For those who don’t like the Ryan budget for example, like the president, where’s their budget? Where is Harry Reid’s budget? Where is the Democrats in the senate’s budget?” – Sen. Marco Rubio  with Neil Cavuto

In 2004 Obama said the “monstrous” deficits were “an enormous problem” when the deficit was $413 billion. In 2008 he said increasing the debt would burden our children and was unpatriotic. Every year of his term deficits have been over a TRILLION dollars. By the end of his first term he will have increased the debt more than all other presidents combined. Can we afford four more years of two faced, self serving fiscal insanity?

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.” – Barack Obama

“Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, its time to try something new. Let’s invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt.” – President Barack Obama on his Office of Management and Budget website.

“We’re spending twice as much money as we did in 2001. If you go back 15 years our deficit this year is bigger than what our entire budget was. That’s how out of control the federal government is. … There is a political reason we’re not having a budget. Everybody understands that. Nobody’s going to say it. .. because we don’t want to make the hard choices in an election year.” – Sen. Dr. Coburn

Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen said our national debt is our greatest threat to national security.

“Whether one believes leaves in a large, very active government or something more limited, mathematically, the amount of debt we already have and the terrifying rate at which it is accumulating will lead to national ruin,” Gov. Mitch Daniels

“Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.” -Alan Greenspan

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude.
If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds… [we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers… And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for [another]… till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery… And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.” – (Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.” -  Friedrich Hayek

“Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money,by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.” – Alan Greenspan

“A small debt produces a debtor; a large one, an enemy” – Publilius Syrus quotes (Roman author, 1st century B.C.)

“Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people” – Wendell Phillips quotes (American Abolitionist and Orator whose eloquence helped fire the antislavery cause during the period leading up to the American Civil War. 1811-1884)

“The fact is, we’ll never build a lasting economic recovery by going deeper into debt at a faster rate than we ever have before. It took this nation 166 years until the middle of World War II to finally accumulate a debt of $95 billion.” – Ronald Reagan

“I have long argued that paying down the national debt is beneficial for the economy: it keeps interest rates lower than they otherwise would be and frees savings to finance increases in the capital stock, thereby boosting productivity and real incomes.” – Alan Greenspan

When asked why the markets haven’t reacted to the US being on the precipice of collapse, Erskine Bowles said its because the US economy is  “the best lookin’ horse in the glue factory.”

Alan Simpson (former senator from WY) and co-chair of Obama’s debt commission  said economic collapse will ‘be very swift and very dramatic’.

Former Treasury Secretary Rubin said the debt crisis could explode any minute.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations that our national debt is a national security risk echoing previous statements by Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen, head of U.S. intelligence – Dennis Blair, and all of America’s intelligence agencies.

“After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money we don’t have. But, instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt, unlike anything we have seen in the history of our country.” – Michele Bachmann

“Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.” – Herbert Hoover

“There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.” – Richard Feynman

“Many respected economists and statesmen believe our national debt is neither unwieldy nor a dangerous burden on the country. The trouble is that a vast majority of the American people think otherwise…. It violates basic American ideas of thrift and money management. These strong public feelings cannot be ignored forever.” – Morris K. Udall

“The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to be careful to prevent their growth in our own.” – John Adams

“All of the problems we’re facing with debt are manmade problems. We created them. It’s called fantasy economics. Fantasy economics only works in a fantasy world. It doesn’t work in reality.” – Michele Bachmann

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’. The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.” – Joe Biden

“Mr. Obama plans to boost federal spending 25 percent while nearly tripling the national debt over 10 years. Americans know that this kind of spending will have economic consequences, including new taxes being imposed by the new progressives.” – Karl Rove

“I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater curse than any other.” -  James Madison

“A politician cannot spend one dime on any spending project without first taking that dime from the person who earned it. So, when a politician votes for a spending bill he is saying that he believes the government should spend that particular dollar rather than the individual who worked for it.” Neal Boortz.

“There is no such thing as government money – only taxpayer money.” William Weld, quoted in Readers Digest.

See your share of the debt and how fast it is rising.

by Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D.

In a recent campaign speech, Obama said: “See, the question is not whether things will get better — they always do… The question is whether together, we can muster the will — in our own lives, in our common institutions, in our politics — to bring about the changes we need.”

This is a revealing statement. It reveals the assumption of all liberals and socialists, Obama included, that the money will always be there. Will a wrecked economy improve? “They always do.” This implies that the economy will get better, no matter what the government does to it.

Tell this to people in Communist or former Communist countries. Or to people living under religious or fascist dictatorships. The government throttles these economies to no end. The only economic growth that ever takes place is to the benefit of the rulers — mainly because of places like the United States, from whom they can beg, borrow and steal.

It’s beyond foolish to assume the economy can get better no matter what. To think this is to assume that economic growth and wealth creation happen automatically. This explains the attitudes of liberals like Obama. They resent “the rich” and people who have more because they got “more than their share” of the inevitable wealth. There’s no concept that somebody works to create the wealth, and maintain wealth and profit once it’s there. This is the attitude of a spoiled adolescent or a moocher. It’s not an attitude we should find in a President of the United States.

Liberals passed ObamaCare on the assumption that the American economy will keep on growing as it always has. Three years into Obama’s term, and it’s still not happening. The government is totally bankrupt and the currency is imperiled by the unprecedented and almost unimaginable national debt. There’s no money to pay for Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, the most expensive parts of the government. This is before the demand for these programs rises due to the aging of the population over the coming two decades. And it’s before ObamaCare, which will put millions more Americans (ultimately everyone) on government insurance, the most expensive social program in human history.

How much debt are we supposed to sustain? Hundreds of millions of trillions? What’s higher than the trillions? Do our economists even know? On our current course of little to no economic growth, and exponential growth in government spending, we’re going to get there sooner than you think.

Obama has criticized the idea of “American exceptionalism.” American exceptionalism refers to the idea that Americans are somehow different, that Americans are somehow better than everyone else. But this is the very thing Obama implies when he says that the American economy will come back, no matter what. He’s suggesting that America is somehow above the stagnation, unemployment and ruin that befell all other socialist countries and nationalist economies throughout the world. It can’t happen here, right?

The American people are not paying attention. Slightly more than half are ready to vote for his reelection, in an economy that has actually worsened under his watch. No Republican president and probably no other Democratic president would ever have enjoyed such a free ride. Too many Americans are just not thinking.

I’m not suggesting that the opposition, Mitt Romney, is any inspiration. Of course he isn’t. But voting Obama out of office ought to be a no-brainer to anybody who’s not a committed and ideological Big Government socialist. Polls show a huge majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. But Obama gets almost none of the blame, and a majority like him. If you were on a sinking ship and the captain stood there saying, “No worries. It never sinks,” how much support would you give this captain? Or would you look for another leader, or perhaps take matters of survival into your own hands, instead?

Liberals like Obama are in a bind. They hate the rich and they hate wealth. But the definition of a growing economy is wealth production. In a thriving economy, of 4 or even 6-8 percent growth a year, you see (1) the rich getting richer and (2) the poor and middle class getting richer. These are the trends. In a declining or stagnating economy, the rich stay rich while the poor and the middle class get poorer. That’s what we see happening now. Obama points to the fact that the rich are still rich and says, “See? I told you so. The rich need to pay more taxes.” This will not change a thing, and will only make matters worse.

Taxes have to actually be lowered. Of course the rich will get the biggest tax cuts — because they already pay for most of what the government does! Economic freedom will raise the standard of living for everyone. Socialism and government interventionism don’t do a thing, other than hamper or reduce the strength of the economy. Obama’s policies tend to freeze everything in place. The rich don’t mind this too much, at first, but the poor and middle class are the first to feel it. They’re the ones who will feel the inflation. Government welfare programs cannot save them, because government welfare programs do not raise the standard of living and can never hope to cover the cost of lost economic growth by all this Big Government interventionism in the economy.

The absence of a “populist’ or “blue collar” revolution for free market capitalism shows just how ignorant most people are, and how woefully ignorant their teachers, talking head intellectuals, and professors have been. The current President, a former professor himself, is the worst one of them all.

Can the economy get better and can the debt crisis be reversed? Of course they can. But not through anything Obama has done, or is proposing. To start with, we have to reverse every single thing Obama has done in office. Then we have to start reversing all the other things previous governments — Republican and Democratic — have done to hamper or harm the economy. We have to stop this cycle of insanity whereby government intervenes, makes things worse, the people scream “do something!” and the government proceeds to make it even worse.

We don’t need a bloody revolution, and we don’t need to overthrow our system of government. But we do need to radically reverse and revise almost all of our government policies of the last century in particular. Obama was supposed to bring “change,” but in reality he brought more of the same. A lot more of it. If most Americans are so convinced that the country is headed in the wrong direction, why can’t they see Obama as part of the problem?

Dr. Hurd has a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Psychology, Saybrook Institute, San Francisco, CA, November 1991. Degree awarded With Distinction. Master’s of Social Work (M.S.W.), Clinical, The University of Maryland at Baltimore, May 1988. Bachelor’s of Arts (B.A.), Psychology, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, May 1985. Distinguished Psychology Student Award, Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude. Dr. Hurd blogs at DrHurd.com

By Alan Caruba

I have always been an optimist. And, I hope, a realist. Of late though, I have been entertaining some pessimist thoughts about the future of America. This runs contrary to one of the enduring attributes of Americans because, like me, they too are optimists.

The great value of national elections is that the issues affecting everyone’s future get discussed. The election of 2008 was an alarming indication of the power of the mainstream media to bamboozle voters. Aided by McCain’s near total lack of charisma or even energy, the media’s wholesale devotion to getting a completely unknown and unvetted Barack Obama elected was and is scary.

One reason for optimism is the way the current campaign to reelect Barack Hussein Obama is struggling to distract voters from the worst record of incompetence of any modern president since Jimmy Carter.

As Obama campaigns non-stop around the nation he never mentions Obamacare, the failed “stimulus” of 2009, or the outrage of the Fast and Furious program to run guns to drug cartels in Mexico. I would put money on the Supreme Court declaring Obamacare unconstitutional. And, with that, goodbye Obama. Feeling a bit more optimistic now?

The problems Americans face today have been put in place by successive Congresses over decades and the blame falls equally on both Democrats and Republicans. Too much socialism!

The 2008 crisis of the housing mortgage and the banking meltdown is the result of government sponsored agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that own half of all the mortgage loans made. There is no reason why the government should be in the mortgage business that for most of the nation’s history was the providence of the banking industry. It was the “bundled” mortgage “assets” that seduced many banking institutions to purchase them.

The nation’s tax system is shot through with special breaks to various elements of the nation’s economy and includes the highest corporate tax of any nation on earth. It requires legions of lobbyists to maintain the special favors and it ignores the lower corporate tax rates that have made other nations more competitive than ours in the global marketplace.

The problem with America is not that it has millionaires and billionaires, but that it does not have more of them. They and other wealthy Americans pay the bulk of all income taxes while some forty percent of Americans pay nothing. That level of inequality is criminal. So is the tax system. It must be reformed as it threatens to make criminals of all who must deal with it.

The failure to reform Social Security and Medicare is yet another problem threatening the economy as a smaller workforce is required to pay for a growing aged population. A recent Rasmussen poll found that 64% of voters would prefer a government with fewer services and lower taxes. The findings are consistent with findings since 2006. Just 25% want more services.

The hollowing out of the nation’s military power is a major concern because a strong military is vital for the defense of the nation and, by extension, peace in the world.

Ours has a geriatric fleet of fighter and transport airplanes and a naval fleet that hasn’t been so small since the end of World War II. Our missile system is growing moldy in its silos. Our Army, Marines, National Guard and Reserves are worn out from constant rotations in and out the Middle Eastern conflicts in a world where asymmetrical warfare is the order of the day, not massed armies.

Our society is suffering from the erosion of the most fundamental tradition—marriage. The Obama administration announced it will not enforce the Defense of Marriage Act and the President’s endorsement of same-sex marriage is abhorrent.

Popular culture has degraded to films that are either cartoons or based on characters from comic books. Movies made for adults are becoming a vanishing genre. The nightly fare of situation comedies is filled with characters for whom casual sex is the norm. The nation remains a mecca for drugs at the same time our southern border remains superficially protected while drug cartels fill the streets of Mexico with the beheaded bodies of their rivals.

Our educational system has been so debased by the teacher’s unions since the 1960s that it is commonplace to learn that our children continue to lag behind all other nations in the fundamental knowledge of reading, writing, science, history and all other fields of knowledge on which a successful nation depends.

The nation’s unions are bankrupting states with their excessive demands for salaries, health care options, and pensions. They must be curbed and we are witnessing states like New Jersey and Wisconsin that have begun to reduce this drain on public treasuries.

Lastly, the programs advanced by wealthy environmental organizations such as Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, and others have imposed a vast matrix of laws and regulations that are putting at risk our ability to conduct any business enterprise. The Greens are successfully denying Americans access to reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas and have been seeking to erode property rights, the keystone of capitalism.

As the cartoon character, Pogo, once observed, “We have met the enemy and it is us.”

Specifically, it is a Congress and a federal government that spends more than it takes in, borrowing 40 cents of every dollar spent. That is unsustainable.

At this point I have identified a few good reasons for pessimism, but there is cause for optimism. Despite all the slurs hurled at it, the Tea Party movement that emerged to protest and to repeal Obamacare now has the active or tacit support of millions of Americans.

It will take decades to undo the damage that has been done, but it can be done and there are clear indications that most Americans have had enough of big government, big spending, and big borrowing.

We have just five months and a few weeks until November 6, Election Day. Turn out the usurper. Turn out the cowards in Congress who do not support Paul Ryan’s reforms. Be optimistic!

© Alan Caruba, 2012

Please don’t crash until after the election. Obama railed against deficits until he became radical record breaking big spender.

“Do people back home fully understand what I  just explained? That the Democrats in Washington that control the senate have not offered a budget in three and a half years, almost four years now. This government has spent close to $10 TRILLION dollars since the the budget was last passed by them” – Sen. Marco Rubio

For those who don’t like the Ryan budget for example, like the president, where’s their budget? Where is Harry Reid’s budget? Where is the Democrats in the senate’s budget?” – Sen. Marco Rubio  with Neil Cavuto

In 2004 Obama said the “monstrous” deficits were “an enormous problem” when the deficit was $413 billion. In 2008 he said increasing the debt would burden our children and was unpatriotic. Every year of his term deficits have been over a TRILLION dollars. By the end of his first term he will have increased the debt more than all other presidents combined. Can we afford four more years of two faced, self serving fiscal insanity?

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.” – Barack Obama

“Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, its time to try something new. Let’s invest in our people without leaving them a mountain of debt.” – President Barack Obama on his Office of Management and Budget website.

“We’re spending twice as much money as we did in 2001. If you go back 15 years our deficit this year is bigger than what our entire budget was. That’s how out of control the federal government is. … There is a political reason we’re not having a budget. Everybody understands that. Nobody’s going to say it. .. because we don’t want to make the hard choices in an election year.” – Sen. Dr. Coburn

Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen said our national debt is our greatest threat to national security.

“We’re spending twice as much money as we did in 2001. If you go back 15 years our deficit this year is bigger than what our entire budget was. That’s how out of control the federal government is. … There is a political reason we’re not having a budget. Everybody understands that. Nobody’s going to say it. .. because we don’t want to make the hard choices in an election year.” – Sen. Dr. Coburn

Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen said our national debt is our greatest threat to national security.

“Whether one believes leaves in a large, very active government or something more limited, mathematically, the amount of debt we already have and the terrifying rate at which it is accumulating will lead to national ruin,” Gov. Mitch Daniels

“Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.” -Alan Greenspan

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude.
If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds… [we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers… And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for [another]… till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery… And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.” – (Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people.” -  Friedrich Hayek

“Stripped of its academic jargon, the welfare state is nothing more than a mechanism by which governments confiscate the wealth of the productive members of a society to support a wide variety of welfare schemes. A substantial part of the confiscation is effected by taxation. But the welfare statists were quick to recognize that if they wished to retain political power, the amount of taxation had to be limited and they had to resort to programs of massive deficit spending, i.e., they had to borrow money,by issuing government bonds, to finance welfare expenditures on a large scale.” – Alan Greenspan

“A small debt produces a debtor; a large one, an enemy” – Publilius Syrus quotes (Roman author, 1st century B.C.)

“Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine governments and corrupt the people” – Wendell Phillips quotes (American Abolitionist and Orator whose eloquence helped fire the antislavery cause during the period leading up to the American Civil War. 1811-1884)

“The fact is, we’ll never build a lasting economic recovery by going deeper into debt at a faster rate than we ever have before. It took this nation 166 years until the middle of World War II to finally accumulate a debt of $95 billion.” – Ronald Reagan

“I have long argued that paying down the national debt is beneficial for the economy: it keeps interest rates lower than they otherwise would be and frees savings to finance increases in the capital stock, thereby boosting productivity and real incomes.” – Alan Greenspan

When asked why the markets haven’t reacted to the US being on the precipice of collapse, Erskine Bowles said its because the US economy is  “the best lookin’ horse in the glue factory.”

Alan Simpson (former senator from WY) and co-chair of Obama’s debt commission  said economic collapse will ‘be very swift and very dramatic’.

Former Treasury Secretary Rubin said the debt crisis could explode any minute.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations that our national debt is a national security risk echoing previous statements by Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen, head of U.S. intelligence – Dennis Blair, and all of America’s intelligence agencies.

“After the $700 billion bailout, the trillion-dollar stimulus, and the massive budget bill with over 9,000 earmarks, many of you implored Washington to please stop spending money we don’t have. But, instead of cutting, we saw an unprecedented explosion of government spending and debt, unlike anything we have seen in the history of our country.” – Michele Bachmann

“Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.” – Herbert Hoover

“There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.” – Richard Feynman

“Many respected economists and statesmen believe our national debt is neither unwieldy nor a dangerous burden on the country. The trouble is that a vast majority of the American people think otherwise…. It violates basic American ideas of thrift and money management. These strong public feelings cannot be ignored forever.” – Morris K. Udall

“The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to be careful to prevent their growth in our own.” – John Adams

“All of the problems we’re facing with debt are manmade problems. We created them. It’s called fantasy economics. Fantasy economics only works in a fantasy world. It doesn’t work in reality.” – Michele Bachmann

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’. The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.” – Joe Biden

“Mr. Obama plans to boost federal spending 25 percent while nearly tripling the national debt over 10 years. Americans know that this kind of spending will have economic consequences, including new taxes being imposed by the new progressives.” – Karl Rove

“I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater curse than any other.” -  James Madison

“A politician cannot spend one dime on any spending project without first taking that dime from the person who earned it. So, when a politician votes for a spending bill he is saying that he believes the government should spend that particular dollar rather than the individual who worked for it.” Neal Boortz.

“There is no such thing as government money – only taxpayer money.” William Weld, quoted in Readers Digest.

See your share of the debt and how fast it is rising.

From New York Times:

“The key decisions had essentially been made already when Gen. David H. Petraeus, in his last months as commander in Afghanistan, arrived in Washington with a set of options for the president that called for a slow withdrawal of surge troops. He wanted to keep as many troops as possible in Afghanistan through the next fighting season, with a steep drop to follow. Mr. Obama concluded that the Pentagon had not internalized that the goal was not to defeat the Taliban. He said he “believed that we had a more limited set of objectives that could be accomplished by bringing the military out at a faster clip,” an aide reported.” [emphasis added]

In the height of hypocrisy Obama takes money from Blackstone Capital which is set to profit billions from the ruined real estate market. No wonder they’re supporting Obama. ]]> http://usactionnews.com/2012/05/leftist-supporter-slams-obamas-ads-against-mitt/feed/ 0 http://usactionnews.com/2012/05/even-biased-polls-paint-poor-picture-for-obama-plan/ http://usactionnews.com/2012/05/even-biased-polls-paint-poor-picture-for-obama-plan/#comments Mon, 21 May 2012 10:48:34 +0000 Mike Whipple http://usactionnews.com/?p=21462 Obama was ahead among women voters by 49% – 43%, now, … Romney is ahead among women by 46% – 44%, .. an eight-point swing in one month. … The irony is that this poll, like so many others, is skewed to favor Obama.

By Roger Aronoff

The Obama campaign is complaining about the latest New York Times/CBS poll, because of its “methodology.” Their real complaint, however, is with the results. Whereas in April, the poll showed that in a general election match-up between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, Obama was ahead among women voters by 49% – 43%, now, in the latest poll, Romney is ahead among women by 46% – 44%, which is within the three-point margin of error, but represents an eight-point swing in one month. After the Sandra Fluke/contraception issue, and the whole “GOP war on women” theme pushed by Obama and his media allies, these numbers seemed surprising. But, in fact, they indicate that a majority of women aren’t buying it.

The part of the poll that upset the Obama campaign even more was the percentage of those polled who believe that Obama made his decision to announce his support for gay marriage for political reasons. That number was 67% versus only 24% who said they believe he did it “mostly because he thinks it is right.” That is hugely significant, and it is a gap, a credibility gap, that reverberates throughout the Obama administration.

The White House’s reliable mouthpiece, Chuck Todd, of MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown,” said that the poll was “a callback survey, not a traditional poll.” This point was also made by Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter, in an interview with Todd. She questioned the methodology. Yet this same poll matched its highest approval rating for Obama in more than two years, 50%, except for a bump he got after the death of Osama bin Laden in May of last year.

The irony is that this poll, like so many others, is skewed to favor Obama. Of those interviewed, 27% generally considered themselves Republican, 35% considered themselves Democrats, and 34% considered themselves independent. And most do not agree with Obama that the economy is getting better. In fact, 63% believe it’s getting worse or is not getting better, and only 36% believe it’s getting better, which is actually an improvement for Obama. By a 46% to 43% margin, they would vote for Romney over Obama if the election were held now. And this is a group in which 45% have a favorable opinion of Obama, while only 31% have the same feeling about Romney. It goes without saying that polls are a snapshot in time, and will certainly move in both directions in the months leading up to the election. And there are other polls showing Obama with a double-digit lead in the gender gap. But this is significant because it comes at a time when the Obama campaign has ramped up, and made a strong push to win over women voters. The media have clearly carried their message for them.

Obama’s Evolution Toward Gay Marriage

It has been obvious for a long time that Obama, despite his public statements to the contrary, did not oppose gay marriage. But now John Heilemann, the liberal columnist writing in New York magazine, has confirmed the extent of the duplicity. According to Heilemann, “Barack Obama knew the ludicrous pretense that his views on the issue were ‘evolving’ was living on borrowed time. Surely some reporter would ask soon enough if Obama would have signed the bill were he in Cuomo’s loafers. The president informed his senior advisers that the answer was yes (duh). And thus, the only question was whether to endorse gay marriage publicly before Election Day or try to stall until thereafter. After months of internal deliberations, Obama rendered his decision early this year. ‘He was clear,’ a top White House official tells me. ‘He said, ‘If I get the question, I’m gonna have to answer it, and if I don’t, we gotta figure out the best way to do it [before November 6].’”

As a matter of fact, when they were asked about it back in late March by Greg Sargent of The Washington Post, the answer from the administration was that “The President and the President alone will come to a decision.” He obviously didn’t feel the need at that time, as Heilemann suggested, to come clean.

So for the past year, Obama now claims, he has known he was going to make the announcement that his evolution on this issue was complete. But while saying he now supported same-sex marriage, he in fact endorsed a state’s right to decide, with no plan to push federal legislation, other than a tepid call for the repeal of DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act. It was apparently a purely political calculation of when the time was right to make the announcement for maximum political gain. Frankly, that claim is not very credible. The more likely scenario is that he planned to announce it after the November election, but with Vice President Joe Biden’s gaffe, meaning that he inadvertently revealed his and the President’s position, Obama’s hand was forced.

So how to explain the President’s dwindling gender gap? “The answer isn’t all that complicated,” argues Jonathan Tobin of Commentary magazine. “Though some liberals may be convinced there is a GOP war on women, most aren’t buying it any more than they believe the president’s flip-flop on gays was a principled stand. Whatever their positions on social issues, most women seem to believe that the economy and the well-being of their families is their primary concern and on that score, Obama has lost their confidence. And it’s not clear that it can be won back by ginning up fake controversies that are transparent attempts to demonize Obama’s opponents.”

Obama’s Growing Credibility Gap

This credibility gap extends to many other areas as well. Does Obama really believe in the Afghanistan mission as it has been carried out, or was it another political calculation centered around Election Day 2012? At the time he announced the troop surge in Afghanistan, which fell significantly short of the numbers sought by his generals on the ground, he also announced a timetable for pulling out the troops. On top of that, during his public flip-flop on the gay marriage question, talking to ABC’s Robin Roberts, Obama stated that the troops are “out there fighting on my behalf,” rather than on the country’s behalf, again highlighting the Obama-as-narcissist theme.

Obama’s credibility was further damaged when it was discovered and publicized by the Heritage Foundation that he was inserting himself into the biographies on the White House website of nearly every president of the past century, with favorable comparisons. Specifically, at the end of the bio of every president since Calvin Coolidge, the Obama White House has added a comment under a section titled, “Did you know?” In each case it was an attempt to gain stature or political advantage for Obama by taking something that they had done as president, and bragged how he was building or expanding on it.

In the case of Ronald Reagan, Obama tried to make it seem that he would have endorsed Obama’s so called Buffett Rule that he is hoping to get passed. Here is what was added to Reagan’s biography: “In a June 28, 1985, speech, Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multimillionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule.” Investor’s Business Daily (IBD), citing Reagan’s son Michael, called this “a bold-faced lie.” They wrote, “Rather than raising the capital-gains tax on successful investors or punishing wealthy people—which are Obama’s priorities—Reagan wanted full-bore pro-growth tax reform that would slash rates for everyone, simplify the tax system with only two brackets and eliminate tax shelters that allowed people to avoid paying any taxes at all.”

The White House attempted to explain this away through an anonymous source telling The New York Times that “We simply added links at the bottom of each page to related whitehouse.gov content, which is a commonly used best practice to encourage people to browse more pages on a site.” IBD saw it somewhat differently: “What we have here is an Orwellian rewriting of history akin to the fictional Winston Smith doing it on a daily basis for the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s novel 1984.”

It is an appalling example of narcissism and political gamesmanship, and just bad form. It is something you would expect from Hugo Chavez, or the former Dear Leader in North Korea. It is not fitting for a U.S. president to insinuate himself into other official presidential biographies for propaganda purposes when he has temporary control of the White House website. Especially when the added notations are provably false. While the liberal media are ignoring the story, the conservative media’s reaction ranges from amusement, to disbelief, to outrage.

Obama also has a credibility problem with regard to his position on Israel. As he and the State Department have evolved from supporting Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital, to calling it a subject for final status negotiations; to releasing $147 million to the Palestinian Authority, overriding a congressional freeze on those funds; to making demands of Israel on borders and settlements that have never been made; to embracing the Muslim Brotherhood, which spawned Hamas and other terrorist groups, many have serious questions about whether Obama is as supportive of Israel as he sometimes claims, particularly when speaking to Jewish groups. Should we expect to see increased pressure on Israel if he is re-elected in November? We know what he told Dmitry Medvedev to pass along to Russian president Putin about cooperating with Russia on their concerns about our missile defense plans: “This is my last election,” Obama said while not aware there was a live mic nearby. “After my election, I have more flexibility.”

Based on how “flexible” Obama has already been with the election ahead of him, how flexible would he be if gets re-elected?•

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media. He can be contacted at roger.aronoff@aim.org.

“The man who today occupies the White House and is running for president is a very different person. We have not seen such a divisive figure in modern American history.” – Sen. Marco Rubio speaking in Columbia, South Carolina.