Romney Demanded " Several " Years Tax Returns From Ryan

[John Manning]

FILE UNDER: Arrogant Hypocritical Liar For President


-- Mitt Romney's presidential campaign requested
"several" years of tax returns from potential vice presidential
picks, senior adviser Beth Myers, who ran the search, told
reporters Saturday.

Myers said vetting documents were stored in safes in
a secure room at campaign headquarters for review by attorneys.

Asked what was inside the safes, Myers replied
"tax documents, everything we used.”

And how many years? "Several" she said, declining to provide
a more specific number.

Romney has found himself in on defense on the issue.
His father, former Michigan Governor George Romney, began
the voluntary practice of financial transparency when he volunteered
to turn over, in his case, 12 years of tax returns to an
inquisitive reporter in 1967.

Mitt Romney reportedly provided 23 years of returns
to John McCain's vetters when he was up for the vice
presidential nomination four years ago. He has said he
fears that the Obama campaign and the media will distort
the contents of any other returns he might release.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/romney-campaign-examined-tax-returns-of-potential

[Dave U. Random]

Derek Hunter - TownHall.com

After the massacre in Tucson that saw six murdered and U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and 12 others wounded, President Obama gave a speech at the memorial where he called for raising the tone in politics. To honor the memory of those killed and wounded the president said:

"The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives -- to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let's remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation in a way that would make them proud."

Moving words. Also a lie.

President Obama had no interest in having “more civility in our public discourse,” no concern for those grieving families. He said what was expected of him as president – touching, well-delivered words we now know had as much meaning to him as his promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.

The president has stood silently while his supporters, surrogates and staff have engaged in some of the most transparently desperate and disgusting campaign rhetoric of the modern age.

Without proof or even proof to the contrary, Democrats have accused Mitt Romney of being a felon, a tax cheat, a racist and a murderer. With each charge, the president avoided leveling the charge himself. But he said nothing … did nothing to stop them.

The media only recently bothered to ask his staff about the latest lie his allies have propagated – that Romney’s actions at Bain Capital are somehow responsible for the death by lung cancer of the wife of former steel worker and current liberal activist Joe Soptic.

Their response? The natural instinct of liberals when challenged – to lie.

First, we learned Mrs. Soptic didn’t die until seven years after Romney left Bain Capital. Oops.

Then, we were told the president had no knowledge of Joe Soptic or the basis of his claim Romney was responsible for his wife’s death. But then we learned White House staffers pimped Soptic’s story on a conference call back in May, and the campaign still pimps his wife’s death on its website. Oops again.

Even then, they wouldn’t admit they were lying – liars never do. They admitted only the story Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter had been telling on national television the day before was not in line with reality. Cutter, the Obama staffer who hosted the conference call featuring Soptic, and a regular in the media, promptly canceled her appearance on ABC’s This Week and was replaced by head campaign hack David Axelrod. It’s much easier to deny a lie on behalf of someone else because the video of the lie will not be of you.

While all of this happened, while the president’s own press secretary first denied any knowledge of the ad, then refused to comment or condemn it, Barack Obama was silent.

No reporters have asked the president directly about this because they haven’t had the chance. He has avoided questions from the media for weeks – as if his henchmen have threatened to take away his golf clubs if he opens his mouth.

But when his flying monkeys learned Mitt Romney’s campaign had rejected a proposal from a pro-Romney SuperPAC to link Obama to his racist pastor of 20 years, they feigned outrage and demanded Romney – who truly was uninvolved – condemn it.

None of this occurs naturally. All of it comes from the top. And the top is Barack Obama.

You can tell all you need to know about a man’s character by comparing his words with his actions.

Every day he and his allies refuse to repudiate this disgraceful ad, every hour they continue these reprehensible lies, every second they embrace these dishonorable tactics, they spit on the graves of those victims in Tucson the president himself said he wanted to honor. The longer Barack Obama refuses to condemn and end the vicious tactics and words used in his name, the more he dishonors the memory of Christina Taylor Green and the other victims.

At that January memorial for the victims of that massacre, Barack Obama said this of the Green, the youngest murder victim:

"If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today. And here on Earth, we place our hands over our hearts and commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of her gentle, happy spirit."

Did he mean those words when he said them? Or were they the utterings of a sociopath who exploited the death of a 9-year-old girl for the moment and quickly cast her aside like he’s cast aside so many others?

Sadly for our country and their memories, the answer is clear.

[Joe Cooper]

Fix the Economy: Regardless of when the country’s economic problems
started, the president also vowed during his campaign to fix the economy in
three years. Fourteen months later, he said missing the deadline would make
his presidency a “one-term proposition.”

The U.S. unemployment rate has remained above 8 percent for more than three
years, despite the president's economic adviser predicting one month into
the administration that the president’s roughly $787 billion American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act would keep unemployment below 8 percent and
reduce it to about 6 percent by this year.

“By any measure, the president’s approach has failed,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby
Jindal said in a recent op-ed for the Tri-Parish Times.



--
I do not want a President who is really rich. The rich are
out of touch...Unless their last name is Kennedy, Obama or
Kerry, or they run as a Democrat.

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

In some areas of life, flexibility is good. If you�re doing yoga or gymnastics, for example, you�ll need to be flexible. However, there are some arenas where flexibility isn�t possible. If you try to bend the rules they don�t give, they simply break.

Consider welfare reform.

As Heritage experts Andrew Grossman and Robert Rector explain, the welfare reform of 1996 stands as perhaps the most important entitlement reform in the nation�s history. Its successes stem from a core requirement that able-bodied parents must work, search for work, or train for work to be eligible for public assistance.


But now, under the guise of providing states greater �flexibility� in operating their welfare programs, the Obama administration claims it has the authority to weaken or waive the work requirements at the heart of the reform law.


Yet the law is clear that those requirements can�t be waived.The work requirement was the most controversial provision of the 1996 welfare reform.


Even after President Clinton twice vetoed reform bills, Congress refused to budge on Section 407, which defines �Mandatory Work Requirements.� Clinton reluctantly signed the final �workfare� measure into law.


Fast forward to July 12, when the Obama administration�s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued an �information memorandum� to state welfare-plan administrators regarding �waiver and expenditure authority.� Essentially, HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius contends that a separate provision gives HHS authority to waive the work requirement in Section 407 of the welfare-reform law.


But this claim by HHS is wrong.


Section 407 establishes stand-alone work requirements for state welfare plans that brook no exceptions. And Section 407 is absent from the list of sections that the HHS secretary does have the authority to waive. Indeed, Section 407 shows that Congress was concerned that HHS or states would attempt to evade the law�s strict work requirements.


To prevent backsliding, Congress legislated in great detail, defining terms with specificity and setting hard caps on exemptions. For example, rather than leave the matter to administrative discretion, Section 407 enumerates twelve �work activities� that satisfy the state and individual work requirements and specifies the number of hours per week that family members would be required to work. It even spells out how work-participation rates would be calculated, to prevent gaming by the states or HHS.


The Obama administration concedes that Congress allowed states obtaining waivers in the interim period after the 1996 law�s passage to ignore every single new requirement in the law except for the work requirements contained in Section 407, which states were required to implement immediately.It makes no sense to suggest that Congress was so concerned about ensuring that work requirements weren�t waived that it inserted a stopgap provision to prevent waivers during the interim period but then authorized HHS to waive those requirements at will at any time afterward.


�We�re going to look every single day to figure out what we can do without Congress,� President Obama said late last year. The president has followed through on that promise, weakening legal requirements enacted by Congress on immigration, education funding and now welfare. There is, after all, absolutely no indication, in the text of the 1996 welfare reform or elsewhere, that Congress intended to allow the waiver of the centerpiece provision: work requirements.


It�s just the latest of �a persistent pattern of disregard for the powers of the legislative branch in favor of administrative decision-making without�and often in spite of�congressional action. This violates the spirit�and potentially the letter�of the Constitution�s separation of the legislative and executive powers of Congress and the President,� Heritage�s Matthew Spalding writes.


�The President has unique and powerful responsibilities in our constitutional system as chief executive officer, head of state, and commander in chief. Those powers do not include the authority to make laws or to decide which laws to enforce and which to ignore. The President � like judges or Members of Congress � takes an oath to uphold the Constitution in carrying out the responsibilities of his office.�

When it comes to welfare reform, the administration is overstepping its authority again � asserting a flexibility that simply doesn�t exist.

[Just Wondering]

On 8/14/2012 11:38 AM, Anonymous wrote:
> In some areas of life, flexibility is good. If you�re doing yoga or gymnastics, for example, you�ll need to be flexible. However, there are some arenas where flexibility isn�t possible. If you try to bend the rules they don�t give, they simply break.
>
> Consider welfare reform.
>
> As Heritage experts Andrew Grossman and Robert Rector explain, the welfare reform of 1996 stands as perhaps the most important entitlement reform in the nation�s history. Its successes stem from a core requirement that able-bodied parents must work, search for work, or train for work to be eligible for public assistance.
>
>
> But now, under the guise of providing states greater �flexibility� in operating their welfare programs, the Obama administration claims it has the authority to weaken or waive the work requirements at the heart of the reform law.
>
>
> Yet the law is clear that those requirements can�t be waived.The work requirement was the most controversial provision of the 1996 welfare reform.
>
>
> Even after President Clinton twice vetoed reform bills, Congress refused to budge on Section 407, which defines �Mandatory Work Requirements.� Clinton reluctantly signed the final �workfare� measure into law.
>
>
> Fast forward to July 12, when the Obama administration�s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued an �information memorandum� to state welfare-plan administrators regarding �waiver and expenditure authority.� Essentially, HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius contends that a separate provision gives HHS authority to waive the work requirement in Section 407 of the welfare-reform law.

>
>
> But this claim by HHS is wrong.
>
>

> Section 407 establishes stand-alone work requirements for state welfare plans that brook no exceptions. And Section 407 is absent from the list of sections that the HHS secretary does have the authority to waive. Indeed, Section 407 shows that Congress was concerned that HHS or states would attempt to evade the law�s strict work requirements.
>
>
> To prevent backsliding, Congress legislated in great detail, defining terms with specificity and setting hard caps on exemptions. For example, rather than leave the matter to administrative discretion, Section 407 enumerates twelve �work activities� that satisfy the state and individual work requirements and specifies the number of hours per week that family members would be required to work. It even spells out how work-participation rates would be calculated, to prevent gaming by the states or HHS.
>
>
> The Obama administration concedes that Congress allowed states obtaining waivers in the interim period after the 1996 law�s passage to ignore every single new requirement in the law except for the work requirements contained in Section 407, which states were required to implement immediately.It makes no sense to suggest that Congress was so concerned about ensuring that work requirements weren�t waived that it inserted a stopgap provision to prevent waivers during the interim period but then authorized HHS to waive those requirements at will at any time afterward.
>
>
> �We�re going to look every single day to figure out what we can do without Congress,� President Obama said late last year. The president has followed through on that promise, weakening legal requirements enacted by Congress on immigration, education funding and now welfare. There is, after all, absolutely no indication, in the text of the 1996 welfare reform or elsewhere, that Congress intended to allow the waiver of the centerpiece provision: work requirements.
>
>
> It�s just the latest of �a persistent pattern of disregard for the powers of the legislative branch in favor of administrative decision-making without�and often in spite of�congressional action. This violates the spirit�and potentially the letter�of the Constitution�s separation of the legislative and executive powers of Congress and the President,� Heritage�s Matthew Spalding writes.
>
>
> �The President has unique and powerful responsibilities in our constitutional system as chief executive officer, head of state, and commander in chief. Those powers do not include the authority to make laws or to decide which laws to enforce and which to ignore. The President � like judges or Members of Congress � takes an oath to uphold the Constitution in carrying out the responsibilities of his office.�
>
> When it comes to welfare reform, the administration is overstepping its authority again � asserting a flexibility that simply doesn�t exist.
>
Based on Obama's repeated violations of federal law, Congress should
bring articles of impeachment against him.

[PaxPerPoten]

No! He should be charged with massive numbers of the Felonies that he
has committed and be prosecuted and hung for his high crimes against
America. His wife and children should be deported to Kenya to prevent
further crimes from that family in America. Impeachment takes too long
and seldom can be accomplished.

[Jeanne Douglas]

In article <c6be9044e97d2fd3...@foto.nl1.torservers.net>,

Anonymous <anon...@foto.nl1.torservers.net> wrote:

> In some areas of life, flexibility is good. If you�re doing yoga or
> gymnastics, for example, you�ll need to be flexible. However, there are some
> arenas where flexibility isn�t possible. If you try to bend the rules they
> don�t give, they simply break.
>
> Consider welfare reform.
>
> As Heritage experts Andrew Grossman and Robert Rector explain, the welfare
> reform of 1996 stands as perhaps the most important entitlement reform in the
> nation�s history. Its successes stem from a core requirement that able-bodied
> parents must work, search for work, or train for work to be eligible for
> public assistance.
>
>
> But now, under the guise of providing states greater �flexibility� in
> operating their welfare programs, the Obama administration claims it has the
> authority to weaken or waive the work requirements at the heart of the reform
> law.

The Administration has done no such thing, so no need to read any
further.

--
JD

"the lybian lier"

[John H. Gohde]

On Aug 14, 4:10 pm, Just Wondering <fmh...@comcast.net> wrote:
> On 8/14/2012 11:38 AM, Anonymous wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

> > In some areas of life, flexibility is good. If you’re doing yoga or gymnastics, for example, you’ll need to be flexible. However, there are some arenas where flexibility isn’t possible. If you try to bend the rules they don’t give, they simply break.
>
> > Consider welfare reform.
>
> > As Heritage experts Andrew Grossman and Robert Rector explain, the welfare reform of 1996 stands as perhaps the most important entitlement reform in the nation’s history. Its successes stem from a core requirement that able-bodied parents must work, search for work, or train for work to be eligible for public assistance.
>
> > But now, under the guise of providing states greater “flexibility” in operating their welfare programs, the Obama administration claims it has the authority to weaken or waive the work requirements at the heart of the reform law.
>
> > Yet the law is clear that those requirements can’t be waived.The work requirement was the most controversial provision of the 1996 welfare reform.
>
> > Even after President Clinton twice vetoed reform bills, Congress refused to budge on Section 407, which defines “Mandatory Work Requirements.” Clinton reluctantly signed the final “workfare” measure into law.
>
> > Fast forward to July 12, when the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued an “information memorandum” to state welfare-plan administrators regarding “waiver and expenditure authority.” Essentially, HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius contends that a separate provision gives HHS authority to waive the work requirement in Section 407 of the welfare-reform law.

>
> > But this claim by HHS is wrong.
>

> > Section 407 establishes stand-alone work requirements for state welfare plans that brook no exceptions. And Section 407 is absent from the list of sections that the HHS secretary does have the authority to waive. Indeed, Section 407 shows that Congress was concerned that HHS or states would attempt to evade the law’s strict work requirements.
>
> > To prevent backsliding, Congress legislated in great detail, defining terms with specificity and setting hard caps on exemptions. For example, rather than leave the matter to administrative discretion, Section 407 enumerates twelve “work activities” that satisfy the state and individual work requirements and specifies the number of hours per week that family members would be required to work. It even spells out how work-participation rates would be calculated, to prevent gaming by the states or HHS.
>
> > The Obama administration concedes that Congress allowed states obtaining waivers in the interim period after the 1996 law’s passage to ignore every single new requirement in the law except for the work requirements contained in Section 407, which states were required to implement immediately.It makes no sense to suggest that Congress was so concerned about ensuring that work requirements weren’t waived that it inserted a stopgap provision to prevent waivers during the interim period but then authorized HHS to waive those requirements at will at any time afterward.
>
> > “We’re going to look every single day to figure out what we can do without Congress,” President Obama said late last year. The president has followed through on that promise, weakening legal requirements enacted by Congress on immigration, education funding and now welfare. There is, after all, absolutely no indication, in the text of the 1996 welfare reform or elsewhere, that Congress intended to allow the waiver of the centerpiece provision: work requirements.
>
> > It’s just the latest of “a persistent pattern of disregard for the powers of the legislative branch in favor of administrative decision-making without—and often in spite of—congressional action.  This violates the spirit—and potentially the letter—of the Constitution’s separation of the legislative and executive powers of Congress and the President,” Heritage’s Matthew Spalding writes.
>
> > “The President has unique and powerful responsibilities in our constitutional system as chief executive officer, head of state, and commander in chief. Those powers do not include the authority to make laws or to decide which laws to enforce and which to ignore. The President – like judges or Members of Congress – takes an oath to uphold the Constitution in carrying out the responsibilities of his office.”
>
> > When it comes to welfare reform, the administration is overstepping its authority again – asserting a flexibility that simply doesn’t exist.

>
> Based on Obama's repeated violations of federal law, Congress should
> bring articles of impeachment against him.

Too much information. No one but you is interested in your crap.

[John Manning]

(CNSNews.com) � Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney�s running mate, mocked Vice President Joe Biden Thursday while campaigning in Ohio, by saying �as Joe Biden might say, it�s great to be here in Nevada.�

Ryan, speaking at a rally at Walsh University in North Canton, said, �It�s great to be here in North Canton, or as Joe Biden might say, it�s great to be here in Nevada.�

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ryan-ohio-mocks-biden-joe-biden-might-say-it-s-great-be-here-nevada

[Sunwalker <G><]

On Fri, 17 Aug 2012 13:38:24 +0200, John Manning
<fr...@spamexpire-201208.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> wrote:

>http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ryan-ohio-mocks-biden-joe-biden-might-say-it-s-great-be-here-nevada

Thanks, for another great post. It helped me discover a new source of
interesting information.

The link cnsnews.com has now become another straight level source of
news for me.

Thanks again. Know that I have learned more from reading cnsnews.com
today then from watching FOX News for years.

Today FOX News is run by a bunch of clowns, but cnsnews.com actually
goes to the heart of the issues quickly.

It's truly amazing to me that the more I read your posts Mr. Manning
the more I begin to side with you.

How, could I have been wrong all this time? Perhaps now that I am
finally distancing myself from the LDS Church, God is breaking the
swirling dark ink around me, and allowing me to finally see the light
day.

The Mormon Church has only been a curse to me. Last night I had a
dream that the Mormons were like Swirling Dervish, and as they spin
around me they created a smoke screen of black ink in the air, and it
kept me from seeing the light. Yes, it truly awesome, that as I
distance myself from Mormonism the more peace and clearer my thoughts
and the inspiring my writing become. <G><

- Erick

[Lydig Avenue Kibbitzer]

In article <33702a58735b7a2d...@msgid.frell.theremailer.net>, John
Manning says...

(The post I am responding to was obviously posted
by someone using John Manning's name,
not John Manning himself)

Biden might have forgotten which state he was in,
but Ryan wants everybody to forget that he's acolyte
of the radical Ayn Rand.

Religious leaders of *Ryan's own religion* have denounced
him as being at odds with what they teach, and they might
well have sent the same letter of protest to Rand herself.

Ryan is every bit as much a opportunistic chameleon
as Romney, both are shilling for their big money backers,
and no amount of stand-up comic shtick should make him
palatable to the average American.

[John Manning]

Hey, remember when Nancy Pelosi and a gaggle of Democratic women vowed to eradicate Washington's culture of corruption? Tee-hee. Instead of breaking up the Good Ol' Boys Club, Capitol Hill's leading liberal ladies have established their very own taxpayer-funded Sisterhood of the Plundering Hacks.

This week, the names of two of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's gal pals surfaced in a mortifying, Animal House-style scandal. If the allegations of whistleblowers pan out, DHS may soon be known as DSH: The Department of Sexual Harassment.

According to FoxNews.com's Judson Berger, DHS chief of staff for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Suzanne Barr put herself on voluntary leave after details of her lewd behavior were disclosed as part of an ongoing discrimination and retaliation lawsuit. In "newly emerging affidavits," Berger reported, "one of the employees claimed that in October 2009, while in a discussion about Halloween plans, the individual witnessed Barr turn to a senior ICE employee and say: 'You a sexy (expletive deleted).'"

Striking a blow for equal opportunity pervs everywhere, Barr "then looked at his crotch and asked, 'How long is it anyway?' according to the affidavit."

Barr is accused of numerous other acts intended to "humiliate and intimidate male employees." Yet another account from the lawsuit detailed Barr's vulgar text messages to a colleague while on a boozy trip to Colombia. On the same junket, Barr allegedly offered to perform oral sex on another DHS employee. Barr, a lawyer who previously served as Napolitano's director of legislative affairs when the DHS secretary was governor of Arizona, had no law enforcement experience before ascending the federal ranks.

A few months after Barr followed Napolitano to DHS in 2009, another crony tagged along. Dora Schriro, who served as director of Arizona's Department of Corrections under then-Gov. Napolitano, was appointed by her BFF to head the Detention and Removal Operations office despite zero experience in that critical homeland security policy area. The suit claims that Schriro had a "longstanding relationship with (Napolitano)" that resulted in preferential treatment.

A few plum posts here, a few plum posts there. Pretty soon, the sleaze piles up.

But DHS has nothing on the public relations slush fund created by Obamacare -- and forked over to Obama on-air surrogate Kiki McLean. The longtime Democratic operative and self-described "true D.C. insider" heads up the global public affairs division at Porter Novelli, which secured a $20 million contract to peddle Obamacare to the public. The firm claims it struck gold after a "competitive bidding process." But members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have called for probes into that and other shady business-as-usual PR contracts. And HHS, headed by Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, is dragging its feet on meeting information requests.

Such obstructionism is nothing new to Sebelius, whose tenure as Kansas governor is still the subject of an ongoing criminal court case against Planned Parenthood and the Sunflower State's health officials. Last year, the plaintiffs discovered that health bureaucrats presided over the "routine" shredding of "documents related to felony charges the abortion giant faces." Sebelius doggedly fought transparency motions in the proceedings for years.

Are Obama's female inspectors general watching out for taxpayers any better than their male counterparts? As the boys in my family like to say: negatory.

Interior Department acting IG Mary Kendall is knee-stocking-deep in a conflict-of-interest scandal, which alleges that she potentially helped White House officials cover up their doctoring of scientific documents that led to the fraudulent, job-killing drilling moratorium of 2010.

Acting Department of Justice IG Cynthia Schnedar, a longtime employee and colleague of now-Attorney General Eric Holder, has an ethics imbroglio all her own. As I reported in June, she worked under Holder in the 1990s and co-filed several legal briefs with him. Schnedar recklessly released secret Fast and Furious audiotapes to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix before reviewing them. The tapes somehow found their way into the hands of the local ATF office. Both remain targets of congressional probes.

Over on Capitol Hill, Democratic women are too preoccupied with their own nest-feathering and backside-covering to police the Obama administration:

California Democratic Rep. Laura Richardson, a tax dodger and loan defaulter, received a House ethics wrist slap two weeks ago after investigators concluded she had "improperly pressured her congressional staffers to work on her campaign, verbally abused and intimidated them, used taxpayer-funded resources for personal and political activities, and obstructed the investigation," as the Los Angeles Times summed it up.

Fellow California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters still hasn't faced an ethics trial over her meddling in minority-owned OneUnited Bank. The financial institution, in which her husband had invested, received $12 million in federal TARP bailout money after Waters' office personally intervened and lobbied the Treasury Department in 2008.

Nevada Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley faces a formal House ethics investigation into charges that she abused her position to benefit her husband's business interests.

And investigative author Peter Schweizer exposed House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and her husband's smelly Obamacare insider deals involving the initial public offering of credit-card company Visa.

Out: Drain the swamp. In: Last one in is a rotten egg. Kick off your pumps and 3, 2, 1 ... cannonball!

http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2012/08/17/the_liberal_sisterhood_of_the_plundering_hacks/page/full/

[John Manning]

There�s a millstone hanging around the neck of the US economy.

And his name is Barack Obama.

Blame Bush if you want, but post-9/11, Bush�s policies got the country moving in the right direction after a hard right hook.

Blame Bush if you must, but the �blame Bush� mantra doesn�t change some critical facts:

You see, George Bush isn�t running for president of the United States. Barack Obama is; and voters seem to be aware of this fact, to the dismay, no doubt, of the White House.

�A New York Times/CBS News poll released Thursday,� wrote the Washington Times in April of this year, �didn�t ask voters about blame for the economy, but whether they thought an Obama re-election would improve their financial situations. Thirty-eight percent said it would have no effect; 33 percent said it would make their situations worse. Only 26 percent said a second Obama term would improve their economic situations.

You know why they say this? Because while the buck is supposed to stop on the president�s desk, the buck- and the bucks- never seems to stop with Obama.

Every time Obama blames Bush, he just reinforces how irrelevant President Scholarship has become.

President Invest-in-Clean-Energy has pretty much had it his own way since his coronation. He spent the money he asked for. If he wanted more, he had two years to ask for it, and Congress would have given it to him.

And despite brave talk from President High-Speed-Rail, he was better at writing books than he has been at being president. Or at least he hired better people to write books for him.

Ah, yes, this is just another thing Sarah Palin was right about that the mainstream media couldn�t sniff out for themselves. I guess going to all those colleges worked out better for Palin than having say, one journalism degree from one school and working at one job- journalism- your whole life.

Betcha five bucks that one year under a Palin presidency- or a Bachmann, a Perry, a Romney, or a [shudder, shudder, shudder] (Hillary) Clinton presidency- that the unemployment arrow would be pointing the right way.

Only an ideologue, tied to academic leftist-dogma, could be proud of such a disastrous record as President-Eat-My-Peas-and-Like-it. And apparently he�s pursued all these goals on purpose.

And here�s the most damning thing about President Class-Warrior: The only people making money so far are the stock traders. Every time I turn around, the stock market is threatening to make new two year highs, companies are reporting record earnings and even evil banks are reporting profits. Things are going swimmingly on Wall Street thanks to zero interest rates and the certainty that the Federal Reserve will provide enough liquidity to make the seas rise along with commodity prices.

Oh, and did I tell you President Fundraiser broke a presidential fundraising record?

The man who claimed he�d raise a billion bucks for his reelection bid won�t make that lofty figure, but he�ll own the record for the number of fundraisers given by a president.

�In the first 12 days of June,� reports ABCNews, �Obama has attended 21 fundraising events. All told, he has now attended 163 re-election fundraisers for his campaign and the Democratic Party � almost double the number George W. Bush attended in his entire first term (86) and more than any other president in history.�

And why doesn�t it surprise me that President Balanced-Budget raised $300 million and spent a record $204 million so far this cycle?

Spending money recklessly is the only thing President War on Women knows how to do. Imagine what Obama would do with himself if the bucks ever stopped.

The people who are left out in the cold are the vast middle-class, and it includes people who make more than $250,000 a year. People like that, under the right president, can create jobs for the rest of us better than President Tax-the-Rich can with the entire power of the federal government at his disposal.

Whether you�re a Democrat, a Republican or a swing voter- I�m talking about voters here- President I-Killed-Osama-bin-Laden-Personally, either created this economy on purpose or created it by accident.

It�s time to pick one.

And let the buck stop where it may.

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2012/08/17/the_bucks_never_stop_with_obama/page/full/

[John Manning]

Inserting himself into the biographies of past presidents on the White House website apparently wasn't enough for President Obama. His State Department is now editing its descriptions of foreign countries into yet another taxpayer-subsidized campaign commercial for the Obama Administration.

The State Department has recently ended its long-running series of Background Notes, which were analytical, objective histories of other countries. In their place, new "Fact Sheets" now tout Obama's policies and actions toward each nation. No more historical context, no recounting of complex and long-standing issues in the country. Just cut to the chase�that is, the time when the current Administration came to power.

Heritage's Jim Roberts, one of the editors of Heritage's Index of Economic Freedom, was struck by the disproportionate change in emphasis while doing some research recently. Roberts, who worked at the State Department from 1982 to 2007 and used to write these country profiles, said he had never seen edits like these under either previous Republican or Democratic Administrations.

Roberts noted that "They seem to be not 'fact sheets' but brag sheets," adding that the edits appear to treat countries more favorably when the Obama Administration agrees with their leaders.

Roberts is in the process of examining the differences between the historical Background Notes and the new, Obama-centric Fact Sheets. He reveals:

Compare the nearly 1,200-word "Fact Sheet" published this week by the U.S. embassy in Brazil with the last Background Note on Brazil written during the George W. Bush Administration.

The 4,100-word Bush document, chock full of facts and figures helpful in analyzing the country and its importance to the U.S., never once mentions the name of any U.S. President. The 300-word section on U.S.�Brazil relations takes up about 7 percent of the document.

Conversely, fully 70 percent (830 words) of the Brazil Fact Sheet, which is focused exclusively on U.S. relations with Brazil, discusses President Obama either directly by name (twice!) or in the context of the plethora of programs his Administration has launched with Brazil, including a shared "commitment to combat discrimination based on race, gender, ethnicity, or lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) status; to advance gender equality; a bilateral instrument that targets racism; support for HIV/AIDS prevention, promotion of clean energy technologies in Brazil, and mitigation of climate change."

Thus far, Roberts has not found a comprehensive explanation for the debut of the Fact Sheets. The State Department's website simply says, "As of May 2012, Background Notes are no longer being updated or produced. They are in the process of being replaced by Fact Sheets that focus on U.S. relations with each country."

Since President Obama took office, the budget of the State Department has increased from $38.7 billion to $50.2 billion, and thousands have been added to the payroll. Finding that these taxpayer-funded resources are being used to eliminate neutral publications that were highly useful to researchers�only to replace them with lopsided "facts" akin to a campaign commercial�is something the American people deserve to know.

This follows an Administration trend that goes back to 2009. In March of that year, the Administration was caught editing President George W. Bush's biography to soften his listed accomplishments, and it quickly reversed course. Just a few months ago, it was discovered that White House staff had edited the biographies of many past presidents on whitehouse.gov to include a bullet point or two inserting President Obama into each historical narrative. These remain on the site, including a fabrication they inserted about President Ronald Reagan's tax policy to make it seem similar to Obama's.

American officeholders are supposed to take great pains to separate their campaigns from their official duties. Using taxpayer resources to blatantly promote the president's positions on foreign policy�and even editing the historical record�is an egregious abuse of power.

Heritage Foundation

[sully]

On Aug 17, 10:11 am, John Manning <nob...@slug.sluggish.net> wrote:
> Inserting himself into the biographies of past presidents on the White House website apparently wasn't enough for President Obama. His State Department is now editing its descriptions of foreign countries into yet another taxpayer-subsidized campaign commercial for the Obama Administration.
>

It's appropriate that liars quote liars. A frustrated reich
winger who can't deal with either facts or reason posts
lies while spoofing John Manning.

What's sad is the rest of the right wingers are likely
nodding along with gaped mouth agreement!

[Sunwalker <G><]

On 17 Aug 2012 07:24:02 -0700, Lydig Avenue Kibbitzer

Thanks again, Lydig Avenue Kibbitzer. You are right this John has a
different email in his header. I have been tricked! I thought he was
the real John Manning. I'm going to check email headers next time.
<G><

[Just Wondering]

On 8/17/2012 10:14 AM, John Manning wrote:
> �In the first 12 days of June,� reports ABCNews, �Obama has attended 21 fundraising events.

This is a good thing. It means that during that time, he was not sitting
in the Oval Office doing whatever it is that he does there.

[Joe Cooper]

sully <suls...@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:87a312f7-2219-441c...@qa3g2000pbc.googlegroups.com:

> It's appropriate that liars quote liars. A frustrated reich
> winger who can't deal with either facts or reason posts
> lies while spoofing John Manning.

You believe Roberts is lying? Can you prove that?

[Lydig Avenue Kibbitzer]

In article <e3391aad14998890...@slug.slugish.net>, John Manning
says...

(the post I am responding to was written by someone
using John Manning's name, not John Manning)


So...the Obama Administration is now producing
*more comprehensive* (1,200 word) summaries of current
U.S.-Brazil relations, policies and diplomatic issues than
the Bush administration did (300 words).

Diplomatic relations and policy is what State Department
is supposed to focus on.

Do you actually believe that "facts and figures helpful

in analyzing the country and its importance to the U.S.

are now no longer available from State Dept. or other
sources well-known to those who use such information?

There was a post last week in this forum that, similar to
this dishonest post, attempted to use the revamping of
State Department country reports for anti-Obama
propaganda, claiming that religious issues had been
stripped from the country reports -- in fact, what was done
was that separate and *more comprehensive* reports
focusing exclusively on religious issues were now being
produced in tandem with the general country reports,
and were available at the State Department web site,
clearly marked and literally side-by-side.

I brought this to the poster's attention -- I believe it was
that "Against Socialism" guy, Lance (that fine "Christian"
fellow who urges the U.S. to engage in mass murder by
dropping nukes on Mecca). He didn't respond. Wonder why...

[Xavier Onnasis]

John Manning <fr...@spamexpire-201208.rodent.frell.theremailer.net>
wrote in
news:33702a58735b7a2d...@msgid.frell.theremailer.net:

kill yourself, asshole...


--

XO

[Black Coffee]

Xavier Onnasis <xavier.onnasis@mule_brokers.com> wrote:
>John Manning <fr...@spamexpire-201208.rodent.frell.theremailer.net>

>news:33702a58735b7a2d...@msgid.frell.theremailer.net:
>> (CNSNews.com) � Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), GOP presidential candidate
>> Mitt Romney�s running mate, mocked Vice President Joe Biden Thursday
>> while campaigning in Ohio, by saying �as Joe Biden might say, it�s
>> great to be here in Nevada.�
>> Ryan, speaking at a rally at Walsh University in North Canton, said,
>> �It�s great to be here in North Canton, or as Joe Biden might say,
>> it�s great to be here in Nevada.�
>> http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ryan-ohio-mocks-biden-joe-biden-might-say-it-s-great-be-here-nevada
>kill yourself, asshole...

Do it for him, coward.

---
"I VOTED!" stickers:
Idiots labeling themselves to show everyone that they're gullible idiots

[Gray Guest]

wble...@fbi.gov (Black Coffee) wrote in
news:c4Gdnah2n5mJt6zN...@posted.sonicnet:

Slow Joe is your hero, ain't he?

He's the perfect example of:

"Hire the handicapped. It's fun to watch them work."

--
Refusenik #1

[Xavier Onnasis]

wble...@fbi.gov (Black Coffee) wrote in
news:c4Gdnah2n5mJt6zN...@posted.sonicnet:

you have no idea what you're blithering about, do you?

or maybe you do...given your own foot print here in A.A, I'm guessing
you're a big fan of nym-shifting, identity theft, and forgery

jerks like you are no different from the OP...the planet is better off
without you



--

XO

[Anonymous]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/08/19/niall-ferguson-on-why-
barack-obama-needs-to-go.html

Why does Paul Ryan scare the president so much? Because Obama has broken
his promises, and it’s clear that the GOP ticket’s path to prosperity is
our only hope.

I was a good loser four years ago. “In the grand scheme of history,” I
wrote the day after Barack Obama’s election as president, “four decades is
not an especially long time. Yet in that brief period America has gone
from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to the apotheosis of
Barack Obama. You would not be human if you failed to acknowledge this as
a cause for great rejoicing.”

Despite having been—full disclosure—an adviser to John McCain, I
acknowledged his opponent’s remarkable qualities: his soaring oratory, his
cool, hard-to-ruffle temperament, and his near faultless campaign
organization.

Yet the question confronting the country nearly four years later is not
who was the better candidate four years ago. It is whether the winner has
delivered on his promises. And the sad truth is that he has not.

In his inaugural address, Obama promised “not only to create new jobs, but
to lay a new foundation for growth.” He promised to “build the roads and
bridges, the electric grids, and digital lines that feed our commerce and
bind us together.” He promised to “restore science to its rightful place
and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower
its cost.” And he promised to “transform our schools and colleges and
universities to meet the demands of a new age.” Unfortunately the
president’s scorecard on every single one of those bold pledges is
pitiful.

In an unguarded moment earlier this year, the president commented that the
private sector of the economy was “doing fine.” Certainly, the stock
market is well up (by 74 percent) relative to the close on Inauguration
Day 2009. But the total number of private-sector jobs is still 4.3 million
below the January 2008 peak. Meanwhile, since 2008, a staggering 3.6
million Americans have been added to Social Security’s disability
insurance program. This is one of many ways unemployment is being
concealed.

In his fiscal year 2010 budget—the first he presented—the president
envisaged growth of 3.2 percent in 2010, 4.0 percent in 2011, 4.6 percent
in 2012. The actual numbers were 2.4 percent in 2010 and 1.8 percent in
2011; few forecasters now expect it to be much above 2.3 percent this
year.

Unemployment was supposed to be 6 percent by now. It has averaged 8.2
percent this year so far. Meanwhile real median annual household income
has dropped more than 5 percent since June 2009. Nearly 110 million
individuals received a welfare benefit in 2011, mostly Medicaid or food
stamps.

Welcome to Obama’s America: nearly half the population is not represented
on a taxable return—almost exactly the same proportion that lives in a
household where at least one member receives some type of government
benefit. We are becoming the 50–50 nation—half of us paying the taxes, the
other half receiving the benefits.

And all this despite a far bigger hike in the federal debt than we were
promised. According to the 2010 budget, the debt in public hands was
supposed to fall in relation to GDP from 67 percent in 2010 to less than
66 percent this year. If only. By the end of this year, according to the
Congressional Budget Office (CBO), it will reach 70 percent of GDP. These
figures significantly understate the debt problem, however. The ratio that
matters is debt to revenue. That number has leapt upward from 165 percent
in 2008 to 262 percent this year, according to figures from the
International Monetary Fund. Among developed economies, only Ireland and
Spain have seen a bigger deterioration.

Not only did the initial fiscal stimulus fade after the sugar rush of
2009, but the president has done absolutely nothing to close the long-term
gap between spending and revenue.

His much-vaunted health-care reform will not prevent spending on health
programs growing from more than 5 percent of GDP today to almost 10
percent in 2037. Add the projected increase in the costs of Social
Security and you are looking at a total bill of 16 percent of GDP 25 years
from now. That is only slightly less than the average cost of all federal
programs and activities, apart from net interest payments, over the past
40 years. Under this president’s policies, the debt is on course to
approach 200 percent of GDP in 2037—a mountain of debt that is bound to
reduce growth even further.

Newsweek’s executive editor, Justine Rosenthal, tells the story behind
Ferguson’s cover story.

And even that figure understates the real debt burden. The most recent
estimate for the difference between the net present value of federal
government liabilities and the net present value of future federal
revenues—what economist Larry Kotlikoff calls the true “fiscal gap”—is
$222 trillion.

The president’s supporters will, of course, say that the poor performance
of the economy can’t be blamed on him. They would rather finger his
predecessor, or the economists he picked to advise him, or Wall Street, or
Europe—anyone but the man in the White House.

There’s some truth in this. It was pretty hard to foresee what was going
to happen to the economy in the years after 2008. Yet surely we can
legitimately blame the president for the political mistakes of the past
four years. After all, it’s the president’s job to run the executive
branch effectively—to lead the nation. And here is where his failure has
been greatest.

On paper it looked like an economics dream team: Larry Summers, Christina
Romer, and Austan Goolsbee, not to mention Peter Orszag, Tim Geithner, and
Paul Volcker. The inside story, however, is that the president was wholly
unable to manage the mighty brains—and egos—he had assembled to advise
him.

According to Ron Suskind’s book Confidence Men, Summers told Orszag over
dinner in May 2009: “You know, Peter, we’re really home alone ... I mean
it. We’re home alone. There’s no adult in charge. Clinton would never have
made these mistakes [of indecisiveness on key economic issues].” On issue
after issue, according to Suskind, Summers overruled the president. “You
can’t just march in and make that argument and then have him make a
decision,” Summers told Orszag, “because he doesn’t know what he’s
deciding.” (I have heard similar things said off the record by key
participants in the president’s interminable “seminar” on Afghanistan
policy.)

This problem extended beyond the White House. After the imperial
presidency of the Bush era, there was something more like parliamentary
government in the first two years of Obama’s administration. The president
proposed; Congress disposed. It was Nancy Pelosi and her cohorts who wrote
the stimulus bill and made sure it was stuffed full of political pork. And
it was the Democrats in Congress—led by Christopher Dodd and Barney
Frank—who devised the 2,319-page Wall Street Reform and Consumer
Protection Act (Dodd-Frank, for short), a near-perfect example of
excessive complexity in regulation. The act requires that regulators
create 243 rules, conduct 67 studies, and issue 22 periodic reports. It
eliminates one regulator and creates two new ones.

It is five years since the financial crisis began, but the central
problems—excessive financial concentration and excessive financial
leverage—have not been addressed.

Today a mere 10 too-big-to-fail financial institutions are responsible for
three quarters of total financial assets under management in the United
States. Yet the country’s largest banks are at least $50 billion short of
meeting new capital requirements under the new “Basel III” accords
governing bank capital adequacy.

And then there was health care. No one seriously doubts that the U.S.
system needed to be reformed. But the Patient Protection and Affordable
Care Act (ACA) of 2010 did nothing to address the core defects of the
system: the long-run explosion of Medicare costs as the baby boomers
retire, the “fee for service” model that drives health-care inflation, the
link from employment to insurance that explains why so many Americans lack
coverage, and the excessive costs of the liability insurance that our
doctors need to protect them from our lawyers.

Ironically, the core Obamacare concept of the “individual mandate”
(requiring all Americans to buy insurance or face a fine) was something
the president himself had opposed when vying with Hillary Clinton for the
Democratic nomination. A much more accurate term would be “Pelosicare,”
since it was she who really forced the bill through Congress.

Pelosicare was not only a political disaster. Polls consistently showed
that only a minority of the public liked the ACA, and it was the main
reason why Republicans regained control of the House in 2010. It was also
another fiscal snafu. The president pledged that health-care reform would
not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on
Taxation now estimate that the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA
will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012–22 period.

The president just kept ducking the fiscal issue. Having set up a
bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, headed
by retired Wyoming Republican senator Alan Simpson and former Clinton
chief of staff Erskine Bowles, Obama effectively sidelined its
recommendations of approximately $3 trillion in cuts and $1 trillion in
added revenues over the coming decade. As a result there was no “grand
bargain” with the House Republicans—which means that, barring some
miracle, the country will hit a fiscal cliff on Jan. 1 as the Bush tax
cuts expire and the first of $1.2 trillion of automatic, across-the-board
spending cuts are imposed. The CBO estimates the net effect could be a 4
percent reduction in output.

The failures of leadership on economic and fiscal policy over the past
four years have had geopolitical consequences. The World Bank expects the
U.S. to grow by just 2 percent in 2012. China will grow four times faster
than that; India three times faster. By 2017, the International Monetary
Fund predicts, the GDP of China will overtake that of the United States.

Meanwhile, the fiscal train wreck has already initiated a process of steep
cuts in the defense budget, at a time when it is very far from clear that
the world has become a safer place—least of all in the Middle East.

For me the president’s greatest failure has been not to think through the
implications of these challenges to American power. Far from developing a
coherent strategy, he believed—perhaps encouraged by the premature award
of the Nobel Peace Prize—that all he needed to do was to make touchy-feely
speeches around the world explaining to foreigners that he was not George
W. Bush.

In Tokyo in November 2009, the president gave his boilerplate hug-a-
foreigner speech: “In an interconnected world, power does not need to be a
zero-sum game, and nations need not fear the success of another ... The
United States does not seek to contain China ... On the contrary, the rise
of a strong, prosperous China can be a source of strength for the
community of nations.” Yet by fall 2011, this approach had been jettisoned
in favor of a “pivot” back to the Pacific, including risible deployments
of troops to Australia and Singapore. From the vantage point of Beijing,
neither approach had credibility.

His Cairo speech of June 4, 2009, was an especially clumsy bid to
ingratiate himself on what proved to be the eve of a regional revolution.
“I’m also proud to carry with me,” he told Egyptians, “a greeting of peace
from Muslim communities in my country: Assalamu alaikum ... I’ve come here
.. to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around
the world, one based ... upon the truth that America and Islam are not
exclusive and need not be in competition.”

Believing it was his role to repudiate neoconservatism, Obama completely
missed the revolutionary wave of Middle Eastern democracy—precisely the
wave the neocons had hoped to trigger with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein
in Iraq. When revolution broke out—first in Iran, then in Tunisia, Egypt,
Libya, and Syria—the president faced stark alternatives. He could try to
catch the wave by lending his support to the youthful revolutionaries and
trying to ride it in a direction advantageous to American interests. Or he
could do nothing and let the forces of reaction prevail.

In the case of Iran he did nothing, and the thugs of the Islamic Republic
ruthlessly crushed the demonstrations. Ditto Syria. In Libya he was
cajoled into intervening. In Egypt he tried to have it both ways,
exhorting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to leave, then drawing back and
recommending an “orderly transition.” The result was a foreign-policy
debacle. Not only were Egypt’s elites appalled by what seemed to them a
betrayal, but the victors—the Muslim Brotherhood—had nothing to be
grateful for. America’s closest Middle Eastern allies—Israel and the
Saudis—looked on in amazement.

“This is what happens when you get caught by surprise,” an anonymous
American official told The New York Times in February 2011. “We’ve had
endless strategy sessions for the past two years on Mideast peace, on
containing Iran. And how many of them factored in the possibility that
Egypt moves from stability to turmoil? None.”

Remarkably the president polls relatively strongly on national security.
Yet the public mistakes his administration’s astonishingly uninhibited use
of political assassination for a coherent strategy. According to the
Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London, the civilian proportion of
drone casualties was 16 percent last year. Ask yourself how the liberal
media would have behaved if George W. Bush had used drones this way. Yet
somehow it is only ever Republican secretaries of state who are accused of
committing “war crimes.”

The real crime is that the assassination program destroys potentially
crucial intelligence (as well as antagonizing locals) every time a drone
strikes. It symbolizes the administration’s decision to abandon
counterinsurgency in favor of a narrow counterterrorism. What that means
in practice is the abandonment not only of Iraq but soon of Afghanistan
too. Understandably, the men and women who have served there wonder what
exactly their sacrifice was for, if any notion that we are nation building
has been quietly dumped. Only when both countries sink back into civil war
will we realize the real price of Obama’s foreign policy.

America under this president is a superpower in retreat, if not
retirement. Small wonder 46 percent of Americans—and 63 percent of
Chinese—believe that China already has replaced the U.S. as the world’s
leading superpower or eventually will.

It is a sign of just how completely Barack Obama has “lost his narrative”
since getting elected that the best case he has yet made for reelection is
that Mitt Romney should not be president. In his notorious “you didn’t
build that” speech, Obama listed what he considers the greatest
achievements of big government: the Internet, the GI Bill, the Golden Gate
Bridge, the Hoover Dam, the Apollo moon landing, and even (bizarrely) the
creation of the middle class. Sadly, he couldn’t mention anything
comparable that his administration has achieved.

Now Obama is going head-to-head with his nemesis: a politician who
believes more in content than in form, more in reform than in rhetoric. In
the past days much has been written about Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan,
Mitt Romney’s choice of running mate. I know, like, and admire Paul Ryan.
For me, the point about him is simple. He is one of only a handful of
politicians in Washington who is truly sincere about addressing this
country’s fiscal crisis.

Over the past few years Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” has evolved, but the
essential points are clear: replace Medicare with a voucher program for
those now under 55 (not current or imminent recipients), turn Medicaid and
food stamps into block grants for the states, and—crucially—simplify the
tax code and lower tax rates to try to inject some supply-side life back
into the U.S. private sector. Ryan is not preaching austerity. He is
preaching growth. And though Reagan-era veterans like David Stockman may
have their doubts, they underestimate Ryan’s mastery of this subject.
There is literally no one in Washington who understands the challenges of
fiscal reform better.

Just as importantly, Ryan has learned that politics is the art of the
possible. There are parts of his plan that he is understandably soft-
pedaling right now—notably the new source of federal revenue referred to
in his 2010 “Roadmap for America’s Future” as a “business consumption
tax.” Stockman needs to remind himself that the real “fairy-tale budget
plans” have been the ones produced by the White House since 2009.

I first met Paul Ryan in April 2010. I had been invited to a dinner in
Washington where the U.S. fiscal crisis was going to be the topic of
discussion. So crucial did this subject seem to me that I expected the
dinner to happen in one of the city’s biggest hotel ballrooms. It was
actually held in the host’s home. Three congressmen showed up—a sign of
how successful the president’s fiscal version of “don’t ask, don’t tell”
(about the debt) had been. Ryan blew me away. I have wanted to see him in
the White House ever since.

It remains to be seen if the American public is ready to embrace the
radical overhaul of the nation’s finances that Ryan proposes. The public
mood is deeply ambivalent. The president’s approval rating is down to 49
percent. The Gallup Economic Confidence Index is at minus 28 (down from
minus 13 in May). But Obama is still narrowly ahead of Romney in the polls
as far as the popular vote is concerned (50.8 to 48.2) and comfortably
ahead in the Electoral College. The pollsters say that Paul Ryan’s
nomination is not a game changer; indeed, he is a high-risk choice for
Romney because so many people feel nervous about the reforms Ryan
proposes.

But one thing is clear. Ryan psychs Obama out. This has been apparent ever
since the White House went on the offensive against Ryan in the spring of
last year. And the reason he psychs him out is that, unlike Obama, Ryan
has a plan—as opposed to a narrative—for this country.

Mitt Romney is not the best candidate for the presidency I can imagine.

But he was clearly the best of the Republican contenders for the
nomination. He brings to the presidency precisely the kind of
experience—both in the business world and in executive office—that Barack
Obama manifestly lacked four years ago. (If only Obama had worked at Bain
Capital for a few years, instead of as a community organizer in Chicago,
he might understand exactly why the private sector is not “doing fine”
right now.) And by picking Ryan as his running mate, Romney has given the
first real sign that—unlike Obama—he is a courageous leader who will not
duck the challenges America faces.

The voters now face a stark choice. They can let Barack Obama’s rambling,
solipsistic narrative continue until they find themselves living in some
American version of Europe, with low growth, high unemployment, even
higher debt—and real geopolitical decline.

Or they can opt for real change: the kind of change that will end four
years of economic underperformance, stop the terrifying accumulation of
debt, and reestablish a secure fiscal foundation for American national
security.

I’ve said it before: it’s a choice between les États Unis and the Republic
of the Battle Hymn.

I was a good loser four years ago. But this year, fired up by the rise of
Ryan, I want badly to win.

Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University. He is also
a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a senior
fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His Latest book,
Civilization: The West and the Rest, has just been published by Penguin
Press.

[Dave U. Random]

I�ve said it before: it�s a choice between les �tats Unis and the Republic

[Anonymous]

Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) struck a nerve during his acceptance speech in Tampa, Florida last week. He put his finger on the Obama vision for America and in doing so, may have given Americans a jolt.

Yes, there can be a downside to ever greater government provision. Many things done in the name of compassion�even compassionate conservatism�can have undesirable side effects. In the 1970s, for example, honorable people on both sides of the political divide tried to find ways with coping with persistent poverty. Surely, those who seemed trapped in poverty were living lesser lives. Was there not something government might do to alleviate this unhappy condition?
The massive transfers of wealth of the Lyndon B. Johnson era were sputtering out, having achieved little. And some people said then: �We declared war on poverty, and poverty won.� The federal government intervened in many communities, hoping to create a liberal vision of a great society.

In all too many cases, however, such interventions produced devastating results. Family breakdown in America can be traced to these interventions of the 1960s. At the time of Pearl Harbor in 1941, for example, 89% of black children were born to married parents. By the mid-1960s, however, the number of out-of-wedlock births to black mothers had doubled.

This alarming fact led social scientist Daniel Patrick Moynihan to sound a note of alarm. His 1965 Report on the Negro Family warned of terrible consequences if more and more children, especially young boys, were raised without their fathers� wisdom and guidance.

Moynihan was shouted down. Liberal though he was, he had offended the emerging liberal orthodoxy. That orthodoxy said that decrying out-of-wedlock births was only another way of �blaming the victim.� Liberals demanded more and more federal social programs. The problem, in their view, was that government simply had not spent enough.

Conservatives recoiled. They objected not only to the mounting costs and the ever increasing tax burden on intact families struggling to keep their own heads above water, but also from a growing sense that federal social programs were hurting, not helping, the poor.

Thus was born the welfare reform movement. It came from a desire not just to cut costs, but also to give the poor a hand up not just a handout. Conservatives quoted even such a liberal lion as Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR had warned that the dole�as necessary as he saw it in a nation stricken by Depression�should be temporary. He even likened it to a narcotic � necessary after surgery, but dangerously addictive if overdosed or indulged in too long.

Barack Obama was an early and outspoken opponent of welfare reform. Even as an Illinois state senator, he rejected the emerging bi-partisan consensus in the 1990s that the poor needed work, marriage, and dignity.

As President, Barack Obama has loosened the strict work requirements that state governors�including conservative Republicans like John Sununu of New Hampshire and moderate Democrats Bill Clinton of Arkansas�worked for a decade to put in place.

Today, President Obama bitterly denies that he has repealed welfare reform. Welfare reform is still up and running, he indignantly replies. All he has done is to loosen the laces in the running shoes. We will soon see the entire reform tripped up.

Welfare Reform�passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democratic President�was one of the greatest examples of bi-partisan cooperation since the Great Civil Rights Act of 1964. And yet this important national initiative is being quietly and effectively gutted.

In its place, President Obama wants us to model our lives on �Julia.� This fictional character was created by the Obama team to show their greater concern for women.

�Julia� has no last name. She seems to have no family. She makes her debut as a toddler in Head Start. Her entire education is subsidized and supervised under the mild gaze of Barack Obama. She goes to college with his help. Aided by him, she starts a business�although what this business does is never specified. She �decides to have a child.� No husband is mentioned. Not even a cohabiting male partner. And we don�t know if the child is a son or daughter.

Perhaps, like that infamous Canadian couple, the child is to be raised without respect to male or female. In fact, Julia has no father, brother. Not even a male business associate. Her life has only one man in it: Barack Obama.

Paul Ryan was right to describe Barack Obama�s America: �Where everything is free but us.�

That brief sentence is the best capsule summary of the timeless wisdom of French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville. In 1835, Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America and warned of the �soft despotism� that could threaten liberty:

"Above [all local and family attachments] an immense tutelary power is elevated, which alone takes charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fate. It is absolute, detailed, regular, far-seeing, and mild. It would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood�It willingly works for their happiness; but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that; it provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances; can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living?"

In such a world, Tocqueville warned us, government becomes all-embracing:

�It does not destroy, it prevents things from being born.� What a chilling phrase from our past. Mr. Obama�s vision is a nightmare to millions. Not only does it prevent things from being born�new enterprises, new services, new concepts, new social and commercial arrangements�but it literally prevents from being born millions of human beings through the vast extension of abortion�fully funded and legally protected."

Americans should appeal to President Obama to turn back from the path to soft despotism. We should remember that a government big enough to give us everything we want is strong enough to take all we have�including liberty.

[John Manning]

RUSH: You see where Obama was asked in an interview what grade he would give himself? He gave himself an "incomplete." I guess there's still too many people with jobs. (laughing) Doesn't that scare you? Gives an "incomplete." What the hell does that mean? There's no progress, so what does incomplete mean?

..

OBAMA: You know, I would say "incomplete," but what I would say is the steps that we've taken in saving the auto industry, in making sure that college is more affordable, investing in clean energy and science and technology and research, those are all the things that we're going to need to grow over the long term.

RUSH: This is delusional. This is really delusional. Saving the auto industry. Making sure that college is more affordable. What's the lament? The lament is college graduates coming out of school with so much debt that they have no hope of paying it back. College more affordable? Is there anybody who is going to college or recently graduated that buys that? College is more affordable? Investing in clean energy? Solyndra, anybody?

..

RUSH: Now, here's another way of looking at it: Are you better off now than you were four years ago. Here's some numbers from four years ago compared to today.

Unemployment: 7.8% when Obama is immaculated; 8.3% now.
The median family income four years ago: $54,983. Today it's $50,964. Basically the medium family income is down four grand. That's not insignificant.

Gasoline prices $1.85 a gallon four years ago; $3.78 a gallon national average now. In some places it's over $4.

The national debt four years ago: $10.6 trillion. It's $15.9 trillion today and will surpass $16 trillion during the Democrat convention. So the national debt is up over $5 trillion in four years, and that's because Obama has had deficits in excess of a trillion dollars every year.

..

People want leaders. Most people are not self starters. Most people like being inspired. That's what leaders do. Obama is not a leader. And I'm going to tell you, an "incomplete" grade, is this how we choose leaders? Five trillion dollars spent. Over five trillion dollars spent and his grade is "incomplete"? We nationalize healthcare and his grade is "incomplete"? We have a one trillion dollar stimulus and his grade is "incomplete"? We have corporate cronyism all over the place in the so-called green energy sector, led by Solyndra, but there are countless other examples, and the grade is "incomplete." We have a takeover, a nationalization of General Motors and Chrysler. And then the majority of the company of General Motors given to the United Auto Workers. Incomplete?

The president dares talk about one of his achievements is that college tuition is now cheaper? Are you graduates hearing this? Did you know after you've amassed anywhere from 20,000 to $200,000 in student loans that college has gotten cheaper? Obama just said so. We just played the sound bite. And his grade is "incomplete.' Unemployment 8.3%, grade "incomplete." Median family income off $4,000 in four years, grade "incomplete." Gasoline price a $1.85 four years ago, $3.78 now, grade "incomplete." Five trillion in new spending. A trillion dollars stimulus. Grade "incomplete." This is how we choose our leaders? I don't think so. This president isn't a leader.

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/09/04/obama_grades_himself_incomplete_but_the_new_york_times_reports_he_s_cocky_and_thinks_he_s_a_great_president

[Jason]

In article <2d3e73b9bf85f5da...@slug.slugish.net>, John

Thanks for your post.

[Logan Sacket]

On Tue, 4 Sep 2012 17:52:37 -0400 (EDT), John Manning
<nob...@slug.sluggish.net> wrote:

>RUSH: You see where Obama was asked in an interview
>what grade he would give himself? He gave himself an
> "incomplete." I guess there's still too many people with jobs.

Amen

[Doc Smartass]

Anonymous <nor...@breaka.net> wrote in
news:dcac82752a99d3cc...@breaka.net:

> Subject: Obama's America: "Where Everything's Free But Us"

If only there were an amendment guaranteeing free speech, free association,
a free press, you'd be able to write stupid shit like that and post it
publicly...oh, wait...

--
Doc Smartass, BAAWA Knight of Heckling aa # 1939

Kooks! http://kookclearinghouse.blogspot.com/
Books! http://jw-bookblog.blogspot.com/
Everything Else! http://pareidolia-global.blogspot.com/

Republicans are to Patriotism what Pimps are to Feminism.

[John Manning]

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.

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2012/09/05/on_message_obama_really_likes_china_again/page/full/

[raven1]

On Wed, 5 Sep 2012 03:36:12 -0400 (EDT), John Manning
<nob...@slug.sluggish.net> wrote:

>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?

Wow, you're *really* grasping at straws here. Why is it unusual that
Obama would mention that even the fastest growing economy in the world
is slowing down along with the rest of us?

[Lydig Avenue Kibbitzer]

In article <2ffc751ec1a54705...@slug.slugish.net>, John Manning
says...

>
>
>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?
>

This may be the most ludicrous stretch of
reading-into-words that I have ever seen.

Only a really ignorant person could read this
and not question the intelligence of the writer
-- literally the dumb influencing the dumber.

Amazing.

[Lydig Avenue Kibbitzer]

In article <bgfe48le3pekjq4et...@4ax.com>, raven1 says...

The poster's material (certainly this one) seems to come
primarily from this writer:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/johnwransom

[John Manning]

The first term of the Obama administration has been a complete failure -- a complete failure of Americans to deserve the great president they elected.

President Obama has done everything for you. He spent billions to create you dozens of new green jobs. He's given you amazing new health care laws. He even wore a flag pin a couple of times, though that had to disgust him. And his poor wife has done all she can to put up with the sight of your fat children waddling around everywhere. And yet you shout and shake your fat fists at him like _he's_ done something wrong. It reminds me of the end of that one _Twilight Zone_ episode where everyone screams when they see the beautiful woman, because they all have pig faces, and she's different from them. Well, Obama is the delicate beauty, and you're all the ugly, pig-faced idiots whose sight should repulse and terrify him.

Just look at the status of things. High unemployment. A sluggish economy teetering on the verge of another recession. A credit downgrade for our country. What a horrifying, stupid mess you've made of the past four years, you fat moron slobs.

When Obama took office, he handled everything with such brilliance that it was almost like he was a mystical being -- a regular faerie prince. When he saw what a horrible economy he inherited from you fool Americans, he sensibly spent hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus money. And by his expert analysis, unemployment should have declined to just above 5% by now. So what happened? You globular, lazy, gun-clinging imbeciles didn't create the jobs you were supposed to!

Obama did the hard part of job creation: He made sure the roads and bridges were built. That's 90% of the work right there. All you nitwits had to do was remove your fat faces from your tubs of nacho cheese for a few minutes and create a few businesses along those roads. I mean, how hard could that be? It's something so simple, so elementary, that Obama has never bothered to do it, because it's so far beneath him -- it's like asking a chess champion to play Candyland. But you didn't make the jobs, and now you've totally ruined his plans. To add insult to injury, he has to listen to you incessantly mewl, "Where are the jobs?" And the kicker is that you don't even need jobs, because Obama was kind enough to give you more food stamps. You'd all be perfectly fine if you�d give up your weird fetish about working.

Not only did you completely fail at turning Obama's stimulus into jobs, but in 2010 you elected a bunch of Republicans, destroying Obama's large majorities in the House and Senate. What kind of cruel joke is that? That's like surrounding a magnificent unicorn with wretched trolls. How in the world is Obama supposed to do anything when he has to actually work with people who might disagree with him? And whose ridiculous idea was it to make a genius such as Obama first get his plan approved by some other branch of government? People say it's in the Constitution, which I can't verify for certain, as I've never read it (I don't read white supremacist propaganda), but who cares what some thousand-year-old document says when we have such a brilliant man trying to transform our country? The fact that the Constitution would ever get in Obama's way proves that it needs to be chucked, but you all cling to the Constitution like it�s a security blanket, because you really are just a bunc
h of dumb babies.

This reminds me of the whole contraception controversy. Right now, 30-year-old law students are forced to go to Walgreens and buy their own birth control like common consumers, and Obama just wanted to fix that by forcing Catholic bishops to buy it for them. But then he was plagued by this "freedom of religion" objection. Really? We have iPhones now. Why do we, in this modern age, even still have religion? And when you have a real person, Obama, offering to give you everything you could ever need, why do you still need this God character, anyway?

These past four years have just proven there is no reasoning with you hillbillies. Obama has given speech after speech after speech explaining things to you, but you never get it. Obama is a fragile flower you oafs keep trampling beneath your feet. You just babble things at him like, "You cain't make peepul buy health inshuranse! It's unconstitooshunal!" And then you whine about the national debt, when it�s none of your concern anyway -- that's the government's business. What is it with you people questioning and ruining everything Obama is trying to do?

And now, in the greatest indignity you've thus far subjected the patient Obama to, you're actually pretending you might elect this Mitt Romney goofball in his place? Really? You propose that you'll actually go to the election booth, jam your sausage fingers at a Diebold machine, and select someone besides the greatest president you've ever seen?

What farce is this? If there were any justice in the world, Obama would vote whether to keep all of you Americans as his populace. And considering what a failure you've been these past four years, you�d want to go ahead and pack your bags, as Obama would instead elect better citizens to lead -- ones who wouldn't question him and would assume the appropriate position by extending their hands to him, ready to receive all that he would give them.

Sadly, that's not an option. So let's just quickly reelect Obama, give him back Democrat majorities in Congress who won't fight with him, and beg his forgiveness. And maybe -- just maybe -- he'll stop screaming in terror at your ugly pig faces.

[John Manning]

If you're going to wage a "war on women," there's no better way to do it than glorifying a guy who left a woman to drown in his car while he escaped to dry ground. The video below was shown tonight at the DNC convention in Charlotte. It documents Ted Kennedy's life, but for some reason skipped the time when he drove drunk off of a bridge and left Mary Jo Kopechne (who was on his side and worked for him as a young campaign assistant!) to die in his car, better known as the Chappaquiddick incident. The video also skips the part when Kennedy failed to tell police of the incident until nine hours after it happened.

See the video, read the article:
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2012/09/04/dnc_glorifies_senator_who_left_a_woman_to_drown_in_his_car

[John Manning]

http://townhall.com/columnists/frankjfleming/2012/09/05/the_first_term_of_obama_has_been_a_failure_of_america/page/full/

[John Manning]

CHARLOTTE, N.C. � Israel�s ambassador to the U.S. fired back at Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Tuesday after she reportedly claimed the diplomat called Republicans� policies "dangerous" to Israel -- comments the DNC chief says were "misrepresented."

"I categorically deny that I ever characterized Republican policies as harmful to Israel,� Ambassador Michael Oren said in a written statement. �Bipartisan support is a paramount national interest for Israel, and we have great friends on both sides of the aisle."

Oren was responding to a report in the Washington Examiner that quoted Wasserman Schultz as saying Oren agreed �what the Republicans are doing is dangerous for Israel."

The newspaper reported that Wasserman Schultz made the comment Monday while participating in a training session for Jewish Democrats, organized by the Obama campaign a day before the Democratic convention in Charlotte.

Republicans �can�t get anywhere with our community on domestic issues� and instead �do everything they can to lie and distort and mischaracterize this president�s stellar record on Israel,� the newspaper quoted Wasserman Schultz as saying. �We know, and I�ve heard no less than Ambassador Michael Oren say this, that what the Republicans are doing is dangerous for Israel.�

But a spokesman for Wasserman Schultz said Tuesday that the newspaper "misrepresented" the Florida congresswomans's words.

"What she said is what she has stated repeatedly before: What jeopardizes Israel's security is the suggestion, for partisan political gain, that the election of either political party would weaken the long-standing relationship of the United States and Israel," DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse said. "The Examiner�s piece should be seen for what it is, a blatant misrepresentation of the facts by a conservative outlet."

The back-and-forth Tuesday coincided with a greater point of contention between conservative Israel backers and the Obama administration at this year�s convention. The language in the 2012 Democratic party platform is noticeably different from the language in 2008 � particularly, with regard to Iran and Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The 2008 platform stated that �Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel� and that �The world must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.�

This year, by contrast, the platform adopted Tuesday by Democrats makes no mention of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. With respect to Iran, the platform reads, �President Obama believes that a diplomatic outcome remains the best and most enduring solution.

�At the same time, he has also made clear that the window for diplomacy will not remain open indefinitely and that all options - including military force - remain on the table,� it says.

The 2012 platform says Obama maintains an �unshakable commitment� to Israel�s security, and has worked to increase security assistance �despite budgetary constraints.�

When questioned on the matter, the DNC released a statement, saying, �We focused the platform on President Obama's undeniable and unshakable commitment to Israel's security, and we described the president's unprecedented record in this regard.

�The platform makes it clear that the president seeks peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and that he firmly believes that any Palestinian partner must recognize Israel's right to exist, reject violence, and adhere to existing agreements. The official position of this administration on Jerusalem is no different than the position of numerous previous administrations of both parties - that it is a final status issue to be negotiated directly by the two parties,� the statement read. �This is just another attempt by the Romney campaign to turn our support for Israel - which has always been bipartisan - into a partisan wedge issue by playing politics. This is both cynical and counter-productive to Israel's security."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/04/israeli-ambassador-denies-reported-remarks-on-israel-while-dnc-chair-calls/

Debbie Blabbermouth Schults, Joe Biden...two of the dumbest Democrats on display in Charlotte...

[MarkA]

On Wed, 05 Sep 2012 11:28:21 -0400, John Manning wrote:

> The first term of the Obama administration has been a complete failure --
> a complete failure of Americans to deserve the great president they
> elected.
>

The sad truth is that the President doesn't really have that much power.
If the GOPpers in Congress decide they are going to oppose him at every
step, regardless of how much hardship it creates for the average Joe,
there's not a lot he can do about it. He offered the GOP bipartisanship,
and they spit on him. Now, the GOP is about to be handed the most
humiliating defeat imaginable in November. They reap what they've sown.

--
MarkA

If you can read this, you can stop reading now.

[Logan Sacket]

How soon we forget.

[Doc Smartass]

John Manning <nob...@slug.sluggish.net> wrote in
news:ade0da805b838c4e...@slug.slugish.net:

...and who whipped the MittBot handily.

[MarkA]

Chappaquiddick? Really? How desperate can the GOPpers get?

Ad hominems: the last refuge of those who have nothing of substance to
argue.

--
MarkA
Keeper of Things Put There Only Just The Night Before
About eight o'clock

[plainolamerican]

---
what he does have is a desire to tax the wealthy, create socialistic
programs that fund minorities, and pardon illegals.

[Lydig Avenue Kibbitzer]

In article <be7c4e4b-f928-439a...@e14g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
plainolamerican says...

>
>>On Sep 5, 4:14=A0pm, MarkA <some...@somewhere.invalid> wrote:
>
>>The sad truth is that the President doesn't really have that much
>>power.
>

>what he does have is a desire to tax the wealthy, create socialistic
>programs that fund minorities, and pardon illegals.

Can you point me to a comprehensive list of all
these "socialistic programs that fund minorities"
and the detailed statistical analysis that demonstrates
that non-minorities don't benefit to as great a degree?

The reason I ask, is because you sound like you're
talking out of your ass -- as opposed to having
access to serious analytical data from reputable
sources and the ability to evaluate it for yourself.

Also, how do you figure that the financial
industry bailout isn't socialistic?

[Just Wondering]

Agree that the President doesn't have nearly as much power as many
people think, the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. among
them). I don't agree that truth is "sad," I think that's a good thing.

[Logan Sacket]

On Thu, 06 Sep 2012 09:36:15 -0400, MarkA <nob...@nowhere.invalid>
wrote:

Hey the Democrats started it.

[John Manning]

The modern Democratic presidency is a creation of very wealthy men. So what makes Romney wealth unacceptable?

Since when have Democrats had a problem with wealthy presidential candidates? Democrats' two most revered presidents, FDR and Kennedy, were extraordinarily wealthy. Interestingly, the contrast between Democrats' past history and their current attacks on Romney is never acknowledged -- either by Democrats or the media.

The Obama campaign has used Romney's wealth to caricature him. To hear them tell it, he was born Richie Rich and became Gordon Gecko. Of course, such a sketch serves many purposes -- from the politics of division to the economics of redistribution. The problem is it neither fits Romney nor Democrats' own self-cherished past.

Despite the recent resurrection of Bill Clinton -- really a factor of limited choices (it's either Clinton or Carter), the modern Democratic party rests on the twin pillars of Roosevelt and Kennedy. And those pillars' political careers rested on great wealth.

FDR built today's Democratic Party, and along with it the modern all-encompassing presidency. Democrats idolize both.
Roosevelt was not exactly born in a log cabin. Rather, FDR was born to wealth and privilege unimaginable to most Americans of his day or today's. He is possibly America's wealthiest president. Yet this did not hurt his political ascent, even during the depths of the Depression.

Obama in his acceptance speech even mentioned FDR ("the kind of bold experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one"), in order to tie the current economy to the Depression and himself to FDR. Yet while his campaign uses today's economy to discredit Romney and his wealth, there is not a peep about the party's plutocratic patriarch.

Did the urgency of the Depression absolve FDR, but today's does not Romney? Perhaps the world of 80 years ago was different. Then how about that of 50 years ago?

If FDR is the substance of Democrats' presidential ideal, Kennedy is its symbol. An author, truly gifted orator (pre-teleprompter), handsome, young, and a war hero, he embodied the spirit of his age. He looked like how America wanted to appear, and as the Democratic Party still sees itself.

Alas for Obama's campaign, Kennedy too had a very privileged upbringing, due to the wealth of his investor father (sound familiar?). Yet this didn't bother Democrats of his day, and apparently not those of today either.

Neither of these two Democrat icons had a hand in creating the wealth they enjoyed. Far from being self-made men, they were homemade. Contrastingly, Romney's wealth is largely of his own creation. Assuredly, he did not start from scratch, but "the scratch" he has, he earned.

This personal private sector success, which separates Romney from FDR and Kennedy, would seemingly meet with greater approval from those so suddenly suspicious of wealth. At least that is the Horatio Alger way we used to see it. People came to America to get rich. Wealth and success were Americans' goals, not their millstones.

Yet today, Romney's personal success -- the only thing separating his wealth from FDR's and Kennedy's -- stokes liberal opprobrium all the more.

The reason is simple: the men and women who succeed on their own are not dependent on government. And if they do not need government, they do not need liberals who promote it.
Liberals see the successful as an implicit rebuke of their vision. So they create a counterfactual tale of the successful: that their success has come with the assistance of the rest of us, if not at our expense. It is liberals' view that government is needed to generate widespread success and correct the imbalance that the successful create.

It is Romney's personal success, not his wealth that antagonizes liberals so. And it is the liberal control that separates today's Democratic Party from that of FDR and Kennedy. Romney actually has greater resonance to Democrats' past than today's liberals do.

Source:
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/09/25/romney-and-democrats-own-past

[Anonymous]

Derek Hunter - TownHall.com

After the massacre in Tucson that saw six murdered and U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and 12 others wounded, President Obama gave a speech at the memorial where he called for raising the tone in politics. To honor the memory of those killed and wounded the president said:

"The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives -- to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let's remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation in a way that would make them proud."

Moving words. Also a lie.

President Obama had no interest in having “more civility in our public discourse,” no concern for those grieving families. He said what was expected of him as president – touching, well-delivered words we now know had as much meaning to him as his promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.

The president has stood silently while his supporters, surrogates and staff have engaged in some of the most transparently desperate and disgusting campaign rhetoric of the modern age.

Without proof or even proof to the contrary, Democrats have accused Mitt Romney of being a felon, a tax cheat, a racist and a murderer. With each charge, the president avoided leveling the charge himself. But he said nothing … did nothing to stop them.

The media only recently bothered to ask his staff about the latest lie his allies have propagated – that Romney’s actions at Bain Capital are somehow responsible for the death by lung cancer of the wife of former steel worker and current liberal activist Joe Soptic.

Their response? The natural instinct of liberals when challenged – to lie.

First, we learned Mrs. Soptic didn’t die until seven years after Romney left Bain Capital. Oops.

Then, we were told the president had no knowledge of Joe Soptic or the basis of his claim Romney was responsible for his wife’s death. But then we learned White House staffers pimped Soptic’s story on a conference call back in May, and the campaign still pimps his wife’s death on its website. Oops again.

Even then, they wouldn’t admit they were lying – liars never do. They admitted only the story Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter had been telling on national television the day before was not in line with reality. Cutter, the Obama staffer who hosted the conference call featuring Soptic, and a regular in the media, promptly canceled her appearance on ABC’s This Week and was replaced by head campaign hack David Axelrod. It’s much easier to deny a lie on behalf of someone else because the video of the lie will not be of you.

While all of this happened, while the president’s own press secretary first denied any knowledge of the ad, then refused to comment or condemn it, Barack Obama was silent.

No reporters have asked the president directly about this because they haven’t had the chance. He has avoided questions from the media for weeks – as if his henchmen have threatened to take away his golf clubs if he opens his mouth.

But when his flying monkeys learned Mitt Romney’s campaign had rejected a proposal from a pro-Romney SuperPAC to link Obama to his racist pastor of 20 years, they feigned outrage and demanded Romney – who truly was uninvolved – condemn it.

None of this occurs naturally. All of it comes from the top. And the top is Barack Obama.

You can tell all you need to know about a man’s character by comparing his words with his actions.

Every day he and his allies refuse to repudiate this disgraceful ad, every hour they continue these reprehensible lies, every second they embrace these dishonorable tactics, they spit on the graves of those victims in Tucson the president himself said he wanted to honor. The longer Barack Obama refuses to condemn and end the vicious tactics and words used in his name, the more he dishonors the memory of Christina Taylor Green and the other victims.

At that January memorial for the victims of that massacre, Barack Obama said this of the Green, the youngest murder victim:

"If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today. And here on Earth, we place our hands over our hearts and commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of her gentle, happy spirit."

Did he mean those words when he said them? Or were they the utterings of a sociopath who exploited the death of a 9-year-old girl for the moment and quickly cast her aside like he’s cast aside so many others?

Sadly for our country and their memories, the answer is clear.

[raven1]

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 19:56:32 +0200, John Manning

<fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> wrote:

>The modern Democratic presidency is a creation of very
>wealthy men. So what makes Romney wealth unacceptable?

It's not his wealth so much as the fact that he seems more like he's
running for "Upper-Class Twit of the Year" than the Presidency.

[raven1]

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 20:20:17 GMT, Anonymous <anon...@hoi-polloi.org>
wrote:

>Without proof or even proof to the contrary, Democrats have accused
>Mitt Romney of being a felon, a tax cheat, a racist and
>a murderer. With each charge, the president avoided
>leveling the charge himself. But he said nothing … did nothing to stop them.

LOL! Stop whining that the Citizens United ruling came around to bite
you in the ass, and start thinking about how Obama will appoint
justices that will overturn it in his next term.

[Jeanne Douglas]

In article
<df9c15bd5dc070bc...@msgid.frell.theremailer.net>,
John Manning <fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net>
wrote:

> The modern Democratic presidency is a creation of very wealthy men. So what
> makes Romney wealth unacceptable?

Who said his wealth is unacceptable, fake Manning?

--
JD

"Osama Bin Laden is dead and GM is alive."--VP Joseph Biden

[Dakota]

The fake John Manning who posted this nonsense should not be confused
with the real John Manning.

[Joe Cooper]

raven1 <quotht...@nevermore.com> wrote in
news:grt3681sj91l7dnr6...@4ax.com:

Really? I guess that's why Democrats continue harping on the "rich not
paying their fair share."

Sure thing, Raven.

--
Obama Voters Are Ignoramuses:
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/09/25/obama-voters-ignoramuses
In His Own Words: Barack Obama Reviewed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8R5GvwUFU8

[John Manning]

DENVER (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says he can't imagine calling the killing of a U.S. ambassador a "bump in the road."

His comments Monday were veiled criticism of Obama for his comment in an interview broadcast Sunday.

In an interview with "60 Minutes," Obama said "there are going to be bumps in the road because ... in a lot of these places the one organizing principal has been Islam." Obama was asked about recent events in the Middle East but not specifically about the attack in Libya that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Romney told ABC News that he couldn't "imagine saying something like the assassination of ambassadors is a bump in the road."

White House spokesman Jay Carney called the GOP criticism desperate.

Source:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/romney-criticizes-obama-bumps-comments

"Sorry, that chair is empty."

Learn the truth about the Muslim Brotherhood:
http://muslimbrotherhoodinamerica.com/

[John Manning]

President Obama is so soaked in the State Department/Western European/ leftist intellectual goo of moral relativism and disdain for core American values that I doubt he understood how offensive were his remarks at the United Nations today.

After fessing up that our embassy people were killed by terrorists (he doesn’t say what kind, however) and reciting that violence is never justified he then once again denounced the anti-Islam video. And he delivers this:

"The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.

"Let us condemn incitement against Sufi Muslims and Shia pilgrims. It’s time to heed the words of Gandhi, “Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.”

"Together, we must work towards a work where we are strengthened by our differences, and not defined by them. That is what America embodies. That’s the vision we will support."

Where to begin?

Let’s start with the simple observation that he is the president and not the minister of religion. It is not necessary for him to select out one or another references to the Divine. (No “God of Moses”?). It sounds like blatant pandering and it is.

The fact that he embodies the U.N. mantra on defamation of religion (“slander”) is even more regrettable. This is, as informed watchers of the U.N. know, an invidious movement to control and suppress speech, to prevent criticism of Islamic extremists and to use the West’s legal system against itself.

Moreover, Obama is heading down a path to nowhere in which every statement of intolerance theoretically must be individually condemned by our government. But he doesn’t mean it. The hypocrisy is evident. He doesn’t and will never do this when Evangelical Christians are vilified, when art displays portray Jesus in offensive ways or when Broadway musicals jab at Mormons.

Moreover, the moral equivalence is downright appalling. Intolerant speech and insulting cartoons — that is free speech — is NOT the same as violence. And Holocaust denial by governments is not the same as boisterous, irreverent free speech exercised by free peoples.When he also concedes that the future should not belong to those “who target Coptic Christians in Egypt “ and “bully women” (bullying is what he calls mutilation, honor killings and child marriages?) in the same patter in which he denounces those who “slander” Islam he suggests these are all equally heinous and all deserving of eradication.

The rest of his speech was equally disingenuous. A few examples: “Among Israelis and Palestinians, the future must not belong to those who turn their backs on the prospect of peace.” Which party went to the U.N. to get a unilateral declaration, left bilateral negotiations and has made a pact with Hamas?

That and other sections, as John Bolton, former ambassador to the United Nations, told me, “were infused with the fallacy of moral equivalency. While Obama defended the First Amendment, he also said that we accepted that others didn’t. It’s no wonder Obama doesn’t understand the real threats to America in the Middle East.” Obama said the defense of free peoples reflects “universal values” but later concedes “I know that not all countries in this body share this particular understanding of the protection of free speech.”

On Syria: “In Syria, the future must not belong to a dictator who massacres his people. If there’s a cause that cries out for protests in the world today, peaceful protest, it is a regime that tortures children and shoots rockets in apartment buildings. And we must remain engaged to assure that what began with citizens demanding their rights does not end in a cycle of sectarian violence.” But what will he do, other than speak pretty words? Nothing.

The president’s policy is in deep disarray because his thinking is deeply misguided. When at the U.N., it would be appropriate for the president to say clearly and without caveats that the U.S. does not label obnoxious speech “slander” nor apologize for it. It defends liberty. Period.

We are faced with a segment of Islamic extremists who are offended by the idea of freedom. They must be defeated, and the West must be defended. Unfortunately, this president will never be so clear. And his policy will forever be a muddled failure.

Source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/obamas-speech-at-the-united-nations/2012/09/25/4f207d8c-0728-11e2-a10c-fa5a255a9258_blog.html

[John Manning]

The Post’s Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, takes issue with my report that since taking office President Obama has skipped his daily intelligence meeting more than half the time. So let’s fact check the Fact Checker.

The facts

After hearing from sources in the intelligence community that President Obama was not attending his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis, I asked researchers at the Government Accountability Institute, a nonpartisan research group headed by Peter Schweizer (who is also my business partner in a speechwriting firm, Oval Office Writers) to examine at Obama’s official schedule. We found during his first 1,225 days in office, Obama had attended his daily meeting to discuss the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting.

After Islamist radicals stormed our embassy in Cairo and terrorists killed our ambassador to Libya on Sept. 11, I further reported that Obama also skipped his daily intelligence meeting every day in the week leading up to the attacks. The day after the attack, he scheduled but then canceled his daily intelligence meeting, while finding time to go to Las Vegas for a campaign rally.

These facts are not in dispute. Indeed, before publishing both of my columns, I specifically asked National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor if there were instances where the president had, in fact, held his daily meeting on the PDB that did not appear on the official public calendar. He offered no examples, and not once did he challenge the numbers I presented. Neither has any White House official challenged them in the weeks since this controversy erupted. So, as a factual matter, Kessler offers no evidence that the information I presented on Obama’s PDB meeting attendance is wrong.

What Kessler and the Obama White House do argue is a matter not of fact but of opinion — that it does not matter if Obama attends a daily intelligence meeting because he reads his PDB every day. Kessler compares Obama to former presidents going back to Reagan and Nixon and finds that “many did not have an oral briefing” — and that this means Obama has simply “chosen to receive his information in a different manner than his predecessor.” There are several problems with this.

First, Kessler ignores one giant difference between then and now: Sept. 11, 2001.

Comparing lax presidential briefing habits before and after 9/11 is like comparing lax presidential security habits before and after the Kennedy assassination. After terrorists killed 3,000 people in our midst, everything changed — and the president’s daily intelligence meeting took on dramatically increased importance. President Bush made it a priority to sit down with his senior intelligence advisers every day to discuss overnight intelligence on threats to the country. President Obama has not.

Source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-bogus-defense-of-obamas-intelligence-briefing-record/2012/09/25/f5ae10de-071d-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_story.html

[Zacharias Mulletstein]

"John Manning" <fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> wrote
in message
news:df9c15bd5dc070bc...@msgid.frell.theremailer.net...

> The modern Democratic presidency is a creation of very wealthy men. So
> what makes Romney wealth unacceptable?

Bill Clinton was a dirt poor good ol' boy from Arkansas until he left the
White House and wrote his book.

[Zacharias Mulletstein]

"John Manning" <fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> wrote
in message
news:df9c15bd5dc070bc...@msgid.frell.theremailer.net...

FDR was considered a traitor to his class by the very wealthy. He was a
good man despite being born into privilege.

[Zacharias Mulletstein]

"Jeanne Douglas" <hlwd...@NOSPAMgmail.com> wrote in message
news:hlwdjsd2-43ABAB...@c-131-121-196-216.gonavy.usna.edu...

> In article
> <df9c15bd5dc070bc...@msgid.frell.theremailer.net>,
> John Manning <fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net>
> wrote:
>
>> The modern Democratic presidency is a creation of very wealthy men. So
>> what
>> makes Romney wealth unacceptable?
>
> Who said his wealth is unacceptable, fake Manning?

What is unacceptable is what he did with his money. Shipping jobs overseas,
raping companies, taking government bailouts.

[Jeanne Douglas]

In article <k3th43$av9$1...@dont-email.me>,

Yep. It's not the money, it's how he got it (I won't say earned, because
getting money by destroying thousands of lives is not earning it).

[Fred]

John Manning <fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> wrote:

> The modern Democratic presidency is a creation of
> very wealthy men. So what makes Romney wealth
> unacceptable?

the treason that he committed against the united states to acuire that
wealth. the refusal to pay taxes on the money he looted out of other
companies. his "you people" entitled attitude and contempt that he has
for the actual tax payers of the united states.

[John Manning]

For the last two weeks, the American people have been encouraged by Team Obama - both official spokesmen for the administration, its champions in the press and other partisans - to believe a number of national security calumnies that can only be described as surrealistically epic lies and dangerous deceptions. Far more than the usual political slight-of-hand that can be expected in the run-up to an election, the mendacity of Team Obama is truly audacious, and the consequences of the public accepting it at face value are very grave.

Take, for example, Obama's insistence that the surging violence in dozens of countries is a "natural" response by Muslims to a video produced in America that trashes Islam's prophet, Mohamed. One can scarcely find an official or press account of these events that does not start with something to the effect that the attacks were precipitated by that (almost-entirely-unviewed) short film.

There are several things wrong with this proposition. First, in some places - notably, Libya where an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi resulted in the brutal murder of the American ambassador and three others assigned to that mission - there is no evidence that the film was even a pretext, let alone the real reason for what was, in fact, a disciplined, coordinated and successful act of jihad. In others, it was simply the latest excuse by Islamists to incite crowds to violence, just as Danish cartoons, burned Korans, a speech by the Pope and defiled Afghan corpses have been at one time or another in the past.

What this latest campaign of deceit by Team Obama is meant to obscure is its own national security malpractice, namely a dogged refusal to face the reality that America is at war with an enemy that they have been unwilling to name, have failed to counter and are actually emboldening. Such behavior has signaled to jihadists seeking to impose on the rest of us the totalitarian ideology they call shariah that acts of violence - or even threats of violence - against us will be met with accommodations and concessions whenever the stated justification is outrage over some perceived insult to Islam.

As recounted in this space last week, the Obama administration has already committed to engage in, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it, "old-fashioned peer-pressure and shaming" to discourage such offensive behavior. This is but a milestone (as Islamist ideologue Sayyid Qutb would say) along the trajectory of the White House's acquiescence to the shariah blasphemy agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood's state-level counterpart, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

The course of this trajectory is utterly predictable: More violence, followed by more demands for more self-imposed restrictions on free speech, which are justified as necessitated by the national security. This pattern, in turn, translates into a rising perception of our submission to the Islamists' demands, which encourages another cycle of jihadism. And on and on. What started as the U.S. government's refusal to understand or even name the enemy for fear of causing offense, may soon metastacize into a cowed submission to shariah. All in the name of "keeping the peace," of course.

We are likely to be treated to another example of Obama's staggering national security disinformation campaign in connection with the UN General Assembly meetings in New York this week. The Muslim Brotherhood's Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, is expected to use his appearances to repeat his demand that the United States release a convicted terrorist currently serving a life-sentence in federal prison, Omar Abdul Rahman, better known as the "Blind Sheikh." The Obama administration wants us to believe that such a step is notunder consideration.

Yet, Hillary Clinton's State Department gave a visa in June to one of the Blind Sheikh's fellow terrorists, Hani Nour Eldin. The reason? To facilitate discussions of Morsi's demand in meetings at the White House, State Department and on Capitol Hill. Andrew McCarthy, the former federal prosecutor who secured Abdul Rahman's conviction for conspiring to destroy the World Trade Center in 1993, warns that, despite the administration's serial and artfully worded denials, President Obama is likely to release the sheikh after the November election.

Another Obama calumny I have experienced personally, but it touches every American that speaks clearly about the threat we face. Organizations closely aligned with the White House and supportive of its pandering to Islamists - like the radical left's Center for American Progress, American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Muslim Brotherhood's Council on American Islamic Relations and the Muslim Public Affairs Council(among others) - have taken to vilifying opponents of jihadism.

Without any basis in fact, we have been called everything from "racists" and "bigots" to "Islamophobes." Our expertise on national security and threats from the shariah agenda have been denied, basically on the grounds that we have not been approved by the Muslim Brotherhood, attended a madrassa or been trained as an Islamist cleric. And lately it has been suggested that, if anything bad happens in the future involving Muslims and violence, it will be our fault.

Presumably, this assertion is designed to set the stage for prosecution of the kind we have seen in Europe and Canada on hate speech or other charges consistent with what amount to shariah blasphemy laws - once our First Amendment rights have been further shredded by Mr. Obama and his team.

Will we really accede to this succession of big lies, with all that portends for our freedom of expression, our situational awareness of the jihadist threat and our ability to resist it? Not if we want to bequeath to our children the America we inherited.

Source: TownHall.com

[Zacharias Mulletstein]

"Jeanne Douglas" <hlwd...@NOSPAMgmail.com> wrote in message

news:hlwdjsd2-43D12C...@c-131-121-196-216.gonavy.usna.edu...

He initially got his money from his parents. I have no respect for anybody
who inherits money and walks around acting like they earned it.

[linuxgal]

John Manning wrote:
> DENVER (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says he can't imagine calling the killing of a U.S. ambassador a "bump in the road."
>

Well, he must not have heard the ordinary people of Benghazi rose up
against the militias, and it turns out they are actually pro-American.

[John Manning]

[MarkA]

On Wed, 26 Sep 2012 02:35:42 +0200, John Manning wrote:


>
> What this latest campaign of deceit by Team Obama is meant to obscure is
> its own national security malpractice, namely a dogged refusal to face the
> reality that America is at war with an enemy that they have been unwilling
> to name, have failed to counter and are actually emboldening. Such
> behavior has signaled to jihadists seeking to impose on the rest of us the
> totalitarian ideology they call shariah that acts of violence - or even
> threats of violence - against us will be met with accommodations and
> concessions whenever the stated justification is outrage over some
> perceived insult to Islam.

Yeah, because the GW Bush approach of invade their country, and completely
destroy their infrastructure and government worked so well in Iraq, didn't
it?

[Dakota]

It certainly won the hearts and minds of the defense contractors.

[John Manning]

One of the reasons Mitt Romney and the GOP failed to get a convention bounce was their inability to talk tax cuts, economic growth, and jobs. In his 45-minute convention speech, Romney spent 200 words on the economy, with no mention of tax cuts. It was the same for his running mate Paul Ryan: no mention of tax cuts at the convention.

In fact, Romney and Ryan didn’t talk tax cuts leading up to the convention, and they didn’t in the weeks that followed. This has hurt them in the polls. They haven’t connected the dots between Obama’s anemic economy and the Romney-Ryan solution to improve it.

But, all of a sudden, there may have been an “aha” moment. In a 60 Minutes interview this past Sunday, Romney did mention tax cuts, and take-home pay, too. Whoa.

“Take-home pay” is an old Reagan line. The Gipper appealed to middle-class voters who clearly understood that if you keep more of what you earn, and your take-home pay goes up, that’s the benefit of a tax cut.

Democrats like to hand out goodies by spending more and providing more government benefits. That’s the Obama story. But Republicans who win elections offer benefits to people through lower taxes.

In supply-side terms, rising take-home pay is an incentive for more work, investment, and risk taking, since these activities pay more after tax, and because the free market will distribute the money, not the government central planners.

And Mitt Romney may be coming around to this view. Maybe it’s part of his strategy to “beef up” his message. On the side of his campaign bus it says “take-home pay and jobs.” Right on. And if Romney actually uses this language, he can put more meat on the bones by being more specific.

Basically, his 20 percent tax-reduction plan takes the top rate down from 35 to 28 percent. These are the big investors who help fund new businesses and job creation. And yes, as liberals always point out, their take-home pay will go up the most, by roughly $70,000 yearly.

But politically, Romney can speak directly to the middle class and show them how much their take-home pay will go up, too.

For example, a $70,000 middle-class family whose tax bracket falls from 15 to 12 percent will see a roughly $2,100 increase in take-home pay. That’s not nothing. Mortgage. Tuition. Car payments.

A married couple earning $143,000 whose tax rate under Romney drops from 25 to 20 percent will keep roughly $7,100 more in take-home pay. That’s good money. Or to use Obama’s middle-class benchmark, a married couple earning $220,000 a year whose rate drops from 28 to 22 percent will save over $12,000. That’s a big number.

That very term, “take-home pay,” has a middle-class feel to it. It’s something folks sitting around the kitchen table understand. Middle-class folks know what take-home pay means to their families.

So what I’m suggesting is that Romney puts together specific examples of lower family tax rates and higher take-home pay. Specific examples. Put all those Harvard PhDs in the Boston headquarters to work. They can do it to the penny. I’m just roughing it out here in broad strokes, using work from my friends Jim Pethokoukis and Douglas Holtz-Eakin.

It’s really that simple. Talk up tax cuts and connect them to Main Street families in terms of the after-tax dollars and cents they understand. Higher take-home pay. More financial security. More jobs. Repeat these over and over. And then add meat to the bones.

For example, tell middle-class earners that their tax deductions will not be eliminated, or even limited. Reassure them. Take the Obama argument away: more take-home pay and no end to the child tax credit or other significant deductions.

And then circle back to the top tax rates, the Obama class-warfare tax rates, and say, “Look, in return for marginal tax-rate reduction, which will add investment and small-business incentives, we are going to limit and then eliminate a variety of tax deductions that you won’t need at the ultra-low 28 percent top rate.” Were I Governor Romney, I would mention a few, like the mortgage deduction, or the deductions for state and local taxes or interest-free municipal bonds.

And if Romney doesn’t want to go that far, he can state that all tax deductions are on the table in return for your lower tax rate. This is pro growth. It’s fair. And it’s something most folks can understand.

The moral of this story is nice and simple: middle-class tax cuts, higher take-home pay, more prosperity, more jobs.

Reagan made it that clear. Romney can do the same.

Continues:
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/larrykudlow/2012/09/25/mitts_takehomepay_message

[Jeanne Douglas]

In article
<1697417dcafee8cf...@msgid.frell.theremailer.net>,
John Manning <fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net>
wrote:

> One of the reasons Mitt Romney and the GOP failed to get a convention bounce
> was their inability to talk tax cuts, economic growth, and jobs. In his
> 45-minute convention speech,

Of course. He knows that all of that has been proven a lie over the last
30 years.

[Fred]

John Manning <fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> wrote:

>One of the reasons Mitt Romney and the GOP failed to get
>a convention bounce was their inability to talk tax cuts,
>economic growth, and jobs. In his 45-minute convention
>speech, Romney spent 200 words on the economy, with no
>mention of tax cuts. It was the same for his running mate
>Paul Ryan: no mention of tax cuts at the convention.

obviously that was not the core leading reason why america rejects
republicanism. the way that republicans have been attempting to
eliminate coire fundamental rights, freedoms, and liberties in the
united states -- most of it directed at women -- is probably the
largest reason why america rejects these theocratic scumbags.

[Fred]

Jeanne Douglas <hlwd...@NOSPAMgmail.com> wrote:
>In article
><1697417dcafee8cf...@msgid.frell.theremailer.net>,
> John Manning <fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net>

>> One of the reasons Mitt Romney and the GOP failed to get a convention bounce
>> was their inability to talk tax cuts, economic growth, and jobs. In his
>> 45-minute convention speech,
>Of course. He knows that all of that has been proven a lie over the last
>30 years.

linuxgal said that ronald reagan doesn't exist. :) which is amusing
coming from an atheist even as she worships reagan's inviolate scripture.

[somebody else made that happen]

On 9/25/2012 10:31 PM, Dakota wrote:
>> Yeah, because the GW Bush approach of invade their country, and
>> completely
>> destroy their infrastructure and government worked so well in Iraq,
>> didn't
>> it?
>>
> It certainly won the hearts and minds of the defense contractors.

Who employ...actual...AMERICANS!

[somebody else made that happen]

On 9/26/2012 7:47 AM, Fred wrote:
> america rejects
> republicanism.

That why we have a Rep. House?

[MarkA]

On Wed, 26 Sep 2012 02:02:14 +0200, John Manning wrote:

> The Post’s Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, takes issue with my report that
> since taking office President Obama has skipped his daily intelligence
> meeting more than half the time. So let’s fact check the Fact Checker.
>
> The facts
>
> After hearing from sources in the intelligence community that President
> Obama was not attending his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis, I
> asked researchers at the Government Accountability Institute, a
> nonpartisan research group headed by Peter Schweizer (who is also my
> business partner in a speechwriting firm, Oval Office Writers) to examine
> at Obama’s official schedule. We found during his first 1,225 days in
> office, Obama had attended his daily meeting to discuss the Presidential
> Daily Brief (PDB) just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During
> 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent
> — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor,
> George W. Bush, almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting.
>

LOL! If Bush never missed his daily intelligence meeting, it was because
he thought that his attendance might make him more intelligent. He was
wrong. "Why do they keep talking about all these furriners? I don't feel
any smarter!"

[Syd M.]

On Sep 25, 4:37 pm, Joe Cooper <contactr...@126.com> wrote:
> raven1 <quoththera...@nevermore.com> wrote innews:grt3681sj91l7dnr6...@4ax.com:

>
> > On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 19:56:32 +0200, John Manning
> > <fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> wrote:
>
> >>The modern Democratic presidency is a creation of very
> >>wealthy men. So what makes Romney wealth unacceptable?
>
> > It's not his wealth so much as the fact that he seems more like he's
> > running for "Upper-Class Twit of the Year" than the Presidency.
>
> Really? I guess that's why Democrats continue harping on the "rich not
> paying their fair share."
>
>

It's called 'fairness'.
Something you rightards know nothing about.

[MarkA]

On Wed, 26 Sep 2012 02:02:14 +0200, John Manning wrote:


>

> What Kessler and the Obama White House do argue is a matter not of fact

> but of opinion - that it does not matter if Obama attends a daily

> intelligence meeting because he reads his PDB every day. Kessler compares
> Obama to former presidents going back to Reagan and Nixon and finds that

> "many did not have an oral briefing" - and that this means Obama has

> simply "chosen to receive his information in a different manner than his
> predecessor." There are several problems with this.
>
> First, Kessler ignores one giant difference between then and now: Sept.
> 11, 2001.
>
> Comparing lax presidential briefing habits before and after 9/11 is like
> comparing lax presidential security habits before and after the Kennedy
> assassination. After terrorists killed 3,000 people in our midst,

> everything changed - and the president's daily intelligence meeting

> took on dramatically increased importance. President Bush made it a
> priority to sit down with his senior intelligence advisers every day to
> discuss overnight intelligence on threats to the country. President
> Obama has not.
>

How is the "giant difference of Sept 11, 2001" relevant to the fact that
Obama prefers to read his briefing rather than have someone read it to
him? All that shows is that Obama is a better reader than GW was. No
surprise there.

[Joe Cooper]

"Syd M." <pauldav...@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:775457a3-e0f7-4e4e...@i14g2000yqe.googlegroups.com:

> It's called 'fairness'.
> Something you rightards know nothing about.

Let's see how Obama's "redistribution" has worked out for us:

Household income down 8.2 percent since Obama took office, study shows

Median household incomes have fallen 8.2 percent since President Obama
took office and continue to drop despite the official end of the
recession, a new study shows.

Data compiled by Sentier Research found that since the economic recovery
technically began in June 2009, median household income has dropped 5.7
percent. As of August, that median income was $50,678 -- also down 1.1
percent from the month prior.

And since Obama took office in January 2009, the median income has fallen
8.2 percent, from $55,198 to its present figure.

"The August decline in real median annual household income is indicative
of a struggling economy," Sentier said in its report.

"Even though we are technically in an economic recovery, real median
annual household income is having a difficult time maintaining its
present level, much less 'recovering.'"

The figures continue to paint a dim portrait of the nation's post-
recession economic rebound, and are sure to factor into the robust
economic debate on the campaign trail.

At a rally in Westerville, Ohio, on Wednesday, Mitt Romney challenged
protesters at the site, asking them if they really wanted "four more
years" of trillion-dollar deficits and declining take-home pay.

Obama continues to hold onto a lead in several swing state polls, though.
A poll Wednesday from Quinnipiac University/CBS News/New York Times
showed Obama leading in Ohio by 10 points even as roughly half the voters
surveyed listed the economy as their most important issue.

The nation's unemployment rate has dropped from its peak at more than 10
percent to 8.1 percent in August.

But the drop belies persistent problems in the economy. Many are leaving
the workforce or settling for part-time work -- the latter of which helps
explain why unemployment rates are going down while median income falls.
Sentier noted in its study that changes in hourly earnings and hours
worked affects the household income level.

According to the study, the average number of hours per week worked in
August was 34.4 -- slightly below the 34.6 hour average in December 2007.

The income figures, which are based on Census data, follow a Census
report showing the poverty rate in 2011 at 15 percent. The number of
people in poverty last year was 46.2 million, up from 37.3 million in
2007 before the start of the recession. The poverty line for a family of
four was defined by the Census in 2011 as a household salary of just over
$23,000.

The household income level has not been declining every month. Sentier's
report showed several monthly increases in late 2011, followed by another
drop at the beginning of 2012.

-Fox News

[Joe Cooper]

"Zacharias Mulletstein" <zacha...@isright.com> wrote in
news:k3tis4$iuc$1...@dont-email.me:

> [Romney] initially got his money from his parents. I have no respect

for
> anybody who inherits money and walks around acting like they earned
> it.

Actually, Romney donated his entire inheritance to charity. Funny you
haven't mentioned that.

That aside, let's compare his record with President MTChair's:

Romney's Free Market Job Creation - Romney's Bain Capital Invested
PRIVATE
money in:

ACE Entertainment
Burger King
Burlington Coat Factory
Clear Channel Communications
Domino's Pizza
Dunkin' Donuts
Guitar Center
The Sports Authority
Staples
Toys "R" Us
Warner Music Group

Obama's TAX MONEY Spending Spree - Obama invested YOUR money in:

Solyndra - BANKRUPT
Ener 1 - BANKRUPT
Beacon Power - BANKRUPT
Abound Solar - BANKRUPT
Amonix Solar - BANKRUPT
Spectra Watt - BANKRUPT
Eastern Energy - BANKRUPT

PS: ALL of these companies were Obama Campaign contributors.

Then there's the Chevy VOLT from Government Motors...taxpayers are losing
$50,000 PER CAR, thanks to the brilliance of MTChair, and GM is once
again threatened with bankruptcy.

Yep, I can sure see why you'd want to re-elect MTChair...

[Dakota]

The claim that President Obama misses the meetings may have some
credibility. However, as has been posted here several times already,
he receives private intelligence briefings every day.

[John Manning]

President Obama’s supporters are obsessed with being “on the right side of history.” This is, after all, the essence of progressivism — history progresses, always upward (don’t ask about the Dark Ages), and progressives exist to speed up that “progress.” This, in turn, informs the view of this election presented by the Democrats and the media. Bill Clinton gave an effective (if highly misleading) speech at the Democratic convention, a tape emerged of Mitt Romney’s unfortunate remarks at a fundraiser, and — voila! — history has spoken: Obama’s reelection is inevitable. He and his supporters have once again, as Obama likes to put it, met “history’s test.”

Only, history hasn’t spoken, and neither have the American people — at least not where it counts, in the voting booth. Moreover, it’s not yet remotely clear what they are going to say.

So far, Obama, his party, and his primary super PAC, have outspent Romney, his party, and his primary super PAC, by about 15 percent — according to the New York Times — and Obama has a lead, it appears, of somewhere between 1 and 4 percentage points. But the incumbent won’t similarly be able to outspend Romney from here on out. Instead, the tables will likely be turned, as Romney, his party, and his primary super PAC, have more money on hand than Obama, his party, and his primary super PAC — by a ratio of about 4 to 3, according to the Times.

Moreover, if one really wants to look at “history’s test” (in the proper sense of looking backward and learning from the past), Jay Cost writes that, from President Eisenhower onward, the challenger has gained an average of 3.7 points on the incumbent between Gallup’s mid-September polling results and the actual Election Day results. In the ten Gallup polls taken from September 8 through September 23, Obama was ahead by an average of 1.6 points. Similarly, Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics writes, “Indeed with the exception of 1992 — a difficult race from which to draw conclusions given Ross Perot’s on-again/off-again participation in the race — every contest with an incumbent has broken at least three points toward the challenging party from this point in the race through Election Day” (italics added). In other words, history isn’t on Obama’s side.

To be sure, Romney has his work cut out for him. According to state-by-state polling from Rasmussen Reports, if the election were held today, Obama would win by an electoral-vote tally of 313 to 225. But if, by Election Day, Romney were able to swing the margin his way by even 2 points across the board — or even just in the 9 key swing states, where Obama has particularly outspent Romney (but where Romney will presumably be turning the tables soon) — then the GOP nominee would move into the lead in Rasmussen’s polling by a tally of 256 to 247 (with Florida and Nevada undecided and the election hinging on the Sunshine State). If Romney were to improve by just 1 more point from there (so by 3 points in total), he would win by a tally of 291 to 237 (with Wisconsin undecided).

Suffice it to say, nothing is inevitable here — not remotely. This race is extremely close and will likely go down to the wire — unless, that is, Romney starts talking more assertively about Obamacare, in which case he may be able to give his victory speech in prime time on November 6.

Source:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/silly-mantra-obama-s-inevitability_653059.html

[John Manning]

WESTERVILLE, Ohio (AP) — Mitt Romney says the nation's debt could grow to almost $20 trillion if the country re-elects President Barack Obama.

Romney also says his policies would do more to help middle-class families than the president's.

Campaigning in Ohio, where polls give the advantage to Obama, the Republican presidential nominee combined a sharper focus on the mounting debt with an insistence that middle-class families are struggling.

Said Romney: "I want to help them."

The national debt is $16 trillion and growing. Romney says the interest payments alone cost more than what the U.S. spends on several government departments combined.

Source: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ohio-romney-highlights-16-trillion-us-debt

[raven1]

On Wed, 26 Sep 2012 22:35:40 +0200, John Manning

<fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> wrote:

>Only, history hasn’t spoken, and neither have the American
>people — at least not where it counts, in the voting booth.

Checked Intrade lately? Mitt needs something along the lines of Obama
declaring himself a Kenyan-born Marxist Muslim in the debates to have
a snowball's chance in Hell.

---
raven1
aa # 1096
EAC Vice President (President in charge of vice)
BAAWA Knight

[Budikka666]

On Sep 26, 3:38 pm, John Manning

<fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> wrote:
> WESTERVILLE, Ohio (AP) — Mitt Romney says the nation's debt could grow to almost $20 trillion if the country re-elects President Barack Obama.
>
> Romney also says his policies would do more to help middle-class families than the president's.
>
> Campaigning in Ohio, where polls give the advantage to Obama, the Republican presidential nominee combined a sharper focus on the mounting debt with an insistence that middle-class families are struggling.
>
> Said Romney: "I want to help them."
>
> The national debt is $16 trillion and growing. Romney says the interest payments alone cost more than what the U.S. spends on several government departments combined.
>

> Source:http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ohio-romney-highlights-16-trillion-us...

>
> Learn the truth about the Muslim Brotherhood:http://muslimbrotherhoodinamerica.com/

What a pity he didn't highlight the trend:
http://cybercalc.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/gdptrend2.jpg
which fell under Clinton, skyrocketed under Bush, and has been slowing
significantly under Obama.

Budikka

[George Plimpton]

On 9/26/2012 1:35 PM, John Manning wrote:
> President Obama’s supporters are obsessed with being “on the right side of history.” This is, after all, the essence of progressivism — history progresses, always upward (don’t ask about the Dark Ages),

Yeah, and don't ask about the gulags, the Chinese "cultural revolution",
the Cambodian killing fields, or all the other instances of what the
left call "progress".

[raven1]

On Wed, 26 Sep 2012 22:35:43 +0200, John Manning

<fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> wrote:

>The national debt is $16 trillion and growing.

What was it in January 2009? And who brought us there? I am, quite
frankly, nauseated at the arrant hypocrisy of GOP shills who have
absolutely no problems ("deficits don't matter" - Dick Cheney)
spending like drunken sailors as long as they hold the White House. It
only seems to become a problem when a Democrat is President.
Hypocrites.

[somebody else made that happen]

On 9/26/2012 3:15 PM, raven1 wrote:
> It
> only seems to become a problem when a Democrat is President.
> Hypocrites.

Shut your debt-swilling piehole, you 5 trillion $$ deficit spending tax
whore!

[somebody else made that happen]

On 9/26/2012 3:05 PM, raven1 wrote:
> Checked Intrade lately?

Bet the Pats much?

[raven1]

Who spent the first $10.5 trillion, asshat, and where were you
protesting it? GFY.

[Jeanne Douglas]

In article
<775457a3-e0f7-4e4e...@i14g2000yqe.googlegroups.com>,

How is expecting the rich to pay their fair share just like the rest of
us hating wealth?

[John Manning]

LIMA, Ohio - As the candidates arrive in the Buckeye State for several days of critical campaigning, President Obama is enjoying more than just a lead in most polls. He's also enjoying Republican insiders slamming Mitt Romney for various faults, real and perceived, while potentially huge problems for the president -- the investigation into what happened at the Libyan consulate attack, a devastating blow suffered by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and Obama's lack of a plan to deal with the coming entitlement crisis, to name just three -- go largely undiscussed in much of the press.

As far as Libya is concerned, the White House story that the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens was entirely the result of anger over an anti-Muslim video has completely fallen apart. While the administration now concedes the attack was an act of terrorism, the public still does not know exactly what happened in Benghazi that night, nor does it know what security precautions, if any, the State Department took to protect U.S. interests there.

For the moment at least, the administration is stonewalling any further inquiries. State Department officials say they won't discuss the matter because it is under FBI investigation. But on Monday morning, CBS reported that the FBI "isn't even in Benghazi yet. They haven't secured that site, which is how journalists can wander through."

It was journalists wandering through who discovered a brief journal kept by Stevens in which the ambassador made clear he faced multiple security threats, including from al Qaeda. That clearly doesn't jibe with the president's video story. And then there's the question of what Stevens told the State Department about the security threats around him. They're all matters the department won't discuss because of the slow-starting FBI investigation.

One might think the situation, which could well break into a full-scale scandal, might be consuming the political press. It's not. For example, one could watch all of NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday and never hear a word about Libya, with the exception of a brief critique of Romney's reaction to the attack.

Then there is what happened in Afghanistan. On Sept. 14, Taliban forces attacked an allied base in Helmand province, killing two U.S. Marines. Human losses are always the most disturbing, but the Taliban's main target was American warplanes. They managed to destroy eight Harrier jets. In a brief article entitled, "The U.S. Suffered Its Worst Airpower Loss Since Vietnam Last Week and No One Really Noticed," the Atlantic's John Hudson wrote that the losses amounted to 7 percent of the Marine Corps' entire Harrier fleet. The planes, which stopped production in 1999, can't be replaced. Hudson quoted one military expert who called the attack "arguably the worst day in [U.S. Marine Corps] aviation history since the Tet Offensive of 1968."

Hudson's piece came out the same day Romney released his 2011 tax returns. Guess which got more attention in the political world?

Then there is the entitlement crisis. Democrats have targeted the Republican ticket, and particularly vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, over plans to reform the nation's troubled entitlement system. That's fine. But what would President Obama do about the problem?

Journalist Mark Halperin asked top Obama aide David Axelrod that very question Monday morning. Axelrod hemmed and hawed about a "balanced" approach to the problem, but when Halperin asked simply, "So what is [Obama's] proposal?" Axelrod answered, "This is not the time." Axelrod suggested that if Halperin were to win election to the U.S. Senate, then they might talk.

Libya, Afghanistan, entitlements -- all are enough for days of discussion about the president's problems. But much of the political conversation, among Republican insiders as well as in news reporting, has focused on Romney's difficulties.

Some conservative critics say Romney has been too vague about his economic proposals. Some say he has muzzled Ryan, failing to take advantage of his running mate's impressive mastery of the federal budget. Some say he has fallen short of the standard set 30 years ago by Ronald Reagan.

There's no doubt Romney has made mistakes in the past few weeks. And there's no doubt some GOP insiders are nearing a state of panic about his chances of becoming president. But what about the other guy, the guy who actually is president? There's a lot going on there that Republicans, and journalists too, might want to talk about.

Byron York, The Examiner's chief political correspondent, can be contacted at by...@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blogposts appear on washingtonexaminer.com.

[raven1]

On Thu, 27 Sep 2012 03:37:57 +0200, John Manning

<fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> wrote:

>LIMA, Ohio - As the candidates arrive in the Buckeye State for
>several days of critical campaigning, President Obama

is a shoo-in for re-election. He's now over 50% among likely voters in
Ohio, Virginia, and Florida. Romney has exactly zero paths to 270
Electoral votes without winning 2 of those 3 states, and he's winning
none of them unless Obama answers a question about immigration during
the debates with "as a Kenyan-born Marxist Muslim, my position is...".
Suck it, GOP. Four more years. Oh, and probably two SCOTUS Justices.

[John Manning]

Republicans, by and large, are frustrated with recent polls of the presidential election because they think Democrats are being oversampled. Many pollsters respond by saying that “weighing” the polls for partisan identification creates its own problems and might end up skewing the polls in the wrong direction.

I am not in favor of partisan weighing, per se, although some polls like the Rasmussen poll do it in a sensible and nuanced way. So, I think the pollsters are offering a false choice between weighing versus non-weighing.

Furthermore, a lack of weighing creates its own problems, which many pollsters often fail to acknowledge. Specifically, many polls have, in my judgment, overestimated the Democrats' standing right now. I base this conclusion not on a secret, black box statistical methodology or some crystal ball, but rather on a read of American electoral history going back to 1972. If I am right, then some of the polls are giving a false sense of the true state of the race, and will likely correct themselves at some point or another.

One important “tell” in my opinion, is this president’s continued weak position with independent voters, who remain the true swing vote:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/sites/all/files/images/Obama%20Versus%20Romney%20Among%20Independents.gif

[raven1]

On Thu, 27 Sep 2012 04:45:55 +0200, John Manning

<fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> wrote:

>Republicans, by and large, are frustrated with recent polls

Of course they are! So much so that they're reduced to impersonating
others on Usenet. Which is hardly surprising considering that Obama is
now polling over 50% among likely voters in Ohio, Virginia, and
Florida. Meaning it's over, since there are *no* possible paths to 270
for Romney without winning 2 of those 3. Sucks to be you, oh John
Manning impersonator. I would love to meet you in person so I can
watch your head explode when Obama is re-elected.

[linuxgal]

raven1 wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Sep 2012 22:35:40 +0200, John Manning
> <fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> wrote:
>
>> Only, history hasn’t spoken, and neither have the American
>> people — at least not where it counts, in the voting booth.
>
> Checked Intrade lately? Mitt needs something along the lines of Obama
> declaring himself a Kenyan-born Marxist Muslim in the debates to have
> a snowball's chance in Hell.

I think last Monday Night Football game was a foreshadow of what's to
come. Packers were favored going in, but it came down to a wrassling
match in the last second in the end zone, decided by a N00B ref. In
Obama's case, the replacement refs will wear black robes.

[Fred]

John Manning <fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net> wrote:
>WESTERVILLE, Ohio (AP) — Mitt Romney says

nobody cares what a fucking idiot tax fraud's opinion is about anything.
the insane cunt thinks airplane windows should open, that says everything
one needs to know about the christian loon's opinions.

[raven1]

On Wed, 26 Sep 2012 20:13:39 -0700, linuxgal <linu...@cleanposts.com>
wrote:

In what Electoral vote scenario does this election go to the SCOTUS?
Obama is on course to win comfortably at this point given the latest
polls in Ohio, Virginia, and Florida.

[Jeanne Douglas]

In article
<bc8dba3796c2f079...@msgid.frell.theremailer.net>,
John Manning <fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net>
wrote:

> LIMA, Ohio - As the candidates arrive in the Buckeye State for several days
> of critical campaigning, President Obama is enjoying more than just a lead in
> most polls. He's also enjoying Republican insiders slamming Mitt Romney for
> various faults, real and perceived, while potentially huge problems for the
> president -- the investigation into what happened at the Libyan consulate
> attack, a devastating blow suffered by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and
> Obama's lack of a plan to deal with the coming entitlement crisis, to name
> just three -- go largely undiscussed in much of the press.
>
> As far as Libya is concerned, the White House story that the attack that
> killed Ambassador Chris Stevens was entirely the result of anger over an
> anti-Muslim video has completely fallen apart. While the administration now
> concedes the attack was an act of terrorism, the public still does not know
> exactly what happened in Benghazi that night, nor does it know what security
> precautions, if any, the State Department took to protect U.S. interests
> there.

What the hell are you talking about. I've known the ambassador was
killed by actual terrorists the day it happened. Why don't you know that?

[Jeanne Douglas]

In article
<a93dd364ee04a13d...@msgid.frell.theremailer.net>,
John Manning <fr...@spamexpire-201209.rodent.frell.theremailer.net>
wrote:

> Republicans, by and large, are frustrated with recent polls of the
> presidential election because they think Democrats are being oversampled.
> Many pollsters respond by saying that “weighing” the polls for partisan
> identification creates its own problems and might end up skewing the polls in
> the wrong direction.

Yes, people, this is how desperate the Republicans are, they're coming
out against the polls.

[Jeanne Douglas]

In article <ukh768hiap5nno60v...@4ax.com>,

Unless the Republican voter suppression efforts succeed.

Just saw that a man who was included in Florida's 1st voter purge sent
in his naturalization papers as evidence that he was indeed a citizen.

Well, there's a new purge list from the state and he's still on the
list. So it looks like they're not interested in accuracy, just
including 90% minorities on the purge lists.