The Empty Chair Accepts His Nomination

September 7, 2012
By William L. Gensert

 
 Barack Obama is no Barack Obama.  When it has been shown there is nothing there -- repeatedly and in a fashion that all but the most devoted minions refuse to see -- it becomes difficult to ignore.  This is not the same man who ran for President in 2008.  He was an illusion then, but today, Americans have no illusions.  

"Hope and change" has become "what the hell happened?"

There has been much talk in the press about Clint Eastwood's performance last week at the Republican National Convention, but the honest among them have to admit that the empty chair was a perfect metaphor for Barack Obama -- because there really is not much there.

Politicians are renowned for their ability to talk and talk and talk -- all without saying much.  Yet, wasn't this one supposed to be different?  Wasn't he by now, supposed to have amassed a record of accomplishment that would put mere mortals to shame?  Weren't we readying Mount Rushmore for the man?

In another era, someone might have asked.  "Where's the beef?"  Nowadays, the only beef as far as Barack is concerned is the Wagyu steaks he has flown in for parties at the Whitehouse.

He can't talk about accomplishments, because he has none.  Sure, he passed the Stimulus and Obamacare and Dodd Frank, but it is hard to sell any of this as success when it is all hugely unpopular and terrible policy.  To most Americans, it doesn't compute.

The stimulus was a pork-laden exercise in rewarding backers of Barack through investment in crony capitalist green-energy pipe dreams and transfer payments to cities and states to help avoid having to reckon with their bloated public union payrolls (big Obama supporters).  Because if you vote Barack, you should never have to go back, to a day when government wasn't bleeding the taxpayer dry with exorbitant salaries and pensions for public sector employees -- if there ever was such a time.

So...he didn't talk about the Stimulus, but he did mention his bailout of GM and Chrysler and how they can't make cars fast enough.  Yet...surprisingly, saving GM -- or more precisely the UAW, has cost taxpayers more than $25 billion and GM is headed for bankruptcy, yet again.  He didn't mention that.  But then, why would he?

Obamacare, a multiple thousand page legislation destroying medical care in America, is ever more unpopular by the day.  It turns out, you can't keep your insurance provider, even if you like it, and taking $716 billion out of Medicare cannot be portrayed as good for seniors.  And...shock of all shocks, premiums will not go down and Obama's dream of transformation will cost taxpayers trillions to implement.  But at least it's named after him...there is that.

He didn't mention Obamacare, but he did talk about sick and dying kids who are now at least happy to be sick and dying with him as President.  You see it is all relative.

Dodd Frank, another multiple thousand page legislation, has solved nothing, except making it impossible for people to get mortgages and businesses to get financing.

He didn't mention Dodd Frank, but he did mention greedy banks.  Those bastards ruined everything -- don't you know?

The economy -- he couldn't brag about the longest sustained period of 8%+ unemployment since World War II, or the weakest recovery from a recession since World War II, or declining incomes and falling family net worth.  And what could he say about the price of gasoline?  The "all of the above" trope is hard to support since he canceled the Keystone XL pipeline.

The economy and unemployment were unmentioned except to say we are on the right track -- because of him, but then you knew that.  Didn't you?

What about spending, having blown out the budget and added $5 trillion to the national debt in less than 3 ½ years?  It would have been hard to paint that as anything but failure.

Yet, he talked about tackling deficits...at some later date.  Got off his back...can't you see he is busy transforming the world?

He couldn't talk about leading the Democratic Party to the presidency and super majorities in both the House and Senate.  The Republicans took the House in 2010, in an admitted "shellacking," and will probably take the Senate in less than 2 months.  With his record and lack of ideas, it's amazing he is still competitive in the Presidential race.  Then again, we only have the main stream media's word for that, as well.

It would almost be easy to feel sorry for Barack Obama having to give his acceptance speech with the record he has.  Well...Americans might feel sorry for him, if he hadn't spent the last 3 ½ years torturing us with demagoguery, bad policy, overbearing regulation and the demonization of dissent...all while he partied and played golf like it was 1999. 

What could he say?  The nation got an acceptance speech from our President which lists no accomplishments and no plan for a way "forward."  He talked about who he is -- or at least who he pretends to be.  He talked about what he wants America to be, without giving any details for how he plans to make that happen.

Of course, no Barack Obama speech would be complete without him saying ala Richard Nixon.  "I'm the President."  And he did.  For such a disappointing leader, he refuses to disappoint -- at least on that front.

You see, "forward" is a dream, much like Obama himself.  With nothing to tout or propose, he talked about the vision.  Many will find his speech compelling, because millions believed the dream that was Barack Obama, and many still do.  But when you have nothing to brag about and no idea what to do, how long can Americans make believe there is any reason to give this man another term?  Eastwood was right, when someone doesn't do the job, sometimes, you have to let them go.

Certainly, the media will be awash with plaudits from pundits for a speech well-delivered and well-received. 

Yet, in reality, it was a speech from an alternate universe, where Barack is still king, where all that ails America was caused by those who came before and everything now is on the right track, because of him.  

And because of him, through him and in him, the unity of the nation is intact -- forever and ever.

He has no plan for the future, but he knows his opponent is scary.  "Vote for me.  I may be terrible, but the other guy is worse," is not a reason to give the man 4 more years to fail further.

In the end, it was an empty speech delivered by an empty suit. 

It's sad that Barack Obama turned out to be an empty chair, but he built that.  He has no one to blame but himself.

American Thinker

The Media Fought Clint and Clint (and Romney) Won

by John Nolte 7 Sep 2012
 

 Our last remaining American icon has every right to be proud of how effective his now legendary appearance before the Republican convention has proven itself to be. First off, he made a complete fool of the elite media that spent the better part of four days running around like old, humorless, spinster hens clucking with phony well-I-never! indignation over Clint daring to mock The One.

Secondly, that mockery penetrated, drew blood, and is still drawing blood.

Thanks to Eastwood's hilarious and unforgettable stagecraft with an empty chair standing in for President Obama, overnight, Obama went from being an empty suit to, yes, an empty chair. So perfect was this piece of theatre that earlier this week there was a successful Empty Chair Day organized by the grassroots in New Media and, throughout the remaining days of this election, the specter of the "empty chair" will be synonymous with America's deflating enthusiasm for Obama and his inability to command the crowds he once did.

Today, Eastwood doubled down on how awesome he is by granting his first post-convention interview -- not to Diane Sawyer, not to "The Today Show, not to "60 Minutes" -- but to his hometown newspaper, "The Carmel Pine Cone."

What a snub to the corrupt media. Just when you think you can't love this man any more, right?

Here are some highlights:

Eastwood’s appearance at the convention came after a personal request from Romney in August, soon after Eastwood endorsed the former Massachusetts governor at a fundraiser in Sun Valley, Idaho. But it was finalized only in the last week before the convention, along with an agreement to build suspense by keeping it secret until the last moment.

Meanwhile, Romney’s campaign aides asked for details about what Eastwood would say to the convention.

“They vett most of the people, but I told them, ‘You can’t do that with me, because I don’t know what I’m going to say,’” Eastwood recalled.

And while the Hollywood superstar has plenty of experience being adored by crowds, he said he hasn’t given a lot of speeches and admitted that, “I really don’t know how to.” He also hates using a teleprompter, so it was settled in his mind that when he spoke to the 10,000 people in the convention hall, and the millions more watching on television, he would do it extemporaneously.

“It was supposed to be a contrast with all the scripted speeches, because I’m Joe Citizen,” Eastwood said. “I’m a movie maker, but I have the same feelings as the average guy out there.”

Remember, it's the very same media that constantly whines about how scripted these conventions are and always tries to paint Romney as the cautious, buttoned-down, boring white guy -- that refuses to give Romney credit for making the decision to put Eastwood in primetime and to allow him to wing it.  

Rather than credit Romney for this, Obama's Media Palace Guards have attempted to use Eastwood as a club to distract from Romney's convention speech (which was much better than Obama's). Of course, this is an irony which will never penetrate the elite media bubble.

More:

AFTER A week as topic No. 1 in American politics, former Carmel Mayor Clint Eastwood said the outpouring of criticism from left-wing reporters and liberal politicians after his appearance at the Republican National Convention last Thursday night, followed by an avalanche of support on Twitter and in the blogosphere, is all the proof anybody needs that his 12-minute discourse achieved exactly what he intended it to.

“President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” Eastwood told The Pine Cone this week. “Romney and Ryan would do a much better job running the country, and that’s what everybody needs to know. I may have irritated a lot of the lefties, but I was aiming for people in the middle.” …

“I had three points I wanted to make,” Eastwood said. “That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left, that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job. But I didn’t make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it.”

And make those points Clint Eastwood did.

The best part is that all the polls show people loved Clint's appearance and you can bet that all the media interest in his appearance drove a lot of people online to see it for themselves (over a million YouTube hits alone). So a lot more people heard Eastwood's message who otherwise might not have if the corrupt media hadn't made such a stupid and phony fuss over it.

If anything illuminates how biased, dishonest, and bubbled our elite media is, it's that the very same talking heads who labeled Clint's performance an embarrassment are the very same talking heads who were falling all over themselves last night to praise Jennifer Granholm's  hysterical buffoonery.

The media's manufactured Eastwood kerfflufle proves once again that the media is not only disconnected from reality, but are constantly trying to manufacture reality.  But they forget it's not 2008 anymore and that they can no longer say something like "Eastwood flopped" and make it so. And here's why:

[Eastwood] had no idea that overnight, a rebellion had erupted online against the media’s condemnation of him, with thousands of bloggers, Twitterers and commentators calling him, “a genius,” “1,000 times more brilliant than the media,” and saying he’s “only gotten better with age.”

They also started posting their own versions of Eastwood’s empty chair in droves (“eastwooding”), and, on YouTube, replays of his remarks at the convention were being viewed millions of times.

That's right, New Media had Eastwood's back and the old, dying corrupt media wasn't able to get away with its "manufactured reality" this time.

"Media's got to know its limitations."

 Big Journalism

Jobs Report: Obama Taking Us Back to the Carter Years

by Mike Flynn 7 Sep 2012
 

 The Obama campaign is based on a foundational myth that the Democrats have the policies to move America and its economy forward. They are the party of fresh, innovative ideas while the GOP wants to "turn back the clock." This is used often in the context of social issues, which is simply daft. But, it's also used in an economic context which is ludicrous. Obama may call his policies ideas for the future, but, for the American workforce, they've only succeeded in turning the clock back 30 years. Today's jobs report showed that the American workforce has shrunk to its lowest level since September 1981.  That month, the labor force participation rate stood at 63.5%, exactly where it is today. This measures the percentage of working age adults (16-64) who are employed or are unemployed but actively looking for work. This was just a few months after Reagan took office and just as he was winning approval for his economic reform policies. Over his two terms in office, as economic growth exploded, the participation rate grew to around 66%.

This is important, obviously, because increasing the number of workers in the economy helps, in part, to create a self-sustaining growth curve. More workers increases products and services, income and consumer spending. It also provided significant opportunities for women to enter the workforce, giving them greater economic independence. Over the twenty years after Reagan, the participation rate was around 67%.

In the aftermath of the recession, the participation rate had dipped back to around when Reagan left office.

When Obama was sworn into office, the rate was 65.5%, about where it was after Reagan's eight years in office. In less than four years, Obama's policies have driven the participation rate to where it was right after Reagan took office. In other words, in 3 1/2 years, Obama wiped out all the workforce gains achieved in the eight years of the Reagan administration.

This is forward?

Remember, the recession ended in June 2009, just a few months after Obama took office. Unfortunately, we have lost ground ever since. There are still more unemployed people--those actively looking for work--then when his term began. Considering that the working age population has grown by around 10 million since then, this is dismal. The only reason unemployment isn't higher is that people have given up and left the workforce.

In fact, if we had the same participation rate as when Obama took office, unemployment would be 11.2%, a level America hasn't seen since the depths of the depression. Obama borrowed trillions--around 10% of our total GDP--to try to boost growth. It hasn't worked. It will never work.

So, Obama has gotten us, in terms of the American workforce, to about where we were when Reagan first took office. Or, rather, when Carter left office. Might actually be time to "turn back the clock" and spark anyone Reagan-style rebound.

Big Government

Obama and Biden Challenge Opponents' Patriotism

by Ben Shapiro  
7 Sep 2012

 

 President Obama and Vice President Biden mirrored each other’s thematics particularly well last night. They were on point with regard to redistribution of wealth and foreign policy. They were shoulder-to-shoulder on government spending and fibs about Obama’s personal history. But where they really came together was in the proposition that everyone who doesn’t vote for the Obama/Biden ticket is unpatriotic.

In little-noticed line in Biden’s speech, he laid the groundwork for this absurdly insulting argument. “I’ve got news for Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan, it has never, never, ever, been a good bet to bet against the American people,” he said. The implication is obvious: Romney and Ryan and their political allies want to bet against the American people. This is insipid, since it is the Democrats who bet against the American people by seizing their wealth and handling it themselves. It is Republicans who bet on the American people by relying on the American people to make their own financial decisions.

But no matter. Disloyalty to Barack is disloyalty to the American people.

Just in case you missed it, President Obama doubled down on this vitriolic stance. Twice. First, he claimed that to oppose redistributionism is to oppose basic notions of American citizenship:

We honor the strivers, the dreamers, the risk- takers, the entrepreneurs who have always been the driving force behind our free enterprise system, the greatest engine of growth and prosperity that the world's ever known.

But we also believe in something called citizenship — citizenship, a word at the very heart of our founding, a word at the very essence of our democracy, the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations …

Citizenship, then, is about us giving up our cash to one another. Or rather, rich citizens giving up their cash. Because what obligations are there for the poor under Obamaism? Only rich people can be good Obama citizens, and only rich people can be bad Obama citizens. But we can all be good Obama citizens by voting for Obama.

Is that reading too much into Obama’s words? Not really, since he followed up with this doozy:

We, the people  recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which asks only, what's in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.

As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It's about what can be done by us, together through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. That's what we believe.

So you see, the election four years ago wasn't about me. It was about you.

According to Obama, he embodies the best element of Americanism: communalism via government. He’s not a big fan of the church, and he’s not a big fan of entrepreneurial associations like the Chamber of Commerce. But he is a huge fan of “commitment to others” via “self-government.” In fact, only that value makes you patriotic. Anything else makes you unworthy of soldiers who died for America.

Obama’s citation of founding ideals here is nauseating. He does not give a damn about the Constitution of the United States – his view of the Constitution is the same as that of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and FDR, who saw it as a barrier to progress. He merely uses the Alinsky tactic of covering his radicalism in the flag.

And that’s what this election is about: a president who believes that all who oppose him oppose America. A president who believes he is the embodiment of the communal will. A president who thinks that his vision of America is the only vision of America that can earn you the title “patriot.” A president who is a demagogue.

Big Government

Democrats are going for broke

By Klaus Rohrich

 One thing you can say about the Democratic Party, they are an interesting bunch. Scrutinizing the events and pronouncements during their convention is both educational as well as entertaining. Today’s Democrats as a party make George Lukas’s Star Wars bar look like a convention of southern Methodists, given the freak show they’ve put on.

It’s clear that the Democratic Party has devolved into a collection of specific interest groups, some of which are in competition with each other, as in the pro-life vs. the pro-choice faction of the party. But by and large, today’s Democrats have become the repository of the aggrieved and disaffected, of the professional victim, of dissatisfaction and envy, of race baiters and poverty mongers with each faction passionately pursuing its own narrow interests and supporting others’ narrow interests in return for having theirs upheld.

Despite Bill Clinton’s admonition that the Democrats are striving to achieve shared prosperity and shared responsibility, there’s clear evidence that the opposite is the case. Certainly the Party is happy to share prosperity, so long as that prosperity can be winnowed out of the pockets of successful individuals who have chosen to work hard. But responsibility is another matter altogether, as under the Democrats fully 50% of Americans pay no taxes.

But that’s really just the tip of a very ugly iceberg. The demands and complaints that we’ve heard during the Democratic Convention highlight the fact that the Party is at the outer reaches of the fringe of mainstream society.

Government must pay for my abortion faction

Today’s Democrats are all about having the government pay for everything. There’s the “government must pay for my abortion faction,” which consists largely of shrews who don’t know well enough to keep their knees together and firmly believe that in order for a woman to be complete she must have experienced at least one abortion. Then there is the “government must pay for my contraception” faction of the party, which consists largely of shrews who do not want to keep their knees together, but don’t want to take responsibility for the outcome.

“Save the planet” faction

Other factions in the party include the “save the planet” faction whose belief stipulates that the only way the planet can be saved from the ravages of SUV driving white people is to give all our money to the UN. (This faction differs from the “save the earth” faction, whose beliefs include forcibly sterilizing individuals to reduce human population. Pres. Obama’s science advisor, John Holdren, heads that faction).

“America is racist” faction

Another prominent faction of the Democratic Party is the “America is racist” faction, which is comprised entirely of individuals whose life’s mission it is to find new words that can be vilified as racist rhetoric. This is how words like “angry,” “professor,” “Chicago” and “welfare” all became racist slurs needing to be eradicated from the English language.

“Comprehensive immigration reform” faction

Almost as militant as the “America is Racist” faction is the “Comprehensive immigration reform” faction. This faction’s core belief is that while all countries on the planet are legally entitled to protect their borders from invaders, the United States is uniquely disendowed of this legality. As such, it is the belief of this faction that anyone who happens to make it into the US, no matter by what means, should be granted immediate citizenship, provided with free healthcare, and made paid-for-life members of the Democrat Party.

“I’m poor because he’s rich” faction

Equally evident is the “I’m poor because he’s rich” faction, which believes that prosperity is a zero sum proposition. Thus, it’s no longer possibly to prosper without the government redistributing wealth, because all the wealth has already been spoken for by the wealthy. It’s one of the reasons that so much is made of Mitt Romney’s personal wealth because if only he didn’t have all that money, there’d be more money for food stamps and other government programs.

Union “living wage” Faction

Unions also occupy a prominent place in the Democrats’ Big Tent, albeit that tent is starting to look more and more like a crack house on the bad part of town. This faction believes that if the government nationalizes all business then all the workers will get a “living wage.” They hold General motors as a prime example of a successful nationalization. You’ll recall when President Obama nationalized GM and Chrysler in 2009, the secured creditors lost their security and the Autoworkers’ Union took an equity position. The price? Voting Democrat!

“More than two genders” faction

The “more than two genders” faction of the Party is working diligently to advance gay marriage. This is the faction that seeks to bring lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender entities into the mainstream and ensures that their issues are given priority. This faction wants to convince all Americans that it’s all good.

How weird and out of the mainstream is the Democratic Party? It’s so weird that they even kicked God out of the Party, forcing Him to join the Republicans.

It seems to me that the Tampa Convention and the Charlotte Convention have served to highlight the basic philosophical differences between the Republicans and the Democrats. One is a party striving to create a climate in which we can prosper, while the other is pandering to a rag tag collection of special interests.

Canada Free Press

'Washington Post' Catches Democrats Rewriting Civil Rights History

by John Nolte

 
 One of the ways in which President Obama was able to win states such as North Carolina and Indiana in 2008, was through an unprecedented turnout among blacks, who were obviously and understandably inspired to vote for America's first black president. But today, with his approval ratings stubbornly stuck at 47 to 48%, Obama knows he's going to need a similar explosion of black support if he's going to have any chance at all for a second term.

But when you’re a failed president whose only impact on black Americans has been to increase their unemployment rate and side against them on the issue of same-sex marriage, this is not a group Obama's going to be able to inspire as easily. So, as we've seen for months now and during the last two nights of the Charlotte convention, Obama is running a base campaign, a "devil you know" campaign that says, "If I can't get you to come out and vote for me, I can damn well get you to vote against the other guy."

In any number of cynical moves, Team Obama has appealed to the worst in the Democratic base through the waging of a campaign of bitter divisiveness. We've seen the phony War on Women, the demagoguery of class warfare, the unilateral decision to stop enforcing certain immigration laws for a special demographic (Hispanics), and now we've learned that Democrats have gone so far as to manufacture an Orwellian rewriting of history on the DNC Website. 20 paragraphs of nonsense are in support of this opening sentence:

For more than 200 years, our party has led the fight for civil rights, health care, Social Security, workers’ rights, and women’s rights.

The idea that Democrat Party has led the fight for American civil rights for over 200 years is nothing more than a bald-faced lie. Even the Washington Post's fact-checker found the claim too preposterous to ignore:

The Web history mentions the leadership of President Woodrow Wilson in helping pass the 19th Amendment, without noting that he was a racist or that he repressed civil liberties — even to the point of jailing one of his rivals for the presidency in 1914 (socialist Eugene Debs).

The history also highlights the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Certainly President Lyndon Johnson, a Texas Democrat, played an essential role, but it is worth remembering that 80 percent of the “no” votes in the Senate came from Democrats, including the late Robert Byrd (W.Va.) and Albert Gore (Tenn.), father of the future vice president. Republican votes, in fact, were essential in winning final passage of the bill.

And let's not forget that The Great Emancipator, the president who spent his legal and political career making some of the most persuasive, moral, common sense, and elegant cases against slavery in our nation's history -- was a Republican. Oh, and he freed the slaves.

And since that time, we have always been the Party of Lincoln:

In the 26 major civil rights votes after 1933, a majority of Democrats opposed civil rights legislation in over 80 percent of the votes. By contrast, the Republican majority favored civil rights in over 96 percent of the votes.

For a contrast of how low Obama is stooping to divide and conquer, the Washington Post reminds us  how the history of the Democratic Party and civil rights was presented during Bill Clinton's 1992 convention:

[I]n the 1992 book, “Of the People,” which Democrats distributed at the convention that nominated Bill Clinton. That book, written by real historians, obviously has a slant, but it found the space to mention such historical blemishes. For instance, it acknowledged that before the Civil War the party “played both sides of the slavery issue” and after the Civil War, the party “reached out a welcoming hand to returning Confederates, not to blacks.”

And have you noticed lately how we keep hearing about these so-called gaffes -- these racially charged gaffes?

We've had three instances in almost as many convention days of Democrat officials hurling Nazi references at Republicans; we had a sitting vice president tell a crowd filled with many black Americans that Mitt Romney would put them in chains; we had a sitting president light a stick of racial dynamite under the body of a dead teenager; and we've had the media scream racism at every serious criticism of Obama, ranging from the record number of people currently on food stamps to his gutting of welfare reform.

But on a less shrill and more subtle and disturbing scale, what we see almost every day in the media and from Democrats is unceasing chatter about how Romney can't win enough of the minority vote to win the election -- how he can't appeal to these groups and how that somehow proves there's something wrong with him.  

On the flip-side, however, even though Romney is winning a smaller percentage of the white vote than Obama is the minority vote, the fact that a majority of whites are polling with Romney is also presented by the media as a Romney/Republican flaw. The subtext and sometimes outright text is that if Obama loses it will be because of racist whites who vote against him.

Naturally, though, the media won't even speculate on the idea that there might be a sinister racial motivation behind a black and Hispanic community that will only give a small percentage of its votes to a white candidate.

The double standard here is shameless.

But what we're seeing in ways that are subtle (the rewriting of history) and not-so-subtle ("chains"), is a reprehensible campaign of racial division that the media is complicit in -- unless you want to argue that NBC News choosing not to broadcast a single speech made by a minority speaker at the Republican convention that first night was just an accident.

Moreover, do you think it was an accident that Chuck Todd, NBC's Chief White House Correspondent, walked the floor of the RNC convention hall and dismissed the presence of non-white faces before the cameras as nothing more than token window dressing?

Because he's failed so miserably, Obama can't win on his record, so he and his media minions have launched a campaign of resentment and part of that campaign is to -- if you'll pardon the expression -- whitewash Romney, the Republican Party, and the convention in Tampa into something it's not: lily-white and without a proud history on the front lines of the civil rights movement.

Worse still, this campaign of resentment is determined to make Romney and those of us who support him look racist and maybe even feel racist for making what we believe is the best decision for our country.

Sometimes you have to pull your head out of the news cycle and take a 30,000 foot look over the landscape to see the big picture of what's really going on. And what I  see are not isolated events or "gaffes," but rather pieces of a vicious gameplan methodically being rolled out by a desperate and divisive president and the race-baiting media that worships him.  

Big Journalism

You Will Not Hear About the Real General Motors Tonight at the Democrat Convention

6 Sep 2012
By Seton Motley  

 We’ve heard a great deal this week from members of President Obama’s protected Crony Socialist auto bailout class.  Many were showcased last night in the maudlin propaganda flick "An Economy Built to Last: Auto-Industry."  The film was followed by speaker Bob King, President of the Democrat appartchik-union United Auto Workers (UAW).  A “saved” General Motors (GM) employee will be speaking (in Mandarin?) this evening.  And the uber-failed “success” of the $82 billion auto bailout has been repeatedly flogged throughout the festivities.

We will hear about the “more than one million jobs saved.” 

But this is the Administration that claimed the $1 trillion so-called “Stimulus” bill “created or saved” jobs - in non-existent Congressional districts.

So there is, yet again, an Obama Math problem.  Some more Numerical Issues about which you will not hear in Charlotte:

We’re going to lose over $42 billion on the $82 billion auto bailout.  Obama in late 2009 said we would make money on it.

$26.5 billion of the loss was a straight payoff to the...UAW....

President Obama illegally carried forward through the bankruptcy the ridiculously exorbitant UAW contracts.  Which were a hay-yuge contributing factor to GM going under in the first place - and are again, predictably, helping to wreck the bottom line.....

During the bankruptcy process, President Obama illegally paid off the UAW first and in full - before secured bondholders who should have been made whole before anyone else got a dime.  Which was incredibly disruptive and destructive of the entire bond market.  Economic uncertainty, anyone?

We heard from illegally over-rewarded UAW President King.  Will we be hearing from any of these Obama-victim bondholders?  Or any bond market experts to explain just how cataclysmically damaging this was to the economy?  Ummm, no.

We will not be hearing from any of the 100,000 or so GM and Chrysler dealership employees who Obama summarily fired...

(B)ecause (these) Joe and Jane SixPacks were guilty of working at auto dealerships that were owned by Republicans....  (N)othing like crushing innocent middle class Americans to mete out a little political payback.

We will not be hearing from any of the 20,000 or so non-union GM-subsidiary Delphi employees - whose pensions President Obama slashed by up to 70%.
With all of these President Obama American Job Kills, we will not hear that...

(China is) where GM is doing most of its hiring - along with funding celebratory movies of the Communist Revolution.

Or...

GM (is) to Invest $1 billion in Russia Within 5 years

Or...

General Motors (is) to Invest $150m in Indonesia Plant

The bailout may not have saved one million jobs - but the jobs it did save are in...Moscow and West Java.

We will not be hearing anything about the myriad inanities in which GM is engaging.

90+% of GM auto loans are now of the Freddie Mac-Fannie Mae-esque subprime variety - made to people whom GM and everyone else know can’t pay them back.

GM in 2010 launched a venture capital division which is investing in fabulously successful things like...solar panel companies.

In fact, no company registered more (non-)green (non-)energy patents than GM in 2010.

We will not be hearing these inconvenient facts about the Eco-Fantasy Chevy Volt.

Chevy Volts cost $41,000 to make, and sell for $41,000.  It is a non-profit vehicle, yet GM has spent millions advertising it.... 

Even more inane, GM just spent $10.4 million to build a Chevy Volt-ville - an Obama Candy Land Potemkin village. 

And lest we forget - there was the Chevy Volt song...and dance.

And yet Volt sales remain, as always, pathetic.  Perhaps because it only gets 35 miles to a 12-hour charge, and costs twice as much as a similar-sized regular gasoline mobile.

As of November of last year, the total Chevy Volt subsidy Taxpayer cost was $250,000 per Volt sold.

Another contributing factor to the Volt’s non-sales: Obama and GM admit to only one Volt fire - dangerously rabbit-holing at least five fires and a whole host of attending Volt charging problems that have not yet been adequately explained.

All of which explains how GM is actually doing - about which we won’t be hearing.

The Taxpayers are still stuck with 500+ million shares of GM stock.  For us to break even, they must be sold at $54 per. They debuted post-bankruptcy at $33 per share and are now around $22 per share.  This sets us up for a more than $16 billion loss – just on the stock.

This week’s downsized Fantasy Land Dystopia will be marked far more by what is not said than what is said.

Please, enjoy tonight’s last dollop of Leftist ephemera.

Big Government

Gutting Welfare: GAO Says Obama Must Submit Work Requirement Waiver Plan to Congress

By Kevin Glass 

Republicans and the Romney campaign have been relentlessly hitting the Obama Administration on the proposed rule that would allow states to waive work requirements from the successful 1996 welfare reform law. Today, the Government Accountability Office issued a report that the Obama Administration's executive order must be submitted to Congress before it goes into effect:

In a legal opinion requested by Senator Orrin Hatch, Ranking Minority Member of the Senate Committee on Finance and Representative Dave Camp, Chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means, the GAO General Counsel's Office determined that the Department of Health and Human Services' recent memo making changes to operation of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program... must be submitted to both Houses of Congress before it can take effect.

While Democrats have been crying foul over Republicans' attacks, the GAO has found that an attempt to institute this waiver process without Congressional review would be an illegal power grab. This will at least put a small bump in the road for the Obama Administration's attempt to relax one of the key components of welfare reform.

This doesn't mean that it would be easy for Congress to block Obama's welfare waiver plan, though. Under the rule that the GAO cited, all that's required is that the Administration submit the proposed plan in writing to Congress, not that it requires a vote to be implemented. As FDL reported, Congress would have to submit a joint resolution to "review" the regulation, and that might require 60 votes in the Senate. However, House Republicans can still make a lot of noise to try to raise awareness about these new welfare work requirement waivers and possibly force an uncomfortable vote in the Senate.

The Obama Administraton's method of governance by executive order has been troubling recently, and in this case they've clearly attempted an overreach. While mainstream media "fact-checkers" have taken issue with the phrase "gutting welfare," the facts are that the Obama Administration is planning on allowing state governments to relax their work requirements. As Romney policy advisor Lanhee Chen said, "if you open the door, people are going to walk through it. He's expecting that."

Townhall

Bill and Hillary and Huma and Anthony

September 5, 2012
By Stella Paul

As Bill Clinton once again takes center stage at the Democratic National Convention, let's amuse ourselves by screening the vilest soap opera in American history: Bill and Hillary and Huma and Anthony.

This one's got it all: two sham marriages, sexual perversions, and national treachery at the highest level.  

Naturally, the "mainstream media" refuses to inform you of it, but that's why I'm here.

If you've scratched your head trying to puzzle out the complex inter-relationships between these glamorous grifters, stop scratching.  I'm about to unveil a Grand Unified Theory that explains why Huma Abedin, the alleged Muslim Brotherhood asset who's the top aide of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, chose to marry disgraced ex-Congressman Anthony Weiner in an interfaith ceremony performed by matrimonial expert Bill Clinton.

 America first learned of Huma Abedin in 2007, in a worshipful Vogue article titled "Hillary's Secret Weapon: Huma Abedin Oversees Every Minute of Senator Clinton's Day."  Featuring glossy photos of designer-clad Huma, the article rhapsodized about her "wrinkle-free" Prada suit, "flawless" skin, and "long, luxurious hair" with "bouncy waves you see mostly in shampoo commercials."

The photo of Huma statuesquely displayed on a chair drew attention, as did the eyebrow-raising descriptions of Huma's and Hillary's mutual adoration.  That attention intensified as Hillary became secretary of state and installed Huma as her top aide.  Mumblings could be heard about the nature of their relationship and the unusual background of Huma, who grew up in Saudi Arabia.

Someday we may look back upon the intern scandals of the Clinton White House with amazement at our preoccupation with Bill, Monica Lewinsky, and cigars.  The bigger scandal may have been in First Lady Hillary's office, where Huma Abedin waltzed into her internship as a new college graduate, despite her screamingly obvious Muslim Brotherhood family ties.

Five Congress members, including Rep. Michele Bachmann, have raised concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood infiltration of the federal government, with special emphasis on Huma's role at State.  For their trouble, they have been hysterically accused of McCarthy-style witch-hunts, by everyone from Jon Stewart to John McCain to GOP honcho Ed Rollins.

Naturally, Barack Obama defended Huma at his annual Ramadan dinner, praising her as an "American patriot" to whom the American people owe a "debt of gratitude."  Surely, that settles it.  After all, no one understands American patriotism quite like Barack Hussein Obama.

Nevertheless, despite all the elite venom hurled at Michele Bachman for unmasking Huma, the evidence against Abedin is overwhelming.  Andrew McCarthy, Walid Shoebat, and Diana West have factually established that the Muslim Brotherhood is the Abedin family business, and that Huma herself worked in it for years, editing the family's Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs.

Now, let's pave the way for Anthony Weiner, Huma Abedin's national joke of a husband, to make an appearance.  Somewhere in 2010, the Clintons may have decided that their public embrace of Huma as their "second daughter" wasn't quite cutting it anymore, and they needed to set up a more conventional-looking arrangement.

Enter Anthony Weiner, the bachelor congressman with a panting lust to be mayor of New York.  I suggest that, in classic Clintonian fashion, a deal was struck.  The Clintons would endorse Weiner for mayor if he would marry Huma Abedin.

The situation was win-win for everyone. The rumors about Hillary immediately subsided, which pleased Bill, who plans to make her president.  Weiner gained the backing of the formidable Clinton machine, thereby sprinting to frontrunner status in the highly competitive mayoralty race.  And Huma got to keep her top-secret security clearance at State, and look forward to the day when she could pray in the Ground Zero mosque, gazing down at the World Trade Center site as first lady of New York City.

 If you don't think the Weiner-Abedin union is a political deal, ask yourself: on what basis could it possibly be anything else?  Shortly after their marriage, Weiner committed a Twitterectomy of his career, tweeting lewd photos of himself to young women around the country.  But in addition to being a cheating pervert, Weiner is widely known as a nutcase, exposed in the New York Times for temper tantrums that left him unable to keep staff.  And he has no money, thereby rendering him unable to provide Huma with the glamorous lifestyle she requires.

Most importantly of all, Weiner is not a Muslim.  Huma's religion allows Muslim men to marry non-Muslim women, but forbids Muslim women from marrying outside the faith.  Yet Huma remained unsullied by honor killing threats from the usual Islamic enforcers; instead, the party line seemed to be that Huma's marriage was adorable.

Even now, the outrageous Clintonian shenanigans continue.  We've just learned that Huma, her unemployed husband Anthony, and their baby Jordan are moving into a $3.3-million Park Avenue apartment owned by a longtime Clinton crony and top Obama bundler.  You and I may have to live within our means, but in Clinton World, such rules never seem to apply.

Now as Bill formally nominates Obama for a second term, both men are complicit in Hillary's scandal that should be the shame of the nation.  But what's an historic disgrace to us is less than a shrug to them.  Bill has been taking Saudi money by the barrel for years, and Obama admires the Muslim Brotherhood.
In fact, working with Hillary's State Department, Obama has helped to install the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and throughout the Middle East, using the "Arab Spring" turmoil to empower these sworn America-haters.

And now here comes the icing on the treachery cake: Obama and Hillary reportedly have informed Iran that they've abandoned Israel, leaving the only Jewish State to face a nuclear Iran alone.  How proud the Abedin family must be of their little girl!

 Conventional wisdom has it that Hillary is a formidable contender for president, but I suspect that that may not be true.  For one thing, her appearance and behavior are both falling apart, as she drunkenly carouses in public with exclusively female friends.  And for another, the American public may not be so forgiving as the Bill and Hillary and Huma and Anthony saga unfolds.

Stella Paul can be reached at Stellapundit@aol.com.

American Thinker

Just how wrong did the media get Clint Eastwood?

September 3, 2012
 by Karl

Admittedly, I am late to evaluating Clint Eastwood’s RNC performance. However, the fact that the pundit class is still critiquing it days later is one indicator of how shrewd it was as political theater. Accordingly, it is worth noting just how wrong some of the Eastwood analysis has been, even from those defending the speech.

The harsh, conventional wisdom about Eastwood’s decidedly unconventional approach to the convention is that it was the ramblings of a senile old man. Even may of Eastwood’s defenders have described it as rambling. This likely makes Eastwood’s day.

After all, who is Clint Eastwood? He is one of the top actors, directors and producers of motion pictures in the world. Most of the world — and almost certainly everyone tuning in to the RNC Thursday night — knows this. Yet most of the analyses of his RNC appearance are based on the notion that we were not witnessing acting. That mass suspension of disbelief may be the highest tribute Eastwood will ever be paid as an actor. If you think the Eastwood on stage was the only Eastwood there is, watch him promoting J. Edgar on The Daily Show last November. I have little doubt he will be equally sharp promoting Trouble With the Curve in the next few weeks.

Moreover, as a director, Eastwood has a reputation of knowing exactly what he wants. Also, he does not prefer to do many takes: “The big question, for me, is how to do it *** so the actors can perform at their very best and with the spontaneity that you’d like to find so that the audience will feel like those lines have been said for the very first time, ever. Then you’ve got a believable scene.” That approach is entirely consistent with Eastwood’s talent as a jazz pianist, someone who enjoys improvising within a framework.

The fact that Eastwood’s performance was not loaded into a teleprompter does not mean it was unplanned.

If you doubt that Eastwood was not simply winging it, don’t watch his performance — read the transcript. There may be no better indicator of just how intentional Eastwood’s performance is than to compare the visual impression he gave with the text delivered.

Eastwood begins with a touch of Admiral James Stockdale, but Clint answers the question of why he is there. The fact is that everyone really knows why Clint is there — to make a political statement. But Eastwood, in mentioning that Hollywood is perhaps not as monolithic as the stereotype suggests, is making a subtle suggestion to the audience he wants to reach: you may be part of some left-identifying group, but it’s okay to disagree and there may be other quiet dissenters in your group.

Eastwood then introduces the dramatic device of the empty chair, which in this context also echoes the political metaphor of the empty suit. This has been remarked upon, particularly as an echo of comedic dialogs from people like Bob Newhart, so I won’t dwell on it here, although it reappears below.

Eastwood then proceeds to use this comedic device to deliver — as Mark Steyn noted in passing — some of the toughest political attacks on President Obama heard during the entire RNC. A number of the traditional speakers strove to play on swing voters’ disenchantment with the failed promises of Hope and Change. But notice how tired and traditional that just sounded in your head. Mitt Romney (likely with help from a professional political speechwriter) did it pretty well: “You know there’s something wrong with the kind of job he’s done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him.” But did anyone do it as powerfully and emotionally as Eastwood’s segue from everyone — himself included — crying with joy at Obama’s historic victory to the tears we now shed over 23 million still unemployed, which Clint bluntly called a national disgrace?

This was the first part of Eastwood’s simple and effective argument. Eastwood points out — in a prodding, joking manner — that Obama was elected to bring peace and prosperity, but failed to bring either. That Eastwood may disagree with the GOP on some war issues is perfectly alright in this context, because, as suggested earlier and explored further below, Eastwood is not really targeting Republicans.

Eastwood then arrives at his Joe Biden joke: “Of course we all know Biden is the intellect of the Democratic party. Just kind of a grin with a body behind it.” That last part is not accidental in a performance featuring an empty chair. But the first part is even more dangerous. For the last 3+ years, we have been accustomed to having Biden as safe material for humor, while Obama has been kept off-limits. Eastwood leverages the latter into the former, suggesting that Sheriff Joe is the real brains of the operation. Ouch! No wonder Team Obama got annoyed enough to respond.

Having delivered these punches regarding our dire situation with velvet gloves, Eastwood then does the softest of sells for the Romney/Ryan ticket. As Jesse Walker noted, it was almost more of a pitch for Not Obama. Again, there was nothing accidental about the nature or placement of this speech within Clint’s imagined dialogue.

Eastwood concludes by summing up the GOP case to undecideds and rebutting the main point Dems seem to advance for Obama. First, “[p]oliticians are employees of ours… And when somebody does not do the job, we got to let ‘em go.” Second, “we don’t have to be metal [sic] masochists and vote for somebody that we don’t really even want in office just because they seem to be nice guys or maybe not so nice guys if you look at some of the recent ads going out there.”
Eastwood was not “rambling.” He improvised within a structure, making a clear and concise case for dumping Obama.

Eastwood’s approach to this performance was not accidental. Eastwood is — by reason of his resume — the foremost expert in the world on Clint Eastwood fans. Harry Callahan may have understood that a man has to know his limitations. Eastwood knows his… and he also knows his strengths. A man does not produce and star in dozens of Clint Eastwood movies without having thought deeply about and received the benefit of copious market research into what appeals to people about Clint Eastwood.

From the standpoint of political science, it would be fair to hypothesize that appeals to both disaffected and libertarian voters (which is something of a feat) in a way that Mitt Romney could never hope to do. More colloquially, it would be fair to suggest that Eastwood appeals to the sort of people who gravitated to H. Ross Perot in the Nineties. He appeals to people who distrust institutions, who think that conventional politics fails the American people. The sort of people for whom Harry Callahan, Will Munny, Frank Horrigan, Luther Whitney and Walt Kowalski have an emotional resonance.

So why would Eastwood deliver a conventional political speech? Had he delivered his material as a series of slick-sounding zingers, it would have been the sort of speech the media expected from Chris Christie’s keynote address. But that would have been: (a) not in keeping with the Romney campaign’s softer approach; and (b) diminishing and disappointing to Eastwood’s target audience. Most of the chattering class failed to grasp this. Some on Team Romney failed to grasp this. But the evidence coming in, both anecdotally and from polling, suggests Eastwood still has his finger on the popular pulse in a way pols and pundits never will.

Hotair

Liberal Chickens Coming Home To Roost

By Victor Davis Hanson

 
 It could not last — the attendee of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church sermonizing on tolerance; the practitioner of Chicago politics lecturing on civility; the most partisan voting record in the Senate as proof of a new promised bipartisanship; earlier books and speeches calling for hard-core progressivism as evidence of a no-more-red-state-blue-state conciliation. And in fact the disconnect did not last, and Barack Obama finds himself dealing with assorted chickens coming home to roost.

In the summer of 2004, Michael Moore released a crude propaganda film, Fahrenheit 9/11, full of distortions and half-truths, and yet passed off as a documentary — all designed to help swing the election to Democratic challenger John Kerry. Hollywood, the media, and the Left in general did not worry about the film’s inaccuracies or the mythology that the infomercial was a disinterested documentary. Instead, liberals deified Moore. Indeed, he was an honored guest at the Democratic Convention, and liberal luminaries paid him obeisance at various showings of the film.

The goddess Nemesis took note, and this year Dinesh D’Souza and John Sullivan followed Moore’s model.

The result is a blockbuster “documentary,” 2016: Obama’s America, that does more to Barack Obama than Michael Moore once did to George W. Bush. The Left is perturbed, unappreciative that its own methods and objectives have been turned against itself, and in a more sophisticated and far more effective manner than Moore’s buffoonery.

The Left in the era of Barack Obama established other ends-justify-the-means precedents. In 2008, Obama surmised that no one else would ever raise the sorts of gigantic sums that he was then amassing (in toto nearly $800 million, more than twice the amount raised by John McCain), and so was the first candidate to renounce public financing of a presidential campaign in the general election since the law was passed. But, of course, Obama never imagined that four years later his approval ratings would be less than 50 percent, or that he would be running against a financier who could match his efforts dollar for dollar. Nor did Obama think that a mesmerized Wall Street, from which he raised more cash than any prior candidate, would object all that much to his populist boilerplate against “1 percenters,” “fat-cat bankers,” and owners of “corporate jets.” So now what exactly will he do? Appeal to Romney to abide by public-financing rules? Blast Romney for raising too much money? Damn Romney for courting Wall Street?

Beneath the folksy veneer and the serial calls for “civility,” Obama proved vicious in his denunciations of George Bush, at one point calling him “unpatriotic” for adding $4 trillion to the national debt over eight years. Obama offered two general arguments: that the chief executive is solely responsible for economic hard times, and that four years is easily long enough to right the ship. Obama scoffed at the Bush defense that politically driven interventions by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae — hand in glove with congressional overseers — had distorted the real-estate market and contributed to the subprime-mortgage collapse, which destroyed an otherwise strong economy.

Obama boasted further that he would cut the deficit by half during his first term, and asserted that he would rather be a successful president than a two-term one. And he added that he should not be reelected if the economy was not restored to health. Apparently Obama assumed that after every recession (this one ended in June 2009) there is a natural recovery, the latter all the more robust when the former is severe. For all the right-wing scare talk about Obamacare, federal takeovers, more taxes, and too many regulations, Obama also took for granted that the cry-wolf private sector would bounce back — no matter how much his policies threatened it — and would almost magically continue to make so much money that an ever-growing government could redistribute ever more of it.

Yet now Romney is echoing Obama’s exact arguments: Yes, the chief executive is responsible for things like 43 months of 8 percent–plus unemployment, $5 trillion in new debt, and anemic GDP growth; and, yes, if things do not improve after four years, then it is time to change the president.

Obama established a wink-and-nod type of negative attack. As he called in sonorous tones for hope and change and a new civility, he negatively stereotyped a stunning cross-section of Americans: The white working class became “clingers,” the police “stereotype” minorities and act “stupidly,” small-business owners “didn’t build” their own businesses, doctors lop off limbs and yank out tonsils, bankers are “fat cats” — apparently on the premise that such groups would never take all this invective seriously. At various times Mitt Romney has been reduced to a dastardly financial pirate, a killer of innocent cancer victims, a veritable racist, and now a misogynist. After the class-warfare card and the race card, we await only Obama’s use of the Mormon card. Yet the polls remain roughly even, and Obama is about to be the target of a no-holds-barred assault fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars. Ethically speaking, what possible Romney sin might Obama object to? That super-PAC ads are unfair? That Romney has gone negative? That Romney stereotypes entire groups? That Romney’s inner staff are ethically compromised? This, after Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe, was paid $100,000 for two speeches in Nigeria in December 2010, to a company that was eager for influence and whose affiliates did business with an embargoed Iran; Plouffe made the trip to Nigeria about a month before he joined the administration as a senior adviser. Just this month, deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on national television asserted something demonstrably false — that she did not know the facts about the woman Mitt Romney supposedly caused to die of cancer.

During the Bush administration, the Left established another caricature: the gaffe-prone, golf-playing elitist George Bush. Did they ever imagine that they were ensuring like caricature for the leftist academic Barack Obama, who quite unexpectedly would play golf four times more often in four years than Bush did in eight years? Or that for every Bushism there would be a “corpse-man”? Or that the small ranch house in Crawford, Texas, would be trumped by First Family jaunts to Martha’s Vineyard, Costa del Sol, and Aspen? I would like to think a slip like “57 states” is just a slip, or that golf is valuable presidential relaxation, but I was taught by the Left that such garbled speech is a window into a confused mind, and that presidential golf is elite recreation that betrays class privilege.

In 2008, there was a lot of sloganeering on energy policy. Obama assured us that we could “not drill” our way out of a spike in gas prices. “Millions of new green jobs” was heard at almost every rally, along with shouts about wind and solar this and that. In less guarded moments, Obama assured us that he would pass cap-and-trade legislation, “bankrupt” coal companies, and allow coal-based energy prices to “skyrocket.”

These were the heady days of “peak oil” and the liberal attack against “oil men in the White House” — on the eve of the Chevy Volt and breakthrough new companies with names like Solyndra.

At the very time when well-connected crony capitalists were squandering hundreds of millions of dollars in federal wind and solar subsidies, a quiet private-sector revolution in horizontal drilling and fracking vastly expanded America’s gas and oil reserves — despite, not because of, Obama’s energy policies. The paradox finally become so absurd that Obama was reduced to bragging that the United States was producing more gas and oil under his watch than ever before, apparently on the logic that oil men were so adept that they could find vast amounts of new sources of energy on private lands without worrying about the Obama administration’s efforts to virtually cut off all new leasing on federal lands. The result is that our first green president is facing $4-a-gallon gas while he brags that what he tried to stop proved unstoppable.

Nemesis, remember, is not just karma, but payback with an absurd twist.

— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.

National Review