Taking responsibility for your choices and their consequences.

From my friend Barry -- and not Obama

BREAKING NEWS: All legislation comes from congress

The day the Democrats took over was not January 22, 2009 -- it was actually January 3, 2007.

That day, the Democrats took over the House of Representatives and Senate, to start the 110th Congress.

The Democrat Party controlled both chambers for the first time since the end of the 103rd Congress in 1995.

You, who may be 'buying' the liberal media's "everything is "Bush's Fault", remember:

January 3, 2007 was the day Reid and Pelosi took over the Senate and the House:

At that time: (Remember their unrestrained gloating, especially Pelosi's?)

The DOW Jones closed at 12,621.77
The GDP for the previous quarter was up 3.5%
The Unemployment rate was 4.6%

George Bush's Economic policies SET A RECORD of 52 STRAIGHT MONTHS of JOB CREATION!

And:

January 3rd, 2007 was the day Barney Frank took over the House Financial Services Committee and Chris Dodd took over the Senate Banking Committee.

The economic meltdown, 15 months later, was in what part of the economy?

BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES!

It was the 110th Congress, with both houses controlled by Pelosi, Reid, Dodd, Frank, Schumer, Boxer, Feingold, Kennedy that implemented the policies and budget dumping 5-6 TRILLION Dollars of toxic loans on the economy from Fannie Mae and Freddie

Bush asked Congress 17 TIMES to stop Fannie & Freddie, starting back in 2001, because it was financially too risky for the US economy.
He was ignored.

And who fought against reform of Fannie and Freddie? Senators BARNEY FRANK, CHRIS DODD, OBAMA, REID and the Democrat Congress.
So, when you hear the liberals, and Obama, still trying to blame Bush

REMEMBER JANUARY 3rd, 2007, THE DAY THE DEMOCRATS TOOK OVER!

Bush may have been in the car, but the Democrats were in charge of the gas pedal and steering wheel, driving the country over the cliff!

Stimulus Dud

Thank you to my friend Simon in Madrid

LET'S SEE IF I GOT THIS RIGHT!!!


IF YOU CROSS THE NORTH KOREAN BORDER
ILLEGALLY YOU GET 12 YEARS HARD LABOR.



IF YOU CROSS THE IRANIAN BORDER
ILLEGALLY YOU ARE DETAINED INDEFINITELY.



IF YOU CROSS THE AFGHAN BORDER
ILLEGALLY, YOU GET SHOT.



IF YOU CROSS THE SAUDI ARABIAN BORDER
ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE JAILED.



IF YOU CROSS THE CHINESE BORDER
ILLEGALLY YOU MAY NEVER BE HEARD FROM AGAIN.



IF YOU CROSS THE VENEZUELAN BORDER
ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE BRANDED A SPY AND YOUR FATE WILL BE SEALED.



IF YOU CROSS THE CUBAN BORDER ILLEGALLY
YOU WILL BE THROWN INTO POLITICAL PRISON TO ROT.



IF YOU CROSS THE U.S. BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET !!!
A JOB, A DRIVERS LICENSE,
SOCIAL SECURITY CARD, WELFARE,
FOOD STAMPS, CREDIT CARDS,
SUBSIDIZED RENT OR A LOAN TO BUY A HOUSE,
FREE EDUCATION, FREE HEALTH CARE,
A LOBBYIST IN WASHINGTON BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS PRINTED IN YOUR LANGUAGE
THE RIGHT TO CARRY YOUR COUNTRY'S FLAG WHILE YOU
PROTEST THAT YOU DON'T GET ENOUGH RESPECT
AND, IN MANY INSTANCES, YOU CAN VOTE.


I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE I HAD A FIRM GRASP ON THE SITUATION !!!

Worth a thousand words

The Disappearing Middle Class

"Redistribution of Wealth" -- the Ruling Class isn't talking about its own wealth. Why is a government composed of millionaires so opposed to cutting taxes in any way, shape, or form? Simple: those laws won't apply to them. Why would the media back all kinds of laws and regulations on speech/press? The media will have friends on those boards. They will be able to do and say things their competition will not. Why did health care go through even with so many opposed? Congress, the president, and other Ruling-Classers are exempt. The entire system is being rewritten to insulate the Ruling Class, just as Marx advocated.

A great article! The Disappearing Middle Class

The Wicked Witch of the West

Obama's Vanishing Sex Appeal

From the Daily Beast
by Tunku Varadarajan
None of this would be worth a moment’s conversation had Obama not carried so much political support by dint of his sex appeal, which was an amalgam of his youth, his seeming dynamism, his idealism (always carefully curated, but always palpable), and his cinematic visual imagery—etching his chin up at a camera, eyes far away; long, lean, loping strides; basketball; bare chest on beach. The great downside of all that came when he had to fill the seductive, pulse-quickening profile with presidential substance. The real world has quarried away at him in the form of Iran, BP, North Korea, Israel, Afghanistan, the economy, the Tea Party, and the like. The result has not been “hot.” It’s been room temperature.

Twenty months into office, Obama stands exposed as a floundering Man, not a panacea-laden Superman. Even his relationship with his wife has hurt his sex appeal: Uxorious men are never sexy for long.

The promise of “otherness” and change that had made Obama so sexy to so many stands shorn of its magic. He has tried to do too much, and as a result has done too little well: And failure is not sexy. He has given speech after speech to a restless, increasingly irritated nation, like a man trying to “talk” about the relationship when a girl wants to be ravaged; he has been a preachy, professorial windbag—in a word, charmless. This hasn’t merely diminished his sex appeal; it has killed it stone dead. Obama now looks more like tank-commander Dukakis than the George Clooney of our national narrative…

…Which leaves America without a single politician of stature with any sex appeal at all. It’s enough to make one weep.

What a putz. Mr. Unpopular? Maybe he should be labeled Mr. Illiterate.

Smartest President in History Botches Oval Office Rug Quote
By Thomas Lifson in American Thinker

Woven into the new presidential seal rug adorning the Oval Office is a misattributed quotation, offering us a perfect metaphor for the Obama presidency. Jamie Stiehm reports in the Washington Post:

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." According to media reports, this quote keeping Obama company on his wheat-colored carpet
is from King.

Except it's not a King quote. The words belong to a long-gone Bostonian champion of social progress. His roots in the republic ran so deep that his grandfather commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington.

For the record, Theodore Parker is your man, President Obama. Unless you're fascinated by antebellum American reformers, you may not know of the lyrically gifted Parker, an abolitionist, Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist thinker who foresaw the end of slavery, though he did not live to see emancipation. He died at age 49 in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War.

A century later, during the civil rights movement, King, an admirer of Parker, quoted the Bostonian's lofty prophecy during marches and speeches.

Apparently, Obama himself believed the quotation to be from King. Stiehm writes:

My investigation into this error led me to David Remnick's biography of Obama, "The Bridge," published this year. Early in the narrative, Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, presents this as "Barack Obama's favorite quotation." It appears that neither Remnick nor Obama has traced the language to its true source.

The error perfectly encapsulates the shallowness of Barack Obama's intellect, and his lack of rigor. Obama is a man who accumulated academic credentials while giving no evidence whatsoever of achieving any depth. He was the only president of the Harvard Law Review to graduate without penning a signed article in that esteemed journal. His academic transcripts remain under lock and key, as do his academic papers.

For the sort of people like David Brooks of the New York Times, who are impressed by fancy degrees and a sharp crease in the trousers, Obama may appear to be the smartest ever occupant of the Oval Office. But, as the old joke goes, deep down, he is shallow. Underfoot, literally, there is woven into his background a prominent vein of phoniness.

For some reason or other, Obama has been able to skate through academia and politics without ever being seriously challenged to prove his depth. A simple veneer of glibness has been enough to win the accolades of the liberal intelligentsia. But now that he has actual responsibilities -- including relatively trivial ones like custodianship of the inner sanctum of the presidency -- his lack of substance keeps showing up in visible, embarrassing and troubling ways.

The ultimate irony is this: Obama's idol, Martin Luther King, had a long pattern of plagiarism, something airbrushed out of his story by the forces of political correctness, but well recognized by scholars of his written work. Clayborne Carson, the dean of King scholars, and director of the King Papers Project at Stanford acknowledges, "instances of textual appropriation can be seen in his earliest extant writings as well as his dissertation. The pattern is also noticeable in his speeches and sermons throughout his career."

There is no evidence that King attempted to claim authorship of the quotation woven into the Oval Office rug, so far as I know. Responsibility for this act of appropriation appears to lie on the presidential shoulders. Obama has his own pattern of appropriating things -- such as the money due to bondholders of GM and Chrysler, which he gave to the UAW, which he found more deserving, no matter what the laws of bankruptcy said about senior creditors.

When governments screw up postage stamps, the results become far more valuable to collectors, as in the case of the most expensive 20th century US postage stamp, the "inverted Jenny".

In a similar way, the botched Oval Office rug becomes a precious symbol of the Obama presidency, based on an image fabricated out of symbols rather than substance, and misappropriating valuable elements of America's history. The only question remaining is whether or not President Obama will choose to keep the rug in his office.

If the president keeps it, it instantly becomes the most interesting facet of that hallowed space, the first thing any visitor will want to (discreetly, with a quick downward glance) check out and silently chuckle about. Can you imagine the mirth that a visiting head of state would experience?
But if the president decides to excise the embarrassing carpet, what does he do with it? If he burns it, then the flames become a symbol of his failed presidency. If he auctions it off, as he should, it would fetch an enormous price -- enough to help reduce the deficit, or pay for some more fancy clothes and shoes for Michelle -- but then become an everlasting symbol of his ignorance.

As in so many other aspects of his presidency, Barack Obama has put himself into a no-win situation. Fortunately, the victims this time do not include the entire American people, but only Obama's image and the private donors who putatively paid for the rug.

or more aptly its the Summer Wreckovery

Obama's military leadership can only be called scandalous.

During the past week, 22 Americans were killed over a four-day period in Afghanistan. This is not a place about which decisions should be made in order to placate congressmen, pass health care and thereby maintain a president's political standing. This is a place about which a president should make decisions to best succeed in the military mission he himself has set out.

From Charles Krauthammer

How Barack Obama Became Mr. Unpopular. This from Time Magazine? How can it be that our Savior has fallen from grace?

How Barack Obama Became How Barack Obama Became Mr. Unpopular
By Michael Scherer

The Barack Obama that most Hoosiers remember voting for can still be found on YouTube. He stands before a cheering Elkhart high school gymnasium in August 2008, tireless, aspirational, promising a new America of jobs and hope. "We can choose another future," says the newcomer with the funny name. "So I ask you to join me."

Today that view of Obama is harder to find in Indiana. A couple of weeks back and a dozen miles west of Elkhart, hundreds gathered in another school gym — except this time it was for a job fair. With the local unemployment rate above 12% and rising again this summer, about a third of the employer display tables stood empty. Julie Griffin, who voted for Obama in '08, sat down at the room's edge, well dressed and discouraged. After 23 years as a payroll administrator at a local RV plant, she got laid off 18 months ago. "Really, what has he been doing?" she said when I asked about Obama's efforts to help people like her. "I guess I don't know what he is doing." (See TIME's 2008 Person of the Year: Barack Obama.)

USS Denial

Does anyone care?

7 US troops killed in latest Afghanistan fighting

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Seven U.S. troops have died in weekend attacks in Afghanistan's embattled southern and eastern regions, while officials found the bodies Sunday of five kidnapped campaign aides working for a female candidate in the western province of Herat.

Two servicemen died in bombings Sunday in southern Afghanistan, while two others were killed in a bomb attack in the south on Saturday and three in fighting in the east the same day, NATO said. Their identities and other details were being withheld until relatives could be notified.

The latest deaths bring to 42 the number of American forces who have died this month in Afghanistan after July's high of 66. A total of 62 international forces have died in the country this month, including seven British troops.

A nation bankrupt. Get ready for alot more of this.. dialing 911 will get you a busy signal. But everyone has crappy healthcare.

Cutbacks force police to curtail calls for some crimes

By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY
Budget cuts are forcing police around the country to stop responding to fraud, burglary and theft calls as officers focus limited resources on violent crime.
Cutbacks in such places as Oakland, Tulsa and Norton, Mass. have forced police to tell residents to file their own reports — online or in writing — for break-ins and other lesser crimes.

"If you come home to find your house burglarized and you call, we're not coming," said Oakland Police spokeswoman Holly Joshi. The city laid off 80 officers from its force of 687 last month and the department can't respond to burglary, vandalism, and identity theft. "It's amazing. It's a big change for us."

Get yours today!

courtesy Barry A

Q: Will Barack Obama be a one-term president?

A: Yes, he might last that long.

Honest to goodness, the man just does not get it.

Smiles everyone, Smiles!

It's a shame that our first black president is such a miserable failure (after only 18 months, no less). How great would it have been if Obama's policies would have created prosperity, security and a nation confident in our elected officials. Instead we are a bankrupt nation, morally and fiscally. What a legacy for the history books. Anyone with an Obama bumper sticker should be ashamed.

The stunning decline of Barack Obama: 10 key reasons why the Obama presidency is in meltdown

By Nile Gardiner TELEGRAPH.co.uk

President Obama: In decline?
The last few weeks have been a nightmare for President Obama, in a summer of discontent in the United States which has deeply unsettled the ruling liberal elites, so much so that even the Left has begun to turn against the White House. While the anti-establishment Tea Party movement has gained significant ground and is now a rising and powerful political force to be reckoned with, many of the president’s own supporters as well as independents are rapidly losing faith in Barack Obama, with open warfare breaking out between the White House and the left-wing of the Democratic Party. While conservatism in America grows stronger by the day, the forces of liberalism are growing increasingly weaker and divided.

Against this backdrop, the president’s approval ratings have been sliding dramatically all summer, with the latest Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll of US voters dropping to minus 22 points, the lowest point so far for Barack Obama since taking office. While just 24 per cent of American voters strongly approve of the president’s job performance, almost twice that number, 46 per cent, strongly disapprove. According to Rasmussen, 65 per cent of voters believe the United States is going down the wrong track, including 70 per cent of independents.

The RealClearPolitics average of polls now has President Obama at over 50 per cent disapproval, a remarkably high figure for a president just 18 months into his first term. Strikingly, the latest USA Today/Gallup survey has the President on just 41 per cent approval, with 53 per cent disapproving.

There are an array of reasons behind the stunning decline and political fall of President Obama, chief among them fears over the current state of the US economy, with widespread concern over high levels of unemployment, the unstable housing market, and above all the towering budget deficit. Americans are increasingly rejecting President Obama’s big government solutions to America’s economic woes, which many fear will lead to the United States sharing the same fate as Greece.

Growing disillusionment with the Obama administration’s handling of the economy as well as health care and immigration has gone hand in hand with mounting unhappiness with the President’s aloof and imperial style of leadership, and a growing perception that he is out of touch with ordinary Americans, especially at a time of significant economic pain. Barack Obama’s striking absence of natural leadership ability (and blatant lack of experience) has played a big part in undermining his credibility with the US public, with his lacklustre handling of the Gulf oil spill coming under particularly intense fire.

On the national security and foreign policy front, President Obama has not fared any better. His leadership on the war in Afghanistan has been confused and at times lacking in conviction, and seemingly dictated by domestic political priorities rather than military and strategic goals. His overall foreign policy has been an appalling mess, with his flawed strategy of engagement of hostile regimes spectacularly backfiring. And as for the War on Terror, his administration has not even acknowledged it is fighting one.

Can it get any worse for President Obama? Undoubtedly yes. Here are 10 key reasons why the Obama presidency is in serious trouble, and why its prospects are unlikely to improve between now and the November mid-terms.

1. The Obama presidency is out of touch with the American people

In a previous post I noted how the Obama presidency increasingly resembles a modern-day Ancien Régime, extravagant, decaying and out of touch with ordinary Americans. The First Lady’s ill-conceived trip to Spain at a time of widespread economic hardship was symbolic of a White House that barely gives a second thought to public opinion on many issues, and frequently projects a distinctly elitist image. The “let them eat cake” approach didn’t play well over two centuries ago, and it won’t succeed today.

2. Most Americans don’t have confidence in the president’s leadership

This deficit of trust in Obama’s leadership is central to his decline. According to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, “nearly six in ten voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country”, and two thirds “say they are disillusioned with or angry about the way the federal government is working.” The poll showed that a staggering 58 per cent of Americans say they do not have confidence in the president’s decision-making, with just 42 per cent saying they do.

3. Obama fails to inspire

In contrast to the soaring rhetoric of his 2004 Convention speech in Boston which succeeded in impressing millions of television viewers at the time, America is no longer inspired by Barack Obama’s flat, monotonous and often dull presidential speeches and statements delivered via teleprompter. From his extraordinarily uninspiring Afghanistan speech at West Point to his flat State of the Union address, President Obama has failed to touch the heart of America. Even Jimmy Carter was more moving.

4. The United States is drowning in debt

The Congressional Budget Office Long-Term Budget Outlook offers a frightening picture of the scale of America’s national debt. Under its alternative fiscal scenario, the CBO projects that US debt could rise to 87 percent of GDP by 2020, 109 percent by 2025, and 185 percent in 2035. While much of Europe, led by Britain and Germany, are aggressively cutting their deficits, the Obama administration is actively growing America’s debt, and has no plan in place to avert a looming Greek-style financial crisis.

5. Obama’s Big Government message is falling flat

The relentless emphasis on bailouts and stimulus spending has done little to spur economic growth or create jobs, but has greatly advanced the power of the federal government in America. This is not an approach that is proving popular with the American public, and even most European governments have long ditched this tax and spend approach to saving their own economies.

6. Obama’s support for socialised health care is a huge political mistake

In an extraordinary act of political Harakiri, President Obama leant his full support to the hugely controversial, unpopular and divisive health care reform bill, with a monstrous price tag of $940 billion, whose repeal is now supported by 55 per cent of likely US voters. As I wrote at the time of its passing, the legislation is “a great leap forward by the United States towards a European-style vision of universal health care, which will only lead to soaring costs, higher taxes, and a surge in red tape for small businesses. This reckless legislation dramatically expands the power of the state over the lives of individuals, and could not be further from the vision of America’s founding fathers.”

7. Obama’s handling of the Gulf oil spill has been weak-kneed and indecisive

While much of the spilled oil in the Gulf has now been thankfully cleared up, the political damage for the White House will be long-lasting. Instead of showing real leadership on the matter by acing decisively and drawing upon offers of international support, the Obama administration settled on a more convenient strategy of relentlessly bashing an Anglo-American company while largely sitting on its hands. Significantly, a poll of Louisiana voters gave George W. Bush higher marks for his handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, with 62 percent disapproving of Obama’s performance on the Gulf oil spill.

8. US foreign policy is an embarrassing mess under the Obama administration

It is hard to think of a single foreign policy success for the Obama administration, but there have been plenty of missteps which have weakened American global power as well as the standing of the United States. The surrender to Moscow on Third Site missile defence, the failure to aggressively stand up to Iran’s nuclear programme, the decision to side with ousted Marxists in Honduras, the slap in the face for Great Britain over the Falklands, have all contributed to the image of a US administration completely out of its depth in international affairs. The Obama administration’s high risk strategy of appeasing America’s enemies while kicking traditional US allies has only succeeded in weakening the United States while strengthening her adversaries.

9. President Obama is muddled and confused on national security

From the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the War on Terror, President Obama’s leadership has often been muddled and confused. On Afghanistan he rightly sent tens of thousands of additional troops to the battlefield. At the same time however he bizarrely announced a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces beginning in July 2011, handing the initiative to the Taliban. On Iraq he has announced an end to combat operations and the withdrawal of all but 50,000 troops despite a recent upsurge in terrorist violence and political instability, and without the Iraqi military and police ready to take over. In addition he has ditched the concept of a War on Terror, replacing it with an Overseas Contingency Operation, hardly the right message to send in the midst of a long-war against Al-Qaeda.

10. Obama doesn’t believe in American greatness

Barack Obama has made it clear that he doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism, and has made apologising for his country into an art form. In a speech to the United Nations last September he stated that “no one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold.” It is difficult to see how a US president who holds these views and does not even accept America’s greatness in history can actually lead the world’s only superpower with force and conviction.

There is a distinctly Titanic-like feel to the Obama presidency and it’s not hard to see why. The most left-wing president in modern American history has tried to force a highly interventionist, government-driven agenda that runs counter to the principles of free enterprise, individual freedom, and limited government that have made the United States the greatest power in the world, and the freest nation on earth.

This, combined with weak leadership both at home and abroad against the backdrop of tremendous economic uncertainty in an increasingly dangerous world, has contributed to a spectacular political collapse for a president once thought to be invincible. America at its core remains a deeply conservative nation, which cherishes its traditions and founding principles. President Obama is increasingly out of step with the American people, by advancing policies that undermine the United States as a global power, while undercutting America’s deep-seated love for freedom.

Pelosi: $26 Billion Teachers’ Union Bailout Good Value

Posted By Scott Ott On August 9, 2010

(2010-08-09) — Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, who called the House back into session this week to pass a $26 billion bailout bill to help cash-strapped states pay for 140,000 teachers, said the legislation’s price tag “may sound like a lot of money, but the value of having all of those union members on our Democrat campaign team makes it well worth the investment.”

“Most people don’t understand all of the good that these union members do,” said Rep. Pelosi. “These people make the phone calls, give the money, do the door-to-door work because they have a personal financial stake in the reelection of Democrats. You can’t get that kind of commitment out of mere volunteers. Without them, Democrats might lose their majority in Congress, as well as in many state legislatures.”

The Speaker said that once the American people understand the return they get for their investment in big public-sector unions like the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, “the only complaint they’ll have is ‘Why didn’t you give them $52 billion?’”

“It’s a quid pro quo arrangement,” Rep. Pelosi explained. “The public-sector unions make sure we get elected, and we make sure they get ever-increasing salaries, and sweet guaranteed pension deals for life, no matter what the economy does. It’s a classic win-win situation.”

The California lawmaker added that “the genius of our Founding Fathers was to establish this relationship whereby we the people of the Democrat Party are sovereign, and we negotiate mutually-beneficial collective bargaining agreements with our union supporters. It’s a system of checks and balances that protects us all from the tyranny of the public.”