The Enormity ...

These people ...

Just when you think you have grasped the enormity of the U.S. news media’s Steele dossier scandal, it gets worse. Much worse.

The “primary subsource” for the so-called dossier was suspected once of being a Russian operative and a “threat to national security,” according to newly declassified FBI records.

To put things more clearly: The document the FBI used to secure authorization from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to spy on one-time Trump campaign aide Carter Page is based largely on the say-so of an individual the FBI itself once suspected of being a national security risk.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-news-medias-steele-dossier-scandal-is-even-worse-than-you-thought

What's He Going For?

"As for the alleged curative effect on debt of Obama's tax-rate demand — the full rate hike on the "rich" would have reduced the 2012 deficit from $1.10 trillion to $1.02 trillion.

"That's a joke, a rounding error.

"Such nonsense abounds because Obama's objective in these negotiations is not economic but political: not to solve the debt crisis but to fracture the Republican majority in the House. Get Boehner to cave, pass the tax hike with Democratic votes provided by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and let the Republican civil war begin."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-its-nothing-but-a-power-play/2012/12/06/83061050-3fde-11e2-ae43-cf491b837f7b_story.html

I don't think Obama's as sinister as CK paints him to be - I think he just has no idea how to make a deal and is poorly advised.

Even Will?

"And one who tilts toward the libertarian side of the Republican Party's fusion of social and laissez-faire conservatism. Most voters already favor less punitive immigration policies than the ones angrily advocated by clenched-fist Republicans unwilling to acknowledge that immigrating - risking uncertainty for personal and family betterment - is an entrepreneurial act. The speed with which civil unions and same-sex marriage have become debatable topics and even mainstream policies is astonishing. As is conservatives' failure to recognize this: They need not endorse such policies, but neither need they despise those, such as young people, who favor them. And it is strange for conservatives to turn a stony face toward any reconsideration of drug policies, particularly concerning marijuana, which confirm conservatism's warnings about government persistence in the teeth of evidence."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-republicans-must-start-over-again/2012/11/09/d7c81db0-29e8-11e2-bab2-eda299503684_story.html

I don't think he has any idea how to fix the GOP.  What would fix the GOP is a compelling candidate - and like the two friends running from the bear, the winner only need to be better than the opposition's candidate.  To wit, George W. Bush.

Repeat Of 09

"The campaign stump speech in which Mr. Obama demanded that Congress cede him control over the debt ceiling slips my mind. But we all recall his repeated cries for increasing taxes on "the wealthiest" ($200,000 individual/$250,000 joint), so arguably he has a claim to that. Consequences do come with the democratic habit of holding elections. But if that is true, then Republicans are justified in citing the consequences of the message of the midterm election held a mere two years ago. In 2010, the Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives. Less noted but as important in measuring the nation's desires, that election gave the GOP control of the largest number of state legislatures it had held since 1928. A similar surge occurred for Republican governors."  

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732350140457816148344984907
0.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

It's funny that this is a repeat of what I seem to have just read about
when Obama and Boehner went head to head in 09 and 10. He seems to
think he can win without offering anything to the GOP. Maybe he can.

But he cannot be transcendent, significant, important. He's just
winning a small, symbolic victory that will amount to nothing. He seems
so tiny and thin as a person on the Presidential stage. He's not a good
enough actor - Clinton was - to appear substantial. And he seems to
have very little substance.

Sequestration will be wasteful, and who knows which party will benefit.
But there are worse things than sequestration, and giving this petulant
president anything he wants would be one of those things.

Blue Dresses on Interns

Obama's pettiness and shallowness used to anger me, now I realize, thanks to Woodward, he's just in way over his head. He's a AA player in the big leagues and does not realize it and most Presidents were just as far in over their heads but did seem to know.

"President Obama treats the truth the way Bill Clinton treated blue dresses on interns. In our raucous political system, it's natural for a president's policies to insult our beliefs. But only the most arrogant
president insults our intelligence on a near-daily basis."

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/it_not_adding_up_qmZ
RyBixLfsVquuzKN3H4L

Levin's Perspective

MARK LEVIN: We conservatives, we do not accept bipartisanship in the pursuit of tyranny. Period. We will not negotiate the terms of our economic and political servitude. Period. We will not abandon our child to a dark and bleak future. We will not accept a fate that is alien to the legacy we inherited from every single future generation in this country. We will not accept social engineering by politicians and bureaucrats who treat us like lab rats, rather than self-sufficient human beings. There are those in this country who choose tyranny over liberty. They do not speak for us, 57 million of us who voted against this yesterday, and they do not get to dictate to us under our Constitution.

We are the alternative. We will resist. We're not going to surrender to this. We will not be passive, we will not be compliant in our demise. We're not good losers, you better believe we're sore losers! A good loser is a loser forever. Now I hear we're called 'purists.' Conservatives are called purists. The very people who keep nominating moderates, now call us purists the way the left calls us purists. Yeah, things like liberty, and property rights, individual sovereignty, and the Constitution, and capitalism.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/11/07/mark_levin_gives_unvarnished_truth_on_romney_loss.html

What Does That Mean?

I love Tamny's Libertarian zingers - viewed through the lens of a
liberty lover, these guys both sound like economic clowns speaking in
tongues.

"Lets bring back manufacturing jobs".  Honestly, how would that be done and who could do it? And what reason would there be to believe it would cause more good than harm?  Idiots.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntamny/2012/10/23/in-an-election-about-th
e-economy-obamas-foreign-policy-debate-victory-was-pyrrhic/3/

"...when in fact, a return of those low wage jobs would signal a
weakening a America."

Embarrassingly for Romney, he came back with stock retort that "I know
what it takes to create jobs", brought up his 5 point economic plan,
then made the false assertion that small businesses are the engine of
our economy. In fact they're not. In truth, it's the growth of big
business that fosters the creation of small ones in clusters around the
big ones. Politics is never about the truth. Never.

Never one to let a silly comment go unanswered without an equally silly
reply, Obama responded that "small business creation when you were
governor of Massachusetts was 48th in the country", but as president
"I've reformed education because we're falling behind in math and
science." Judging by the economy, either Obama's reforms haven't been
that great for growth, or education isn't as relevant to our economic
chances as politicians would have us believe. I'll bet on the latter.


Obama then made the howler of an assertion that "If you and me don't pay
more taxes we as a nation won't be competitive." Sorry Mr. President,
but other than a strong and stable dollar, and perhaps open borders to
willing workers, the single most stimulative economic act of any
president would be to reduce the burden on the vital few in the U.S.
whose innovations and investment author much of our economic
advancement.

Actually Mr. Governor, our rising "trade deficit" with China is a
positive economic sign that we're allowing them to make low value goods
for us that we're able to pay for thanks to massive capital inflows into
the U.S. It's scary what kind of economic damage presidents could do
absent the gridlock blessedly foisted on them by the House and Senate.
Can they really be this illiterate about economics?

Sit Down, Shut Up, Do Nothing, and .... Win?

"Readers can cite the long list of errors made by Obama since his  election, I'll agree with many of their criticisms, but the reality is that absent egregious errors of George W. Bush's own making, there's no President Obama today. Republicans can wail that they don't recognize what the U.S. has become (funny because Obama extended the Bush tax cuts, followed Bush's lead on the bailouts and nosebleed spending,
reappointed Bush's Fed appointee in Ben Bernanke, and doubled down on Bush's weak dollar policies), but the reality is that policies given us by admittedly clueless Republicans gave us Obama. Of course in doubling
down on Bush's policies of dollar debasement, heavy spending and bailouts, along with his own personal disaster in the form of Obamacare, President Obama was disciplined by an all-knowing electorate.

"Unbeknownst to Obama, Bush handed him the opportunity of a lifetime in the form of an economy that was on its back. Here it can't be stressed enough that when economies are recessing, they are healing themselves.

"The greater the downturn the greater the recovery, and that's the case because the greater the downturn, the more the healing that is occurring. If Obama had sat back and done nothing upon arrival in Washington, he would today be presiding over a nice recovery. And then if he'd sat back and done nothing while adopting Reagan/Clinton dollar policies, he'd be presiding over the kind of boom that would have him on the verge of a Reagan style victory circa 1984."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntamny/2012/09/16/jude-wanniskis-electora
l-model-points-to-a-slim-romney-victory/3/

Interesting speculation, but I wonder if "doing nothing" and reversing the soft dollar policy would have been enough.

The Dog Ate My Homework

"It’s not the first time that the intelligence community has been thrown under the bus by an administration trying to paper over a foreign-policy failure, but Biden’s move was breathtaking in its brazenness. In front of tens of millions, he squarely blamed the intelligence officials for the administration’s pathetic, erroneous claim that an anti-Islam video had sparked spontaneous protests that later turned violent at the Libyan consulate.

“The intelligence community told us that,” Biden said during the debate. “As they learned more facts about exactly what happened, they changed their assessment.”
But a former senior intelligence official scoffed at that assertion. “The administration designated Benghazi as a terrorist attack within 24 hours while at the same time declaring the attack was a ‘spontaneous protest’ that ‘spun out of control,’” he told me. “They can’t get their story straight, so the cover-up is deepening.” "
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/330397/october-surprise-may-be-libya-john-fund

The question isn't whether or not a video could have caused it - the question is, like the homework eaten by the dog, is why they bought that line, and then tried to sell it. 

Any school teacher, or foreign policy analyst, should have rolled their eyes at that whopper.

The Unspoken Narrative

http://nationaljournal.com/columns/political-connections/obama-s-missing-piece-a-second-term-agenda-20121004

I can't promise anything, I've already broken every promise

I don't have any reasonable ideas about how to fix what's broken, since if I did, I'd be pressed on why I have not already advocated for them

I will appoint another crazy liberal judge or two.

I will keep the GOP out of power for a bit longer.

I will prevent the GOP from undoing obamacare until it's too late to stop it.

That's it folks, that's all I have.

He Was What He Is

The problem was Romney, who was commanding, fluent, reasonable, articulate, sharp-witted, warm, occasionally funny, full of ideas, full of facts, full of thoughtful, detailed criticisms of Obama policy (who the hell expected him to bring up, as an afterthought, Dodd-Frank's failure to specify what a "reasonably qualified" mortgage applicant was, and how that chilled lending? Obama sure didn't!), and, therefore, ultimately, full of qualification for the job and yes, full of gravitas.

That's the problem.

Not Obama. I repeat: This is who Obama is. He has never been this brilliant intellect and keen policy analysts liberals have, in their BubbleWorld, dreamed him as.

The problem is not that Obama is or was awful. The problem is that he is what he always is -- adequate and hardly ever more -- and Romney is actually on top of things, an accomplished executive with a winner's thirst for victory an an A-student's understanding of what victory requires.

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/333653.php

Great quote from a fantastic movie:

As the heroes of The Man Who Would Be King discovered-- when a God is seen to bleed, things can go pear-shaped pretty quickly.

WSJ - Bully v Wonk

On nearly every specific issue on which Mr. Biden attacked, he was demonstrably wrong. The Administration's Medicare actuary really does say that 15% of hospitals will take on operating deficits as a result of ObamaCare's cuts in payments to Medicare providers. The American Enterprise Institute study doesn't say that Mr. Romney's plan will raise taxes on the middle class, and Mr. Ryan's Medicare plan doesn't raise costs for seniors by $6,400. Mr. Biden never even tried to offer a
second-term agenda.

But this 90 minutes wasn't about an exchange of ideas or a debate over policies. It was a Democratic show of contempt for the opposition, an attempt to claim by repetitive assertion that Messrs. Ryan and Romney are radicals who want to destroy "the middle class." Mr. Ryan's cool under assault was a visual rebuttal of that claim, and we certainly know who looked more presidential.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044374920457805107349471145
6.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Will This Get Ugly?

... the president himself advanced the argument that "the video did it" in his speech to the United Nations. So, as Charles concluded, he is extremely vulnerable to a counterattack tonight from Governor Romney, who will have 90 minutes and much on-the-record evidence when he presents his case. That, however, raises the pressure on the governor not to screw it up a second time.

Tonight, therefore, is the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier contest of presidential politics.

In one important respect, however, Charles understated his argument. Though he observed that Obama had sent out other administration spokesmen to present the administration's false account, he argued the quite limited case that it was the president who was facing the music.

That may be true tonight and on Election Day. If, however, Romney persuades the world that the Obama administration has given a "misleading" account of the Benghazi murders to American television viewers, to the media, to the United Nations, and to the world at large, he will indict a great many people in addition to the president.

Simply list the people who have gone out in public to repeat the video argument - and related arguments such as the claim (maintained for eight days after the president used the phrase "acts of terror" in the Rose Garden) that it couldn't yet be said for certain that the Benghazi attack was a terrorist action

If this was indeed a deception, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Ambassador Susan Rice, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, White House aide David Axelrod, and press spokesman Jay Carney are only six of the people who apparently cooperated in it - though Mr. Carney is probably safe, since no one believes that the press guy is told what really happened unless that also happens to be the cover story.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/331122/libyagate-john-o-sullivan
I wonder if even this would make folk think twice about "their" elected leadership.

Questions for the Candidates

http://m.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-debate-questions-for-the-presidential-candidates/2012/09/28/231ff27e-08fb-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_story.html

These were awesome - read the article!

Samuelson on the $5 Trillion Lie

Here's Obama at one rally:

"My opponent, he believes in top-down economics, thinks that if you spend another $5 trillion on a tax cut skewed towards the wealthy that prosperity will rain down on everyone else."

It's a powerful argument, marred only by the fact that the $5 trillion tax cut is a fiction.

Let's see how this happened.

Some blame belongs to Romney. He has made many vague, inconsistent and contradictory promises. He would cut all individual income tax rates by 20 percent and then offset lost revenues by eliminating tax breaks -- but doesn't say which ones. He would reduce government spending from today's 23 percent of gross domestic product to 20 percent, a $450 billion annual cut -- but doesn't say how. He would balance the budget and raise defense spending. And so on.

On taxes, uncertainties abound. If you cut everyone's tax rates by 20 percent, the rich -- with the highest rates and the biggest tax bills -- get the biggest breaks. The present top rate of 35 percent drops to 28 percent; the lowest rate falls only from 10 percent to 8 percent. (Each reduction is one-fifth, or 20 percent.) If that were all, Romney's plan would indeed represent a windfall for the wealthy. Those with annual incomes exceeding $1 million would save an average $175,000, estimates the Tax Policy Center (TPC), a research group. (By the TPC's estimates, the 0.8 percent of taxpayers with incomes over $500,000 currently pay 28 percent of federal taxes.)
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/10/05/the_5_trillion_tax_cut_myth_115672.html

The BLUF: Neither pol has provided a plausible answer, but the 5 Trillion dollar tax break for the rich is imaginary. While Obama campaign has provided not even a whiff of how they'd arrested the currently screaming government debts or pay for any of the grand democratic programs, Romney/Ryan has a serious side - they've actually put a proposal on the table.

Save Big Bird Dammit!

So when Romney completely deflated that six-month "kill Romney" strategy - by looking reasonable, responsible, authoritative in demonstrating how his policies would help the middle class by stimulating economic growth - what did Obama have left?

Big Bird. The stupidest ad in memory. Has any president ever run an ad so small and trivial? After an unprecedented shellacking in a debate about very large issues, this is his response?

The Middle East is ablaze, the country drowning in debt, the fiscal cliff looming - and Obama's great pitch is that only he can save the $130 million enterprise that is the Sesame Workshop?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-the-big-bird-
counterattack/2012/10/11/c605e224-13cc-11e2-be82-c3411b7680a9_story.html

"Oh?"

Late in the debate, when Romney for a third time referred to Obamacare's creation of "an unelected board, appointed board, who are going to decide what kind of [medical] treatment you ought to have," Obama said, "No, it isn't." Oh?

The Independent Payment Advisory Board perfectly illustrates liberalism's itch to remove choices from individuals, and from their elected representatives, and to repose the power to choose in supposed experts liberated from democratic accountability. Beginning in 2014, IPAB would consist of 15 unelected technocrats whose recommendations for reducing Medicare costs must be enacted by Congress by Aug. 15 of each year. If Congress does not enact them, or other measures achieving the same level of cost containment, IPAB's proposals automatically are transformed from recommendations into law. Without being approved by Congress. Without being signed by the president.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-f-will-romneys-trifecta/2012/10/04/8e4fc77a-0e4d-11e2-bb5e-492c0d30bff6_story.html

It's Always Changing, Sometimes For the Better

In this, one of the most racially and culturally homogenous states, the only uninteresting thing about Love is that she is black. This is not just progress; it is the destination toward which progress was directed during the brisk march to today’s healthy indifference to the fact that Love would be the first black Republican woman ever in the House. Some “stalemate.”

In March 2008, in the speech ostensibly explaining the inexplicable — his 20 years in the pews of the raving Rev. Jeremiah Wright — candidate Barack Obama referred to “a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years.” Hardly.

He was then eight months from winning 43 percent of the white vote — two points more than John Kerry won four years earlier. Obama carried three states — three more than Kerry — of the Confederacy (Florida, Virginia and North Carolina). In states outside the South, Obama received substantially more white votes than any Democratic candidate since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 — more than Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton or Al Gore. This is part of the “racial stalemate” in which Mississippi has more black elected officials — not more relative to population; more — than any other state.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-utahs-mia-love-and-the-myth-of-the-racial-stalemate/2012/09/21/a41da834-0348-11e2-8102-ebee9c66e190_story.html

Now We Get The Truth

Mr Danne added: 'His unfortunate remarks over the weekend show an utter lack of understanding and appreciation for the people who take a huge personal risk and work endless hours to start a business and create jobs.'


President Obama said in a speech at the weekend that governments and not individuals create jobs, telling entrepreneurs: 'If you've got a business - you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.'
He added: 'You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2174160/Obama-says-wealthy-ARENT-responsible-success.html#ixzz20tN3LYtn
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2174160/Obama-says-wealthy-ARENT-responsible-success.html

I'm glad he said it because it's been apparent this is how he thinks.  The POTUS seems not to get what wealth is, where it comes from, and why he and other pols can use the productivity generated by others, and auction it off to pad their political resume.

Lots of smart people "fail", many hard working people do not wind up with successful businesses that employ hundreds or thousands and bring valued products to market.  That comment is so irrelevant it is stunning to consider.

This Will Only Hurt For A Little While

The highest barrier to a new economic boom is the defeatism of those seeking to manage the west's decline. Millions of Europeans and Americans alike are now enduring the painful consequences of empty promises becoming broken promises, after politicians pushed government spending and debt to unsustainable levels and spread cronyism instead of entrepreneurial dynamism.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c9eb2ad6-d022-11e1-99a8-00144feabdc0.html#axzz21BkdEsAb

Who couldn't recognize this in the efforts of the past few years?  Paying off needed elements drastically over-rode any other motive.  This is how socialism works.