Doug Ross @ Journal

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Horrifying Stat: Nearly Half of U.S. Households Dependent on at Least One Government Program

Friends, if this statistic gets much over 50 percent, you can stick a fork in America. Because it will be done.

Half of U.S. Lives in Households Getting Benefits
49.1%: Percent of the population that lives in a household where at least one member received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2011...

Cutting government spending is no easy task, and it’s made more complicated by recent Census Bureau data showing that nearly half of the people in the U.S. live in a household that receives at least one government benefit, and many likely received more than one.

The 49.1% of the population in a household that gets benefits is up from 30% in the early 1980s and 44.4% as recently as the third quarter of 2008.

...The more people who receive benefits, the harder it’s going to be to make cuts, and it’s never popular to raise taxes. In some respects that argues for letting a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that is set to automatically hit in 2013 take effect. There’s just one problem: the Congressional Budget Office says it would sink the economy into recession.

Well, I've got a news flash for these clowns. We have to cut spending sometime soon, because otherwise the entire system will collapse.

Did you ever see the movie Road Warrior? I only ask because that's what a complete economic collapse will look like, except without the cool cars.

Imagine there's no country. It's easy if you try.

Imagine that FDR's New Deal had ended the Great Depression prior to World War II.

Imagine that all of the money contributed by Americans to FDR's Social Security system over the decades hadn't been stolen by Congress, leaving the system now underfunded by tens of trillions of dollars.

Imagine that LBJ's "Great Society" program -- consisting of endless housing projects and massive wealth transfers -- had propelled poor inner-city residents to prosperity.

Imagine that Democrats' efforts to legalize 'Chain Migration' had not dramatically increased illegal immigration and hadn't resulted in the the Balkanization of large swaths of the United States.

Imagine that LBJ's Medicare program had been designed for competition, efficiency and cost-effectiveness; and it had not resulted in $100 billion a year in fraudulent payments; and its trust fund had not been stolen by Congress and spent with no regard for future needs.

Imagine that the Democrats' multi-decade push for welfare benefits hadn't resulted in an endemic culture of dependency; hadn't increased urban blight and poverty; hadn't encouraged more single-parent families; and hadn't resulted in more inner-city violence, crime and imprisonment.

Imagine that the United States Post Office is a paragon of efficiency, generating profits for taxpayers year after year.

Imagine that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac hadn't gone bankrupt, and hadn't touched off one of the most catastrophic financial crises in American history; that it hadn't been a "job shop for connected Democrats"; that it hadn't been protected from audits by Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and other Democrat politicians; and that it hadn't been mercilessly abused by Clinton administration cronies including Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick and Jim Johnson.

Imagine that the SEC and other financial regulators had discovered Bernard Madoff's fraud before it imploded; that it hadn't somehow ignored the impending derivatives meltdown; and that it had adequately policed AIG, Goldman Sachs and other "too-big-to-fail" companies that were backstopped by the taxpayers.

* * * * * * * * *
Can you imagine a United States of America where all of these big government, social engineering programs were successful?

I can't. In fact, none of them have been successful. Not one. That's a .000 batting average.

Nor can they ever be successful. Central planning fails every time when you compare it to free markets, private property, individual liberty and the magnificent system of government our country's founders created.

We know central planning fails. We need only look at the "five-year plans" issued endlessly by the Soviet Union, by Cuba, by Venezuela, by North Korea, by Zimbabwe, and by Democrats in this country, that have failed, utterly and completely.

So how could anyone support the trillion-dollar "Stimulus" program, Cap-and-Trade, the EPA's out-of-control bureaucracy, Obamacare's socialized medicine, a 2,200-page "financial overhaul", and "comprehensive immigration reform" when Democrats rely upon big government to make things right?

We know with absolute certainty how all of these ill-fated programs will end up. They will be bankrupt, fraud-prone, maddeningly inefficient and reminiscent of the DMV at the end of the month. They will be used as political weapons, to reward and punish. To centralize ever more power in the hands of a few connected bureaucrats.

It's November or never to unwind them. Our children and grandchildren are depending upon us.

Inspired by: Mark Levin.

Exclusive photo unearthed: Barack Obama with his 'Choom Gang' in the high school parking lot!

Enterprising Cub Reporter Biff Spackle insists -- insists! -- this photograph is real.

The backstory, for those who missed it, is here.

Hat tip: WyBlog and BadBlue.

Most Awesomest Grill Ever

May the pork be with you, Luke.

Hat tip: Andrea.

Oh, my: even the Associated Press mocks Obama's deficit hawk claims

When you're running a Democrat campaign and you've lost the Associated Press in one of their so-called 'fact checks', you know you've got big, big troubles. Someone in the Axelrod household woke up extra-cranky this morning.

FACT CHECK: Obama off on thrifty spending claim
By ANDREW TAYLOR
Associated Press

...The problem with [Obama's] rosy claim is that the Wall Street bailout is part of the calculation. The bailout ballooned the 2009 budget just before Obama took office, making Obama's 2010 results look smaller in comparison. And as almost $150 billion of the bailout was paid back during Obama's watch, the analysis counted them as government spending cuts.

It also assumes Obama had less of a role setting the budget for 2009 than he really did.

Obama rests his claim on an analysis by MarketWatch, a financial information and news service owned by Dow Jones & Co. The analysis simply looks at the year-to-year topline spending number for the government but doesn't account for distortions baked into the figures by the Wall Street bailout and government takeover of the mortgage lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

...Taken together, TARP and the takeover of Fannie and Freddie combine to give Obama an undeserved $317 billion swing in the 2010 figures and the resulting 1.8 percent cut from 2009. A fairer reading is an almost 8 percent increase.

...There's also the question of how to treat the 2009 fiscal year, which actually began Oct. 1, 2008, almost four months before Obama took office. Typically, the remaining eight months get counted as part of the prior president's spending since the incoming president usually doesn't change it much until the following October. The MarketWatch analysis assigned 2009 to former President George W. Bush, though it gave Obama responsibility that year for a $140 million chunk of the 2009 stimulus bill.

But Obama's role in 2009 spending was much bigger than that. For starters, he signed nine spending bills funding every Cabinet agency except Defense, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security. While the numbers don't jibe exactly, Obama bears the chief responsibility for an 11 percent, $59 billion increase in non-defense spending in 2009. Then there's a 9 percent, $109 billion increase in combined defense and non-defense appropriated outlays in 2010, a year for which Obama is wholly responsible.

...If one assumes that TARP and the takeover of Fannie and Freddie by the government as one-time budgetary anomalies and remove them from calculations - an approach taken by Holtz-Eakin - you get the following picture:

-A 9.7 percent increase in 2009, much of which is attributable to Obama.

-A 7.8 percent increase in 2010, followed by slower spending growth over 2011-13. Much of the slower growth reflects the influence of Republicans retaking control of the House and their budget and debt deal last summer with Obama. All told, government spending now appears to be growing at an annual rate of roughly 3 percent over the 2010-2013 period, rather than the 0.4 percent claimed by Obama and the MarketWatch analysis.

That's not even counting the catastrophic deficits Obama rang up.

The only people who believed Obama's claim to be a deficit hawk -- after signing the Stimulus bill and driving more deficit spending than all previous presidents combined -- are either morons or just not paying attention. In the former case, we're talking about the hard-core members of the Democrat base anyhow. There's nothing that can sway the stupid, except maybe Flowers for Algernon-style medication and electroshock therapy.

Kinda like the lady who had her mortgage and car loans paid off by President Obama after the 2008 election.

Related: The Five Charts You Must Show Every Undecided Voter You Know.

Ouch: Unions have blown $60 million on doomed effort to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker

The public sector union ~~hacks~~ bosses could have found a lot more productive ways to blow $60 million, if this report is accurate.

Barrett’s internal polling suggests his campaign is dead
Independent polls show Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker leading opponent Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett by 6 to 7 points in the June 5 recall vote. So what’s the public to do with Barrett’s own data — polls ... that show the recall is a statistical dead heat?

Veteran campaign staffers on the left and right will tell you Barrett’s internal polling suggests his campaign is dead.

Sometimes, the release of such internal polling is meant to bolster the sagging spirits of campaign staffers and volunteers looking into the oblivion of total defeat... But don’t take my word for it. Kristen Soltis, director of policy research and pollster for the Washington, D.C.-based Winston Group and contributor to the Huffington Post’s Pollster.com, defended the Barrett campaign and We Are Wisconsin pollsters... "[They are] very good pollsters who have rock-solid reputations on the Democratic side of the aisle.”

Then she offered sage counsel to the average consumer of internal polling data. “You have to remind yourself that pollsters only crunch the numbers,” Soltis told me. “It’s the people who are pushing these numbers out who have an agenda they must be served.”

In short, Wisconsin voters are going to march to the polls on Tuesday and repudiate the public sector unions' efforts to return to fiscal irresponsibility and wasteful spending.

And how much money have the unions spent?

In April, Gary Larson reported the total at $60 million:

Led by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Wisconsin-based and other states' teachers unions, [the Democrats'] attack is aimed at sinking Gov. Walker and his Republican majority in the Wisconsin Assembly, thus to reclaim power over how taxpayer dollars are spent.

...To win, vituperative anti-Walker forces are putting up an estimated $60 million in ad dollars, all derived from union brethren from all parts of America. Call this solidarity. Last year union activists unleashed 3,000 recall petition carriers across Wisconsin, apparently not content to await the next election.

The good news? That's $60 million these Statist hacks won't be able to waste backing Barack Obama, the most destructive president in U.S. history.

Larwyn's Linx: Is a fraud better than a Republican?

Send us tips! Bloggers: install a Larwyn's Linx widget. Get real-time news, 24/7, at BadBlue.

QOTD: "The CTA [California Teachers Association] began its transformation in September 1975, when Governor Jerry Brown signed the Rodda Act, which allowed California teachers to bargain collectively. Within 18 months, 600 of the 1,000 local CTA chapters moved to collective bargaining. As the union’s power grew, its ranks nearly doubled, from 170,000 in the late 1970s to approximately 325,000 today. By following the union’s directions and voting in blocs in low-turnout school-board elections, teachers were able to handpick their own supervisors—a system that private-sector unionized workers would envy. Further, the organization that had once forsworn the strike began taking to the picket lines. Today, the CTA boasts that it has launched more than 170 strikes in the years since Rodda’s passage.

The CTA’s most important resource, however, isn’t a pool of workers ready to strike; it’s a fat bank account fed by mandatory dues that can run more than $1,000 per member. In 2009, the union’s income was more than $186 million, all of it tax-exempt. The CTA doesn’t need its members’ consent to spend this money on politicking, whether that’s making campaign contributions or running advocacy campaigns to obstruct reform. According to figures from the California Fair Political Practices Commission (a public institution) in 2010, the CTA had spent more than $210 million over the previous decade on political campaigning—more than any other donor in the state. In fact, the CTA outspent the pharmaceutical industry, the oil industry, and the tobacco industry combined." --Troy Senik, "The Worst Union in America"

Friday, May 25, 2012

Sweet: Obama thanked his drug dealer in his high school yearbook

Curiously, I haven't heard a word about this on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, or PMSNBC.

It has been well known for years that President Obama was an avid user of cocaine and marijuana in both his high school and college years. However, the rabbit hole appears to be much deeper than previously thought.

Over the last few days, Mr. Obama's "rules" for taking drugs has been widely publicized. The fact that President Obama took so many drugs that he needed specific guidelines should speak for itself.

Additionally, and possibly most shocking, we have learned that in his high school year book, Mr. Obama thanked his drug dealer by name... The dealer's name was Ray. You can see a picture of the high school yearbook below:

So what happened to Ray, you might ask. Why has he not spoken up about this incident? Well, "Many years later they learned that he had been killed with a ball-peen hammer by a scorned gay lover."

Say, did you hear about the time Mitt Romney gave a kid a wedgie in junior high?

Georgia Powerball Winner!

Papa B sent this one in.

Can you believe it?

Man wins Georgia lottery on Wednesday, finds love of his life two days later.

Talk about luck!!!

Is America A Great Country Or What?

Obama receives crucial endorsement [The Looking Spoon]

Via The Looking Spoon.

I mean, seriously: is there any doubt how our mortal enemies would vote?

Larwyn's Linx: Former Navy SEAL: "Loose Lips Will Sink Ships"

Send us tips! Bloggers: install a Larwyn's Linx widget. Get real-time news, 24/7, at BadBlue.

Nation

Former Navy SEAL Ben Smith: “Loose Lips Will Sink Ships”: ASK
Newly Revealed: Obama Featured At 1996 Socialist Event: WZ
NY GOP Trying to Ban Anonymous Online Comments?: MenRec

“Blac Bloc” Video: Destroying SF, Attacking Police: Sooper
Senate Democrats Betray Lilly: Beacon
Flashing Headlights To Warn of Speed Trap Is Protected Speech: Cato

Obviously, Obama’s KY And ARK Beatdowns Were Raaaaacism: RWN
Dewhurst releases false attack ad against Ted Cruz: Breitbart
Obama: Not That Bright: Kelly

Economy

Governments Are Never Cheap: P&F
Romney: Why is Obama attacking capitalism?: Hot Air
Poll: Scott Walker Lead Explodes to 12%: Pundit

Bad News for Globalists: RWN
CNN: How Government Blocks Health Care Access for the Poor: Cato
Obama's Economic Attacks Could Backfire: AmPower

Scandal Central

States Join Extortion Racket Against Book Publishers: ObjStd
The Cronyism Board: Tourism Board Stacked With Obama Cronies: Beacon
Republicans Backing Off Holder Contempt Charges, Exemplifies Systemic RINO Problem: AT

Climate & Energy

Necessary Skyrocketing: Greenroom
Obama’s America: EPA Officials Visit Man For Sending Email: POH Diaries
Newton (MA) saves money by going green. Sort of. Not really.: AT

Media

Convicted Bomber Brett Kimberlin, Neal Rauhauser, Ron Brynaert: Their Campaign of Political Terrorism: Patterico
Lying Felon Can’t Stop Lying: RSM
Brett Kimberlin Update: The Big Guns Are Coming on Board--Cain, Erickson Enter the Fray: Hideout

Newsflash: Liberals Confirm They Have No Sense of Humor or Irony: Bruce
Get Your Story Straight: Conservatory
Is conservative blogger in Georgia another victim of “lawfare”?: LI

Brett Kimberlin Plotted To Have Witnesses, Former Assistant US Attorney Killed: Ace
Who is Brett Kimberlin?: EBL
D-Minus-1: Preparing For Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day: Camp o' the Saints

World

Obama’s Blockbuster Secrets: Foundry
Here’s the Real Deal No BS Situation with Europe (Warning What Follows is Extremely Bad).: ZH
US preparing plan to vet members of Free Syrian Army to determine if suitable to receive arms transfers: Fox

Sci-Tech

What Common Objects Used to Be Made Of: Wired
Inside the Attacker's Toolbox: Botnet Web Attack Scripts: SpiderLabs
Facebook At $22 Seen In Europe’s Structured Warrants: Bloomberg

Cornucopia

Obama and Soviet Agitprop: A Handshake Across Time and Space: Cube
"If Fuzzy Wuzzy was Prezzy, he'd do something different.": MOTUS
The Best Quotes From “Maximum Achievement”: Hawkins

Introducing ItsBigFurHat.com!: ItsBigFurHat.com
Anti-Aging Medicine: Amelia’s Look Into A Medical Controversy: WCCO-4
Class: Bill Clinton Poses With Porn Stars: ABC

Image: The Bad
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Support Ted Cruz for U.S. Senate

QOTD: "U.S. taxpayers thinking that they couldn't possibly be forced to stand behind overseas derivatives trading will not be comforted by remarks from Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler. On Monday he emphasized his determination to extend Dodd-Frank derivatives regulation to overseas markets when subsidiaries of U.S. firms are involved.

Readers know Mr. Gensler as the chief regulator of MF Global, which was run into bankruptcy by his old Beltway and Goldman Sachs pal Jon Corzine. An estimated $1.6 billion is still missing from MF Global customer accounts. What an amazing feat Mr. Gensler will have performed if, through his agency's oversight, he can manage to have U.S. customers eat the cost of Mr. Corzine's bets on foreign debt and have U.S. taxpayers underwrite bets in foreign derivatives trading." --The Wall Street Journal

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Old Media Is Bleeding Out Right Before Our Eyes

Old media is literally committing suicide in front of our very eyes. In its desperate rush to see Barack Obama reelected, they are ignoring bigger and bigger stories. People have the Internet. They read The Drudge Report. They listen to talk radio. They read blogs. And in spite of all of these different access points, old media is ignoring blockbuster story after blockbuster story.

Consider the following panoply of stories -- from the last few days alone -- courtesy of the national treasure known as NewsBusters.

Outrage Over 72 Hours Of Network Silence On Catholic Lawsuit Spreads

Fury over the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts’ continued refusal to report the lawsuits Catholic entities have filed against the Obama administration has spread beyond the Media Research Center watchdog group and Catholic leaders to nine additional Christian leaders equally concerned about this decision to deliberately not report national news...

Networks Censor News of Massive Democratic Protest Vote Against Obama

42 percent of Democratic primary voters in Kentucky on Tuesday chose "uncommited" over Barack Obama. In Arkansas, a Tennessee attorney finished with 41 percent of the vote. ABC's Good Morning America, NBC's Today and CBS This Morning all skipped the embarrassing story, despite the fact that CBS and NBC covered the far less interesting Republican primary... During the month of May, Obama suffered through a series of humiliating protest votes in Democratic primaries. On May 8th, the incumbent President nearly lost the West Virginia primary to a convicted felon. Yet, except for a single mention at 4am on May 9th, the networks have buried Obama's bad news.

ABC, NBC Punt on Alleged Obama Administration Leak of Classified Information to Hollywood

CBS This Morning stood out as the only Big Three network morning show on Thursday to cover [an] allegation that the Obama administration gave a movie director and writer "special access to government officials involved in the commando operation that killed Osama bin Laden," as reported by Reuters on Wednesday. ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today ignored the story.

...Anchor Charlie Rose pointed out in his introduction to Reid's report that there was "new information this morning on an alleged security leak by the Obama administration... "Sources tell CBS News the White House put the movie on the fast track, aggressively looking for ways to help."

Was Rev. Wright Offered Hush Money? Nobody In The Media Cares

When the New York Times warned it had been handed a “super PAC” memo suggesting someone, somewhere might plot to make a “hardline attack on Obama” with Wright sermon soundbites, MSNBC expressed outrage hour after hour. But scandalized liberal journalists had no appetite for a different behind-the-scenes Reverend Wright narrative. In Ed Klein’s new book “The Amateur,” he interviewed Rev. Wright on tape for three hours. The most shocking revelation: suggestions that Friends of Barack were trying to suggest Wright take some “hush money” to shut up for the rest of the 2008 campaign. Media interest? Pretty much zero.

That's just over the last few days. My conclusion?

Buh-bye, old media. Don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.

Note: if you missed headlines from your favorite news source, you can use the BadBlue news service database to get an up-to-date list sorted by popularity or date. Here's an example for NewBusters: http://badblue.bitnamiapp.com/d.php?did=newsbusters.org.

Double Whammy: Investors Business Daily Pimp-Slaps Rex Nutting's Pravda-Style Propaganda Piece at MarketWatch

Yesterday, James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute delivered a major-league rhetorical beat-down to some Obama drone named Rex Nutting. MarketWatch had somehow allowed Nutting to publish one of the more preposterous press releases from David Axelrod ever seen on a business news site.

The gist of the story is this. Obama is running from his spending record, using manipulated statistics to assign his block-buster "shovel-ready" Stimulus package to... wait for it... George W. Bush. Did Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and George W. Bush pass the Stimulus package? Obamacare? Cash-for-Clunkers? Green energy scams like Solyndra, First Solar, Solar Trust, etc.? So the Obama campaign is busy churning out propaganda that disavows all the work he took credit for in 2009 and Nutting simply regurgitates it, like a good little Marxist.

No human being in world history has deficit-spent like Barack Obama. And everyone knows it, including Rex "Leni Riefenstahl" Nutting.

Today, it's Investor's Business Daily's turn to pimp-slap Nutting. One simple chart is all it takes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IBD goes on to point out that, aside from the Stimulus scam and the litany of crap Obama pushed through a compliant Congress, TARP and GSE spending were incorrectly accounted for in Nutting's analysis. In other words, Nutting made giant mistakes, small mistakes, and everything in between.

MarketWatch had better, eh, watch itself. If it continues publishing trash like Nutting's excrement, it will become about as relevant as Daily Kos.

I swear these are real testimonials...

...all extolling the virtues of the BadBlue.com news service.

• "G***amn American -- and BadBlue!" --The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr.

• "I saw BadBlue and, seriously, a thrill went down my leg, instead of up it." --Chris Matthews

• "No site is more relevant, more timely and more annoying." --Rachel Maddow

• "I hate BadBlue more than I hate my daughter." --Alec Baldwin

• "If BadBlue weren't virtual, I would sit on it." --Michael Moore

• "If you don't visit BadBlue every day, the terrorists win." --Me

Don't let the terrorists win. Bookmark BadBlue and tell your friends.

It's the real-time news site that old media doesn't want you to see. Like me, you probably want to tell old media to shove it. That's what BadBlue is all about.

Oops! Democrat Narrative Fail: 1996 Socialist Advertisement Unearthed, With Barack Obama Headlining as a Featured Speaker

Gee, I guess he really is a socialist, despite all of the frequent denials.

And it looks like Andrew Breitbart's legacy -- including the great vetting of Obama that old media never bothered to do -- continues apace, this time courtesy of BuzzFeed (via Weasel Zippers):

It's a reminder that the President presented himself as much more progressive during his time in Chicago. In this little-seen advertisement that ran in the Hyde Park Herald in 1996, Obama was listed on a panel sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), University of Chicago Democrats, and University of Chicago DSA. He also supported gay marriage back then.

The Real Revo explains the strategy that Democrats have in mind. Hint: Obama's promise to "fundamentally transform" America? It's real.

Larwyn's Linx: Are Republicans to Blame for Washington’s Problems?

Send us tips! Bloggers: install a Larwyn's Linx widget. Get real-time news, 24/7, at BadBlue.

Nation

Are Republicans to Blame for Washington’s Problems?: RWN
Occupy group videos themselves pillaging SF neighborhood: Zombie
Heading Off the Fiscal Cliff: IBD

20,000 Felons Signed Walker Recall Petition: HillBuzz
WI's Tom Barrett: Bragging About Bogus Crime Reduction: Geraghty
Wasserman-Nimrod Likely to Get Canceled at Temple Israel: Shark

Economy

Romney: I’m not willing to borrow money from China to fund PBS: DC
Actually, the Obama spending binge really did happen: Peth
Paul Ryan's Electrifying Speech at the Reagan Library: Glob

20,000 Felons Signed Walker Recall Petition: HillBuzz
A Graduation Message: Academic Success Begins at Home: Foundry
Labor Force Plummets Under Obama: HillBuzz

Figures Don't Lie. Democrats Do.: Coulter
Five Devastating Numbers That Show Obama’s Incompetence: RWN
Booming Obamaconomy has HP cutting 27,000 by 2014: BBC

Scandal Central

Obama campaign spokesman bears false witness: RS
Obama wants the Electric Reliability Corporation to stop assessing electric reliability: Watts
Surprise: PR Firm Awarded $20MM HHS Contract Gives 90% of Campaign Donations to Democrats: ConTeacher

Climate & Energy

Ready for Electricity to Skyrocket? Thank Obama!: Sooper
EPA Overreach Threatens Entire U.S. Economy: ResourcefulEarth
UK Families To See Energy Prices Skyrocket Under Green Energy 'Reforms': RWN

Media

‘He Has No F–king Soul’: RSM
Celebrity Fantasy? Hustler's Obscene Misogynist Attack on S.E. Cupp: AmPower
The Booty Bundler: Beacon

Bomber Turned Left Wing Activist, Brett Kimberlin, Tries to Silence Conservative Opposition: RS
What Did Barbra Streisand Know … And When Did She Know It?: DailyPundit
Question of the day: Is this a case of self-destruction for Dear Leader?: AWD

Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand's Morality of Egoism: ObjStd
Alec 'Fat Turd Baldwin (which is the nickname he prefers, I hear) mocks Andrew Breitbart’s death: Twitchy
From an Undisclosed Location to Herman Cain’s Facebook Wall, the Truth Issues Forth: Sundries

Reputable Blogger Needed: XCV
Free speech moment: Standing with Stacy McCain, Patterico, Liberty Chick, and Aaron Walker: Hot Air
The Astute Bloggers Just Screwed Me Over Again: TAB

World

Judicial Watch Obtains DOD and CIA Records Detailing Meetings with bin Laden Raid Filmmakers: JW
German Press: "The Greek Exit Is A Done Deal": ZH
Iran: World powers creating 'difficult atmosphere' at talks: ynet

Sci-Tech

Jury Says Google’s Android Does Not Infringe Java Patents: Wired
SpaceX rocket lifts off for space station trial run: Reuters
Your Siri questions may be not be a secret: KABC

Cornucopia

Introducing the hot new social network: PhoneBook!: Borowitz
Exclusive Photo: Rabbis about to throw Debbie Wasserman Schultz out of the Temple?: EBL
A Little Obama P.R. (or B.S.): Unsolicited

Image: iOwnTheWorld
Today's Larwyn's Linx sponsored by: Senate Conservatives Fund

QOTD: "NERC (the North American Electric Reliability Corporation) must have thought it was taking a step up when a 2005 law made the non-profit group an official advisor to Congress, but that law also brought them under the oversight of FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) which just spent months of rummaging through every desk looking for rule violations they could use to embroil NERC in legal difficulties.

It seems that the President’s drive to shut down the coal-fired half of the grid could pose some risk to grid reliability—who’d a thunk it?—so Obama is trying to shoot the messenger. When no violations were found, FERC decided to “audit” NERC’s mission itself, resulting in a finding that this business of “periodic reliability assessments” is all a bit much and “should be revisited.”...

...The perils of shutting down the nation’s largest electricity source can’t be news to the Obama people. They just don’t want the public to get the message." --Alec Rawls

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Obama MarketWatch Propagandist Rex Nutting Gets B****-Slapped By James Pethokoukis

The old adage needs an upgrade. There's lies. There's damn lies. And then there's Rex Nutting.

Until Barack Obama took office in 2009, the United States had never spent more than 23.5% of GDP, with the exception of the World War II years of 1942-1946. Here’s the Obama spending record:

• 25.2% of GDP in 2009
• 24.1% of GDP in 2010
• 24.1% of GDP in 2011
• 24.3% (estimates by the White House ) in 2012

What’s more, if Obama wins another term, spending—according to his own budget—would never drop below 22.3% of GDP. If that forecast is right, average spending during Obama’s eight years in office would average 23.6% of GDP. That’s higher than any single previous non-war year.

Yet financial columnist Rex Nutting of MarketWatch tries to portray the president as being downright stingy in a piece entitled, stunningly, “Obama spending binge never happened”:

Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree. As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: “I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno.” Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true. Government spending under Obama, including his signature stimulus bill, is rising at a 1.4% annualized pace — slower than at any time in nearly 60 years.

And here’s the chart summarizing Nutting’s argument:

As the chart indicates, Nutting arrives at that 1.4% number by assigning 2009—when spending surged nearly 20%—to
George W. Bush...

What a lying sack of s***.

Gee, last time I checked, Nutter -- if that is your real name -- George W. Bush wasn't the guy who jammed the Stimulus package through Congress, which was tacked onto the 2009 budget.

Here is another way Nutting could have framed the spending issue:

The Obama spending record looks a little different now, yes?

Da-yam, Rex: you gonna put some ice on that?

Obama campaign unveils new slogan, logo [Papa B]

Papa B (who else)?

The Obama campaign recently unveiled their new slogan and logo.

Seems apt, dontcha think?

Best I can tell, if you're a gun-owner, Bank of America would prefer you move your business to another bank. Immediately.

Papa B writes, "If you are not familiar with McMillan manufacturing, they are a large manufacturer of firearms stocks and components located in Phoenix, Arizona."

McMillan Fiberglass Stocks, McMillan Firearms Manufacturing, McMillan Group International have been collectively banking with Bank of America for 12 years.

Today Mr. Ray Fox, Senior Vice President, Market Manager, Business Banking, Global Commercial Banking (Bank of America) came to my office. He scheduled the meeting as an “account analysis” meeting in order to evaluate the two lines of credit we have with them... He spent five minutes talking about how McMillan has changed in the last five years and have become more of a firearms manufacturer than a supplier of accessories.

At this point I interrupted him and asked "Can I possibly save you some time so that you don’t waste your breath? What you are going to tell me is that because we are in the firearms manufacturing business you no longer want my business."

"That is correct", he says.

I replied, "That is okay, we will move our accounts as soon as possible. We can find a Second Amendment-friendly bank that will be glad to have our business. You won’t mind if I tell the NRA, SCI and everyone one I know that BofA is not firearms industry friendly?"

"You have to do what you must," he said.

"So you are telling me this is a politically motivated decision, is that right?"

Mr. Fox confirmed that it was. At which point I told him that the meeting was over and there was nothing left for him to say.

I think it is important for all Americans who believe in and support our Second amendment rights to keep and bear arms should know when a business does not support these rights. What you do with that knowledge is up to you.

When I don’t agree with a business’ political position I can not in good conscience support them. We will soon no longer be accepting Bank of America credit cards as payment for our products.

Kelly D. McMillan
Director of Operations
McMillan Group International, LLC
1638 W Knudsen Dr
Phoenix, Arizona 85027
McMillan Integrity-Global Vision

I later discovered that William Jacobson wrote about this incident a few weeks ago. You can confirm the letter's content on McMillan's Facebook page.

EPA-Driven Apocalypse Predicted for the Electric Grid (Just Don't Mention It In Public, Unless You Want to Get Audited by the Feds)

"Under my plan of a cap and trade system, [energy prices] would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was... [t]hey will pass that money on to consumers." --Barack Obama, 1 November 2008

He can run, he can hide, he can evade, he can blame Bush and James Buchanan. But this is one campaign promise Barack Obama actually followed through with. And you. Ain't. Seen. Nothing. Yet.

Clean Technica reports that the EPA's war on coal -- which produces the lion's share of electricity in the U.S. -- is working:

Power generation from coal is falling quickly...

...According to new figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal made up 36 percent of U.S. electricity in the first quarter of 2012 — down from 44.6 percent in the first quarter of 2011...

The U.S. coal industry if facing major headwinds... factors that will assist in pushing coal out of the electricity mix: An aging fleet of plants, cost-competitive renewables, new clean air regulations, and a strong anti-coal movement are working together to reduce the attractiveness of coal. Since 2010, plant operators have announced 106 retirements of coal facilities — representing 13 percent of the U.S. fleet, according to the Sierra Club.
Source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/1bVMC)

What's this mean for you and me? Electricity prices are going to rise like nothing you've ever seen before (curiously, only after the 2012 elections).

Last week PJM Interconnection, the company that operates the electric grid for 13 states (Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia) held its 2015 capacity auction. These are the first real, market prices that take Obama’s most recent anti-coal regulations into account, and they prove that he is keeping his 2008 campaign promise to make electricity prices “necessarily skyrocket.”

The market-clearing price for new 2015 capacity – almost all natural gas – was $136 per megawatt. That’s eight times higher than the price for 2012, which was just $16 per megawatt. In the mid-Atlantic area covering New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and DC the new price is $167 per megawatt. For the northern Ohio territory served by FirstEnergy, the price is a shocking $357 per megawatt.

Why the massive price increases? Andy Ott from PJM stated the obvious: “Capacity prices were higher than last year's because of retirements of existing coal-fired generation resulting largely from environmental regulations which go into effect in 2015.” Northern Ohio is suffering from more forced coal-plant retirements than the rest of the region, hence the even higher price.

These are not computer models or projections or estimates. These are the actual prices that electric distributors have agreed to pay for new capacity. The costs will be passed on to consumers at the retail level.

The only thing that can stop this massive price hike now is an all-out effort to end Obama’s War on Coal and repeal this destructive regulatory agenda.

The Senate will have a critical opportunity to do just that when it votes on stopping Obama’s most expensive anti-coal regulation sometime in the next couple of weeks. The vote is on the Inhofe Resolution, S.J. Res 37, to overturn the so-called Utility MACT rule, which the EPA itself acknowledges is its most expensive rule ever.

This vote is protected from filibuster, and it will take just 51 votes to send a clear message to Obama that his War on Coal must end. ...Of course, Obama could veto the resolution and keep the rule intact, although that would force him to take full political responsibility for the massive impending jump in electricity prices.

That's not the only problem. Late last year, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation reported that new EPA regulations "threaten the stability of power grids". Blackouts, anyone?

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) released a report yesterday concluding that proposed EPA regulations “may significantly affect bulk power system reliability depending on the scope and timing of the rule implementation and the mechanisms in place to preserve reliability.”

As this Platts report notes, NERC says that these proposed rules could create “insufficient generating resources” and “threaten the stability of power grids in Texas and New England within the next decade.”

Not to mention job losses and economic ruin. Hooray!

And what do you think happened after the NERC reported its concerns over the stability of the electric grid? What do you think? It was, of course, investigated by another arm of the Obama administration for publicizing the truth. Seriously. Reminds one of the old Soviet Union, no?

Mark my words: should this egregious disaster of a president win a second term in November, I can predict exactly what will happen.

Electricity rates, as candidate Obama promised, would "necessarily skyrocket".

And the Democrats will blame the electric companies -- having sabotaged them through regulation and intimidation.

And they will then attempt to nationalize those companies, Chavez-style, under the banner of efficiency and "fairness".

Mark my words.

Tell your friends. Tell your family members. Tell your colleagues.

Unless we boot these Statist hacks out in November, America is destined to become a Third World country faster than you can say "Jeremiah Wright".

Update: Obama wants the Electric Reliability Corporation to stop assessing electric reliability

Visit: WarOnCoal.com to voice your concerns. Hat tip: Mark Levin.