August 11, 2012

THE DAILY CALLER
Tea Party Movement is Libertarian at Core, Study Says
by Betsi Fores
August 11, 2012

A study released Monday by the Cato Institute suggests that the roots of the tea party movement are more libertarian than people think.

Pundits on the left have often pigeon-holed the tea party as a new incarnation of the “religious right” movement.

“The tea party is upending the conventional wisdom that Republican candidates must placate socially conservative voters to win primaries. Increasingly, Republican candidates must win over tea party voters on libertarian economic issues,” the study says in its executive summary.

The study, which compiles polling data, both national and local, as well as dozens of personal interviews with tea party members and leaders, reveals that economic issues are the major influence of the growing tea party movement. The group is still split on social issues, however, with half leaning more socially conservative, and half more socially liberal.

Cato Institute executive vice president David Boaz spoke to The Daily Caller News Foundation about the effects of a growing libertarian base across the country.

“We do know for the long term polling data that libertarians typically vote about 2 to 1 Republican so I know of no reason to think that they wouldn’t have done that in 2010,” Boaz told TheDC News Foundation.

“[Study author David Kirby] suggested, re-suggested that many independent voters tend to be fiscally conservative and socially liberal,” Boaz went on to explain.


Boaz said that the rise of Texas Rep. Ron Paul brought issues like the Federal Reserve and government welfare to the forefront of the political debate.

The constituency of citizens concerned with the growth of government, however, has grown in the past decade, and Boaz thinks that trend will only continue.

A growing concern over issues like gay marriage and the drug war combined “with an appreciation for limited government more broadly and for the dangers of over-spending and debt” is driving the trend, Boaz adds.

“Yes, I think that libertarian constituency will get larger.”

Read more:  http://goo.gl/gKxbT

AMERICAN THINKER
Budget Deficit at $914 Billion for the Year
by Rick Moran
August 11, 2012

The Obama administration added $70 billion more to the budget deficit in July, guaranteeing that the fiscal year, which ends September 30, will see the 5th straight trillion dollar plus deficit.
Associated Press:
The U.S. federal budget deficit increased $70 billion in July and is on track to top $1 trillion for the fourth straight year.

The deficit for the first 10 months of the 2012 budget year, which ends Sept. 30, totaled $974 billion, the Treasury Department said Friday. That's 11.5 percent less than in the same period last year. A slightly better economy has boosted income tax receipts.

Still, President Barack Obama will almost certainly face re-election after running $1 trillion deficits each year in office. Republican candidate Mitt Romney has criticized Obama for failing to cut the deficit in half, as he pledged to do during his 2008 campaign.

The White House last month forecast that the budget gap will total $1.2 trillion this year, down from $1.3 trillion in 2011.

This year's gap is equal to about 7.8 percent of the U.S. economy, down from 8.5 percent in 2011. The Obama administration expects the deficit to fall just under $1 trillion next year, to $991 billion.
I recall fondly my first year in Washington D.C. It was 1979 and President Carter was being heavily criticized for running a $60 billion deficit the previous year.

Now, Congress sneezes and they spend $60 billion blowing their noses.

Read more: http://goo.gl/QB134

PJ MEDIA
Obama Said There'd Be Days Like This
by Rick Richman
August 11, 2012

Earlier this year, President Obama started adding a stock line to the stump speech he gives at his endless fundraisers, recalling what he supposedly said in 2008. As he phrased it at a campaign event in Florida last month:

Now, ever since I first ran for this office, I’ve said it’s going to take more than one year or one term or maybe even one president to restore the dream that built this country.

A week later, he mangled his oft-repeated statement, reversing the subject and predicate, saying that ever since he had run for president he had said it would take that long to “restore the dream this country built.” Perhaps he was confusing his 2008 statement with his 2012 campaign theme. (That dream you have? You didn’t build that).

But the more significant question is: when in 2008 did he say anything like it would take two terms and maybe two presidents to do what he promised?

On the night he effectively secured the Democratic presidential nomination, he told the crowd it was a “defining moment for our nation,” a “moment that will define a generation,” a “moment when … the rise of the oceans began to slow.” Five days before the election, he said we were “five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” His nomination would make the waters recede; his election would transform America. It was all about the fierce urgency of now — not two terms or maybe two presidents.

In his inaugural address, Obama said that “everywhere we look, there is work to be done” and that what was required was “action, bold and swift.” He assured the nation that:

[W]e will act, not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.  We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.  We’ll restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.  We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.  And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.  All this we can do.  All this we will do.

People listening to Obama on the first day of his presidency might have thought to themselves, “Boy, this has gotta take two terms, and maybe even two presidents; I mean — not just creating new jobs, but laying a new foundation for growth; not just building roads and bridges, but grids and lines; restoring science to its rightful place; raising health care’s quality while lowering its cost; harnessing the sun and wind; transforming schools, colleges and universities — that’s gonna take a while.”

Read more: http://goo.gl/wD7Br