February 18, 2013

TOWNHALL

McCain to David Gregory: “Do You Care Whether Four Americans Died?”

by Leah Barkoukis 

February 17, 2013

The extent to which GOP lawmakers are ridiculed by the MSM for trying to get to the bottom of Benghazi is unbelievable. If you missed Sen. McCain on Meet the Press today with David Gregory, it’s well worth watching now.

After explaining to Gregory that there are still a number of unanswered questions regarding Benghazi, McCain concludes by saying there’ s been a massive cover-up. Gregory is confused: “A massive cover-up of what?”

The crux of the interview, however, came when McCain asked Gregory whether he even cared that four Americans died (transcript via NewsBusters):

JOHN MCCAIN: I'm asking you, do you care-- I-- I'm-- I'm asking you, do you care whether four Americans died? Or do you-- the reasons for that? And-- and shouldn't pe-- people be held accountable for the fact that four Americans died-- 

DAVID GREGORY: Well, what you said was the cover-up--
(OVERTALK) 

DAVID GREGORY: A cover-up of what? 

JOHN MCCAIN: Of the information-- concerning the deaths of four brave Americans. The information has not been forthcoming. You can obviously believe that it has. I know that it hasn't. And I'll be glad to send you a list of the questions that have not been answered, including what did the president do and who did he talk to the night of the attack on Benghazi? 

And why was it? Why was it that we-- that the f-- the people who were evacuated from the-- from the consulate the next day were not interviewed the next day. And then they would've known that it was not a spontaneous demonstration. Why did the president for two weeks, for two weeks during the heat of the campaign continue to say he didn't know whether it was a terrorist attack or not? 

Is it because it interfered with the line of Al Qaeda has decimated? And everything's fine in that-- in that part of the world? Maybe. We don't know. But we need the answers. Then we'll reach conclusions. But we have not received the answers. And that's a fact.

But hey, what difference at this point does it make, right?

Read more: http://goo.gl/lOa1a

HUMAN EVENTS
Night of Nonsense
by George Will
February 16, 2013

WASHINGTON — In the 12 months we have to steel ourselves for the next State of the Union spectacle, let us count the ways that this spawn of democratic Caesarism — presidency-worship — has become grotesque. It would be the most embarrassing ceremony in the nation’s civic liturgy were the nation still capable of being embarrassed by its puerile faith in presidential magic.

The Constitution laconically requires only that the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” Nothing requires “from time to time” to be construed as “every damn year.” Informing and recommending need not involve today’s tawdry ritual of wishful thinking by presidents unhinged from political reality, and histrionics by their audiences. And must we be annually reminded that all presidents think that everything they want is “necessary and expedient”?

Some of the blame for this yearly night of nonsense goes to Ronald Reagan. Most, however, goes to Woodrow Wilson. Reagan, who loved entertainment, pioneered the regrettable practice of stocking the House gallery with (usually) admirable people. Wilson, who loved himself, had, as professors often do, a theory, which caused him to reverse Thomas Jefferson’s wholesome reticence.

When the Founding generation was developing customs and manners appropriate to a republic, George Washington and John Adams made the mistake of going to Congress to do their constitutional duty of informing and recommending. Jefferson, however, disliked the sound of his voice — such an aversion is a vanishingly rare presidential virtue — and considered it monarchical for the executive to lecture the legislature, the lofty instructing underlings. So he sent written thoughts to Capitol Hill, a practice good enough for subsequent presidents until Wilson in 1913 delivered his message orally, pursuant to the progressives’ belief in inspirational and tutelary presidents.

It is beyond unseemly, it is anti-constitutional for senior military officers and, even worse, Supreme Court justices, to attend these political rallies where, with metronomic regularity, legislators of the president’s party leap to their feet to whinny approval of every bromide and vow. Members of the other party remain theatrically stolid, thereby provoking brow-furrowing punditry about why John Boehner did not rise (to genuflect? salute? swoon?) when Barack Obama mentioned this or that. Tuesday night, the justices, generals and admirals, looking as awkward as wallflowers at a prom, at least stayed seated.

Except for Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, who stayed away. They missed a clunker of a speech, although the tedium was not much worse than usual, and was redeemed by clarifying three things.

First, Obama’s declaration that nothing in his long list of proposed spending “should” — should? — “increase our deficit by a single dime” means there should be commensurate tax increases. Second, now that he has proclaimed that government “must keep the promises we’ve already made,” only the uneducable can still believe he will consider entitlement reforms. Third, by saying spending cuts under the sequester would be “harsh” and would “devastate” domestic programs, he made applesauce of those two words: The cuts would remove only $85 billion from this year’s almost $3.6 trillion budget, and over a decade they would cut just $1.2 trillion from projected spending of $46 trillion. And spending this year would still be well above the post-1945 norm as a percentage of gross domestic product.

Although Obama is a self-proclaimed respecter of science, he does not stoop to empiricism. Understandably. Data are unkind to his assertion that climate change is causing storms to become more severe and drought to become more prevalent. Measured by “accumulated cyclone energy,” hurricane and other tropical cyclone activity is at a three-decade low, and Nature journal reports that globally “there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years.”

Wilson’s stroke prevented him from delivering the State of the Union orally in 1919 and 1920, but Warren Harding, not known for a strong sense of propriety, continued the deplorable practice in 1921 and 1922. Calvin Coolidge did so in 1923, four months after becoming president, but not a second time. Wilson’s practice was, however, made the norm by the man who had first come to Washington as Wilson’s assistant secretary of the Navy, Franklin Roosevelt.

State of the Union addresses are now integral to the apotheosis of the presidency. If government is going to be omniprovident, modern presidents are going to be omnipresent, and politics is going to be infantile.

Read more: http://goo.gl/3YiRu

BREITBART

Woodward Attacks Rove for Fixing Elections with Soviet-style ‘Politburo’

by Breitbart News

February 17, 2013

Fox News’ Fox News Sunday, power panel featuring Author Bob Woodward and Republican strategist Karl Rove in a tense exchange.

Read more: http://goo.gl/rNTf4

February 12, 2013

HUMAN EVENTS
Dr. Carson's good medicine
by David Limbaugh
February 12, 2013

President Obama must have been stunned at the “audacity” of Dr. Benjamin Carson in challenging his core assumptions right to his face in front of thousands of people at the National Prayer Breakfast.

Obama is not used to being challenged, especially in public, even if indirectly and without being specifically named. From the look on his face, it was obvious Obama was none too pleased with Carson’s message or with his “presumptuousness” in presenting it in that forum, while he had to sit still and — remain silent.

I think we can best understand Carson’s message in light of his opening statements, which laid the foundation for the thematic body of this speech.

He began citing scriptural passages that he said would put his upcoming remarks into context. Three of the passages were wisdom sayings from the book of Proverbs, admonishing that the godless destroy their neighbor with their mouths, that a man who lacks judgment derides his neighbor and that a generous man will prosper.

The final passage was God’s promise in 2 Chronicles 7:14 that if his people will humble themselves and pray and seek his face and turn from their wicked ways, he will hear them, forgive their sins and heal their land.

Carson also decried the chilling effect of political correctness that makes people afraid to express certain opinions on important issues, lest they incur the wrath of society’s thought and speech police — those who presume to be the guardians of all moral and acceptable opinions. He then proceeded to boldly articulate a number of ideas that clearly fall in this category of disfavored speech.

Specifically, Carson offered a ringing endorsement of America’s founding principles and its unique constitutional liberties. He decried the moral decay in our society and our government’s grotesque fiscal irresponsibility.

He took aim on our ever-expanding welfare state, not only by championing hard work, self-reliance and personal responsibility but also in invoking his own personal experience as an example.

He related how his mother worked multiple jobs to provide for him and his brother and imparted critically important values to them. She made them read and improve themselves and absolutely refused to let them make excuses and claim victimhood for their plight.

Carson, I believe, was illustrating that we have a moral problem in this nation and that the instilling of good values begins in the home and is neither the responsibility nor the prerogative of a caretaker government.

He denounced the practice — refined to an art form by President Obama — of politicians employing class warfare to deride the wealthy with accusations that they don’t contribute enough while treating the less fortunate as helpless and expecting no contribution from them at all. This, I think, is where he was dovetailing the scriptural texts warning against deriding one’s neighbor. He was saying, in effect, that political demagogues who pit people against one another on the basis of income and wealth harm society, including the very people they pretend to help.

In a television interview, Carson expanded on some of these thoughts, explaining that the Founding Fathers were afraid of an out-of-control government that would “get to the point where it couldn’t subsist without taking everything from the people.” Next, he linked, though not expressly, the scriptural passage on generosity in challenging today’s conventional wisdom that the wealthy are necessarily greedy. He pointed to the remarkable generosity of some of America’s historically wealthiest individuals. America, he said, “has always been a very generous nation. Look at all the foundations that have been created for the purpose of taking care of people.”

He also expounded on his comments on political correctness, apparently criticizing the president’s selective assault on religious liberty. He said, “If the president would exercise anywhere near the sensitivity about religious freedom in this country as he does about Islam and offending them, we wouldn’t even have these kinds of problems.”

There is also no question in my mind that in citing the passage from 2 Chronicles, Carson was expressing his view that America has strayed from its godly roots and replaced God’s absolute moral standards with those that seem right to a man but are wholly destructive of our moral fabric. We must turn back to God, reject this man-made ethic grounded in covetousness, envy and greed, and recommit ourselves to godly values and right living.

In his speech, Carson did not criticize President Obama by name, but he roundly condemned his philosophy of and approach to governance. He did so with abundant forcefulness but equally strong respectfulness.

It was an admirable display of forthrightness and courage and a virtual seminar in how President Obama’s political opponents should boldly, directly and publicly dispute his wrongheaded message and block his destructive agenda.

Read more: http://goo.gl/bQq9B

AMERICAN THINKER
The Resilient Conservative Majority
by Bruce Walker
February 12, 2013

Gallup had a poll recently published a poll which shows that at the end of 2012, self-identified conservatives still outnumbered liberals in every state of the nation except for two -- Rhode Island  has fewer conservatives (27.8%) than liberals (28.3% liberal), as does Massachusetts (28.3% to 30.5%).  Gallup curiously does not play up the ideological gap.  Instead, the February 1, 2013 article title given by Gallup was  "Alabama, North Dakota, Wyoming Most Conservative States.  Americans slightly less conservative, slightly more liberal[.]"

This apparent interest in hiding the conservative advantage in America is pervasive; the Gallup Polls invariably have titles to news stories which would cause no one to get curious.  The Gallup Poll data twelve months earlier showed the same dramatic conservative advantage.  So did the February 2011 Gallup Poll, entitled "Mississppi rates as Most Conservative US State."  The  August 2010 Gallup Poll tells us that "Wyoming, Mississippi, Utah rank as Most Conservative States."  The February 2010 Gallup Poll reads, "Ideology:  Three Deep South States Most Conservative."  Gallup in August 2009 featured the headline "Political Ideology: 'Conservative' Label Prevails in South[.]"

A closer look at Gallup's polling results shows something startling.  In February 2012, Gallup reported that conservatives outnumbered liberals in every state but Massachusetts.  In February 2011, Gallup polling results showed that conservatives outnumbered liberals in every single state.  The August 2010 results showed that conservatives outnumber liberals in every state but Rhode Island.  In August 2009, Gallup polls showed that conservatives outnumbered liberals in every single state.  The February 2009 poll showed conservatives outnumbering liberals in every state of the union.

The Battleground Poll, perhaps the most respected bipartisan poll, has also consistently shown that conservatives dramatically outnumber liberals in America.  Even in December 2012, after Obama had won re-election, Question D3 of that poll showed Americans identifying themselves thus: "Very Conservative" (20%), "Somewhat Conservative" (39%), "Moderate" (2%), "Somewhat Liberal" (24%), "Very Liberal" (12%), and "Unsure" (3%).

As I have been pointing out for many years, the Battleground Poll results -- and there have been dozens of them in the last twelve years -- have always shown not only that self-identified conservatives outnumber liberals by a wide margin, but that conservatives constitute year in and year out about six out of every ten Americans, even when "Moderate" and "Unsure" are included as non-conservatives.

Left-leaning polling organizations like Public Policy Polling, in the aftermath of Obama's re-election, nevertheless reported that "very conservative" voters constituted 15% of respondents and "somewhat conservative" was 24%, while "very liberal" was 11% and "somewhat liberal" was 18%.

Other polling organizations which rely upon local news organizations for their results show the same pattern.  A poll in January 2013, for example, showed that in Minnesota, conservatives outnumbered liberals 30% to 13%.  In Connecticut, conservatives outnumber liberals by 26% to 20%.  In Ohio, conservatives constituted 34% of respondents and liberals 18%.  In Washington State, the conservative advantage over liberals was 34% to 20%.  Other state polls show the same remarkable conservative advantage.

If only one poll or one polling organization showed the huge advantage that conservatives have over liberals, then that might be dismissed as flawed methodology or -- as many conservatives have sourly suggested -- the idea that people who call themselves "conservative" really don't know what the word means.  But, again, the sheer volume of polls, the consistency of the ideological gap, and the constancy of the ideology gap undo this argument.

Why, then, do liberals have so much political success?  One answer is voter fraud, which is why Democrats fought voter identification cards, and the other obstacle is the left's control of every institution in society.  These, however, are only part of the story.  

The principal problem is that Republicans act scared and are reluctant to call themselves unabashed conservatives.  Romney, McCain, George W. Bush with his "compassionate conservatives, Dole (Need I say anything about him?), George H. Bush repudiating Reagan with his notorious "Kinder, gentler America,"  Ford, Nixon, Eisenhower, Dewey, Willkie, Landon, and Hoover -- all were half-hearted and apologetic pseudo-conservatives.

Only four times in the last hundred years has a Republican campaigned as an unabashed conservative.  Coolidge won big in 1924, and he would have won with a bigger landslide if he had chosen to run in 1928.  Reagan won two landslides.  Only Goldwater, running with a divided Republican Party one year after Kennedy was murdered, lost as a conservative.  As for Reagan, he won because he held conservative values and never apologized for them or watered them down.

Conservatives ought to be winning.  When Republicans stop listening to the din of leftist cant, they win.

Read more: http://goo.gl/1BVFr

BREITBART
Thousands Attend Chris Kyle Memorial Service in Cowboys Stadium
by Breitbart News
February 12, 2013 

On Monday, thousands of Americans turned out to pay homage to the late Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL sniper famous for the performance in Iraq that earned him the nickname from his enemies, The Devil of Ramadi. Kyle was murdered last week in Texas by a former soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Kyle’s coffin was placed at the center of Cowboys Stadium, draped in an American flag. Over 7,000 people came to pay tribute to him.

Kyle’s wife and children spoke in moving terms about the American hero. According to wife Taya, Chris made her feel like “pure gold.” “Thank you Chris thank you for loving me, all of me,” she said. “God worked through you to make me the woman I was supposed to be … You taught me I was okay just the way I am. I stand before you a broken woman but I am now and always will be a wife of a man who was a warrior both on and off the battlefield.”

Chris’ children wrote notes that were printed in the program. “You are the best dad ever,” wrote one of Kyle’s daughters, who signed only “Baby Girl.” “I never wanted you to die, I miss your heart.” His other daughter wrote, “One of the best things that has happened to me is you. I love you dad. I always will.”

Luminaries including Sarah Palin attended the funeral. There were no reported attendees from the Obama administration.

Read more: http://goo.gl/A064D

February 11, 2013

TOWNHALL
Does the Republican Party Have a Future?
by Star Parker
February 11, 2013

The United States, from day one, was a project about principles and ideals.

The super power that emerged and grew from the handful of colonists that began settling here was not the product of where those colonists happened to land, but the ideals and principles in their head and heart – applied in how they lived their lives.

The Republican Party was founded in 1854 to address one great blot on the nation’s founding legacy – the existence of slavery in a nation founded under the ideal of freedom under God.

Runaway slave and self-educated abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass said “I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.”

Douglass called Abraham Lincoln, America’s first Republican president, “emphatically the black man’s president.”

When some thirty years ago I told the welfare officer to not bother showing up again at my home – when I decided that my own future would be based on the values of scripture, work, and personal responsibility - there was no doubt in my mind what party would become my political home.

The party of “freedom and progress,” the party of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

But, as longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer once observed, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

It‘s no mystery why the Republican Party is having a hard time today. No matter how hard you squint and try to discern the values of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, or any values for that matter, in those now wielding the money and power at the top of the party, they’ve disappeared.

These establishment Republican leaders and operatives are not about ideals and values but business – their own business.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office is that unemployment will “remain above 7.5 percent through next year. That would make 2014 the sixth consecutive year with a jobless rate that high, the longest stretch of such elevated unemployment in 70 years.”

Yet the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 could not defeat the current occupant of the White House.

In the party that is supposed to be about freedom and personal responsibility, party operatives want to blame everyone else for their own failures.

Worse, they want to pin it on candidates who actually take seriously the traditional values of their party.

Karl Rove would like to weed out candidates like former Missouri congressman Todd Akin.

Akin, who was defeated by Democrat incumbent Claire McCaskill in the Senate race in Missouri, was a six term Republican congressman with a flawless conservative record.

For most of 2012 he was ahead of McCaskill in the polls. Then, in August, he expressed himself poorly in an interview about abortion. Despite his apologies and efforts to clarify himself, his own party abandoned him.

McCaskill ran ads, over and over, showing the Republican’s own candidate Mitt Romney questioning Akin’s qualifications. This race could have been saved. But the party elite wasted not a second to dump Akin because they were not comfortable with his conservative values to begin with.

We’re living in a deeply troubled country today. Americans are looking for answers, not a political class feathering its own nest.

There are tens of millions of conservative American patriots who seek an opposition party to represent their conviction that America will not get back on the path to strength and prosperity without restoration of freedom, limited government, free markets, and traditional values.

Today’s big question is whether the Republican Party is going to be that opposition party.

If not, it is not conservative values and convictions that will be abandoned. It will be the Republican Party.

Read more: http://goo.gl/5b58l

CLEVER QUIPS

Never Retreat!

by Conservative Sue

February 9, 2013

I had an interesting conversation on Facebook earlier this week after posting this graphic.

One of my friends decided to use this as an opportunity to lambaste me for sticking to conservative ideals. To sum up our conversation ... she believed that Republicans lose because they support causes such as life, gun rights, traditional marriage, and securing the borders. I, of course, insisted we must stand for conservative principles, but I never really mentioned the fact that I was not a Republican (but, a conservative). This exchange with my Facebook friend got me to thinking: has the GOP establishment brainwashed the majority of conservatives into believing it is best to stay silent on principles to win elections?  The answer to that question is NO. But, it will take a lot of work to undo the damage that is being done to the psyche of conservatives in this country, because there are a large number in the Republican establishment (aided by the conservative media) that share her views.  We have a lot of work to do.

I am currently reading Erick Erickson's book -  Red State Uprising: How To Take Back America and Erickson does a masterful job of explaining why retreating from conservative ideals not only results in a more progressive and growing government, but it actually diminishes opportunities for success. People are hungry for truth-tellers, for leaders who are passionate, articulate, intelligent, and who offer real and lasting solutions. People are tired of politicians who say anything, do anything just to get elected .. but then fail to deliver on any of their promises. People are tired of politicians who put loyalty to their party ahead of loyalty to this country and the American people. Voters detest candidates who hide their true convictions .. and despise those who pretend to support causes, when their actions are not indicative of that support.

We need to know what we believe and articulate those beliefs with confidence to those who are searching for answers. Conservatism may not be as popular as it was during the days of Ronald Reagan, but that is only because conservatives have been silent. We need a voice .. we need to step forth with boldness. Retreat is never a path to victory. Don't be duped by those who would crush the conservative movement in this country. Anyone who tells you that you should stay silent on your principles has either been deceived by the cautious and retreating Republican establishment, or they are actually working to wipe out the conservative movement. Neither of these groups are your friends.

Read more: http://goo.gl/q5MpY

BREITBART
Left-Wing Lickspittles: How the Huffington Post is Aiding Obama's Benghazi Cover-Up
by Joel B. Pollak
February 10, 2013

Normally, we at Breitbart News ignore the Huffington Post. It is self-consciously leftist, so there is little point in highlighting its rather comical bias, except when that bias filters into the mainstream media. Sunday night was just such an occasion, when HuffoPo ran two stories in succession that neatly captured the lickspittle mentality of the mainstream media towards President Barack Obama, and the danger it holds for our democracy.

The first story was headlined, “Obsessed.” It described the promised by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to block the confirmations of former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan to the posts of Secretary of Defense and CIA Director, respectively, unless the Obama administration fully explained the president’s actions during the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sep. 11.

Graham is no wide-eyed ideologue. Many conservatives consider him a squish on core issues. (I was once present to hear Graham address a gathering of high-dollar donors. He admonished them about the need to address climate change, even using the odd term “carbon pollution” to describe fossil fuel use. One irritated donor turned to me and whispered: “That sound you hear is checkbooks slamming shut across the nation.”)

Yet Graham takes foreign policy very seriously, as well as the fate of Americans serving abroad. He has, after all, been one of them. In pursuing answers on Benghazi, he is doing what the mainstream media ought to have done, and what the nation wants to be done. He is also answering Obama’s challenge in November: “If Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham and others want to go after somebody [on Libya], they should go after me.”

It is the Huffington Post’s own dishonor that it would impute mental imbalance to a Senator who seeks the truth about how four Americans died--a truth hidden behind lies about YouTube videos, among other alibis. It is only through Graham’s firm persistence, for example, that we learned last week that Obama did not communicate with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta after an initial briefing about the attack that evening.

The second story on Sunday evening was headlined, “Commander,” and linked to a Washington Post story about how President Obama intends to use executive orders to pursue his policy goals in his second term, rather than working with Congress. Leaving aside for the moment that Obama now seeks the very executive supremacy he once denounced, there is something even more disturbing in HuffPo’s framing of the story.

The headline and image were clearly meant to be laudatory. The Huffington Post was praising Obama for exerting “command,” and gave the impression that both its editors and readers are eager to be so commanded. The idea of a president who not only ignores the opposition, but the very legislative process, matches Obama’s vision in last year’s State of the Union address of grafting a military model onto our political life.

That spirit, which has possessed much of the country’s press corps, fits fascism rather than democracy. The irony is that Obama was not the “commander” on that terrible night. We already know that neither he nor his Cabinet showed more than a passing interest in the fate of the Benghazi consulate and its personnel. To mock those seeking answers, and to praise Obama’s leadership, is to aid and abet a disgraceful cover-up.

Read more: http://goo.gl/MpHzn

February 6, 2013

NEWSMAX
Kibbe: Rove's Plan to Protect GOP Incumbents is 'Political Suicide'
by Jim Meyers and Kathleen Walter
by February 5, 2013

FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe tells Newsmax that a new Karl Rove-backed group is seeking to protect incumbents who “are afraid of a tea party challenge” — and he calls the effort “political suicide.”

Kibbe also discloses that his group intends to target in GOP primaries incumbents who don’t consistently support conservative principles.

Tea party-affiliated FreedomWorks was founded in 2004 and claims to have millions of members nationwide.

Former George W. Bush adviser Rove’s group, American Crossroads, has formed a new organization called the Conservative Victory Project that will target Republican candidates it deems unelectable. The organization was formed because of concerns that candidates like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock were costing the GOP congressional seats.

Commenting on the group’s efforts, Kibbe says in an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV: “It’s all about stifling competition. It’s all about protecting incumbent senators who are afraid of a tea party challenge, afraid of actually standing on their record.

“If you think about what Karl Rove is trying to do, he’s going to eliminate this whole new breed of Republican that’s repopulated the party, bringing all this energy. There would be no Marco Rubio, no Pat Toomey, no Mike Lee, no Rand Paul if this type of apparatus was successful.

“So it’s a really bad idea and if you look at our record on balance, we have in fact brought new energy to the Republican Party and it’s vital that we continue to do so.”

Read more: http://goo.gl/xqAJR

TOWNHALL
Prophets and Losses: Part II
by Thomas Sowell
February 6, 2013

People on both sides of tax issues often speak of such things as a "$300 billion tax increase" or a "$500 billion tax decrease." That is fine if they are looking back at something that has already happened. But it can be sheer nonsense if they are talking about a proposed increase or decrease in the tax rate.
The government can only raise or lower the tax rate. Whether the actual tax revenues that the government will collect as a result will go up or down is a matter of prophecy. And these prophecies have been far too wrong far too often to base national policies on them.

When Congress was considering raising the capital gains tax rate from 20 percent to 28 percent in 1986, the Congressional Budget Office advised Congress that this would increase the revenue received from that tax. But the Congressional Budget Office was wrong, not simply about the amount of the tax revenue increase, but about the fact that the capital gains tax revenue actually fell.

There was nothing unique about this example of tax rates and tax revenues moving in opposite directions from each other -- and also in opposite directions from the predictions of the Congressional Budget Office. Reductions of the capital gains tax rates in 1978, 1997 and 2003 all led to increased revenues from that tax.

The Congressional Budget Office is by no means the only government agency whose prophecies have been grossly unreliable. Anyone who looks at the history of the Federal Reserve System will find many painful examples of wrong prophecies that led to policies with bad consequences for the whole economy.

In a worldwide context, during the 20th century economic central planning by governments -- prophecy at the grandest level -- led to so many bad consequences, in countries around the world, that even most socialist and communist governments abandoned central planning by the end of that century.

The failures of governmental prophecies in so many different contexts cannot be blamed on stupidity. Most of the people who made these prophecies were far more educated than the average person, had far more information at their fingertips and probably had higher IQs as well.

Their intellectual superiority to others may well have given them the confidence to venture into areas where no human being has what it takes to make prophecies that lead to policies overriding the plans and actions of millions of other human beings.


As John Stuart Mill said, back in the 19th century, "even if a government were superior in intelligence and knowledge to any single individual in the nation, it must be inferior to all the individuals of the nation taken together."

People competing with each other, and being forced to make mutual accommodations with each other in the marketplace, are operating in a trial and error process.

Human beings are going to make errors in any kind of economic or political system. The question is: Which kind of system punishes errors more quickly, and more effectively, in terms of forcing errors to be corrected?

A market economy with many competitors has incentives and constraints that are the opposite of those in a government monopoly.

Anyone familiar with the economic history of businesses knows that their mistakes have been common and large. But red ink on the bottom line lets them know that they are going to have to shape up or shut down.

Government agencies face no such constraint. The Federal Reserve can keep making the same mistakes in the next hundred years that it made in its first hundred years. Or it can make new and bigger mistakes.

Nor is the Federal Reserve unique. The same thing applies to the Congressional Budget Office and to government agencies on down to the local DMV.

Elected politicians not only can keep making the same mistakes. They have every incentive to deny that they made a mistake in the first place, since such an admission can end their careers.

That is why these prophets can lead to our losses.


Read more: http://goo.gl/JXIoK

THE DAILY CALLER
Stunning new numbers forecast debt explosion by 2023
by Betsi Fores
February 6, 2013

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released an estimate Tuesday saying that by 2023, the federal debt will be $7 trillion larger.

“If current laws remain in place, debt will equal 77 percent of GDP and be on an upward path,” CBO projects.

Based on their modeling, the deficit will total $845 billion in 2013, making it the first year in five years to have a deficit below $1 trillion.

“With such deficits, federal debt would remain above 73 percent of GDP — far higher than the 39 percent average seen over the past four decades,” says the CBO.

Economists commonly recommend that the debt-to-GDP ratio should not exceed 60 percent. It currently exceeds 70 percent.

“The CBO’s report is yet another warning that we need to get spending under control,” House budget committee chair Paul Ryan said last week. “The deficit is still unsustainable. By 2023, our national debt will hit $26 trillion. We can’t let that happen. We need to budget responsibly, so we can keep our commitments and expand opportunity.”

Included in the CBO’s budget outlook is the future of medical insurance programs. The CBO projects that 7 million people will no longer have employer-provided health insurance by 2022, because of changes required by the Affordable Care Act.

The cost of Social Security is expected to nearly double over the next ten years, from $773 billion in 2012 to $1.43 trillion in 2023.

G. William Hoagland, senior vice president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, testified before Congress that by 2022, the debt will be $27 trillion. Hoagland agreed that the debt-to-GDP ratio will reach 77 percent.

In all, the CBO expects economic growth to be slow for the remainder of the year as the expected budgetary cuts take place. Following 2013, the CBO estimates economic growth will speed up, “causing the unemployment rate to decline and inflation and interest rates to eventually rise from their current low levels,” the CBO writes.

“Nevertheless, the unemployment rate is expected to remain above 7½ percent through next year,” making 2014 the sixth consecutive year with unemployment exceeding 7.5 percent — the longest period of extended unemployment in the last 70 years.

Read more: http://goo.gl/nKXHx

February 5, 2013

NEWSMAX
Obama's Payback: US to Sue S&P for Mortgage Ratings
by Newsmax Wires
February 4, 2013

The S&P was the first major credit agency to downgrade the United States' triple-A credit rating.

Now the S&P may pay a heavy price for doing so as the Obama administration gets revenge with legal action against the rating agency.

The New York Times reported Monday: "The Justice Department plans to file civil fraud charges against the nation’s largest credit-ratings agency, Standard & Poor’s, accusing the firm of inflating the ratings of mortgage investments and setting them up for a crash when the financial crisis struck."

The paper said the suit could be filed within days and blamed the agency for bestowing high credit ratings to bundled mortgage securities, making them appear safer than they actually were for investors.

The securities known as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) suffered a meltdown in the wake of the housing debacle that began in 2007.

The Times' story noted that neither Fitch nor Moody's, credit agencies that also gave high credit ratings to such mortgage instruments, have been included in the Justice Department suit.

Fitch or Moody's also have never downgraded the U.S. credit rating.

Before the housing crisis, financial experts had argued that the collateralized debt instruments were actually safer for investors, because they divided a single mortgage among multiple debt instruments, seemingly lowering the risk to investors who purchased any one instrument.

Bank regulators at the federal and state level had approved the use of such derivative instruments as safe for investors.

But the federal government seems intent on lowering boom on the S&P. And the Times claims an there is an additional SEC action the credit agency will soon follow.

The S&P downgrade of the U.S. credit rating in August 2011 came during the Congressional ruckus over the extension of the debt ceiling.

The unprecedented downgrade by S&P raised the ire of the Obama White House.

Immediately after the downgrade, the Obama adminstration lashed out agains S&P.

Britain's Guardian reported at the time: "The U.S. Treasury and the White House launched an unprecedented attack on the 'credibility and integrity' of Standard & Poor's for its decision to downgrade the U.S.'s credit rating, blasting the agency's 'misleading' calculations and its 'breathtaking' refusal to change its mind."

The S&P said it took the action because of weaking confidence with Washington to resolve U.S. fiscal woes.

The S&P stated in August 2011: "More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned . . ."

Read more: http://goo.gl/UILTk

TOWNHALL
Prophets and Losses
by Thomas Sowell
February 5, 2013

Now that the federal government is playing an ever larger role in the economy, a look at Washington's track record seems to be long overdue.
The recent release of the Federal Reserve Board's transcripts of its deliberations back in 2007 shows that their economic prophecies were way off. How much faith should we put in their prophecies today -- or the policies based on those prophecies?

Even after the housing market began its collapse in 2006, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in 2007, "The impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained."

It turned out that financial disasters in the housing market were not "contained," but spread out to affect the whole American economy and economies overseas. Then Chairman Bernanke said: "It is an interesting question why what looks like $100 billion or so of credit losses in the subprime market has been reflected in multiple trillions of dollars of losses in paper wealth."

What is an even more interesting question is why we should put such faith and such power in the hands of a man and an institution that have been so wrong before.

This is not just a question of a bad guess by Ben Bernanke. The previous chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Alan Greenspan, likewise misjudged the consequences of the housing boom and bust. Nor was the Federal Reserve's staff any more accurate in its prophecies. According to the New York Times, "The Fed's own staff still forecast that the economy would avoid a recession."

Today, the economy has not yet fully recovered from the recession that the Federal Reserve System's staff and chairmen thought we would avoid.

We all make mistakes. But we don't all have the enormous and growing power of the Federal Reserve System -- or the seemingly boundless confidence that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke still shows as he intervenes in the economy on a massive scale.

Not only does the Federal Reserve System control the money supply and regulate banks, the Fed's willingness to keep buying hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of government bonds makes it easier for the Obama administration to keep engaging in massive deficit spending that runs up a record-breaking national debt.

The reason that the Federal Reserve can afford to continue buying huge amounts of government bonds is that the Fed is authorized to create its own money out of thin air. They use the fancy term "quantitative easing," instead of saying in plain English that they are essentially just printing more money.

Being wrong is nothing new for the Federal Reserve System. Since this year is the one hundredth anniversary of the Fed's founding, it may be worth looking back at its history.

Read more: http://goo.gl/kDKfA

NATIONAL REVIEW

The Unconventional Ted Cruz 
He's doing precisely what he promised on the campaign trail.
by Andrew Stiles
February 5, 2013

Ted Cruz (R., Texas) has been a United States senator for only 34 days, but already he is making his mark on national politics. His conspicuous presence and aggressive tone have thrilled his conservative cheerleaders, while inducing fits of rage in liberal detractors and Joe Scarborough.

In the past week alone, Cruz has tangled with veteran Democratic spin-master Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) on Meet the Press, sent a tongue-in-cheek letter to Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, introduced legislation to fully repeal Obamacare, and recorded “no” votes on major items, including Hurricane Sandy relief, raising the debt ceiling, filibuster reform, and the confirmation of John Kerry for secretary of state. He also made headlines with his aggressive interrogation of prospective defense secretary Chuck Hagel.

Additionally, Cruz’s quick rise to prominence appears to have offended the sensibilities of the political press. During Hagel’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, I overheard multiple groans from other journalists covering the event whenever Cruz began a pointed line of questioning. On Twitter, they noted their exasperation in more colorful ways.

If anything, the 41-year-old Texan has made clear he does not intend to abide by the conventional playbook for new members: Keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, and learn the ropes before inserting yourself into the national conversation.

That’s not Cruz’s style. More important, it’s not what he campaigned on. “If I go to Washington and just have a good voting record, I will consider myself a failure,” then-candidate Cruz said on the campaign trail in 2012. Last week, in an interview with conservative radio host Mark Levin, Cruz expressed disbelief at “how shocked people are when you actually do what you said you would do.” “In most of America that’s to be expected, and yet oddly enough in Washington, D.C., that seems to be unusual,” he said.
Republicans are delighted that Cruz, whom many regard as a skilled advocate for conservatism, has decided to play such an active role right off the bat. “Any member who has a point of view on a topic should not feel shy about expressing that,” says one Republican Senate aide. “For someone as talented as Ted Cruz, it’s vital that we have eloquent conservatives out there arguing for our side.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) sang Cruz’s praises in an interview with National Review Online, calling the freshman senator “one of the smartest, most articulate guys you’ll ever meet.” “He’s ready for prime time on day one, which is pretty unusual for somebody who just got sworn in,” McConnell says. “He’s a deadly weapon.” He is also “good company,” according to McConnell, who recently accompanied Cruz on a delegation to Israel and Afghanistan.

Republican leaders have already sought to deploy Cruz’s talents in critical areas. In addition to being tapped for coveted slots on the Judiciary and Armed Services Committees, Cruz was named vice chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, where he is likely to play a key role in selecting and advising candidates in the 2014 midterm election.

Senate conservatives are similarly pleased to count Cruz among their ranks. “For the forces of those who favor limited government, Senator Cruz is a powerful addition,” says a conservative GOP Senate aide. “Based on our numbers, and the youth of many of these members, we’re going to have a much stronger voice in the public debate.”

Cruz may consider a solid conservative voting record to be a meaningless metric for success, but he has already established one for himself. The Washington Times noted that Cruz has been on the losing end of all eleven votes he has taken so far this year, a record the Texan is perfectly content with.

For example, he voted against the $50 billion Sandy-relief bill, which he decried as a pork-laden mistake. “Hurricane Sandy inflicted devastating damage on the East Coast, and Congress appropriately responded with hurricane relief,” he said in a statement. “Unfortunately, cynical politicians in Washington could not resist loading up this relief bill with billions in new spending utterly unrelated to Sandy.”

He was one of only three senators to vote against John Kerry’s confirmation to be the next secretary of state, citing the Massachusetts Democrat’s “longstanding less-than-vigorous defense of U.S. national-security issues and, in particular, his long record of supporting treaties and international tribunals that have undermined U.S. sovereignty.”

Cruz was also one of the first Republican lawmakers to voice skepticism about the Senate framework on immigration reform, citing “deep concerns” about the proposed pathway to citizenship. “To allow those who came here illegally to be placed on such a path is both inconsistent with rule of law and profoundly unfair to the millions of legal immigrants who waited years, if not decades, to come to America legally,” he said.

Cruz’s position has put him at odds with Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), who helped draft the framework. The political relationship between the two Hispanic Republicans will certainly be something to watch over the coming months.

Cruz has sought to shape the political discourse in other ways, beyond the confines of Capitol Hill. Last week, he issued a colorful retort to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s call for mass-scale divestment from firearms manufacturers.

Cruz sent a letter to the CEOs of gun makers Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger & Co, as well as to leaders of Bank of America and TD Bank, financial institutions that Emanuel specifically urged to cease their relationships with the firearms companies. He slammed the mayor’s actions and urged the companies to bring their business to his home state.

“In Texas, we have a more modest view of government,” Cruz wrote. “We do not accept the notion that government officials should behave as bullies, trying to harass or pressure private companies into enlisting in a political lobbying campaign.”

Matt Mackowiak, a Texas-based Republican consultant, praises Cruz as “someone who really understands the outside game,” who spends his weekends “aggressively” traveling the state and meeting with constituents and grassroots organizations. It’s only a matter of time, Mackowiak says, before Cruz masters the inside game and “starts to have a real impact.”

Cruz supporters see him as a natural heir to former senator and soon-to-be Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), one of Cruz’s earliest backers. “DeMint changed the whole paradigm in the Senate, shook it up in way that you can be a freshman and have a national profile and be aggressive and still be effective,” Mackowiak says.

Like DeMint, Cruz has already become a favorite target of the establishment press. The New York Times penned an editorial on January 20 urging Republican leaders to “marginalize lawmakers like Mr. Cruz,” which began: “Ted Cruz, the newly elected Tea Party senator from Texas, embodies the rigidity the public grew to loathe in Congress’s last term.”

The mainstream press was particularly incensed by last week’s Hagel hearing, where Cruz pressed Hagel to explain remarks he made in a 2009 appearance on Al Jazeera. The senator’s staff had rolled a big-screen television into the hearing room to play clips of the appearance, in which Hagel concurred with a number of controversial statements from Al Jazeera viewers — that the United States is “the world’s bully,” and that Israel has been (referring to a specific past event) complicit in a “sickening slaughter.”

Cruz’s blunt approach, and perhaps unorthodox tactics, became a lightning rod for liberal critics, especially after many of them had all but given up defending Hagel, whose performance was widely panned on both sides. Cruz was derided for his “bogus attack” on Hagel, for “hectoring” the nominee, for turning the hearing “into a clown show,” and even for channeling the spirit of Joe McCarthy.

For conservatives, that may be one of the surest signs that Cruz is doing something right.

Read more: http://goo.gl/Qyi7P

February 4, 2013

NEWSMAX

Conservative Groups Mock Crossroads' Initiative

by Sandy Fitzgerald

February 3, 2013

Two powerful conservative groups say a new American Crossroads' initiative, formed to work against Republican candidates it deems unelectable, is just another attempt to muzzle the GOP's true base.

American Crossroads, a super PAC founded by a group led by former Bush White House advisor Karl Rove, was the largest Republican super PAC of the 2012 election cycle. The idea behind the PAC's latest effort is to intensely vet prospective contenders for Congressional races to weed out candidates who are seen as too flawed to win general elections, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The new organization, the Conservative Victory Project, was formed because “there is a broad concern about having blown a significant number of races because the wrong candidates were selected,” American Crossroads President Steven Law told Politico.

Law and others want to avoid what has become known as the "Todd Akin problem" in some GOP circles. Republicans lost two high-profile Senate battles last year in which their candidate had expressed controversial views on social issues.

Then-Representative Todd Akin had been a favorite to take a Senate seat representing Missouri before commenting on TV that pregnancy rarely occurs in the case of "legitimate rape".

Rove and other senior Republican figures called on him to step down from the campaign, but he refused to do so. The resulting backlash from, in particular, female voters saw him lose a seat that many party officials believed was very winnable.

In Indiana, Republican candidate Richard Mourdock lost the Senate battle after suggesting that rape was "something God intended to happen".

But the Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund, both of which boost candidates on the right, said the new group — which they mockingly nicknamed the “Conservative Defeat Project,” is another example of “the Republican establishment's hostility toward its conservative base.”

“Rather than listening to the grassroots and working to advance their principles, the establishment has chosen to declare war on the party's most loyal supporters,” said Matt Hoskins, executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund.

SCF, which works to push tea party-leaning conservative candidates, backed Ted Cruz, Deb Fischer and Jeff flake in their successful Senate races last year. It was founded in 2008 by then-Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, becoming an independent PAC in July, 2012.

"The Conservative Defeat Project is... a continuation of the establishment's effort to avoid blame for their horrible performance in the 2012 elections," Hoskins added.

"They blew a ton of races up and down the ticket because they recruited moderate Republicans who didn't stand for anything. Now they want to use this new PAC to trick donors into giving them more money so they can lose more races."

Tea Party Patriots national coordinator Jenny Beth Martin tweeted: "TPPatriots want to save USA. Karl Rove wants to line pockets-Don't Tread on Us! Tea Party bites back-never gives up!"

The First Things' "Postmodern Conservative" blog blasted Rove in a column on Sunday.

"The 'establishment' candidates aren’t losing because of a lack of money, and giving Karl Rove more bucks won’t lead to better Republican Senate candidacies anymore than the $300 million that Rove raised and spent in 2012 helped Republicans win the presidency and pick up Senate seats," blogger Pete Spiliakos wrote.

He advised Republican donors to "stop giving money to super-PACs who will spend the money on thirty second ads designed to win elections in 1988. All you are doing is making old school Republican consultants even more rich without their even having to think through the specific problems of our time."

Barney Keller, spokesman for Club for Growth, said many conservative insurgents have emerged as influential GOP leaders.

“They are welcome to support the likes of Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist and David Dewhurst,” Keller said of the new Crossroads group. “We will continue to proudly support the likes of Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.”

The tea party-influenced groups spent millions of dollars in 2012 to boost candidates, but American Crossroads was the heaviest spender. However, it did not get involved in nomination fights — something that's changing this spring as it gets involved in competitive races starting to take shape.

Read more: http://goo.gl/zk1wB

TOWNHALL

True the Vote Files Lawsuit Against Supervisor of Elections Over Mishandling of Allen West Recount

by Katie Pavlich

February 4, 2013

Voter integrity group True the Vote (TTV) filed a federal lawsuit Monday against St. Lucie County Florida Supervisor of Elections Gertrude Walker for failing to uphold election law and for failing to enforce record inspection rights under the National Voter Registration Act and the Florida Constitution. The lawsuit has been filed in light of the gross mishandling of the recount between Rep. Allen West and now Rep. Patrick Murphy by St. Lucie County election officials.

"True the Vote's lawsuit will provide information kept from the public. It will allow for a public debate on exactly what happened, why it happened, why it seems to happen repeatedly and how it can be stopped from happening again," True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said in a video statement about the lawsuit.

Walker has already admitted mistakes were made during the recount process but has been less than transparent when it comes to allowing TTV or even the West campaign to access information about votes cast. On November 10, days after the election took place, Walker "unofficially" certified the results and three days later on November 13, she held a press conference where she admitted her staff had acted with "haste" and that "mistakes were made" throughout the tabulation and partial recount process.

According to the NVRA of 1993, Walker "shall maintain for at least 2 years and shall make available for public inspection and, where available, photocopying at a reasonable cost, all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters.”

According to a press release, TTV is seeking to "compel St. Lucie County election authorities to grant complete inspection rights to all election records pertaining to the 18th District race and voter registration records under federal and state law. In addition, TTV demands that the court order the Supervisor of Elections to preserve all records. If granted access, TTV will determine a precise vote count, document any illegal participation in the election and offer solutions to prevent similar failures in future recounts."

"Gone are the days when Motor Voter is a law used only by a couple of special interest groups. The law requires physical inspections, I hope we reach a quick agreement," TTV attorney J. Christian Adams of the Election Law Center said.

The lawsuit provides an extensive timeline of events and documented non-cooperation from election officials after information requests were filed.

“This dramatic recount was an extraordinary example of how our elections can suffer systematic failure,” True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said. “We run the risk seeing episodes like this becoming ordinary if citizens do not demand answers and hold election officials accountable. The American people own the voting system – we have the right to ask tough questions when we witness the failure of one of America’s core functions. The clock is ticking on the opportunity for a comprehensive, outside audit of this recount...each passing day heightens the risk of critical documents being disposed of. If you thought voter fraud could erode America’s confidence in elections, unchecked incompetence in the vote tabulation process will destroy all faith remaining in our systems.”

The lawsuit was filed by TTV in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida – Fort Pierce Division.

Read more: http://goo.gl/awXVq

NATIONAL REVIEW

The Real Barack Obama 
He’s a man of the Left, and now he sees no need to hide it.
by John Fund
February 4, 2013

The country may be catching on: Barack Obama is our first knee-jerk liberal president. And now that he will never face the voters again, he doesn’t mind showing it.

“There is a deep recognition that he has a short period of time to get a lot done,” says Jennifer Psaki, Obama’s 2012 campaign spokeswoman. So the moderate mask is slipping.

In his second inaugural address, he gave a full-throated defense of the entitlement state and made no mention of reforming Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security before they go bust. He is issuing a stream of executive orders, and he backed the Pentagon’s recently announced plan to lift the ban that kept female soldiers out of combat positions.

Once in a while, Obama still feints to the center. A sharp reaction to his gun-control proposals prompted him to declare that he is sympathetic to gun owners and that he goes skeet shooting “all the time.” The skepticism this boast generated was so rampant that the White House released a photo of Obama holding a shotgun, awkwardly, while skeet shooting. Few people found his claim to enthusiasm for the sport to be credible. Michael Hampton, a top official with the National Skeet Shooting Association, told AP that the photo suggests Obama is a novice shooter. “This isn’t something he’s done very often because of how he’s standing, how he has the gun mounted,” he said.

What is believable is that Obama is showing his true colors. If personnel are policy, there is no better demonstration of his priorities than his second-term appointments. In every case — John Kerry for secretary of state, Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense, Jack Lew for secretary of the treasury — he has moved to the left. In the case of Hagel and Lew, his nominees’ political alignment, or propensity to serve as “yes men,” seems to have mattered far more to Obama than their capability and relevant experience, which are less than stellar. The choice of Hagel led last week to the embarrassing spectacle of a presidential nominee’s flunking a confirmation hearing he had spent many hours preparing for.

Nor is Obama’s lurch to the left limited to cabinet appointments. Last month he named Denis McDonough as his new chief of staff and Jennifer Palmieri as the new White House communications director. Both aides have blogged for the left-wing website Think Progress and have ties to the George Soros–funded Center for American Progress. McDonough was a senior fellow at CAP before joining Obama’s Senate staff in 2006, and Palmieri served as president of the group’s political-action fund. CAP is a respectable voice for progressive politics, and John Podesta, the group’s founder, also served for a time as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff. But it is undeniably a hard-left group.

Obama will soon fill key vacant posts at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. Reuters reports that the front runner in the race to become the new head of the EPA is Gina McCarthy, who is now the assistant administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, which makes her the point person for the administration’s “war on coal” campaign. McCarthy has superficial credentials as a moderate, having served as the top environmental regulator in Massachusetts and Connecticut under Democratic and Republican governors. She advised Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts and began the state’s first Climate Protection Action Plan. But Romney campaign aides tell me that they got no end of grief from business interests who were worried she might find a place in a Romney administration. “There was no way, no how she was going to be part of anything,” one aide says. “But we know her well enough to know that if Obama promotes her, the EPA is going to go all out in support of climate controls.”

Similarly, energy companies — at least those not subsidized by the federal government — are appalled that former Washington governor Christine Gregoire, who tried to pass a state version of Obama’s cap-and-trade regulatory policy, is a leading candidate to become the new secretary of energy. Gregoire saw her proposal crash and burn, just as Obama saw his plan fail, after key Democratic legislators opposed it.

No one should be surprised by Obama’s embrace of aides and advisers who are clearly more liberal than his first-term picks. The mainstream media have for years largely ignored the evidence that Obama is solidly a man of the Left. Back in 1985, the 24-year-old Obama answered a help-wanted ad for a job with a group run by Saul Alinsky’s Chicago disciples. The late Alinsky has long been the patron saint of radical “community organizers” on the left.

Obama was deeply influenced by his years as an Alinsky-style organizer in Chicago. “Obama embraced many of Alinsky’s tactics and recently said his years as an organizer gave him the best education of his life,” wrote Peter Slevin of the Washington Post in 2007. That same year, The New Republic’s Ryan Lizza found Obama still “at home talking Alinskian jargon about ‘agitation’” and fondly recalling workshops where he had learned Alinsky’s concepts and methods for infiltrating power structures.

In 1992, after Obama returned to Chicago from Harvard Law School, he ran a voter-registration drive for Project Vote, an affiliate of the now-disgraced ACORN, a community-organizing group founded by Alinksy acolytes. Obama then moonlighted as a top trainer for ACORN and later became its attorney in voting-litigation cases.

Some media observers aren’t at all surprised that the Obama of his ACORN years is resurfacing. “I think Obama . . . sees himself as a Reagan-like president,” Charles Krauthammer said at the National Review Institute summit in Washington, D.C., last month. He pointed to an Obama statement from 2008 that he found “utterly fascinating.” In it, “[Obama] said that Ronald Reagan was consequential historically in a way that Clinton was not.”

Obama has every right to reach far to the left as he tries to reorient America to his liking, much as Reagan did his best to turn America to the right in the 1980s. The difference is that Reagan never hid who he was, what he believed in, and who his staunchest allies were. Obama has consistently cloaked his beliefs and associations, aided by a compliant media that have abetted and adored him every step of his career. Now that Obama has become more forthright about who he is, we can fight the ideological battle over his ideas in earnest. Let’s hope that he now displays more honesty and clarity about his beliefs than he treated the American people to during his two presidential campaigns.

Read more: http://goo.gl/nX9oL

January 25, 2013

NATIONAL REVIEW
Obama: Reagan of the Left 
The president sees himself as the unabashed apostle of the ever-expanding state.
by Charles Krauthammer
January 24, 2013

The media herd is stunned to discover that Barack Obama is a man of the Left. After 699 teleprompted presidential speeches, the commentariat was apparently still oblivious. Until Monday’s inaugural address, that is.

Where has everyone been these four years? The only surprise is that Obama chose his second inaugural, generally an occasion for ““malice toward none”“ ecumenism, to unveil so uncompromising a left-liberal manifesto.

But the substance was no surprise. After all, Obama had unveiled his transformational agenda in his very first address to Congress four years ago (February 24, 2009). It was, I wrote at the time, “the boldest social-democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president.”

Nor was it mere talk. Obama went on to essentially nationalize health care, which is 18 percent of the U.S. economy — after passing an $833 billion stimulus that precipitated an unprecedented expansion of government spending. Washington now spends 24 percent of GDP, fully one-fifth higher than the postwar norm of 20 percent.

Obama’s ambitions were derailed by the 2010 midterm shellacking that cost him the House. But now that he’s won again, the revolution is back, as announced in Monday’s inaugural address.

It was a paean to big government. At its heart was Obama’s pledge to (1) defend unyieldingly the 20th-century welfare state and (2) expand it unrelentingly for the 21st.

The first part of that agenda — clinging zealously to the increasingly obsolete structures of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid — is the very definition of reactionary liberalism. Social Security was created when life expectancy was 62. Medicare was created when modern medical technology was in its infancy. Today’s radically different demographics and technology have rendered these programs, as structured, unsustainable. Everyone knows that, unless reformed, they will swallow up the rest of the budget.
As for the second part — enlargement — Obama had already begun that in his first term with Obamacare. Monday’s inaugural address reinstated yet another grand Obama project — healing the planet. It promised a state-created green-energy sector, massively subsidized (even as the state’s regulatory apparatus systematically squeezes fossil fuels, killing coal today, shale gas tomorrow).

The playbook is well known. As Czech president (and economist) Václav Klaus once explained, environmentalism is the successor to failed socialism as justification for all-pervasive rule by a politburo of experts. Only now, it acts in the name of not the proletariat but the planet.

Monday’s address also served to disabuse the fantasists of any Obama interest in fiscal reform or debt reduction. This speech was spectacularly devoid of any acknowledgment of the central threat to the post-industrial democracies (as already seen in Europe) — the crisis of an increasingly insolvent entitlement state.

On the contrary. Obama is the apostle of the ever-expanding state. His speech was an ode to the collectivity. But by that he means only government, not the myriad of voluntary associations — religious, cultural, charitable, artistic, advocacy, ad infinitum — that are the glory of the American system.

For Obama, nothing lies between citizen and state. It is a desert, within which the isolated citizen finds protection only in the shadow of Leviathan. Put another way, this speech is the perfect homily for the marriage of Julia — the Obama campaign’s atomized citizen, coddled from cradle to grave — and the state.

In the eye of history, Obama’s second inaugural is a direct response to Ronald Reagan’s first. On January 20, 1981, Reagan had proclaimed: “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” And then succeeded in bending the national consensus to his ideology — as confirmed 15 years later when the next Democratic president declared “the era of big government is over.” So said Bill Clinton, who then proceeded to abolish welfare.

Obama is no Clinton. He doesn’t abolish entitlements; he preserves the old ones and creates new ones in pursuit of a vision of a more just social order where fighting inequality and leveling social differences are the great task of government.

Obama said in 2008 that Reagan “changed the trajectory of America” in a way that Clinton did not. He meant that Reagan had transformed the political zeitgeist, while Clinton accepted and thus validated the new Reaganite norm.

Not Obama. His mission is to redeem and resurrect the 50-year pre-Reagan liberal ascendancy. Accordingly, his second inaugural address, ideologically unapologetic and aggressive, is his historical marker, his self-proclamation as the Reagan of the Left. If he succeeds in these next four years, he will have earned the title.

Read more: http://goo.gl/Bcwf1

BREITBART

Rand on 'President Paul': "I like the Ring of That"

by Breitbart News

January 24, 2013

Senator Rand Paul told Breitbart News's Ben Shapiro that he felt foreign aid to other countries should be reassessed considering America's own financial situation. Shapiro began a hypothetical question insinuating it would be "President Paul" in the future. Rand interrupted and said, "I like the ring of that," with a smile.

Read more: http://goo.gl/mTgmz

HOTAIR
Jindal: The GOP “might need to change just about everything”
by Erika Johnsen
January 24, 2013

Since the failed presidential election, the GOP has been grappling with identifying exactly what it is the party needs to work on most — diversity, social issues, and Latino outreach, or election mechanics and a flawed Romney candidacy/campaign? — or some combination thereof, and all of the issues are on the table for discussion at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in North Carolina. Keynote speaker and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, however, is going for a more overarching message in his address tonight: It’s time to “recalibrate the compass of conservatism,” stop focusing so much on Washington-centric politics, and start going for a message of inclusion and economic growth:

“We do not need to change what we believe as conservatives – our principles are timeless,” Jindal says. “But we do need to re-orient our focus to the place where conservatism thrives: in the real world beyond the Washington Beltway.” … 

“Today’s conservatism is completely wrapped up in solving the hideous mess that is the federal budget, the burgeoning deficits, the mammoth federal debt, the shortfall in our entitlement programs,” he says. “We seem to have an obsession with government bookkeeping. This is a rigged game, and it is the wrong game for us to play.” … 

“The Republican Party must become the party of growth, the party of a prosperous future that is based in our economic growth and opportunity that is based in every community in this great country and that is not based in Washington, D.C.,” Jindal says.

Of course, the 2016 brand-building has already begun in earnest, and with the GOP bench looking pretty solid, the competition for free-market, economy-growing, conservative credentials will be fierce — and I am one hundred percent okay with that. Jindal is already looking to institute some aggressive pro-growth changes to Louisiana’s tax code, and the message of goal-oriented optimism is one the Republicans could definitely use right about now.

The Democrats have somehow managed to become the party that can provide more for people through the auspices of big government; as Jindal plans to say, they “promise to be the party of ‘more from government,’ but they are actually the party of less.  They are the party of economic contraction, austerity and less from the economy.  The Republican Party is the party of ‘more,’ the party that creates more from the economy.’” The GOP needs to keep hammering home that they aren’t against a social safety net — rather, they’re actively for an economy in which opportunities are so readily available and attractive that people don’t want to be on welfare — and its the type of economy that cannot be achieved through federal orchestration.

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