Fight the Left

A Nation At War

Cluster56 Comments

The reelection of Barack Obama by a thin popular margin, albeit a wide electoral margin, underscores a nation divided and unfortunately I don’t see much common ground anymore. The GOP controls the House, the Democrats control the Senate and WH, but the GOP governs 29 states, and controls the legislatures in 27 of those states, so each party have fairly strong battle positions, and the battle has commenced, starting with Michigan. There the GOP legislature passed a right to work which has the unions apoplectic and threatening, and engaging in actual violence. This comes on the heels of a hotly contested battle in WI earlier this year where GOP Governor Scott Walker successfully defeated a union uprising over collective bargaining. Arguably public unions have done more harm than good, of course many liberals including the entire MSNBC network and Mr. Obama will contest that assertion, but if anyone wants to really see the results of public unions they need look no further than Detroit, MI, and San Bernardino, CA, where 71% of the city’s budget goes towards public union pay and pensions which led the city to filing bankruptcy earlier this year. In Detroit, it’s reported that nearly 35% of the population receive food stamps and astonishingly nearly 46% aren’t even the work force, and this is an indictment on both parties. While the MI is traditionally a blue state having voted for Democrat Presidents since 1992, they recently voted in a Republican Governor, who helped initiate the right to work bill, and Republican Legislature and have been governed by a Republican 10 out of the last 16 years. So it seems that regardless of the party, public unions have successfully negotiated more than their fair share of their respective states treasuries for quite some time now, and the results are not good. Compounding this problem is the fact that union officials and their membership seem oblivious to this fact, and are evidently  unyielding, so the battle will go on and Mr. Obama is apparently willing to allow it rather than demonstrate leadership which come as no surprise.

If we are to ever right our countries financial ship, public unions will have to play a huge role, and as evidenced by WI and now MI, and the subsequent reaction from the WH, they have no intention of being responsible. The liberal media is also firmly in their corner, and the union leadership is prepared to “draw blood”, so this will be a very interesting four years and as far as I am concerned – I am up for the battle. These next four years could be Civil War II, that is unless Mr. Obama decides to lead. However, I am not holding out any hope on that.

UPDATE: How did I miss this?

 “This is just the first round of a battle that’s going to divide this state. We’re going to have a civil war,” – Jimmy Hoffa

 

Going “FORWARD”, What Positions Favor Progressives?

Retired Spook187 Comments

This post originated a couple threads back with Cluster offering the following challenge:

“Bring it on liberals. There is not one position in your favor and I look forward to bashing you about the head for the next four years.”

One of our resident Leftist Useful Idiots, thetruthshallsetyoufree, responded with:

Except for all those positions that favored liberals on election day, of course. Good point.

JR responded with:

Small-minded as you are, TruthSSYF, it’s clear you fail to see the irony in that. Absent mass forced reeducation camps, the only thing this election will result in is death and despair. And there are those of us who, if it’s the last thing we do, will see to it that you and those who share your views will be on the receiving end of that paradigm. I don’t think you have the slightest grasp of what lies ahead, but it ain’t gonna be pretty. It is gonna be fun to watch, though.

And I responded with:

Not really a good point, Truthie, as JR points out. Besides winning the presidential election and increasing the Donk majority in the Senate, what positions on November 6th favored Liberals? No President in the last 75 years has been re-elected with the unemployment rate as high as it is — and it’s going higher. No other President has been re-elected with economic growth as weak as it is since they began keeping such statistics in 1930, and Obama’s policies will ensure that it’s only going to get weaker. No other President has been re-elected with the right track/wrong track numbers so stacked against him. The number of GOP governors (30) is at a 12-year high. The GOP-controlled House still controls the purse strings. I haven’t spoken to a single Conservative since the election whose resolve has been anything but strengthened.

Other than free contraceptives and free abortions, what, pray tell, does a second Obama term offer anyone except those with their hands out? As JR alludes to, our side still has most of the guns, and the U.S. military will never, I repeat, NEVER side with Obama. And if you think that Obama’s cute little Kiddie Corps is going to be anything other than cannon fodder, you’re more delusional that I thought.

This exchange, probably close to the end of a dead thread got me to thinking; is there anything that really favors the Progressive agenda going “forward”?  Do Progressives now believe they can just do what they want the next 4 years without repercussions?  The House of Representatives does still hold the purse strings, but what if Obama continues to just bypass the House with executive orders?  Will the nearly 60 million people who voted against him just lay down and do nothing?  What, if any, policies will Obama pursue going “forward” that will result in more liberty and more prosperity?

Update: I’m not getting any takers on the final question of the post, and, admittedly, it asks for someone to have a crystal ball.  So let me rephrase it: what policies going “forward” would you like to see Obama pursue that you believe will have a positive effect on liberty and prosperity?

Open Thread: BAraCKWARDS! Hope and Change A Miserable Failure!

tiredoflibbs42 Comments

Why? You ask that ‘Hope and Change’ is a miserable failure?

Well, for one thing, if he had a successful record on which to run we would not see the LIES and the PANDERING of certain groups from the left.

The Obama propaganda team tries to distance itself from the now-infamous Romney cancer ad.  But there’s one problem …

Re-igniting the war on women, at a campaign stop this week, Dear Ruler accused Republicans of wanting to take the nation“back to policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century.”

We have not one, not two, but three members of the ObamaMedia who say that Mitt Romney’s ad on Obama gutting welfare reform is raaaaaaaacist.

His green energy programs, most of which went bankrupt…

The Solyndra scandal widens … Obama’s staff arranged for him to be personally briefed last summer on the loan program to help clean-energy companies like Solyndra.

NEGATIVE net job creation even after the stimulus (over $1 trillion in new spending), in which we were promised unemployment would not rise above 8%.  We have been over that for FORTY STRAIGHT MONTHS.  His team predicted that we would be around 5.6%.

Compared with each president since 1945, Obama ranks dead last in job creation, losing 316,000 jobs.

On Monday, August 13, the national debt will reach $16 trillion.  Obama, the same ruler who in 2009 promised to CUT THE DEFICIT IN HALF by the end of his first term, is responsible for more than $5 trillion of that debt.

Out of control spending with the stimulus and other WASTEFUL programs, Solyndra, nationalizing the auto industry, cash for clunkers, omnibus spending bills, etc. etc.

How the Department of Homeland Security wasted millions of tax dollars on a chemical facilities security program.

“We must pass healthcare to see what is in it.” – we were sold a FRAUD when it came to healthcare.  Premiums are going up at a more alarming rate that BEFORE and actually seeing a doctor will take longer and care will be rationed to control costs.

Nearly two-thirds of employers expect to see a cost hike in their health plans when ObamaCare goes into effect in 2014.

A new CBO report says that under ObamaCare, 30 million non-elderly Americans will remain without health insurance in 2022.

And from the GOVERNMENT IS OUT OF CONTROL FILE:

The Oregon man convicted of collecting rainwater and snow runoff on his own property surrendered to authorities this week to begin serving his 30-day jail sentence.

The looters, moochers and drones will insist on four more years of this train wreck of an administration.

Pathetic.

Keep it civil people….

Update: whatever happened to:

“I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future.” 
(Remarks by President Obama to a Joint Session of Congress, September 9, 2009)
This afternoon Budget Committee Ranking Member Ryan walked through why the bill put forward by Democrats FAILS the President’s deficit test.
Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan took apart obamacare in six minutes.

Let’s Be Honest

Cluster45 Comments

I have grown really tired of the dishonesty not only coming from Obama, but also coming from the sycophantic media. He, and they, continue to perpetuate false hoods on a daily basis. Let’s take for instance the petulant need of Obama to constantly blame the bad economy on Bush’s policies. Well if we were honest about this issue, we would be blaming Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, who used Fed money to incentivize banks to ignore their standard lending procedures, and give mortgages to people who would not normally qualify. This practice encouraged other sets of risky financial products, including the bundling of said securities and selling them off on the secondary market, which in turn created the derivatives debacle, and the risks continued to multiply. These sell off’s on behalf of the banks were designed to get those risky securities off of their books and on to someone else’s, and were certainly not a result of any of Bush’s policies. In fact, had Congress heeded the numerous warnings of Bush, we may not have found ourselves in this situation, however they did not, and representatives Frank and Waters applauded the efforts of the GSE’s as late as 2006, saying that there “was no problem with Fannie and Freddie”.

Another completely dishonest message Obama is trying to sell is that Bush deregulated the financial markets, which in fact he did not. Bush did not sign one piece of legislation deregulating the financial industry during his 8 years in office, not one. The last two pieces of legislation that lowered regulations on the financial sector were signed by Bill Clinton in 1999, and in fact as late as 2008, Clinton was defending that legislation, so again, blaming Bush for deregulation is not only wrong, it’s a lie and Obama and the media know it.

How can we ever get to the point of having an adult conversation on finding real and lasting solutions to our problems, if we are not honest about the origins? Here’s another one. Contrary to what Obama wants you to believe, this recession is not the worst recession since the great depression, not even close. In 1980 there was double digit inflation, double digit interest rates, and double digit unemployment, yet Reagan had it turned around by 1984 as a result of lowering tax burdens, lowering regulations and getting government out of the way. Obama has done the exact opposite – increasing regulations, increasing ancillary taxes, increasing the cost of living, and essentially injecting government in nearly every aspect of our life. The recent composite of the Life of Julia pretty much sums up what Obama believes – that many people are incapable of making it on their own without government help and this is a notion we need to move away from, by moving the Obama’s out of the White House on January 20, 2013.

The Impending Implosion

Retired Spook128 Comments

The American Progressive movement is soon to collapse upon itself and we can
probably expect the self destruction to be loud and messy – there are signs of it already — everywhere.  The brain trust at MSNBC are getting more shrill by the day, as evidenced by Al Sharpton’s recent tirade; Elizabeth Warren appears poised to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory due to a convenient lie told to further her liberal cred and career; Obama is now known to have told a similar lie to further his standing in the progressive movement including his recent endorsement of same sex marriage; Obamacare is most likely to lose in the SC, as is their lawsuit against AZ; even some democrats are now opposing the incessant attacks on private equity; the “war on women” has gone no where; and now they find themselves the subject of 42 lawsuits on behalf of a very powerful institution in the name of the Catholic Church, and these are just some of the current troubles confronting this regime. Add to that the Euro crisis, the Egypt thing isn’t turning out well and oh yeah, there’s that economy thing, and we’ve got the makings of the perfect storm

Scott Walker winning in WI will hopefully be the beginning of the end for progressives, culminating in November, and most likely we can expect an all out assault on conservatives, decency and common sense by the media, the administration, and by their loyalists, ie; OWS, SEIU, AFL-CIO, etc, throughout the summer. I hope Romney stays focused and on message through what portends to be a very vicious campaign, and I hope conservatives will hold him to account to do the necessary things to get us back on track when he wins. This is an important election in not only rescuing the country, but in hopefully “fundamentally transforming” the Democratic Party of Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, into the party of people like Evan Bayh, Joe Lieberman, Harold Ford and Joe Manchin, and digging back into the past, people like John Breaux and Sam Nunn. Maybe then we can start getting things done.

Thanks to Cluster for the content of this post.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan:

Can you say “meltdown”, boys and girls?  From the LA Times:

Artur Davis, one of President Obama’s earliest supporters and a former co-chairman for his presidential campaign, announced Tuesday that he was leaving the Democratic party for good.

In a post published Tuesday on his website, Davis was vague about his future political endeavors, but declared: “If I were to run, it would be as a Republican. And I am in the process of changing my voter registration from Alabama to Virginia, a development which likely does represent a closing of one chapter and perhaps the opening of another.”

Davis, who represented Alabama’s seventh congressional district from 2003 to 2011, was notably the first member of Congress outside of Illinois to endorse then-Sen. Obama’s 2008 presidential bid. And it was Davis who seconded the official nomination of Obama at the 2008 Democratic National Convention…(emphasis added)

This is pretty huge – this is the draggled, rotting, tail-end of “hope and change”.

The Wisconsin Recall Election

Retired Spook127 Comments

There’s a really interesting dynamic at work in Wisconsin, in the run up to the June 5th recall election of Governor Scott Walker.

The majority of polls show Walker once against beating Barrett, with a recent Public Policy Polling poll showing Walker garnering 50 percent of the vote to Barrett’s 45 percent.

This 5 percent margin was unchanged since PPP last polled Wisconsin voters in April, showing that the May 8 Democratic primary did nothing to help boost Barrett’s chances at beating Walker in June.

However, Barrett’s failure to catch steam might be at the fault of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). In an exclusive report by the Washington Post, top Wisconsin Democrats are furious at the DNC for not helping to fund Barrett’s gubernatorial bid against Walker.

“We are frustrated by the lack of support from the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Governors Association,” a top Wisconsin Democratic Party official told the Washington Post. “Scott Walker has the full support and backing of the Republican Party and all its tentacles. We are not getting similar support.”

One has to wonder just what development has stalled the near hysterical fervor of Democrats to get rid of Scott Walker.  The secret could well lie in recent revelations that the Bureau of Labor Statistics may have knowingly or unknowingly represented a false picture of the jobs and unemployment situation in Wisconsin (gee, where have we heard that allegation before?)  I had read a while back that unemployment in Wisconsin had dropped from 7.8% to 6.9% in Walker’s first year in office, and figured that would be a plus in the recall election.  So I was more than a little surprised when Democrats began charging that, under Walker’s leadership, Wisconsin had the WORST job creation record in the entire country.  Sounded like fuzzy math to me, until a read this piece today:

Relying on an alternative set of jobs numbers, embattled Wisconsin Gov Scott Walker is touting job creation during his term in office, saying numbers from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics — which show Wisconsin losing jobs during that period — are not accurate.

The new numbers from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, released by the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, calculate that Wisconsin added more than 23,000 jobs between December 2010 and December 2011, the first full year of Walker’s term.

During his campaign, Walker promised to add 250,000 private sector jobs in his first term as governor.

The numbers diverge sharply from BLS stats, which showed Wisconsin lost 33,900 jobs over that same period. That put the Badger State in last place for job creation nationwide.

Wisconsin’s number-crunchers claim their numbers are more accurate because they are based on data from “nearly all Wisconsin businesses.” The BLS numbers, by contrast, are an estimate based on data from 5,500 Wisconsin companies, which comprise just 3.5 percent of the Wisconsin workforce.

“It looks like 160,000 Wisconsin employers helped show us the thousands of new jobs that BLS estimates missed last year,” Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development Secretary Reggie Newson said in a press release. “The bottom line is Wisconsin added jobs in 2011.”

Obama’s only chance at getting reelected is for published national unemployment figures to come down at least another percentage point, since no president since FDR has been reelected with unemployment over 7.2%.  It’s pretty clear that what we need on the national level is a coordinated effort on the part of the Departments of Workforce Development from each state to come up with a comprehensive report and then compare it to the figures presented by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.  My sense is that most thinking Americans already know that the 8.3% unemployment and the 4.1 million jobs created or saved are simply made up figures, but it would be nice to have something besides a NewsMax headline telling them that their intuition is right.

What is Fairness?

Retired Spook117 Comments

Arthur Brooks new book, The Road to Freedom, is causing quite a stir, and hearing an interview of Brooks this week reminded me of an essay last fall that was inspired by Brooks previous book.  The essay dwelled on the philosophical difference in the way the concept of fairness is viewed by Conservatives and Liberals.

There are basically two ways to define “fairness” in an economic sense where there is mal-distribution of income. One is “redistributive fairness” which President Obama and other liberals in and out of congress favor. The idea is through taxes or financial favoritism to take from wealthier Americans and give to less wealthy Americans and thereby to even out, to some degree, the income people have regardless of whether they have earned it.

The other definition is “meritocracy fairness” which holds that people should receive monetary compensation based on hard work, ingenuity, and innovation – i.e. the money that people make should come as a result of merit.

In his 2010 book, The Battle: The Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future, Arthur Brooks states that inequality is “fair” if it is based on merit and equality would be “unfair” if what someone has earned on merit is redistributed to others who have not earned it. There should be penalties, not rewards, for corruption, stupidity, laziness, and incompetence. Where does the public come down in this? According to a comprehensive survey, 89% of Americans believe in “meritocracy fairness” and only 11% opt for “redistributive fairness.” People in the past, our ancestors, came to the United States for economic opportunity, not for redistribution of wealth.

Those numbers, to me, are staggering, and just completely belie the notion by nearly every Liberal who has ever posted here that they are in the mainstream of American political thought, and it’s Conservatives who represent the kook fringe.  It’s generally accepted that Liberals account for about 20% of the U.S. population, so almost half of those who self-identify as Liberals don’t even agree with redistributive fairness.

I think almost everyone who is paying the slightest bit of attention to this election cycle agrees that it’s one of the most important elections in generations, perhaps, as some contend, the most important since 1860.  November 6th will, I believe, be a referendum on how we as a people view not only the concept of fairness but the overall role, size and scope of government.  We are at a fork in the road, and this election will, I also believe, determine whether we take the road to serfdom or the road to freedom.

Who is Really Waging a War on Women?

Retired Spook263 Comments

Any Conservative who has been paying attention to politics for any length of time knows that one of  the fundamental truths that applies to Progressive Democrats is that whenever they get caught doing something (fill in the blank – bad, illegal, unethical, repugnant, racist, sexist, etc.) their first reaction is to accuse Conservatives of (a) doing the same thing, or (b) doing something worse. The recent fabrication by the Left: the “GOP war on women” is just the latest example of this tactic.

So, is there really a “war on women”?  And if so, who’s waging it?  I would contend that the war actually started in the Obama White House.

In an excerpt obtained by The Post, a female senior aide to President Obama called the White House a hostile environment for women.

“This place would be in court for a hostile workplace,” former White House communications director Anita Dunn is quoted as saying. “Because it actually fit all of the classic legal requirements for a genuinely hostile workplace to women.”

But of course, women White House staffers get paid the same as the men, so they really don’t have any room to complain — right?  Wrong.

President Obama has been outspoken in his criticism of “paycheck discrimination” that has women earning less than men for the same jobs, but a new report shows that female employees in the Obama White House make considerably less than their male colleagues.

According to the 2011 annual report on White House staff, female employees earned a median annual salary of $60,000, while the median salary for male employees was $71,000 — about 18 percent more, the Washington Free Beacon reports.

“Women are Obama’s base, and they don’t seem to have enough people who look like the base inside of their own inner circle,” former Bill Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Meyers told the New York Times.

But out in the general workplace, women have faired pretty well under Obama economic policies, right?  Wrong again.

The recent jobs report from the Labor Department had some alarming facts. The number of women employed in America declined last month as many dropped out of the work force, giving up on looking for work altogether. Of the 740,000 jobs lost since Obama took office, 683,000 of them were held by women. That is unsustainable.

Across America, women are feeling the pain of the weak economy—in the job market and at the kitchen table. Wives are worried about shrinking wages and rising prices as they try to make ends meet. Mothers fear for their children’s futures as the national debt skyrockets and college becomes unaffordable. Businesswomen are frustrated by the regulations and economic policies that make hiring impossible. Fewer women are working, and more are living in poverty.

And finally, the attack on Ann Romney by Democrat hack, Hillary Rosen, will almost certainly endear Democrats to stay-at-home moms – NOT.

All this begs the question, what would Obama have to do to lose support among women?

Rest In Peace, Andrew Breitbart

Matt Margolis143 Comments

When I saw the news, I was giving a quick look on Twitter before starting work. My first thought was, Nah, probably just a bad joke.

I’ve never met Andrew Breitbart, but I know plenty who have worked with him, and while I can certainly recognize his contributions to our movement, there are other people who are more qualified to talk about the man himself. I’ll post links here in due time.

Andrew RIP – Jonah Goldberg

Andrew Breitbart: R.I.P. Happy Warrior – Melissa Clouthier

In Memoriam: Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012) – Larry Solov

The Inspiring Life of Andrew Breitbart – Rob Bluey