
Hat tip: The Looking Spoon.
I asked a number of conservative thinkers what they feared most from a second term, and compiled this list of the top ten disasters that would befall America if Obama were re-elected this fall1. Obamacare will not be repealed.
2. The unprecedented levels of spending in Obama’s first four years will become the new floor, as America sets new records for fiscal profligacy and debt.
3. Job creators will face massive tax increases, and more Americans will come off the tax rolls—resulting in fewer citizens with a stake in keeping taxes low and more with a stake in protecting benefits.
4. Government dependency, already at record levels, will continue to grow.
5. Four lost years in dealing with the entitlement crisis will become eight—digging us into a hole from which we may not be able to emerge.
6. Obama, unworried about the impact of gas and electricity prices on his reelection, will finally wage the regulatory war on fossil fuels the Left demands.
7. He will unleash the Environmental Protection Agency to impose crushing new burdens on U.S. business.
8. His administration’s assault on religious freedom will go on and expand to new areas.
9. The Defense Department will be gutted, with cuts so deep that America will no longer be a superpower.
10. Obama could have the opportunity to appoint more liberal Supreme Court justices, ending the Roberts court in all but name for a generation.
On September 15, 2009, a deadline issued by President Obama for Iran to come to the nuclear negotiating table was ignored by Iran's Mullahs.
Reaching Critical Mass: Just One MinuteQOTD: "Ever since Plato’s “Republic,” imaginative writers have promoted the idea of utopia, a paradisiacal existence in an ideal, managed society. Combine this with democracy’s tendency to descend over time into a soft tyranny and you have what Mark Levin calls “Ameritopia,” the title of his latest book, subtitled “The unmaking of America,”
Levin went to great lengths to validate his assertion that, in defiance of our founding principles, an insidious, managed collectivism is permeating our culture and supplanting the individualism under which we prospered. Levin believes that the centralization and consolidation of power in a political class similar to Plato’s “guardians,” that insulates its agenda in entrenched experts and administrators, is apparent all around us and growing more formidable. He reminds us of Ronald Reagan’s warning that “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” He puts us on notice that, while the tea party limited government movement is a hopeful sign, “many more blissfully indifferent citizens must be aroused and enlisted lest our civil society continue to unravel and eventually dissolve into despotism.”
Can passionate writers and aroused citizens change America’s course? Maybe. But I recall the words of a Persian poet: “The moving finger writes and, having writ, moves on. Not all your piety or wit can lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it.”" --Elbert Menees
The U.S. Air Force is pulling nine cargo aircraft from military operations to support President Barack Obama’s stepped-up visits to campaign events.The five medium-capacity C-130s and four heavyweight C-17s will be used to ferry security vehicles, armored limousines and communications gear into cities ahead of Obama’s campaign appearances.
In the months before November, the president is expected to fly into multiple cities per week, and speak at multiple sites per day. On Mar. 8, for example, the president will fly to Richmond, and then drive over to a Rolls-Royce aircraft-parts factory. That evening, he’ll fly down to Houston, Texas.
His wife, Vice President Joe Biden and many of his cabinet secretaries are using the Air Force’s fleet of VIP aircraft to visit more states as the election season speeds up.
The nine cargo aircraft will begin operations in April, said Maj. Michelle Lai, communications officer for the Air Force’s 89th Airlift Wing. “They’ll stand down in November 2012,” she said.
A report released yesterday by The National Automobile Dealers Association and American Truck Dealers questions the Environmental Protection Agency's cost analysis of 2004-2010 emissions control mandates. Data collected by ATD shows EPA's cost estimates were off by a factor of between two and five.
As a result, ATD says, last decade's emissions mandates resulted in substantially higher prices for commercial vehicles, which depressed vehicle sales and created massive disruptions in normal business cycles, as well as delaying the environmental benefits that the EPA originally sought."While EPA can mandate what truck and engine makers have to build, they can't dictate what customers will buy," said Dave Westcott, vice-chair of NADA... the study sounds a stern warning about EPA's cost projections on the upcoming fuel economy standards for heavy and light vehicles -- which extend out to the 2017 to 2025 timeframe...
The study notes that when the EPA implemented its 2004-2010 rules for heavy trucks, it failed to predict and account for what truck and engine manufacturers had to accomplish to comply with those rules, and how the market would react...
The U.S. economy added 227,000 jobs in February vs. expectations for 206,000, continuing a recent trend of decent hiring activity. The unemployment rate held at 8.3%.But America remains mired in the longest jobs recession since the Great Depression. It's been 49 months since the U.S. hit peak employment in January 2008. And with nonfarm payrolls still 5.33 million below their old high, the jobs slump will continue for several more years.
The previous jobs recession record — 47 months — came during and after the comparatively mild 2001 recession, which saw unemployment climb to only 6.3%... The labor market won't truly return to health until some 10 million positions are created to rehire all those who lost their jobs and to absorb new workers.
The longest jobs recession in decades coincides, not coincidentally, with the longest stretch of anemic economic performance on record.
Even if it were a legit number, the 8.3% February unemployment rate, released today by the Labor Department, would be simply terrible—and unacceptable. It would still extend the longest streak of 8%-plus unemployment since the Great Depression. The U.S. economy hasn’t been below 8% unemployment since Obama took office in January 2009. And back in May 2007, unemployment was just 4.4%.
But, unfortunately, the true measure of U.S. unemployment is much, much worse....If the size of the U.S. labor force as a share of the total population was the same as it was when Barack Obama took office—65.7% then vs. 63.9% today—the U-3 unemployment rate would be 10.8%.
...Then there’s the broader, U-6 measure of unemployment which includes the discouraged plus part-timers who wish they had full time work. That unemployment rate, perhaps the truest measure of the labor market’s health, is still a sky-high 14.9%.
Eight decapitated bodies were found in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, according to multiple Mexican news media outlets.Details are still coming, but the bodies were found today by the Army on the highway that connects Matamoros with Ciudad Victoria, according to El Universal, the Mexico City based media company.
Authorities have not shared any insight into the killings, but the region has been marked recently by intense fighting between two factions of the Gulf Cartel drug-trafficking organization.
Iran's Supreme Leader Praises Obama's Israel Stonewalling
...the Israelis are being offered advanced weaponry [by Obama] on the condition that they don’t use it. That’s like offering someone a gun on the condition that they never put bullets in it...
...Of course the Iranians sure are impressed with the fine job Obama is doing on their behalf, and to prove it, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is praising President Obama for trying to dissuade Israel from attacking Iran. And to hedge his bets, the Khamenei also made it clear that “there would be consequences for the United States... if a premature strike is launched on Iran.”
...Khamenei isn’t the only one who sees Obama on Iran’s side as the confrontation between Israel and the Islamic Republic is coming to a head. DNC Chair and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) has also said she’s fielding a lot of email from “her friends and family members... raising doubts about the president’s support for the Jewish state.” Nevertheless, Shultz is standing by President Obama on this one, even writing editorials in defense of Obama’s supposed support for Israel.
Due to the large number of jobs moving from California to Texas, the Lone Star State has compiled a "Californian to Texan" translation guide.
CALIFORNIA TEXAS Arsenal of Weapons Gun Collection Delicate Wetlands Swamp Undocumented Worker Illegal Alien Cruelty-Free Materials Synthetic Fiber Assault and Battery Attitude Adjustment Heavily Armed Well-protected Narrow-minded Righteous Taxes or Your Fair Share Coerced Theft Commonsense Gun Control Gun Confiscation Plot Illegal Hazardous Explosives Fireworks for Stump Removal Nonviable Tissue Mass Unborn Baby Equal Access to Opportunity Socialism Multicultural Community High Crime Area Fairness or Social Progress Marxism Upper Class or "The Rich " Self-Employed Progressive, Change Big Government Scheme Homeless or Disadvantaged Bums or Welfare Leeches Sniper Rifle Scoped Deer Rifle Investment For the Future Higher Taxes Healthcare Reform Socialized Medicine Extremist, Judgmental, or Hater Conservative Truants Homeschoolers Victim or Oppressed Criminal or Lazy Good-For-Nothing High Capacity Magazine Standard Capacity Magazine Religious Zealot Church-going Reintroduced Wolves Sheep and Deer Killers Fair Trade Coffee Overpriced Yuppie Coffee Exploiters or "The Rich " Employed or Land Owner The Gun Lobby NRA Members Assault Weapon Semi-Auto (Grandpa's M1 Carbine) Fiscal Stimulus New Taxes and Higher Taxes Same Sex Marriage Legalized Perversion Mandated Eco-Friendly Lighting Chinese Mercury-Laden Light Bulbs
Unite the Right: MalkinQOTD: "We are on track in the United States to pay more money to 20 million public sector retirees – at an average pension of $65,000 we will pay these retirees $1.3 trillion per year, then we will be paying in social security to 80 million private sector retirees – at an average social security benefit of $15,000 per year that will cost less, about $1.2 trillion per year. Providing a level of retirement security to government workers that only the wealthiest 1% can enjoy in the private sector is not “protecting the middle class,” it is economic enslavement by government unions over the taxpayer." --Wayne Allen Root

Tonka Dump Trucks: fabricated entirely from Ginsu knives by Tonka. They could slice fingers off if slightly mishandled.
Bow and arrows: remove the suction-cups from the ends of the arrows and -- whhoooooeeee -- you really could put an eye out; and I'm sure some kids did.
Airplane, ship and tank models: yep, we spent hours in our rooms with model glue... and our parents didn't care a bit. These days, an ambulance would be called and our rooms fumigated for a month.
Flexy Racers: a sled on wheels that was missing only one thing: brakes. These mysteriously disappeared from the market after -- I'm guessing here -- some kid rolled onto the Interstate and got pancaked by an 18-wheeler.
Snow sleds with steel runners: on a decent hill, you could hit 70 MPH and some kids did, may they rest in peace.
Water-air rockets: I don't remember the brand, but this was a rocket that you filled with water and then pumped full of air. Let's just say that after a couple of hundred concussions and numerous missing teeth, it was removed from the market.
Also: Airedale remembers Crazy Clackers, "...a string with a golf ball sized glass marble. I use to see those things wrapped around telephone pole lines. They were ninja weapons in the wrong hands....which meant every kind of kid had the ability to give themselves permanent brain damage if they got a bit too curious with these miniature bolos."
Paul J. recalls the Kenner Mold Master (I had one of those!): "Hot soft plastic you poured into into a mold and made toy guns and vehicles. Rarely came out right but you could reuse the plastic. How many times I burned my fingers I could never say. How I didn't burn the house down who knows."
This was a freaking hotplate that allowed you to bake goop in molds. What could possibly go wrong with 300-degree plastic goop?As rising gas prices become a key issue on the campaign trail, the president argued that using less oil is an important part of the solution... "...We need to invest in the technology that will help us use less oil in our cars and our trucks, in our buildings, in our factories. That’s the only solution to the challenge, because as we start using less, that lowers the demand, prices come down,” the president told workers at the Daimler Trucks manufacturing plant in Mount Holly, N.C.
Yet in the same speech he call[ed] oil “the fuel of the past”....Oil is not a “fuel of the past”. Obama’s agenda actually demands we abandon it. And he would in a New York minute if there wouldn’t be electoral consequences. His administration’s track record concerning oil and gas exploitation as well as new regulatory regime the EPA is implementing and actions of Secretaries Chu and Salazar give lie to the claims made.
Oil and gas are, in fact, the critical fuels of the future. It is and will remain the lifeblood of our economy for decades. An administration that doesn’t realize that and works to curtail it deserves to be shown the door at the earliest possible opportunity. If you think gas prices are high now, remember that without the increase in oil production on state and private land, it would be higher than it is now.
Unicorns and moon-ponies (or pond scum) won’t fuel the economy. Oil will. And an “all of the above” strategy should obviously include massive increases in oil production on federal lands. Don’t let this guy get away with his false claims and destructive energy policy. Help show him the door, November.
When President Obama completes his second of four New York fundraisers today, he will pass the total number of fundraisers former President George W. Bush conducted through his whole 18-month reelection campaign.
To put the 100 milestone in perspective, he hasn't played golf that many times, hitting 90 while he was in Hawaii last December for the first family's Christmas vacation, one of 16 the Obama's have taken while in office.
...Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer told Washington Secrets, "The president has spent the equivalent of five work weeks raising money to save his own job rather than focus on the millions of Americans who are struggling to find work. In pursuit of a billion dollar warchest, he has shattered the amount of time and number of events any president has ever spent to focus on saving their own job."
Author's Note: I originally wrote this article nearly two years ago, on July 8, 2010, to address what I perceived to be the unspoken agenda of the Obama White House.
In light of the recent revelations that Obama was a personal advocate for the racial eliminationist Dr. Derrick Bell, I thought it fitting and proper to re-post it.
Section 342, which declares that race and gender employment ratios, if not quotas, must be observed by private financial institutions that do business with the government. In a major power grab, the new law inserts race and gender quotas into America's financial industry... ...Section 342 sets up at least 20 Offices of Minority and Women Inclusion.
Transfer of wealth and “crucial decisions” aside, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act contains provisions that provide incentives for racial discrimination...
One provision states that programs with “a record of training individuals who are from underrepresented minority groups or from a rural or disadvantaged background” will be given priority for government money. This is only one of several such provisions. Programs and medical institutions that practice racial preferences will be moved further up the money queue than programs and medical institutions that disregard race... The one who disregards skin color is penalized... The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights called the provisions racially discriminatory and sent President Barack Obama and Congress letters warning them about the provisions. The politicians ignored the warning, naturally.
A study released earlier today calculates that illegal immigration costs U.S. taxpayers $113 billion annually... And rather than defending America's citizens, which is his primary duty under the Constitution, President Obama instead has unleashed a professional defender of terrorists to expand his practice -- protecting the Mexican crime gangs who now terrorize the southwest.
J. Christian Adams,, a former career Justice Department lawyer who resigned recently to protest political interference in cases he worked on, made some news yesterday in testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights... As expected, he claimed that Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, an Obama appointee, overruled a unanimous recommendation by six career Justice attorneys for continued prosecution of members of the New Black Panther Party on charges of voter intimidation in an incident I detailed here yesterday...
...But Mr. Adams leveled an even more explosive charge beyond the Panther case. He testified that last year Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes made a jaw-dropping announcement to attorneys in Justice's Voting Rights section. She said she would not support any enforcement of a key section of the federal "Motor Voter" law -- Section 8, which requires states to periodically purge their voter rolls of dead people, felons, illegal voters and those who have moved out of state.
Sarah Palin Initiates Rush Limbaugh’s 'Operation Chaos'?: SharkQOTD: "President Obama had a Jimmy Carter moment this afternoon when he dragged his daughters, 10 and 13, into his re-election campaign, using them as political props in the way Jimmy Carter used his youngest daughter, Amy Carter, then 13, to try to score points in the 1980 presidential debate — a debate that turned a close race into the biggest humiliation of an incumbent president in 52 years...
...Real men do not hide behind little girls, especially their daughters. Presidents try to shield their families from the glare of the public eye. Jimmy Carter used her to shield him. Besides, who asks a 13-year-old for advice on nuclear disarmament? She’s pretty much his echo chamber, is she not, telling Daddy what she thinks he wants to hear." --Don Surber
We are on track in the United States to pay more money to 20 million public sector retirees – at an average pension of $65,000 we will pay these retirees $1.3 trillion per year, then we will be paying in social security to 80 million private sector retirees – at an average social security benefit of $15,000 per year that will cost less, about $1.2 trillion per year. Providing a level of retirement security to government workers that only the wealthiest 1% can enjoy in the private sector is not “protecting the middle class,” it is economic enslavement by government unions over the taxpayer.
Wayne Allen Root explains how public sector unions are bankrupting the United States, by the numbers:How did America become broke and insolvent? How did we build up an unimaginable $115 trillion in debt and unfunded liabilities? How did we allow the American Dream to become a nightmare?
...The truth is that government employees are the true 1%. We have far too many of them (21 million), many of them are paid too much, and their union demands are straining taxpayers to the breaking point.
They have become a privileged class that expects to be treated superior to the taxpayers — the same folks who pay their salaries and pensions. But it is their obscene pensions that are the big problem moving forward for America.
...do you know any small business owners who retire with $5 to $10 million? They are few and far between. But that’s exactly what a private sector employee would need in the bank on the day of his or her retirement to match the $100,000 per year pensions (plus health care benefits and cost of living increases) of government employees paid out over 30 to 50 years.
Keep in mind that government employees never risk a dollar of their own money. They have lifetime job security. And they rarely work beyond 9 to 5, let alone weekends or holidays.
Yet government employees are paid millions by taxpayers to retire early, often on pensions fattened by gaming the corrupt system.
They are the true 1%.