‘The Orator, with his Flood of Words….’

-By John Armor

It’s been a long time since I debated John Kerry’s Liberal Party at Yale. (We, the Conservative Party, whopped ‘em good.) Even longer since I debated in high school. Having listened to and analyzed President Obama’s speech on immigration, I’m more convinced than ever that Obama is a one-trick pony, an increasingly unsuccessful one.

The war in Afghanistan is in trouble, and the Talban might snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Therefore, Obama gives a speech. The American economy is in trouble and high unemployment persists. Obama gives a speech. Spewing oil in the Gulf is unchecked. Obama gives a speech. Drugs and criminals are running across the border into Arizona. Obama gives a speech. You get the idea.

When he gives a speech, he sounds like he is addressing the subject at hand. But that is only an illusion, an illusion that even his former supporters are beginning to recognize for what it is.
Continue reading


‘The Orator, with his Flood of Words….’”


First Lady to Waste Millions ‘Visiting’ The Gulf Oil Spill

-By Warner Todd Huston

When times were flush, I guess it didn’t seem so outrageous for the First Lady of the White House to fly about the country “visiting” places as if she were an important part of our national government.

I suppose it was nice to have a First Lady leading by example with her advocacy programs and helpful ideas. There were the anti-drug programs, the literacy programs, the this-n-that programs that taxpayers spent millions on. There’s the big staff and millions of dollars in office expenses. Maybe when we weren’t trillions in debt these boondoggles didn’t seem so outrageous?

That was back when millions were to be had at the drop of a hat. Today is a different era. Today a First Lady should be leading austerity programs, and cost-savings drives.

But not our Queen Michelle. She’s flying about the country on million dollar “date nights” with the prez, she’s flying off to Camp David every time you turn around and she’s taking whirlwind trips around the world all on the taxpayer’s dime.

No austerity for our little Miss Michelle, I’ll tell you what.
Continue reading


First Lady to Waste Millions ‘Visiting’ The Gulf Oil Spill”


This Month’s YouCut: Stop Obama’s Mandated Union Fees That Drive Up Construction Costs

-By Warner Todd Huston

In case you aren’t aware of the House GOP’s YouCut program, it is a website where the GOP offers ideas that can help cut the budget and we (the voters) get to vote on our favorite ones. This voting, in turn, helps the GOP leadership focus on just what cuts the American voters want to prioritize.

Our favorite one this week is the removal of Obama’s mandated PLAs.
Continue reading


This Month’s YouCut: Stop Obama’s Mandated Union Fees That Drive Up Construction Costs”


Barack Obama’s Attention Deficit Disorder

-By Selwyn Duke

While I’m no fan of the Attention Deficit Disorder diagnosis, I think it may be applicable to Barack Obama. After all, the man seems to suffer from a case of it that mainlining Ritalin wouldn’t remedy.

Just consider Obama’s relationship with Jeremiah Wright. Despite calling the prejudiced preacher a friend, mentor and uncle, despite sitting in Wrong’s church for 20 years, despite being married and having his daughters baptized by him, Obama says he was completely unaware of the bigot’s anti-American, anti-white, anti-Jewish, anti-Western and anti-Christian views. And, just so we can appreciate the severity of Obama’s affliction, Wrong has quite conveniently provided a reminder of what those unforgettable views are. The scene was a five-day seminar at the Chicago Theological Seminary where, for a mere $1000 if taken for college credit and $300 if not, you could be enlightened by Wrong on matters of race, brotherhood and Zionism and kibitz with him during lunch breaks. Reporting on the wisdom he imparted, the New York Post wrote:

“You are not now, nor have you ever been, nor will you ever be a brother to white folk,” he [Wrong] said. “And if you do not realize that, you are in serious trouble.”

He cited the writings of Bill Jones — author of the book “Is God a White Racist?” — as proof that white people cannot be trusted. “Bill said, ‘They just killed four of their own at Kent State. They’ll step on you like a cockroach and keep on movin’, cause you not a brother to them.’ ”

Wright referred to Italians as “Mamma Luigi” and “pizzeria.” He said the educational system in America is designed by whites to miseducate blacks “not by benign neglect but by malignant intent.”

Wrong also said, “We probably have more African-Americans who’ve been brainwashed than we have South Africans who’ve been brainwashed” and “All your commentaries are written by oppressors.”
Continue reading


Barack Obama’s Attention Deficit Disorder”


County President Stroger: Lame Duck Still Rolling Out Gravy Train for Pals

-By Warner Todd Huston

One of the main reasons that little Todd Stroger lost his comfy job as president of the Cook County Board — the office left him by his deceased father — is because of the graft and payoffs to his friends and family members that he constantly perpetrated. It was so bad even Democrats were ashamed of him and voted him out of office in the last primary.

But thanks to the fact that Illinois Democrats moved the primary to February President Stroger has eight months to continue giving his friends and family members cushy jobs paid for by the County taxpayers. And this week he’s done it again.

This time Stroger has given a plum job to his former campaign manager, Vincent Williams. Williams now has a $38,000-a-year job on the Cook Zoning Board of Appeals thanks to his pal President Stroger.

Let us recall that Williams was the campaign manager of a losing campaign, shall we?
Continue reading


County President Stroger: Lame Duck Still Rolling Out Gravy Train for Pals”


Obama’s War of Choice

-By Dan Scott

The recent spat over comments made by Michael Steele, the chairman of the GOP demonstrates the sensitivity of the MSM regarding their love child Barack Obama. The slobbering love affair the MSM has had with Obama is now on it last gasps; the honeymoon is just about over. The MSM and pundits would love you to believe this is about Michael Steele when in fact this is really about the continuing incompetence of President Barack Obama as viewed from the left.

This is what Steele said:

“Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama’s choosing. This was not something that the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in,” he said. “But it was the president who was trying to be cute by half by building a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan. Well, if he is such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?”

Obama does own the Afghanistan war as he campaigned for it in the primaries and in the general election. His entire argument against the Iraq Surge was that the US should be fighting in Afghanistan. What Steele recently said was just poorly worded and as such he should be chastised for a poor rhetorical performance.
Continue reading


Obama’s War of Choice”


The 17th Amendment Revisited

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Original provisions of the Constitution intended to prevent Congress from enacting “dumb” laws were vitiated by ratification of the 17th Amendment.

Before ratification of the 17th Amendment it’s unlikely that a Senate committee would have needed to raise the sort of question posed by Senator Coburn during confirmation hearings on Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court. A Wall Street Journal editorial reports:
Continue reading


The 17th Amendment Revisited”


Dear, Former Victims of Socialism/Communism, America Needs OUR Help!

(ED’s Note: Friend to the blog, Leon Weinstein who is a US citizen that emigrated from the USSR in 1974, wrote this because he is alarmed that the U.S. is headed to the hell he ran from so long ago. This is important stuff, folks. Leon KNOWS what he’s talking about as he lived through Russian Communism. We need to seriously think about his warnings…)

-By Leon Weinstein

Dear ex-compatriots who once lived under the socialist regimes of the Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Cuba, China, Albania, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Venezuela of Chavez, the Argentina of Peron, and others of similar life experience!

I was born in the Soviet Union and was lucky to part with socialism and lucky & privileged to become the US citizen. However during last year and a half I am becoming increasingly concerned about the direction American leaders are steering our country to. More and more the US resembles the world you & I were fortunate to leave behind. More and more it now resembles the path Russia took a century ago – and we all know the devastating results this “experiment” caused. This is the very same path Greece recently chosen in trying to achieve another “just society.”

For years the United States was the island of sanity in the ocean of pain, suffering and injustice in which most of the world was drowning. The countries that were able to stand against tyrannies and make life bearable for their citizens did so in large part because the US was backing them with its might. If America falls, world as we know it will end. Without a strong America we will soon see China establishing its hegemony over Asia; Russia will strengthen its muscles and take back Eastern Europe; Hugo Chavez and brothers Castro will run Latin America; and a wide swath of the globe stretching from North Africa through the Middle East to Indonesia and perhaps the Philippines will become radically Muslim – fanatically massacring “infidels.”

Please read Letter to America below and (if you agree with the content) sign it, and forward it to all your friends, relatives, co-workers and pen pals. Ask your spouse and kids over age eighteen to sign it as well. Even if you never lived in a socialist country but share our concerns, we are asking you to stand with us. When signing Letter to America please choose the field “I didn’t experience socialism firsthand but I agree with you.”

Thank you all for your willingness to raise your voice and defend freedom! You & I now have an opportunity and obligation to help America, to do something for all the good we so generously received from this wonderful country.

Our voices will make a difference!

Letter to America
Written by people who came from where Obama is taking America to

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism,’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened… I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democrat Party has adopted our platform.” — Norman Mattoon Thomas, Six times Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.
Continue reading


Dear, Former Victims of Socialism/Communism, America Needs OUR Help!”


The President Is Not Due ‘His Due’

-By Frank Salvato

Over the course of the past several administrations we have heard from senators, political activists and media pundits that when a vacancy opens on the United States Supreme Court the Senate Judiciary Committee, and then the Senate as a whole, should allow the sitting president to have his nominee confirmed and seated to the bench. Many say that presidents “are due” the confirmation of their nominees. Truth be told, this is as far from what our Framers intended as can be fathomed.

Article II, Section 2, of the United States Constitution reads, in part:

“[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law;…”
Continue reading


The President Is Not Due ‘His Due’”


Would You Rather Have Obama Golf or Govern?

-By Selwyn Duke

After seeing Barack Obama’s golf swing, I’m confronted with the staggering possibility that he might actually be better at governing than golfing. And this is despite the fact that he seems to devote more time to the latter, an impression that has won him much bad publicity.

Given that George W. Bush was hammered for spending less time on the links (proportionately), it’s not surprising that conservatives would consider turnabout fair play. As for Main Street, since golf is a Wall Street game, time spent golfing never plays well among the folks who cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like themselves (like golfers, I suppose). Yet I must part company with most on the right. I want Obama (PBUH) to play as much golf as possible even if we taxpayers must pay his greens fees.
Continue reading


Would You Rather Have Obama Golf or Govern?”


Obama Fairness? White House Staffers See Amazingly Unequal Pay

-By Warner Todd Huston

In January one of the early “successes” of the White House was the Lilly Ledbetter Act, legislation that was supposed to insure equal pay “for everybody.” Apparently, as in all Obama’s pronouncements, the outcome of Obama’s drive for “fairness” is rarely as advertised. In this case, some people are more equal than others at least if we take various White House staffer’s pay scales into account.

As it happens about 36 percent of White House staffers make a low 30 percent of what the top 23 percent earn. Bill Collier of The Freedomist calculated that 42 percent of the salary budget is paid out to only 23 percent of the staffers.

What about all that vaunted equal outcome in pay, President Obama? I thought you were all about “fairness”?
Continue reading


Obama Fairness? White House Staffers See Amazingly Unequal Pay”


Schwarzenegger Flexes Muscle for Moscow While Obama Ignores Warnings from Russian Dissidents

-By Toby Westerman

California governor, and former film superhero, Arnold Schwarzenegger has pledged to lead a trade mission to Russia and assist “in any way possible” Russia’s drive to develop its own high tech “Silicon Valley.” U.S. president Barack Obama has also promised his backing in facilitating the flow of U.S. technology to Russia.

The eager participation of Schwarzenegger and Obama in exporting U.S. technological capabilities came during Russian president Dmitry Medvedev’s three day visit (June 22-24) to the United States. Medvedev was looking for technological assistance, and in return offered an increase in U.S. corporate profits and an attractive return for investors.

Medvedev’s campaign for venture capital and high tech aid occurred as his “new” Russia is looking increasingly like the old Soviet Union. Stark warnings about the true intensions of the Moscow elite are coming from vocal opponents within Russia, but are ignored by many in positions of power and influence in the United States.

The Russian “Silicon Valley” effort, known as the Skolkovo Project, named after the Moscow suburb in which it is located, has already gained wide support in the U.S. Boeing, Google, and Cisco are among the U.S. corporate giants participating in Skolkovo, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has agreed to participate in joint research with Skolkovo. MIT may establish, with Russian high tech corporations, a separate research group located at Skolkovo.

Continue reading


Schwarzenegger Flexes Muscle for Moscow While Obama Ignores Warnings from Russian Dissidents”


Republicans Repealed the Fugitive Slave Act

-By Michael Zak

On this day in 1864, the Republican-controlled 38th Congress repealed the notorious Fugitive Slave Act. The law had enabled slave catchers to operate freely in northern states and to kidnap any African-American residing there. Merely by attesting that the person was an escaped slave, a slave catcher could chain him and drag him away to a southern slave market. Moreover, the law required all free people as well as all local and state and federal government officials to assist slave catchers.

A pair of Democrats, Senator James Mason (D-VA) and Senator Andrew Butler (D-SC), had written the Fugitive Slave Act.

The bill repealing the Fugitive Slave Act was written by a Republican congressman from Ohio, Rufus Spalding. A Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, signed it into law.

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. Abraham Lincoln, 1864
Continue reading


Republicans Repealed the Fugitive Slave Act”


‘Ms. Kagan, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been a Lesbian?’

-By Don Boys, Ph.D.

The above pertinent, personal, and principled question will not be asked of the new Supreme Court nominee because no senator has the courage, commitment, and character to ask it, although only a fool or fanatic says the question is illegitimate. Even “conservative” Republicans are silent on this matter. Maybe some of them need a spinal transplant to help them take a stand. I don’t expect Democrats to take a stand since they haven’t stood for anything worthwhile since Senator “Scoop” Henry Jackson died Sept. 1, 1983 and Congressman Larry McDonald was killed the same day when Koran Air Flight 077 was shot down by Russian interceptors presumably killing all on board.

Reports have been circulating that Kagan’s chosen homosexual lifestyle is well known in the Harvard community and her partner is commonly known. She has not been trying to hide her sexual identify—until now.
Continue reading


‘Ms. Kagan, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been a Lesbian?’”


A New Declaration of Independence for a New Revolution

-By Warner Todd Huston

America is fast coming to a crossroads from which there will be no return if we take the wrong path. Do we take the road that leads away from America and toward a Euro-esque way of governing? Do we cast aside our American character and bury our great nation in a grave of socialist-styled authority? Do we damn our progeny to a failed superstate that violate every tenet of our original ideals?

I say we do not. I say we reject the democrat’s Euro-esque ideas and refocus ourselves on American exceptionalism. Our federal system has strayed far from our founding ideals and we may soon find that its time for a new Declaration of Independence from a tyrannical government that has usurped power from proper authority.

Since it is Independence Day this weekend, I offer this new Declaration as a rallying cry to all those willing to return to our true American character…
Continue reading


A New Declaration of Independence for a New Revolution”


Wash Post Forgets to Mention that Writer Is Obama Operative

-By Warner Todd Huston

Ron Brynaert has a story over at his The Raw Story blog that reveals yet another denizen of the Old Media that is trying to be both a “journalist” and an official operative of Barack Obama’s White House. She is Patricia McGinnis, an unpaid advisor at the White House and also one of the contributors to the Post’s “On Leadership” blog.

Once again we see the Old Media working hand-in-hand with the Obama administration and putting the lie to the idea of the “independent journalist” in traditional media outlets, this time with the Washington Post. Even worse than this collusion, though, is the fact that the Washington Post somehow forgot to mention that its writer is working for both the White House and the Old Media at the same time.
Continue reading


Wash Post Forgets to Mention that Writer Is Obama Operative”


Barack Obama: A Bill of Indictment

-By Alan Caruba

Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! All those with business before the court of public opinion will draw near. A bill of indictment has been issued for Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States of America. It is a call for justice from the people of the United States who allege that he is engaged in the destruction of their nation.

For the court’s consideration, it is alleged:

That he secured the office of President by falsely stating he is a natural born citizen of the United States without providing irrefutable documentation and witnesses thereof,
Continue reading


Barack Obama: A Bill of Indictment”


Politico Misleads on NJ Gov. Chiristie’s Immigration Position

-By Warner Todd Huston

This morning Ben Smith of Politico posted a story that essentially mislead readers about what newfound conservative hero Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey thought about immigration. Smith’s article spun Christie into an “amnesty” supporter when it doesn’t seem he is. One has to wonder why Smith did this?

Among many other issues, in the multipage interview with Gov. Christie Smith broached the immigration issue. Being a governor, Christie is faced with as much trouble over the issue as any other, of course, but Smith’s characterization of Christie’s position on immigration would tend to make one feel that Christie is an amnesty supporter. In fact, Smith seems to impute several ideas or feelings into Christie’s replies that may not have been in them at all.

First off, Smith says that Christie had “long declined to ‘demagogue’ the issue” of immigration. It does not seem, however, that Christie has ever claimed to have a long record of refusing to “demagogue” the immigration issue.
Continue reading


Politico Misleads on NJ Gov. Chiristie’s Immigration Position”


Obama Wants to Talk Energy… Well, Except for BP Spill

-By Warner Todd Huston

On one hand the administration and its cohorts in the Democrat majority want to use the BP oil spill as an excuse to wildly raise taxes on energy, to instill cap and trade, and to excuse more regulations in order to take control of as much of our national economy as possible, yet on the other hand when he called leaders of both parties together to talk energy Obama forbade any discussion of the BP oil disaster.

Obama obviously wants his cake and wants to eat it, too. He wants to be able to use this “good crisis” — in Chief of Staff Rham Emanuel’s words — to excuse all his attempts to grab more power and raise taxes to further hamper our economic recovery, yet when it’s time to discuss energy he doesn’t want to be bothered with questions about why his administration has failed so miserably to find solutions to the BP spill. Obama contends that the oil spill has nothing to do with energy policy, except when it does, apparently.

During the bipartisan meeting of 20 Senators Obama dismissed any injection of the BP spill into the discussion with a wave of his hand and his usual upturned nose saying, “That’s just your talking point” when Republican Senators brought up the matter.
Continue reading


Obama Wants to Talk Energy… Well, Except for BP Spill”


Why Democrat/Socialist Party Animosity Toward Private Enterprise

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Marxian economic dogma explains why liberal-progressives, the Obama administration in particular, push for restructuring our constitutional government to concentrate more power in the hands of labor unions and the Federal government.

Marxian economic dogma has been emphasized to an increasing degree in our colleges and universities, even in our high schools, since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal imposed state planning upon the United States in the 1930s. That emphasis became dominant in the late 1960s and 1970s. Today so many generations of teachers and students have been so thoroughly and subtly imbued with Marxian concepts that they are unaware of their ideological environment, assuming that such concepts represent exclusive truth.

Marxian doctrine leads to the assertion that private property is power and that such power is used by employers to exploit the workers. To end exploitation, government must restructure society, using progressive income taxes, high death taxes, and punitive regulation of private businesses, coupled with welfare-state entitlements.
Continue reading


Why Democrat/Socialist Party Animosity Toward Private Enterprise”


Most Ethical White House EVAH, Forgets to Mention $40K Payout

-By Warner Todd Huston

Back in the hoary days of the Obama transition Obamaniacs and other sycophants were rushing to the microphones to tell us all that we voters had just hired the most ethical White House ever. Why, White House transition team co-chair John Podesta even claimed that Obama was instituting the “strictest ethics rules ever applied” as Obama prepared to take office. But since Obama’s whirlwind campaign we’ve seen all those sternly announced ethics rules constantly waived for Obama’s friends and favorite hires. And just this week we see yet another example of those “strict” ethics rules ignored as the president’s own political director somehow forgot to mention that he got a $40,000 payout from a union while he worked for the White House.

Patrick Gaspard was hired away from the Service Employees International Union by team Obama and as he prepared to leave the SEIU for Washington he brokered a $37,071 severance package that Gaspard just somehow forgot to disclose to the White House as he prepared to join Team Obama.

In fact, Gaspard didn’t merely forget to disclose the nearly $40,000 package. He went out of his way to check a box on his disclosure form that said he had nothing to declare. Yes, he lied.

So, what’s to be done? White House spokesman Bill Burton assured us that it’s all taken care of.
Continue reading


Most Ethical White House EVAH, Forgets to Mention $40K Payout”


Get out of My Tent! Fruming Over the Tea Party Movement

Paul A. Ibbetson

What does it mean to be a Republican? What does it mean to be a Democrat? Are they both the same? The answer is no they are not, well not completely. I was disheartened to read David Frum’s article, “The Tea Party is a turn-off for US moderates,” not simply because it misrepresents the Tea Party movement which is usually the activity of angry liberals, but it also once again muddies the waters as to why we have a two-party system.

Frum frames the Tea Party activists as radical and angry people, which makes me believe that he most likely has never attended these events and never met the people who come to show their support for America. There is also a major disconnect in Frum’s reality of the liberal media and this movement. Contrary to Frum’s belief, the Tea Party has never been portrayed by the media as an unstoppable force. Actually, if anything, these gatherings that take place all over the country have been downplayed in every possible way. In his assessment of the Tea Parties, Frum sounded more like Keith Olbermann than a former speech writer for George W. Bush. He implies that liberalism within the Republican Party is a needed working part of its existence. Frum calls them the “moderate faction” of the Republican Party, and he indicates that it is they who are offended by these angry activists. He scoffs at the Republicans for rejecting Arlen Specter and thinks it would have been a good strategy to have kept this liberal under the Republican tent.

There is obviously a major disconnect here that needs addressing. I will do so now as someone who has attended many Tea Parties as a speaker, master of ceremonies and often just as a proud American concerned about the future of this country. Tea Party goers are not angry, misguided people. They are not radicals unless limited government, controlled spending, the Constitution and traditional American values are radical ideas. If these ideas are to be placed within the category of “radical” then let my name be placed there as well.
Continue reading


Get out of My Tent! Fruming Over the Tea Party Movement”


Tax Hike Fever: Obama is ‘Arresting the Victim After He’s Been Mugged’

-By Warner Todd Huston

Steve Everley has a piece at TownHall.com that is one of those “of course they are” moments. As we all know, White House Chief of Staff claimed that he and his comrades would never let a good crisis go to waste and Everley reminds us that the BP oil spill is just another “crisis” to be used as an excuse to raise taxes as far as Democrats are concerned.

Naturally, the BP spill serves as a “reason” for Obama to try and impose new energy taxes that will help further crush our economy into the dust. “By their economic logic,” Everley says, “an accident that is already costing jobs and millions of dollars of economic losses in the Gulf requires imposing more taxes that will cost even more jobs and billions of more dollars in economic losses in both the Gulf and across the country.”

In a clever turn of phrase, Everley says that Obama’s big tax hiking plans is “tantamount to arresting the victim after he was mugged.” Sad but true, sad but true.
Continue reading


Tax Hike Fever: Obama is ‘Arresting the Victim After He’s Been Mugged’”


Housing Slumps Despite Obama’s Stimulus Spending

-By Thomas E. Brewton

The housing market is the most recent of many examples of the failure of Obama’s stimulus plans to revive the economy by repealing principles of human economic behavior.

Predictably, the still vastly overbuilt and over-supplied housing market drops dead, as it should, when not artificially supported by socialistic government subsidies. The Wall Street Journal describes the deteriorating situation:

Quote:

Federal tax credits of as much as $8,000 for home buyers spurred sales in recent months…Since April 30, new purchase contracts have plunged as buyers no longer have the incentive of a federal tax break, builders and real estate agents say. Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors, estimated that contracts signed in May were 10% to 15% below the weak level of a year earlier.

Ronald Peltier, chief executive officer of HomeServices of America Inc., which owns real estate brokers in 21 states, said new home-purchase contracts in May and June so far are down about 20% from a year earlier. The tax credit accelerated sales that otherwise would have occurred later in the year, Mr. Peltier said…

“We’re seeing a loss of momentum” in housing demand since the expiration of the tax credit, [Scott Anderson of Wells Fargo] said, and that lull could last until next spring. The job market remains weak, he added, and foreclosed homes continue to weigh on the housing market.

Last week, the Commerce Department reported that May construction starts on single-family homes fell 17% to an annual rate of 468,000, the lowest level in a year.

Stimulus spending is robbing Peter to pay Paul. It doesn’t add to wealth. It distorts economic activity by channeling funds to favored interest groups at the expense of others, smothering the economic processes necessary to clear the decks for sound new growth.

In the Keynesian command economy, politicians presume to decide where consumer are to spend their money. Such is the inherent and inescapable nature of government stimulus spending programs. With incredible arrogance, politicians propose to control the economic activity of hundreds of millions of individuals, who will make their own decisions about whether to save or to spend money, and what to spend it on.

Remember, all government spending is done with other people’s money, acquired as tax revenues or borrowed to fund deficits. Either way, the government creates nothing. It just transfers that money to its favored economic and social classes or to Congress members’ home district pork-barrel projects. Transfer payments can’t return economic conditions to soundness, but they can in the short run divert business from the essential process of liquidating uneconomic inventory and production facilities. In the longer run, transfer payments permanently corrupt citizens by inducing dependence upon the welfare state.

The rationalization for the species of government transfer payments called stimulus plans is that it theoretically revives an economy in recession and creates perpetual economic booms. At least that was among the confused and often contradictory claims made by economist John Maynard Keynes.

The Democrat/Socialist Party, since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s, has adopted Keynes’s estimate of private enterprise and “the rich” in general, making them targets of punitive regulation, higher taxes, and public condemnation. In line with socialism’s thrust to redistribute income and wealth, they pound the slogan that “the rich” are not paying their fair share, because of tax breaks enacted by Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush.

Counter-intuitively, however, tax revenues grew prodigiously under both tax-cutting presidents, as well as earlier under tax-cutting President John F. Kennedy. With respect to fairness, according to the IRS, the bottom half of all taxpayers pay less than 3% of income taxes, while the top 1% of taxpayers pay 36% of taxes and the top 20% pay 53% of taxes.

It is these top-bracket citizens whose savings and entrepreneurial spirit are essential to powering a revitalized economy that will create new jobs. Freighting them with the uncertainties of higher taxes and thousands of pages of new regulations, while figuratively flagellating them in the public square, will do nothing to speed our nation’s economic recovery.
____________
Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc. The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.

His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776 http://www.thomasbrewton.com/

Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Thomas E. Brewton


I’ve Been Thinking About the Way the President Takes Care of America

-By Marie Jon


I’ve been thinking and thinking about the way President Barack Obama has been taking care of our country. And my emotional reaction has been one of sadness, anger, shock, disgust, and dismay.

For most Americans, as well, the news of the day has become a bit too much concerning the state of the Union. We feel abandoned, bullied, pushed, and intimidated by our “historical” president. Dare I say he seems to have some issues?

Frankly, Obama’s recent address to the nation did little more than add insult to injury. He gave no answers that made any sense. He only became “wee weed up” while spending a great deal of his time telling us we can no longer depend on oil and shamelessly pandering his green energy propaganda.

Outmoded fear-mongering

On Hannity the other evening, my colleague Erik Rush nailed it while discussing his new book titled Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal — America’s Racial Obsession. The Democrat Party purposefully misleads people of color by reinforcing their fears, Erik pointed out. And certain pastors in the black community do the same, he noted. Within too many of the sanctuaries of black churches, the congregants are made to feel that the world is against them. From the pulpit, these same pastors will look to government, rather than to God’s instruction for taking personal responsibility. In John 10:10, Christ says, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” The apostle John writes, “Beloved, I wish above all things that you may prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers” (3 John 1:2).

Continue reading


I’ve Been Thinking About the Way the President Takes Care of America”


Obama’s Drilling Moratorium a Sop to Unions?

-By Warner Todd Huston

The president of the Seafarers International Union’s Gulf Coast District, Dean Corgey, recently penned an op ed in which he noted an interesting fact: deepwater oil drilling rigs are “100 percent non-union.” With this in mind one of union bought president Barack Obama’s major decisions — in fact, one of his few actual decisions — in the BP Oil mess was to shut down the very oil rigs that unions have been trying to organize for decades with a six-month moratorium.

Naturally, as is evident by Corgey’s op ed, unions are claiming the whole BP incident is a result of non-union workers and with Obama trying to shut down these platforms he lends credence to the union claims. Unions are sure to try and use the moratorium as a reason to convince skeptics against organizing workers of deepwater rigs.

But unions or no, Obama’s moratorium will potentially cause 120,000 jobs to be lost in the Gulf area just when the economy of the Gulf states is at its worst.
Continue reading


Obama’s Drilling Moratorium a Sop to Unions?”


Obama Fail: Hundreds of Oil Skimmers NOT Being Used in Gulf

-By Warner Todd Huston

Ken Marrero alerted me to this video of Florida Senator George LeMieux alerting the world that there are hundreds of oil skimmers across the country and the federal government has refused to allow them to be transferred to the Gulf to help in the cleanup because — get this — there may be an oil spill somewhere else and they might be needed there.

As LeMieux says, that this “logic” is like not sending a firetruck to a house fire because some other house might catch fire and the truck might be needed for that possible fire.

The folks at The Shark Tank conducted this interesting interview.
Continue reading


Obama Fail: Hundreds of Oil Skimmers NOT Being Used in Gulf”


BP and the Unmitigated Disaster

-By Alan Caruba

The Gulf of Mexico could turn into a giant dead zone if some means cannot be found to staunch the flow of oil and toxic gases emerging from the damaged well beneath the Deepwater Horizon. Industry insiders who understand the engineering of wells are beginning to speak openly among themselves of an unmitigated disaster.

It is essential to understand that the oil business is like no other. Oil companies that drill too many dry holes go out of business. Oil is too often in places run by despots and gangsters that would make Hollywood villains seem tame by comparison. Oil companies must deal with them even at the risk they will renege on their promises; something they do a lot.

The oil business depends on technology that attempts to give geologists an idea of what is hidden way below the surface of the land or water. It often means having to team up with your competitors to finance an operation such as building a pipeline so both can move their crude oil to refineries.
Continue reading


BP and the Unmitigated Disaster”


The Pirates of Penzance updated

-By Ann “Babe” Huggett

One of the most astute and witty political and cultural journalists of our time, Mark Steyn, recently mocked President Obama as a “modern major generalist” in reference to Obama’s over-arching, bloodless speeches, pedantic dependence on failed political theory and tanking presidency. Steyn so enjoyed his pun that he used it again in a different article and who can blame him? It’s a brilliant observation but how many readers are even familiar with Gilbert & Sullivan’s song, I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General, in particular and it’s operetta in general, The Pirates of Penzance?

Now, I am not going to go into the history, Victorian politics or plot of the The Pirates of Penzance or the artistic tensions and musical rivalries between Gilbert & Sullivan here. That is for the curious to find out for themselves. So my apologies to Gilbert & Sullivan but what I am going to do is, in my own way, bring their satiric observation of Peter Principle leaders up-to-date:

Obama is the Very Model of a Modern Major Generalist
Continue reading


The Pirates of Penzance updated”