Most of What You've Heard about Bain is Bull...

Michael Ramirez of IBD in the ten ring once again!

H/T John Lott

Romney Counters Obama's* Sleazy Ads

*Yes. It's an Obama Super PAC ad, but Obama and Co. are not exactly covering themselves in glory in not condemning the ad or acknowledging what they knew about the falsehoods in it.

GOP Confronts Lies of Obama's Admin and His Super PAC

Even the tepid defense, "We can't coordinate with them" pales before the lack of moral authority to condemn the lies or plead for an honest campaign. Obama's failure to do either or both shows a demonstrable lack of character, with what appears to be tacit approval.

One can show displeasure or disapproval of a Political Action Committee's advertising without "coordination" of any sort. The law does not let Obama off the hook morally for not denouncing the lies and falsehoods put forth by his supporters.

H/T Breitbart TV

If 'You Didn't Make That', then It's Okay for Government to Take It

In 2008, Obama instructed Joe the Plumber on 'sharing the wealth'. In 2012, Obama instructed the rest of us upon what his underlying philosophy rests. Mimicking or channeling the words of Fauxcahontas, Elizabeth Warren, Obama uttered the infamous words, that "if you were successful, you didn't make that!"


Last week, in "The Platte River President* on Economics", we focused on the wrong headed and shallow notion that one's success was more rooted in the infrastructure that government provides, rather than hard work, good ideas and self reliance in making one's business work. It was noted in passing, and elaborated upon in the comments, the inconvenient truth for this administration, that the schools and roads and bridges, among other things, like public libraries, that Obama was crediting with the success of making business prosperous, were in all likelihood paid for in greater proportion by those prosperous businessmen than by society at large.

Since Obama seems more at home in fictional scenarios than running on his actual record, we will for the moment pretend that Obama is the president of Springfield, home to Homer Simpson and his boss, the eeeeeeeevil Charles Montgomery Burns.

Mr. Burns lives in a palatial mansion and owns a nuclear power place. Mr. Burns pays more in property taxes than the hapless Homer who works for him. And though the fictional Mr. Burns must have contributed far more in taxes than his employee, Homer and his family were given access to those same roads, bridges and schools that benefitted the wealthy, while paying but a fraction of their cost.

Mr. Burns was childless and therefore was subsidizing the education or the townspeople with children. Yes, he benefitted from an educated work force and easy access to his business, he paid, by far, a greater percentage of his wealth to build and maintain that infrastructure, in addition to providing the jobs and power the community needs to prosper.

Enough of fiction, you might say! The Simpsons aren't real! Okay. How about this example? You are being bombarded by the Left that Big Oil and Big Business are evil, and greedy and make their wealth at your expense. You are supposed to at least envy them if not hate them. But, consider Andrew Carnegie...

Andrew Carnegie made his wealth from Big Steel. In addition to providing many good paying jobs and products used around the world, Mr. Carnegie was a philanthropist. He contributed millions of dollars to building thousands of libraries here in the US and around the world. (Notice how I snuck "public libraries" into Obama's infrastructure list?) The epitome or acme of a musical performance was once considered to performing at "Carnegie Hall". A beautiful concert hall, contributed to the community by the eeeeeeeevil capitalist, Andrew Carnegie.

Funny what people will do when allowed to keep more of their own money!

But, is it really theirs to give? Ah! According to the Fauxcahontas/Obama wing of the Democrat party, your so called "accomplishments" all took place, the Fauxbamists say , as a product of our collectivist society. Therefore, if you "didn't build it", then why should you solely enjoy its benefits? Is it not the duty of government to "spread that wealth" more equitably among those less fortunate (so long as they vote early and often?).

What Obama proposes in the name of "fairness" is, in reality, a covert attack on personal property rights. It is a rationale for the government to redistribute what you have. After all, if you cannot be credited with having legitimately earning it, then why can't the government come in and relieve you of it?

And that, my friends, is Obama in a nutshell. A government big enough to give things to you is big enough to take things from you.

Cross posted at LCR, Say Anything

This Last Week's Poll

This Last Week's Poll: Obama promised a "new tone" in politics, and not just "politics as usual". In allowing his campaign to call Romney a "felon" and refusing to apologize, is he:

...a hypocrite? 18%

...ignoring his own calls for "civility"? 16%

...breaking a campaign promise? 12%

...becoming too shrill? 0%

All of the above 81%

The people have spoken! Hard to disagree with any of them.


Multiple choices and Obama's crack budget office accountants may account for totals greater than 100% Thank you for your participation!

Not a scientific poll. Respondents are self selecting. Questions are drawn from fortune cookies, hieroglyphics and tomorrow’s New York Times.

Please make your opinion known in this week's poll.

Bamboozler-in-Chief At it Again!

Here's the latest ad that Obama "approved":


"The Obama campaign fails to make its case. On just about every level, this ad is misleading, unfair and untrue, from the use of “corporate raider” to its examples of alleged outsourcing." -Wa Po

I'm shocked, SHOCKED that anyone would outsource jobs to China, says Barack. But, didn't Obama choose the CEO of GE, Jeffrey Immelt, to be the head of his Jobs Council, to be a close Business adviser? And hasn't GE been outsourcing jobs , shipping manufacturing and engineering and development jobs to China, too?

Other than rank hypocrisy, how is what Romney is accused of doing any different that what Obama's closest business adviser does regularly?

And the Washington Post's Fact Checker gives Obama's crew four "Pinocchios" for their dishonesty.

The claim that Romney outsourced jobs as governor is equally overblown.

This concerns Romney’s veto of a bill that would have prohibited Massachusetts from contracting with companies that outsourced the state’s work to other countries. Lawmakers were especially concerned about a $160,000-a-month contract with Citigroup to operate a system of electronic food-stamp cards that included a customer phone service center in India.

Both the liberal editorial page of the Boston Globe and conservative editorial page of the Boston Herald urged Romney to veto the amendment, saying it would cost the state money. Romney agreed, saying the measure did not protect state jobs — the call center might have moved from India to another state — but “had the potential of costing our citizens a lot more money.” The Democratic-dominated Massachusetts legislature did not override his veto, even though it overturned 117 others, suggesting that there was little real support for the measure.

When the food-stamp contract expired, the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance insisted that those jobs be returned to the United States. But they ended up in a call center based in Utah — just as Romney had predicted.

Outsourcing jobs to Utah. Perhaps if Obama is re-elected (God forbid), he could see about making Utah the 58th state?


Cross posted at LCR, Say Anything.

Obama's "Evolution" on Gay Marriage

- cartoon by Bok

One of the charges that Obama wants desperately to avoid this November is that of being a "Flip flopper". To that end, a story was concocted that Obama somehow "evolved" on his position on gay marriage.

Now, whether or not you believe in evolution, since evolution is typically portrayed as a linear progression from the simple to the complex, you must admit that this must have been one strange and unusual evolutionary process to flip flop, er, change back and forth between his positions.

In 1996, when he ran for the Illinois senate, as liberal Democrat, he believed it was in his best political interests to support gay marriage. Which he did. Eight years later, when he was running for national office, he determined it might not be in his best political interests to support gay marriage, so he came out against it - a view which he still publicly held in 2008 when he ran for president. Finally, in yet another election year, he came out with a supposedly more "enlightened view, where he would now recognize gay marriage, (providing enough gays support him, contribute to his campaign, etc). In other words, it has once again been perceived as beneficial to his campaign (and fund raising) for him to "evolve" into his current beliefs.

A couple of questions: One, if his "evolution" is genuine, perhaps Mr. Obama would tell us what were the pivotal moments in his beliefs, what events and circumstances, caused him to flip flop, er, retreat from his position on gay marriage between 1996 and 2004? (Other than political expediency, I mean!) Some crisis of conscience? Some observed aberration from what he believed? Surely there must have been some tragic event, some seismic cataclysm on his way of thinking that would cause him to change his mind. What was it?

If his change was principled at all, and not merely sticking his finger in the wind to see what positions would garner him the most votes, perhaps the man who has written two autobiographies to date, and never seems to tire talking about himself, could explain the thought processes and soul searching involved in making that retrograde portion of his "evolutionary" journey? Or was the man who voted "present", like Teddy Kennedy at Chappaquiddick, merely trying to "preserve his political viability"?

Two, how can one say he has "evolved", when the end result sees him in the same place as as where he started, at the beginning of his "evolutionary" process? How is that "evolution" and not the "F-F" word? And if the acceptance of gay marriage is the most enlightened position, how can you describe it as "evolutionary" to regress as he must have between 1996 and 2004? (Unless it was simply the most crass of political opportunism, telling prospective voters whatever he thought they wanted to hear, and adapting or hiding his beliefs to bamboozle the greatest number of people to vote for him?)

Funny, too, how all the major changes of Obama's "evolution" can be traced to different election years and different bases of voters, isn't it? That's right! You're looking for the "H" word now!

Some of Obama's more rabid supporters will try to paint Romney as a "flip flopper" between now and November. Without even getting into all the campaign promise made and broken by Obama, Mr. Romney has a long way to go before he fills Obama's sandals!




Cross posted at LCR, Say Anything.

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

Martha Stewart was found guilty on four counts of obstructing justice for lying to federal investigators. She was sentenced to five months in prison.

Roger Clemons was charged with lying to Congress, facing up to 21 months in prison if convicted. He was acquitted.

Scooter Libby told the truth to Congress, but his recollections differed from another witness, so he was sentenced to a 30-month prison term, which was later commuted.

Eric Holder both lied repeatedly and presented false testimony to Congress (Mr. Holder believes there's a difference!). In addition, he refuses to turn over documents that could clarify exactly who is responsible for the Fast and Furious debacle which lead to the death of Border Patrol agent Brian A. Terry and literally hundreds of Mexican citizens.

Guess which one of these four is not or has not been under indictment for lying? Guess which one liberal Democrats are trying in vain to defend?



"...to undermine the person who is assigned to block the voter suppression in our country..."
-Nancy Pelosi



Hey, Nancy! What do you call someone who is "assigned" to do something and then doesn't do it? Note she didn't say "the person who actually has blocked voter suppression in our country", because that would mean doing things like prosecuting the New Black Panthers when they practiced voter intimidation in Philadelphia, which he didn't.

Why is it that when anyone else lies to Congress over matters as insignificant as to whether or not baseball players used performance enhancing drugs, they throw the book at them, but when someone sworn to uphold the law, who holds the highest law enforcement office in the land, lies over policies with international repercussions, that got people killed because of seeming incompetence, with indications of a cover up of that incompetence, which could reach to the highest levels of government, partisan hacks like Nancy Pelosi can't even generate a little faux attention?

No, Nancy Pelosi, running away from Holder's lies and incompetence like Barack Obama running away from his record on the economy, is left with nothing but race baiting innuendo.

Someone tell me again how this ditz got to be Speaker of the House? This Halloween, when you need to tell a scary story, tell the one how Nancy Pelosi was second only to Joe Biden in the line of succession to the Presidency. But first, warn anyone with a weak heart!

President 'Out of Touch' -David Axelrod

David Axelrod said the president was "out of touch" for playing golf during a bad economy.



President Bush, of course! But, President Zero has been playing golf for the last three and a half years, even after he told us that the economy was far, far worse than anyone ever believed. ( Yeah! Three and a half years of bumbling incompetence, inaction and the wrong actions taken will do that!)

Obama has played more golf in his first term than George Bush did in two. He has attended more fundraisers in one term than Bush did in two. Right now, it's a toss up whether he does more harm than good by not being in the Oval Office!

Ya think Captain Combover might apply the same standard, though, to the Bamboozler-in-Chief that he did to George Bush? Nah.

Update : Just noticed that CNN misspelled his name, too! I'm guessing this is not Mr. Axelrod's favorite piece of video at the moment.


More at Daily Caller

Obama's Enron

What's the difference between Enron and the Obama Administration? Enron's accounting was more honest.

By now, some liberal, happy warrior has brought your attention to Ray Nutter's, er, Nutting's Market Watch piece about how Obama is Mr. Fiscal Conservative, and that

"under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s."

Seem too good to be true? That probably seems counter intuitive to what most of you know to be true, and it should, because there's some Enron style accounting going into those figures*. First of all, it includes a heaping helping of stimulus that wasn't in Bush's budget. But since it happened in 2009, when traditionally, the previous president is responsible for the spending, it was in Enron's, er Obama's benefit to count it as Bush's spending.

To make the bamboozling even worse, what most of us thought would be a one time stimulus, is now built into the baseline of the federal budget, so that, according to the plan, about an additional billion dollars is spent, before there is any "increase". That's how they figure the increase is lowest since Eisenhower. It is a shell game. Obama is spending money faster than a drunken Congressman. And like Obama's phoney claim to have cut millions from the budget, Obama, should he be re-elected, would spend more every year he is in office. He's told us that we would. Now if only his willing accomplices in the media would expose this charlatan, this bamboozler of the gullible, for the big spender he really is, we can send him packing back to Chicago. Or Hawaii. Or Kenya. Or wherever he wants to go. Just go.

*When White House press secretary Jay Carney starts quoting them, it becomes a part of the administration's spin machine

Update : In his own words...



Cross posted at LCR.

Joe Biden, Son of a Welsh Coal Miner*, Spanked for Hypocrisy

The Right Scoop has this great little RNC ad exposing the hypocrisy and political opportunism of Joe Biden and Company.

Losing 4 out of 10 votes to a virtual nobody in the Democrat primary was a sobering experience, I'd guess.

*From a Neil Kinnock speech he once plagiarized.

The Bamboozler-in-Chief Takes Credit He Doesn't Deserve

Real shocker, eh? The essence of a good con, or so I'm told, is to include an element of truth, something the mark can identify as true, so that you build credibility for when you start lying through your teeth. So, in the Obama ad pictured above, the statement being made is entirely factual, and perhaps one of the biggest lies you'll hear all year.

The graphic says that US oil production is at an eight year high. The question they hope you do not ask, is "Was Obama responsible for any part of it?" I think I can answer that with an illustration: Oprah Winfrey and I have a combined net worth of over three billion dollars, the highest it's ever been. And, even though I suspect that my contribution to that is a mere rounding error in Ms. Winfrey's assets, it is similar to Mr. Obama's oil claims.

The bulk of the production on federal lands, where Mr. Obama had control, has actually decreased. The federal leases producing oil were developed under George Bush and even Bill Clinton. Obama's policies did not result in the "eight year high", but rather production on state and private lands that are not under Obama's control.

And even though production is at an eight year high, worldwide demand for oil has increased even faster. Had Obama not obstructed oil drilling in the Gulf, the extension of the Keystone pipeline, and continued the bans in ANWR, the nation would have been able to supply even more, which, according to the laws of supply and demand, would have helped to bring energy prices down.


Graphic via Roger Kimball And the renewable energy Obama touts in his ad? Heard this on the radio today:

A Canadian firm will receive up to $50 million in Obama Stimulus cash for a Nevada solar plant that hires two people. And, the energy produced at the plant costs three times as much as energy from natural gas.

Is Obama really the guy you want in control of the nation's finances for the next four years? He spends $50 Million on a project that creates energy at three times the cost of natural gas and creates two (2) whole jobs. Had Obama simply signed the papers for the Keystone XL pipeline, the initial estimate of 20,000 jobs would be created. The cost to the taxpayer? A 39 cent Bic pen.

If you ran your household the way Obama runs the country, exactly how long do you think it would last?



Cross posted at LCR, Say Anything.

Curiosity About the "Character of the Candidate"

Just a small note on Juan Williams' performance on Fox News Sunday this AM. Juan had this to say about the reporting on the alleged high school prank or hazing incident, from fifty years ago, in the life of Mitt Romney:

People just want to know about the character of the candidate.

Really?? Has the press shown any real curiosity at all about the dope smoking, girl pushing, dog eating, domestic terrorist befriending, Jeremiah Wright disciple who may or may not have claimed to be a foreign student to get preferential treatment in college? Name any one of those things that the press has pursued with any passion or energy at all.

Get back to me on that one, Juan. People just want to know about the character of the candidate.

What's Another Name for Evolution?

"Flip flops"
1996 - candidate Barack Obama supported gay marriage
2008 - “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman." - debate at Saddleback church
2012 - "I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

You can Trust Barack Obama... to be Barack Obama

Barack Obama, the Bamboozler-in-Chief, is going to try to tell you that you should not focus on the fact that most of us are worse off than we were four years ago, by telling us the the problem he "inherited" was far worse than he thought. Well imagine a fellow that decides to walk from one side of the continental United States to the other. He starts off in San Francisco, and by the time he gets to Denver, thinks to himself, "Wow. This is far longer than I thought it would be!"

But, at least, he'd have made it to Denver.

Now imagine Barack Obama starting off in San Francisco, going the wrong way, ending up in Hawaii, knocking off to play a few rounds of golf, and looking you in the eyes and telling you, "It was farther than I thought."

Obama said he'd cut the budget in half by the end of his first term, but made it tremendously larger instead. As a candidate, he promised to "go through the budget line by line" to eliminate waste and fraud. By my reckoning, he's played over 90 rounds of golf, but hasn't quite found the time to do the whole "line by line" thing. And he said he had cut millions of dollars from the budget, so that he could sound like a moderate politician, but the truth is, they were all phony cuts, and the Federal Budget is slated to continue to grow every year for the next ten years.

When next year's budget is bigger than this year's budget, normal people will tell you that's not a cut, but an increase. A bamboozler will tell you what he thinks you want to hear.

The first two years of his presidency, Democrats controlled the White House, the House and the Senate. They had the power to pass any legislation they wanted, any remedy to the economy that they saw fit: health care reform (as opposed to health care insurance reform), minimum wage, or jobs bills and instead, funneled money to political supporters like Solyndra and failed solar companies, sent money overseas to build electric cars, and actively took measures to raise the price of oil, gas and electricity, instead of doing what was right for the country.

What on God's green earth makes you think the next two or four years will be any different under Obama?

Tips from his caddy??

Cross posted at LCR.

Gutsy Call: Obama Had CYA Memo Drafted In Case OBL Mission Failed

Is it really a "gutsy call" if you know that you are going to take credit for any success, but have insulated yourself from any blame? I don't think so. Maybe if the President had spent more time praising the Navy SEALs and less time taking credit himself (and not bringing this up again in an election year), he wouldn't look like such a hypocritical phony.

H/T The Last Tradition

Andrew Klaven and Bill Whittle go MST 3000 on President Obama

Andrew Klaven drags his buddy Bill Whittle to the movies. Listen at 1:06, when Tom Hanks intones "How do we understand this president and his time in office?", for the familiar "cha-ching" of a cash register. Tag line? "I hope there's not a sequel!"
As do we all!

Captain Combover, a.k.a. David Axelrod Stumps for Romney

Elsewhere in the interview, the Captain offers the same dishonest, verbal sleight of hand as the rest of the administration, when he talks about millionaires and billionaires "paying less" than their secretaries. If I pay the government a thousand times more than you do, the fact that I might be paying it at a lower rate, does not mean I am paying less. And as far as "paying their fair share", I have to admit that this is honest in the most perverse sort of way. The rich don't pay "their fair share", because currently, they are paying more than their "fair share", because they are paying the bulk of the nation's taxes, and that means they are already paying someone else's "fair share" as well.

So, just remember kiddies! If you can't run on your own economic record because it is just too bleak, generate class envy instead. It won't solve our financial problems or generate any new jobs, but it will take your focus off of the architect of our current economic malaise, Barack H. Obama, long enough for him to get re-elected. (He hopes.)

The Bamboozler-in-Chief Has Loopholes in His Credibility

I created the new Democrat mascot "hippocrat" for times such as these. Obama and the Democrats, up to and including my own dear brother (Bless his heart!) are talking about "subsidies" to the oil companies and doing away with them, as if that would do anything other than exacerbate the high price of gasoline and further slow an already weakened economy. First, a look at the weaselly word the Democrats use to describe the activity: "subsidize". The word subsidy has the connotation of one party giving money to another. If some entity of government "subsidizes" the arts, if may be through a grant to a symphony or a ballet company or just an artist who wants to photograph a crucifix in a jar of his own urine. A subsidy to any of these groups or individuals, implies that the government will transfer money to them out of their own coffers. Write them a check, if you will, to subsidize those activities.

Imagine, if you will now, an armed robber approaches you outside an ATM. He demands your watch, your wallet, your car keys and your cash, but tells you you can keep $20 of what you withdrew, because he wants to "subsidize" you getting back home. "What a nice guy," you think, "letting me keep part of my own money! So that's what a subsidy is!"

What Obama refers to as "subsidies" to the oil companies, are what most normal people call "business deductions" when it comes to nearly any other industry. And the laws that the legislators wrote to provide those "subsidies", possibly in exchange for campaign contributions, are then called "loopholes" by those who want to raise taxes on those same companies. (Or extort more "contributions" from them!)

First of all, note the social engineering aspect of it: If you perform certain activities of which we approve, they say, we will lower your taxes and let you keep more of the money you earn. So, Congress writes the law in such a way as to give you an incentive for certain types of expenditures and activities. Think of your home mortgage deduction. To encourage home ownership, Congress writes a law that enables you to keep more of the money you earn if you use some of it to purchase a house. In ObamaSpeak, this would be referred to as a "subsidy" to you, the homeowner, if he were at all consistent, and a "loophole" that allows you to get away with paying less than your "fair share". The fact that you would be chastised for doing exactly what they wrote the law to accomplish is referred to as "irony".

Obama and the Democrats want to create enough class envy so that you'll want to punish those nasty, rich oil companies by raising their taxes. And rest assured, taking away current, legitimate business deductions will effectively be raising the taxes oil companies pay.

"Good!", you might say. "Those SOBs earn way too much on the backs of the working stiff!" Only here's how it works in the real world, and Obama knows it. Taxes are a part of the cost of doing business. In order to open a business and stay in business, taxes are an expense, just like rent or salaries. In order for you to stay in business and make a profit, any profit at all, you have to charge more than your expenses. If your expenses go up, the cost of any goods or services you provide have to go up as well. So called "business taxes" are a hidden tax on everything you buy. That makes the oil company, and any other business, a tax collector for Mr. Obama. Every gallon of gasoline you buy at the pump, a percentage of which is taxes, (less any deductions), which goes to the government. And then, the dirty little secret is, that the government then taxes the retail price of the gasoline as well. So the higher the cost of a gallon of gas, inflated by increased taxation, the higher the revenue in state and federal sales taxes they collect. In other words, taxes on top of taxes. Double dipping. On the backs of the "working stiff".

The state and federal governments are already skimming an average of fifty cents a gallon in taxes. By comparison, towards the end of 2010, Exxon was making just a little over two cents a gallon on oil products here in the US, in profits. So, who's the one robbing you blind here? The guy taking two cents a gallon or the guy who's taking fifty cents a gallon and wants to take even more?

As has been pointed out before, gasoline taxes are regressive taxes. They hit the poor hardest. The Bamboozler-in-Chief rails against the oil companies as if somehow, raising their taxes and thus, the cost of gasoline, (and virtually everything else in the economy), wouldn't be anything other than kicking the poor while they're down. It's a cruel deception. But if the poor are struggling and relying on government assistance to survive, it does make them easier to control.

Back in 2009, Obama went on the record acknowledging that it is a "bad idea" to raise taxes during a recession. Unfortunately, that has not been enough to keep him from seeking new taxes and revenues from people in every tax bracket. The old campaign promise of not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year, unfortunately came with an expiration date. The administration that cannot stop its own rapacious spending is looking for more and more ways to feed their spending habits. Raising taxes on the oil companies directly, and you indirectly, is yet another in a long line of bad ideas. Raise your hand if you think you're not paying enough in taxes?

It's demagoguery. Barack Obama wants to raise your taxes, and the cost of everything you buy...and he wants you to thank him for it. Thank him, please, with an early retirement.

Cross posted at LCR, Say Anything.

"After My Election, I'll Have More Flexibility..."

Does the word "duplicitous" come to mind? Does it give you warm fuzzy feelings for your president when he implies to the leader of a foreign country that he cannot do what he would like to do to our country because it might cost him the election?



Obama has been governing against the will of the people ever since his fanny hit the big chair in the Oval Office. He does not deserve a second term. Period.

Whatever he is planning to do as a lame duck president will not be in the best long term interests of America.