not someone who's been in office for a term. It was out of place for a sitting president but a perfect fit for a party's convention full of petty jabs, anger, a sense of entitlement, jealousy, bitterness, lies and distortions. In other words, it was exactly what I expected it to be.

[Warph]

The Biblical Case for Limited Government and Low Taxes

By James Arlandson
September 9, 2012
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/09/the_biblical_case_for_limited_government_and_low_taxes.html#ixzz2628MqXl0

Liberalism, generally, favors a bigger government and higher taxes to pay for it, while conservatives advocate moving in the opposite direction: limited government and low taxes.

Let's face it.  The government since FDR's New Deal has gotten bigger.  LBJ instituted the Great Society.  (I want my Game Show Government, no matter the cost!)  By now conservatives would say Uncle Sam is morbidly obese.  But liberalism is still winning, and liberals claim the moral high ground.

But do they have the right to it?

Not if we follow what the Bible recommends.

I have to admit from the outset that I get nervous about applying the economic and political specifics of the Bible to the modern era.  But maybe we can draw general principles from the ancient theocracy of the Old Testament, which eventually evolved (or devolved) into a royal theocracy.

Of course, we don't -- nor should we -- live in a theocracy.  So let's proceed with caution as we look at the Bible.

The main principle here in this article is one that goes wrong: from simplicity to complexity.  We need to reverse the process.

From Simplicity
As for political power, Deuteronomy 17:16-20 reads:

16 The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself ... he must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. 18 When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law ... and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees 20 and not consider himself better than his brothers[.]

So the king must not accumulate large amounts of gold and silver, he is to follow the law, and he must not consider himself better than his fellow citizens.  Lean and simple.

As for the flow of the material resources, we don't need to go into the details about taxes and tithes and offerings in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible).  And I'm certainly not advocating going back to the Old Testament specifics on those policies.

Instead, as we notice that the resources flowed to a centralized place (the tabernacle), we just need to look at the same principle of simplicity.

There are three tithes (a tithe is a tenth) commanded in the Torah.  Numbers 18:20-32 provides the tithe for Levites and priests: "It is your wages for your work in the tent of meeting" (v. 31).  Second, the ancient Hebrews could bring their tithes, either in kind or in silver, and buy what they needed after they got to the tabernacle and celebrated the harvest.  They could have a feast on their own tithe in God's presence (Deuteronomy 14:22-27).  Third, every three years, they were to set a tenth of their produce for the Levites who lived in their towns but were not allowed to have land to farm.  This tithe was also for the poor and helpless and foreigners (Deuteronomy 14:28-29).

Next, the ancient Hebrews were to "redeem" their lives because God redeemed them out of Egypt (Exodus 30:11-16).  This yearly payment, a kind of tax, was to go to the temple.  In Jesus' day, the temple tax was two drachmas, or about two days' wages of a day laborer (Matthew 17:24-27).  That's low.  Incidentally, Jesus paid that tax.

Finally, the people were required to bring sacrificial animals to the tabernacle (Leviticus 1:1-7:21).  The well-to-do brought more expensive animals, while the poor could bring in less expensive ones or even grain in some sacrifices (Leviticus 5:7-13).  The priests and Levites could share in some of the offerings, as their provision for food.

We don't need to calculate how much these tithes and tax and offerings would cost today (one tithe was eaten by the giver, so how do you calculate that?).  These laws were given in an agrarian society, which followed the rhythms of the harvests and animal reproduction.

The main point is that the Torah, which sets the standard, was reasonable, requiring low "payments" flowing to the central tabernacle.  Lean and simple.

To Complexity
Later in Israel's history, the people rejected God as king and insisted on a human king.  Samuel the prophet, leading them in this transition, forewarns them that future kings would become oppressive.

Samuel predicts:
11 He said, "This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 18 When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day." (1 Samuel 11:11-18)
So the king will take the harvests, turn the people into laborers, conscript them into the military, and make their own servants work for him.  Becoming slaves of sorts to the centralized government, the people will cry out for relief.

We are far from the simplicity laid out in Deuteronomy 17:16-20.

Solomon fits the description of a king who broke the basic rules.

1 Kings 10:16-18, 21-25 says:

16 King Solomon made two hundred large shields of hammered gold; six hundred bekas of gold went into each shield. 17 He also made three hundred small shields of hammered gold, with three minas of gold in each shield. The king put them in the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon.

18 Then the king made a great throne inlaid with ivory and overlaid with fine gold. ... 21 All King Solomon's goblets were gold, and all the household articles in the Palace of the Forest of Lebanon were pure gold. Nothing was made of silver, because silver was considered of little value in Solomon's days. 22 The king had a fleet of trading ships at sea along with the ships of Hiram. Once every three years it returned, carrying gold, silver and ivory, and apes and baboons.

23 King Solomon was greater in riches and wisdom than all the other kings of the earth. 24 The whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom God had put in his heart. 25 Year after year, everyone who came brought a gift - articles of silver and gold, robes, weapons and spices, and horses and mules.[/i]

One positive picture from this long passage is that Solomon traded with other nations, and Israel enjoyed general prosperity.  Yet the resources flowed directly back to Jerusalem and the king.

The dominant impression from this passage is what can best be described (anachronistically) as a command economy.  That is, the central government accumulates and wields a lot of power and wealth, all of which is concentrated in Jerusalem and managed by a burgeoning bureaucracy, described earlier in 1 Kings 9:22-23.  And to pay for this bureaucracy, assessments and duties and taxes in kind and metals increased.

Monarchs do that sort of thing.  Should we?

And so it came to pass the people revolted.

After Solomon died, his son Rehoboam ascended to the throne.  Would he carry on his father's oppressive policies or lighten the burdens?  The people were crying out for relief, just as Samuel had predicted.  Unfortunately, the new king tightened things up. 
1 Kings 12:14 says, "My father made your yoke heavy; I will make it even heavier[.]"

Thus, Israel split into two kingdoms, north and south, because of high taxes, an oppressive bureaucracy, and centralized power.  We are far from Deuteronomy 17:16-20.

The American Context
We don't have to -- nor should we -- apply the particulars of the Old Testament.  We're not a theocracy or monarchy, and we shouldn't bring back a tithe-tax.

Instead, it is obvious that we have followed the same destructive path away from liberating simplicity, and we're rushing pell-mell toward oppressive complexity.  We're already there.

A command economy and high and countless taxes and a huge bureaucracy were not the aim of our Founders, who often scoured the Greek, Roman, and biblical authors for principles about what to do and what not to do.

A command economy barges into the private sector to dictate, for example, to segments of the auto industry, which now needs more billions, or to command mortgage companies and force them to lend to the poor, though the poor cannot afford to pay them back.

Therefore, an executive is misguided when he seeks higher taxes on job-creators, while the tax rates are high already compared to those in other nations; when he wields a lot of power on his own, rising above the law and bypassing Congress; and when he walks with his chin held higher than his "subjects," as he gazes out over the horizon at no one in particular.

Today, many conservatives have reached the sane conclusion that a 16-plus-trillion-dollar debt is immoral.  George Bush let himself get co-opted by a Democrat-controlled House and Senate in 2006, and that's when things went downhill.  However, things got worse in 2008 -- and much, much worse for the next four fiscal years -- because the Obama administration added five trillion (a record) to the debt.  A debt that matches or exceeds our national income (GDP) is oppressive and destroys prosperity and freedom.

Further, heavy-handed regulations that have grown decade by decade, all exerted by a central bureaucracy, are bad for everyone but the central planners.  The irony?  We have to pay for the overregulation of our freedoms.

The Constitution is small, while the U.S. Code has grown over the decades.  Think of the tax code managed by the IRS, another huge bureaucracy.  Who can penetrate its labyrinth and come out alive?  The tax code has become oppressively complicated.

Do we need to discuss 2,000-plus-page ObamaCare, which has 21 ticking tax bombs built into it, creates a huge bureaucracy, and limits personal freedom?  Not to mention we can't afford already existing Medicare and Medicaid?

Conclusion
Generally, the left teaches that we need a big government to implement social and economic justice (as leftists define the terms).  However, when the government grows, freedom is restricted.  There's an inverse relationship between a big and powerful government and individual freedom, by definition.

The Bible teaches the opposite of a morbidly obese government.  Therefore, the left no longer occupies the high ground, and the right no longer has to cede it.

Proverbs 13:22 says: "A good man leaves an inheritance for his children's children."

What kind of national inheritance are we leaving to the next generations?  We're leaving them nothing but oppressive burdens.  How sad!  How immoral!

You've heard of the Greatest Generation?  Well, we're the Irresponsible Generation.

We need to get back to a simple, lean, and reasonable government and low taxes.

That's the moral high ground.