Quick Hits - May 26, 2012

Kicking off today's QH with two excellent videos.....

First up, the latest of Bill Whittle's Afterburner series, 'Into the Sea'...

The second was forwarded to me by a reader - 'Operation Hot Mike' from American Crossroads....

The Weekly Standard has a very good effort that links the domestic job crisis and the record of President Obama in a method that uses one of the standard rhetorical fallacies of the progressives.  In progressive-speak, if they want to increase government spending (or that of a particular program) by 5% and the GOP advocates only a 2% spending increase, then we're not increasing spending, but cutting or 'slashing' spending.  It's a cut or 'slash' because the desired increase is not being received - and the increase amount is less. 

If one would apply common sense, if one party advocates a 5% spending increase, and the other is advocating a 2% increase, observers should be able to agree that spending is increasing.  For a cut or 'slash' to be achieved, one party would need to be advocating a 5% increase while the other would need to be advocating for a 2% reduction from the CURRENT LEVEL of spending.

In this Weekly Standard article, they use the progressive's logic to highlight the President's abysmal job record - not by focusing on jobs lost, but by focusing on jobs not created because of the policies of this President....

One way we can track that is by using the employment-population ratio, provided every month by the government. This is the broadest metric of employment in this country, and the peak during the last recovery was 63.5 percent of the adult, civilian, non-institutional population. If we had held constant at that level, we would have about 154 million people currently employed. As it stands, we have about 142 million people currently employed. So that is a jobs deficit of 12 million people:

Problem is, with the convoluted 'logic' of the progressives, they want it both ways.  Like with DNC Chair, the dim Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who puts progressive logic in the forefront as she tries to differentiate the jobs lost when Obama 'saved' the auto industry and when Romney's Bain Capital eliminated jobs trying to 'save' struggling companies....

Huh?

Then there is this from DWS as she tells C-SPAN that the heated recall battle in Wisconsin is not that big of a deal - and there would be no major repercussions to the Democrats if Scott Walker survives the recall effort....

“I think, honestly, there aren’t going to be any repercussions,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said in a broad-ranging interview on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers.”


“It’s an election that’s based in Wisconsin. It’s an election that I think is important nationally because Scott Walker is an example of how extreme the tea party has been when it comes to the policies that they have pushed the Republicans to adopt,” Wasserman Schultz said. “But I think it’ll be, at the end of the day, a Wisconsin-based election, and like I said, across the rest of the country and including in Wisconsin, President Obama is ahead.”

That just has to thrill the union base of the Democrat party - the same union base that donated some $400 million in the 2008 election cycle.

It seems that DWS's repeated gaffe's are causing some problems - and she may be on her way out as the DNC Chair since President Obama is reportedly becoming increasingly irritated by the gaffe's which he sees as galvanizing Republican opposition and costing his campaign independents...

During Obama's trip to Florida, not only was Schultz stripped of her previously held honor of introducing the president before his speeches, he barely acknowledged her presence.


In fact, Shark Tank's source said Obama addressed Shultz personally on her destructive activities, telling her it’s not about her, it’s about him.


“Don’t forget, you work for me.”

That's right, it's all about the narcissist in chief.

The UK Telegraph is taking a look at the 2012 Presidential campaign in a manner that few US based publications are - noting that the similarities of 2012 to 1980 are increasing - with Barack Obama facing his Jimmy Carter moment as his campaign and policies become more Carteresque...

Obama’s re-election is no longer guaranteed; some pollsters think it is unlikely. Day by day, the odds are improving that Mitt Romney will be the next President of the United States.


What changed? For a start, voters are getting gloomier about the economy. Joblessness remains high and debt is out of control. According to one poll released this week, only 33 per cent of Americans expect the economy to improve in the coming months and only 43 per cent approve of the way that the president has handled it. Voters think Obama has made the debt situation and health care worse. The man who conducted the poll – Democrat Peter Hart – concluded that “Obama’s chances for re-election… are no better than 50-50.”


The president has tried to distract from America’s economic misery by playing up the so-called culture war.

…

In 1980, Democratic president Jimmy Carter faced an uphill struggle for re-election. Yet, despite an index of inflation and unemployment far higher than Obama’s, he was actually doing slightly better in the polls. In March of that year, Carter led his Republican opponent, Ronald Reagan, by around 25 per cent. By May, Gallup gave him a lead of 49 to 41 per cent – higher than Obama’s today. Carter’s advantage evaporated in the months that followed, but he regained ground in October and by the last week he was running even.


None the less, Carter eventually suffered a landslide defeat. The scale of his humiliation was hidden by the fact that people were unwilling to commit themselves to the conservative Ronald Reagan until the very last minute. It was only when they went into the polling booth and weighed up all the hurt and humiliation of the past four years that they cast their vote against the president. It looks like Barack Obama will be the Jimmy Carter of 2012.

Is an Obama reelection, once thought a done deal by some, really starting to look unlikely? On Monday, I will be posting my 'Wargaming the 2012 Election, Part II' where I update the look I took in December 2011 at the electoral college and the battle to 270.

Does this help or hurt President Obama? Half of all US households are receiving government benefits.

Is this, as Bill Whittle references in his video above, part of the 'long stall from 40,000 feet into the cold dark sea'?

The financial blog Zerohedge has a couple of superb posts today that apply towards a look back at 1980, a new look at the policies of Obama / Progressives today, and adds in the linkage of these with the Eurocrisis.

The first is the progressive policy model of Keynesian economics and Eugenics, and adds to one of the points I press - that theory isn't like the real world, or as its referenced here...nature.

While eugenicists and Keynesians make correct descriptive observations — like the fact that certain qualities and traits are inheritable, or more simply that children are like their parents — their attempts to use the state as a mechanism to control these natural systems often turns out to be drastically worse than the natural systems that they seek to replace.

...

No planner is smarter than nature...

The second offers advice from the esteemed historian Niall Ferguson who reminds us that Greece is the symptom, not the cause of the Eurocrisis...

In a brief clip from a lengthier discussion between historian Niall Ferguson and ex-Greek PM George Papandreou at this week's Zeitgeist conference, the effusive Englishman lays out perfectly what many are missing with regard to Europe: "Greece is not the problem - it is a symptom of a much more profound malaise that affects the entire monetary union." - just as Lehman Brothers was not the 'cause' of the US's problems. The wasted energy spent moralizing about the 'work habits' of Mediterranean citizens as being the problem is incorrect as this is a European-wide problem - a systemic crisis of European banking and public finance. Papandreou pipes in by noting, in typical toe-the-line manner, that Germany must swerve (in the game of chicken) or there is a major danger of disintegration because "there will be contagion".

The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, is talking as tough as Germany and the Bundesbank, when it comes to the Greek bailout, austerity, and the upcoming Greek elections...

The International Monetary Fund has ratcheted up the pressure on crisis-hit Greece after its managing director, Christine Lagarde, said she has more sympathy for children deprived of decent schooling in sub-Saharan Africa than for many of those facing poverty in Athens.


In an uncompromising interview with the Guardian, Lagarde insists it is payback time for Greece and makes it clear that the IMF has no intention of softening the terms of the country's austerity package.


Using some of the bluntest language of the two-and-a-half-year debt crisis, she says Greek parents have to take responsibility if their children are being affected by spending cuts. "Parents have to pay their tax," she says.

Shifting to the Middle East Region, Mark Steyn asks us what does the troubled Facebook IPO and the first stages of Egypt's Presidential elections which took place earlier this week have in common?

A century ago, the west exported its values. So, in Farouk's Egypt, at the start of a new legislative session, the king was driven to his toy town parliament to deliver the speech from the throne in an explicit if ramshackle simulacrum of Westminster's rituals of constitutional monarchy.


Today, we decline to export values, and complacently assume, as the very term "Facebook Revolution" suggests, that technology marches in support of modernity. It doesn't. Facebook's flat IPO and Egypt's presidential election are in that sense part of the same story, of a developed world whose definitions of innovation and achievement have become too shrunken and undernourished. The vote in Egypt tells us a lot about them, but it also tells us something about us.

In another 'read it all' essay, Victor Davis Hanson addresses this meme as well in "Winning Battles, Losing Wars'...

Are U.S. arms and influence without ground troops able to see those laudable aims realized, or would a post-Assad Syria end up like Libya or Egypt—and would that still be better or worse than the present-day Syria, for us, for Christians and other minorities, for Israel, etc.? It is not enough to state the obvious: Assad is a U.S. enemy and a monster who is killing his own; we have the ability to take him out; ergo, we should.


Yet the same calculus applies to dozens of renegade states. If some advisor, pundit, general, or senator wants to go into Syria, then he must explain why Syria is more important than, say, the Congo or Somalia or the Sudan (or that we are following strategic self-interest in the Middle East, not humanitarianism)—and why we can leave the nation a far better place than under Assad, and how that is possible, given the nature of the dissidents and the fact it is the Middle East.


Remember, there is also an ironclad law about the Middle East, one we keep forgetting: Arab intellectuals (many of them educated or residing in Western universities) hate the U.S. for backing dictators; they hate the U.S. for intervening to remove them; they hate the U.S. for trying to impose postbellum democracy upon them; and they hate the U.S. for staying clear and letting Arabs be Arabs on their own.

In Syria, government troops have shelled a string of villages in country's center before pro-regime groups swept through the area, shooting people in the streets and in their homes in attacks that killed more than 90 people. This represents some of the bloodiest attacks by the regime against civilians in the nearly 15 months since the demonstrations started.

UN monitor are also reporting that the Syrian forces executed entire families in their homes...

What are we, and the rest of the international community to do with these reports? Or the fact that despite the economic sanctions, the Iranians and Syrians are working to evade the sanctions and sell oil, while Russia continues to provide the regime with new arms shipments.

This Day in History

1907 - Iconic actor, John Wayne, is born in Winterset, Iowa

1940 - Hundreds of Royal Navy and civilian yachts and vessels cross the English Channel to the area around the French port of Dunkirk to begin the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force and allied French troops.  With a rear guard trying to hold off the German Army, and under relentless bombardment by the German Luftwaffe, these ships and yachts, under cover of the Royal Air Force,  would evacuate 340,000 troops from the Continent to Britain - although without virtually all of their heavy equipment.  The 'Miracle of Dunkirk' was a powerful morale booster for the British in the wake of the massively successful German invasion of France.

1978 - The first legal casino on the US East Coast opened in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Quick Hits - May 25, 2012

Alexis Tsipras, the leftist leader who is very likely to be the next Greek Prime Minister says that his country is involved in a 'Cold War' over austerity with Germany and the United Kingdom.  Using terminology similar to the invocation of 'Mutual Assured Destruction', Tsipras continued to use brinkmanship in his rhetoric where he is expecting Germany to back down on its demands that Greece honors the austerity measures agreed to on condition of its multi-billion Euro bailout - and still send the billions even as Greece fails to change the ways which brought the country to this point.

Greece is currently expected to introduce 11 billion euros of austerity measures by the end of June, but Tsipras said this was simply not possible because of the country's "destroyed economy."


"Do you actually think they would be able to implement these measures?" he said. "The problem is the austerity measures which have failed."

He has no idea what austerity is because Europe has not embraced austerity.  All he is looking for is for the status quo to continue - were wealthier European countries continue to give his country funds even though they can never pay those funds back, and they are unwilling to change the irresponsible fiscal practices which created this situation.

As the WSJ notes about 'Greece's False Austerity'....

The Greek government has been practicing a particularly aggressive form of antigrowth austerity. While the private sector shrank in 2011, Greece's government grew to 49.7% of GDP from 49.6% in 2010. To accomplish this bad outcome, Greece's government increased its value-added tax to 23%—a hidden sales tax so high that no one should be asked to pay it or support it—and created a national property tax that transfers private-sector wealth to the government and through it to foreign creditors.


Meanwhile, Greece's parliament kept full pay, full benefits, its fleet of BMWs, and a full staff. Greece maintained its sweetheart subsidies for businesses, banks, the army and those who choose not to work. Its sizeable delegations and facilities in Brussels, Vienna, Geneva and Washington are still large, as are the life-time pensions for politicians. Last week, Greek officials suspended work on the sale of government assets, one of the most pro-growth conditions in its IMF program.


The reality is that Greece's government is imposing too much austerity on others and not enough on itself. The U.S. is making the same mistake. Yet the big-government branch of economics in France and the U.S. argues that the problem in Greece is too much austerity even though there hasn't been much true austerity on the government.

With the refusal of the Greek government (and people) to actually change their direction away from the socialistic system that they've embraced for decades, they are betting that the rest of the EU will do whatever they can to avoid the pain today.  This looks to be a monumental gamble that will fail.

Germany's Bundesbank has sparked fresh worries over Greece's eurozone future, by claiming than a Greek exit from the single currency would be "manageable".


In a monthly report that has spooked investors, sending the euro tumbling as low as $1.2579 in the last few minutes, the German central bank urged European countries not to cave in over its austerity programme. That, the Bundesbank said, would "damage confidence in all euro area agreements".

The Bundesbank said:

Greece is threatening not to implement the reform and consolidation measures that were agreed in return for the large-scale aid programmes.


This jeopardises the continued provision of assistance. Greece would have to bear the consequences of such a scenario. The challenges this would create for the euro area and for Germany would be considerable but manageable given prudent crisis management.

A report issued by Bank of America Merrill Lynch provided some additional ammunition towards the Greek brinkmanship...

"Our euro area economists have highlighted the possibility of a circa 4pc decline in euro area GDP in the event of a Greek exit. Even with a moderate degree of fiscal loosening, we think that could threaten a circa 2pc decline in UK GDP," warned a report issued by the Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

The report goes on to say that while British banks have little direct risk in the event of the Greek default and exit from the Euro, the collateral damage to Britain from it's connections with EU banks will cause the challenges and deepen the double-dip recession that Britain appears to be entering.

In Spain, in addition to major banks requiring new capital infusions in order to remain viable, one of it's wealthiest areas, Catalonia, has indicated that it cannot pay its obligations as that country's economic condition worsens and borrowing costs soar. The autonomous region is seeking a major bailout from the central government. The region represents 20% of the overall Spanish economy.

The New York Times economist and columnist, Paul Krugman has repeatedly said that the challenges in Europe exist not because governments are spending well beyond their means, but that they are failing to go far enough towards spending and borrowing to stimulate their national economies.  The UK's Telegraph hammers this 'simplistic Keynesian based solution' for the Euro crisis and the UK's double dip recession in a essay deliciously titled, 'Britain Can't Afford to Fall for the Charms of the False Economic Messiah Paul Krugman'...

But haven’t we already tried borrowing to stimulate? And what did it deliver other than fiscal ruin, which in the eurozone periphery is so serious that markets have stopped lending altogether? Krugman has an answer for these questions, too. It’s not the policy that was wrong, merely that the stimulus wasn’t big and sustained enough. As for the eurozone, again, it wasn’t the policy, but the euro. Countries with their own currencies and central banks won’t run into this kind of problem. In extremis, they can always print the money.


Easy peasy, then. What’s not to like? Well, I’m sorry, but I just don’t buy it. It may or may not be possible for a vast, largely internalised economy such as the US, with its reserve currency status, to run double-digit deficits into the indefinite future without adverse consequences, but for the UK it is a much more questionable policy.

This is definitely in the 'read it all' category.

There is a disturbing pattern at work here. Krugman, one of the most vehement Keynesian advocates, basically says that the reason that the Eurozone is in trouble is that it's never been really committed to a full embracing of Keynesian economics. Note - the policy / theory isn't wrong, it's in the implementation - that the government spending stimulus wasn't big enough or sustained long enough.

Ask a Socialist / Marxist / Progressive as to why every previous implementation of that political ideology has resulted in economic crisis and failure, and they will tell you that the problem is not with Socialism, Marxism, or Progressivism, but in the implementation of it...they were never fully committed or thoroughly implemented. Some compromise or fundamental mistake always took place in the implementation...but the theory is perfect.

In the battle between advocates of the Keynesian economic model and the Austrian economic model, true Keynesians continue to push the tripe that the reason Keynesian implementations have not succeeded is not because they are fundamentally flawed and unviable in the real world (but makes a compelling theory when abstractly reviewed outside of real world effects) but because they weren't, as Krugman contends, not 'big and sustained enough'.

Look at the United States. In March 2009, the President and his economic advisers said that we needed a $800+ billion stimulus to 'jump start the economy' and prevent the unemployment level from exceeding 8%. Using the Democratic supermajority in Congress, this was rammed through creating the first ever trillion dollar annual federal deficit. GDP growth continued to stagnate. Unemployment soared into the double digits. In the next fiscal year, government spending grew even more - but there was no change. The same with the 2011 fiscal year spending - the nation barely realized a GDP growth and with the Administration cooking the books in the calculation of the unemployment numbers, we still had a real unemployment in the double digits. President Obama's embracing of Keynesian economics led to spending $5 trillion more than the government brought in in 39 months - and this has only deepened our economic and debt crisis.

The Heritage Foundation's 2012 Federal Budget in Pictures....

Still, the President, struggling in the polls (even when they are rigged in his favor with +8 or more Democrat oversampling), is appearing desperate and delusional as he tries to spin his record in office...

Stephen Moore, of the Wall Street Journal, eviscerates Obama's claim that he is not a big spender...

It's clear that this is not the effects of the ravings of a deluded Rex Nutting, but that Nutting was a willing dupe for the latest Obama reelection campaign meme to put lipstick on the pig of a record the President has - and blame George W. Bush for that pig of a record. As many elements of the mainstream media trip over themselves to assist, like Politifact anointing the President's revisionist history as correct, at least one element of the mainstream media is calling BS on this. Glenn Kessler, the 'fact checker' for the Washington Post, when he looks at this claim, gives it three (out of four) Pinocchio's. Only three? It warranted five.

6 months ago, during the bitter GOP Presidential primary battle, Democrats gleefully speculated that the GOP would be divided and unable to unify in a manner to effectively challenge the Messiah, Barack Hussein Obama, in November 2012.

Today, the GOP is unifying around the presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney and its Barack Obama and the Democrats who like they are in trouble come November.  The latest signs of an impending civil war in the Democrat party and it's base comes from the recall election of Republican Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin...with the unions leading the recall effort starting to lash out at the President and other Washington Democrats for not doing enough to help them.

Top union officials are lashing out at Washington Democrats, claiming they haven't done enough to help them unseat Gov. Scott Walker (R) in Wisconsin's recall election.


President Obama has been silent on the race since his campaign released a statement endorsing Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D) immediately after his primary victory two weeks ago. The Obama campaign is helping Barrett with get out the vote operations, but the president has not publicly mentioned the race.

…

When asked about national Democrats' support in the recall election, another union official scoffed.
"Labor has always been there for the national Democratic Party. The national Democratic Party should be there for labor in this instance. They're not," he said.


The official said that what happened in the recall election would likely bleed over into the presidential election.


"I think they would want their voters energized and motivated for November. To me, it's just short-sighted," the official said.

Even Politico, becoming one of the loudest pro-Obama voices, is noting that the Obama campaign is sputtering - not firing on all cylinders...

So nothing inspires more angst than when that same Obama stumbles, as he has leaving the gate in 2012.


That’s the unmistakable reality for Democrats since Obama officially launched his re-election campaign three weeks ago. Obama, not Mitt Romney, is the one with the muddled message — and the one who often comes across as baldly political. Obama, not Romney, is the one facing blowback from his own party on the central issue of the campaign so far – Romney’s history with Bain Capital. And most remarkably, Obama, not Romney, is the one falling behind in fundraising.

We're seeing far more mistakes being made by the Obama campaign team this year than they did in 2007-8. We're also seeing far more weakness with one of the more important aspects of the Obama base. Not so much with the rabid progressives of the environmental movement or the union leadership (but this could change as a result of Wisconsin), but with the blue collar, rank and file, Democrats...many who would have been Reagan democrats in 1980. The Carteresque economic conditions and the President's continued insistence to treble down on the same economic policies while expecting different results will continue to not play well with the non-ideologues and independents.

Maryland is offering us another lesson in the effects of progressive taxation policies....

Last week the legislature in Annapolis enacted another huge tax increase, this time hitting anyone earning more than $100,000 ($150,000 for couples). This isn't a tax on the 1%. It's a tax on the top 14%.
Readers may recall that when Mr. O'Malley first raised taxes, in 2007, he said he could balance the budget on the backs of the rich. That didn't work out so well. The number of millionaires fell sharply in the state, whether because of the recession or because they sought tax shelters or simply fled to lower-tax states. Revenues came in far below projections, and the deficit forecast ballooned. (See "Millionaires Go Missing," May 26, 2009.)


So Mr. O'Malley is now going where the real money is—the middle class. The highest state-local combined income tax rate will rise to 8.95% from 8.7% and 7.95% when Mr. O'Malley became Governor, giving Maryland one of the highest rates in the nation. About 300,000 Maryland filers reported six-figure incomes last year.
…
The alternative would be to reduce state spending to match current revenues, especially in a state where spending has grown to $35 billion from $28 billion since 2007. But most Democrats and their union allies denounced an alternative plan to avoid the tax hike and allow spending to grow by $700 million, or 2%, as a "doomsday budget." The tax bill ties the new revenues to a pay raise for public-employee unions. Mr. O'Malley says government services are "severely undercapitalized," as if Maryland households aren't.


The progressive tax ratchet—the racket—is to pretend government can squeeze more money from the rich than is possible, then spend the imaginary windfall, then when deficits persist claim there's no choice but to raise taxes on the upper middle class and eventually on everyone who has income to tax. This is why Californians making as little as $48,000 pay a tax rate of 9.3%.

Reports are coming out that the President and his team have been providing unprecedented access, including access to classified information, to a Hollywood team that is hard at work developing for an October release a movie celebrating the President's 'gutsy call' to launch the Seal mission which killed Osama Bin Laden. The 'in-kind' campaign donation is intended to highlight the President's foreign policy success.

This does not appear the first time that the President or his team have released classified information in order to gain politically. In part of their football spike of the Bin Laden raid, they released information that a Pakistani doctor in Abbottabad provided critical assistance identifying the compound that Bin Laden occupied. The Pakistani tribal government in the region expressed their thanks to the Doctor by arresting him and charging him with treason. In a show trial, they found him guilty of assisting the US and sentenced him to 33 years in prison.

A Senate committee outraged over Pakistan imprisoning a doctor who led the U.S. to Usama bin Laden engaged Thursday in some dollar diplomacy by voting to cut aid to the country by $33 million.


The amount equals $1 million for every year of Dr. Shakil Afridi’s 33-year-long sentence for high treason.


The doctor ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden's presence at the compound in Abbottabad where U.S. commandos found and killed the Al Qaeda leader in May 2011.


“All of us are outraged at the imprisonment and sentence of some 33 years, virtually a death sentence to the doctor," said Arizona Sen. John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “It frankly outraged all of us.”

The Administration's response? Crickets chirping..

The scandal around Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat candidate for Senate in Massachusetts, who has falsely claimed to be a Native American, continues to grow despite her efforts to move on from it.

More lies are being uncovered in the story of Warren who started listing herself as a Native American as her career brought her into Ivy League institutions....including that she listed herself as Native American at least three years earlier at Harvard - just as she was being considered for tenure...

Breitbart News has uncovered exclusive new evidence that in the spring of 1993, three years before Harvard Law School first publicly stated she was “a woman of color,” Elizabeth Warren likely made that claim while teaching at Harvard, and at approximately the same time the faculty was considering her for a tenured position. Warren, now running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, told Politico as recently as May 15 that she had “no idea” why a Harvard Law School spokesman called her a “woman of color” in a 1996 Harvard Crimson article and a 1997 Fordham Law Review article. However, a 1993 issue of the Harvard Women’s Law Journal suggests that she knew very well indeed.

Warren has now taken to stonewalling - as evidenced in this with a local TV reporter...

The clip here shows two minutes of back and forth but, according to this report, there was more:


Finally, Warren said, “I am proud of my family and I am proud of my heritage.”


Hiller followed up: “Does it include an Indian background?”


Warren replied, “Yes.”


“How do you know that?” Hiller asked.


Warren responded, “Because my mother told me so. This is how I live. My mother, my grandmother, my family. This is my family. Scott Brown has launched attacks on my family. I am not backing off from my family.”


Better than a document, better even than DNA: Family lore. Give her credit for staying on message here, though. The strategists and spin doctors have now programmed her to respond to all ancestry inquiries with repeated and relentless invocations of the “middle class,” which is as important to her campaign narrative as “jobs” is to Romney’s. Unless something new and more damning bubbles up in this vein that she has to explain away, I doubt she’ll respond on the merits again.

Even the Boston Globe, which up to now has steadfastly defended Warren, calling the attacks 'orchestrated' by the Boston Herald, is now turning on her and her unsubstantiated claim... 

Both of these stories establish a turning point for Warren, and maybe a fatal one -- especially with her powerhouse local paper, the Boston Globe. Once the media digs their teeth into something like this, out of sheer pride and the universal disgust we all share in the face of being deceived, the media can be reluctant to let go, even if it goes against their own partisan interests.


The media also knows that Warren could be fatally hurt by this scandal and that the sooner she comes clean, the better her chances are against Scott Brown. So their motives here aren't entirely pure.


The thin corrupt line between Democrats and electoral defeat is almost always the mainstream media. Republicans can with the media against them and usually have to, but without the corrupt media on their side, Democrats lose elections at something close to a 100% rate. The media knows this, Democrats know this, and this is why New Media has to work so damn hard to push legitimate stories into the MSM's narrative.

One final note - do read Patterico's blog post for today - and then check out Michelle Malkin's site as well as Hot Air and Ace of Spades...

Free speech needs to be defended.


This Day in History

1660 - The English Restoration - the exiled King Charles II, lands at Dover to assume the throne and end 11 years of military rule over Britain.

1787 - The Constitutional Convention, with George Washington presiding, begins in Philadelphia to develop a replacement for the Articles of Confederation which united America's 13 states.

1861 - President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War - insisting that he needed to suspend the rules in order to put down the rebellion in the South.

1977 - Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope opens...

1979 - American Airlines Flight 191, a DC-10 flying from Chicago's O'Hare Airport to Los Angeles crashes shortly after takeoff after losing it's left engine and pylon, killing all 277 people onboard in addition to 2 others on the ground.  An American Airlines maintenance crew was found to have failed to follow proper procedures for the removal / replacement of the engine and pylon during repair and maintenance work.  The loss of the engine and pylon combined with the wing damage inflicted caused the aircraft to crash.  This crash remains the worst in the US, and one of the 10 worst in aviation history in terms of lives lost.

1983 - Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi opens....and sets a new opening day box office sales record.

Quick Hits - May 23 & May 24, 2012

Time to catch up on the posts....

Tuesday was another primary day.  The biggest news from the primary were not the results of the GOP primaries, but of the Democrat primaries.  Several weeks after a convicted felon garnered 41% of the Democrat vote in West Virginia, President Obama faced new challenges and signs of weakness in the Kentucky and Arkansas primaries.  In Kentucky, 42% of the Democrat voters selected 'Uncommitted' instead of voting for the President.  Meanwhile, in Arkansas, an obscure attorney running against President Obama, gained a similar share of the Democrat vote in that state.

Progressive spin merchants are hard at work trying to explain away this new trend of Democrat votes away from the President - and that these are not signs of real trouble for the President 5 1/2 months before the election.

More signs of trouble?  The levels that the progressive press are willing to take to redefine the President so that he and his policies have the appearances of being successful and popular.  There are three new major initiatives that are astounding in just how far they are willing to go to ignore reality and define a false perception as the 'truth'.

The first comes courtesy of the Washington Post in the guise of the latest Washington Post / ABC News poll.  As the WaPo breathlessly touts in their first article announcing the poll results...

After months of aggressive campaigning on jobs and the economy, President Obama and Mitt Romney, his likely Republican challenger, are locked in a dead heat over who could fix the problem foremost on voters’ minds, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.


The parity on economic issues foreshadows what probably will continue to be a tough and negative campaign. Overall, voters would be split 49 percent for Obama and 46 percent for Romney if the November election were held now. On handling the economy, they are tied at 47 percent.

Locked in a dead heat...but with Obama leading and apparently well positioned for another 4 year term as the President.

The problem is, like the last Washington Post / ABC News poll that project a tight race with an Obama victory, the poll offers a few head shaking details - and evidence of more shenanigans by the Washington Post to ensure that the results fit their agenda.

As the Investor's Business Daily noted in their review of this latest poll...

-- Only 16% of Americans say their economic situation has improved under Barack Obama's reign. Fully 30% say their situation is worse. Yet 49% of these 1,004 registered voters back Obama's reelection, while 46% prefer Mitt Romney.


-- Barely one-third of Americans (34%) blame Obama for the ongoing economic problems while nearly half (49%) blame George W. Bush, who hasn't been around the Oval Office in his tie and coat for 1,218 days.


-- The poll reports that the man having the better personal character to be president is Obama, 52%-38%, over Romney. Not kidding here.


-- Of those Americans who say the economy is "not so good," 58% still support the guy who added nearly a trillion stimulus dollars to the national debt to little noticeable effect.


-- In terms of who "better represents your personal values," Obama beats Romney 47% to 43%.


-- Unemployment has been above 8% for the longest period in three-quarters of a century. So in terms of better understanding the economic problems people are enduring, the Democrat president who's presided over the last 40 months beats Romney, 48%-40%.

But fundamentally, the Washington Post / ABC News poll has been rigged by the organizations...rigged by selecting a poll sample that has absolutely no relationship with reality. This is done via a huge oversample of Democrats compared to Republicans - where Democrats outnumber the Republicans 32 to 22....a 10 point oversample. Even in the perfect storm election of 2008, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 7 points. We're supposed to believe that this year, after 2010, and three years of economic stagnation, the enthusiasm for Democrats is a 45% higher?!

We're not supposed to 'see' this massive oversample...or factor the massive oversample in the end results of the poll, which shows that Obama is leading Romney 49 to 46 among registered voters. Left unsaid is - what would be the real results of the poll if the Democrats were sampled only 2 or 3 points higher than Republicans? Would it still show an Obama lead - and support a conclusion that he is likely to win in November? I don't think so.

Jumping on the same dishonest bandwagon is NBC News which is touting their latest NBC News / Marist poll which shows that Barack Obama is defeating Mitt Romney in three extremely critical swing states - Ohio (6 point Obama lead), Virginia (4 point Obama lead), and Florida (4 point Obama lead).  Their meme is that with the President apparently going to win in these states over Mitt Romney, his reelection seems well assured....and providing the Obama campaign with some good news that is more than welcome.

The problem is that like with the case of the WaPo poll, NBC News had to rig the poll in order to get the good news for the President...and did it pretty much the same way the WaPo did it.  By rigging the sample.

Rather than polling likely voters, NBC News focused on registered voters - which contains about a +4 Democrat bias. Then they rigged the party breakdown samples to weaken the Republican representation - in every case reflecting a lower Republican enthusiasm than was present in 2008 when even Republicans were tired of the Bush Administration.

In Florida, the party affiliation breakdown for the poll was Democrat 43%, Republican 35%, and Independents 21%.  This is an 8 point oversample of Democrats.  For comparative purposes, in 2008, the actual turnout in Florida was Democrat 37%, Republican 34%, and Independent 29%.  Sure makes that 4 point Obama lead look very very suspect...

Virginia's poll had a party breakdown for the poll of Democrat 31%, Republican 29%, and Independents 39%.  For comparative purposes, the actual 2008 voter turnout in the state was 37% Democrat, 33% Republican and 27% Independent.  Are we to believe that 4% fewer Republicans will participate in 2012, particularly with the Senate race there, than in 2008?  Again, that 4 point Obama lead looks very suspect.

Yes, the pattern continues with Ohio.  NBC News used a party breakdown of 37% Democrat, 28% Republican, and 34% Independent to generate a 6 point Obama lead.  In the actual breakdown of the 2008 election, Ohio voters were 39% Democrat, 30% Republicans, and 30% Independent.  Not only are Democrats oversampled by 9 points, but we are to expect that 2% fewer Republicans will participate in 2012 than 2008?

The President is facing some real challenges for his reelection campaign.  This remains the weakest recovery since the Great Depression.  Despite his rhetoric calling President Bush 'unpatriotic' for increasing the national debt by nearly $5 trillion during his 8 years in office, President Obama, increased the national debt by $5 trillion in his first 39 months in office - and it's still increasing.

Which brings us to something that will become a case study for journalistic malpractice, bias, and just plain moronic reasoning done in order to try to spin the perception that President Barack Obama is not a prolific out of control spender - and that all of the debt challenges we face are because of George W. Bush - as advocated by Rex Nutting writing in Marketwatch.

Nutting begins with the following - and then proceeds down the rails to (falsely) build a case to meet his preconceived conclusion...

Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.

According to Nutting, President Obama is not a reckless progressive government spender. The title of reckless spender is actually George W. Bush. To 'make the case' - Nutting does one simple (and massively dishonest) sleight of hand....he assigns all of the government spending, and the $1.3 trillion deficit of Fiscal Year 2009, to President George W. Bush because FY2009 started on October 1, 2008 when President Bush was still in the White House. He is not even willing to execute a minimal modicum of intellectual honesty by only assigning to the former President the accountability of FY 2009 through January 20, 2009 when he left office, and holding the current President accountable for the balance of the FY spending. No, it's all about trying to revise history to facilitate the reelection of the President.

This hasn't gone unnoticed or unappreciated at the WH - as the equally dishonest Press Secretary, Jay Carney, has been touting this 'analysis' by Nutting as proof that there is no basis to the GOP accusations that the President is an out of control spender.

Demonstrating just how blatant and irresponsible Nutting's revisionist history is, the fisking of Nutting's piece has been widespread. One of the best comes from James Pethokoukis, of the American Enterprise Institute. Ann Coulter today has a characteristically snarky and hard hitting fisking of Nutting's 'creative accounting'. With all of these fiskings of Nutting's slant, there is a common thread...facts and fairness as to where the 'blame' begins.

Let's visit back to the fall of 2008. There is a Democrat Congress and a lame duck President in the White House - a lame duck President who has shrinking popularity as even many Republicans are feeling 'Bush Fatigue Syndrome'. There is also a recession coming - and as a result of a bursting housing bubble, a major financial crisis.

With this, President Bush offered a budget for FY2009 that was based on $3.1 trillion in spending, $200 billion higher than what was being spent in the current FY2008 year. That's about 7.5% more spending than the previous year. But this budget was never passed by Congress. Why not, you ask? The Democrats who controlled Congress, and anticipated a VERY GOOD election year in 2008, wanted to delay defining and passing a budget until after they expanded their majorities in Congress and gained the White House.

Late September, the financial crisis hit full bore. The entire financial industry was reeling - and it needed some immediate assistance from the federal government in order to prevent its collapse. The solution was TARP - a program that would allocate up to $700 billion to provide assistance to financial institutions - but with some limits / controls. First was that the total amount was split into 2 groups. The first half was available to the President immediately to provide assistance to financial institutions. The second half was discretionary - to be used only on the discretion of the President. Before the end of 2008, President Bush had already announced that based on the steps taken and funds used in the first allocation - the second half of TARP would not be needed. Between it's passage and the end of 2008, about $247 billion was spent out of that first half of TARP funds. President Bush owns this.

On January 12, 2009, President-elect Barack Obama asked President Bush to release the remaining (second half) of TARP funds so that they would be available to him when it took office to take further action. This the President did (proving once again, no good deed goes unpunished when it comes to dishonest journalists). Once in office, and through October 1, 2009 (the start of the next FY), President Barack Obama spent another $200 billion of TARP money assisting not only financial firms, but other companies / industries.

Once in office, a FY2009 budget was passed and signed into law. On March 10, 2009, President Obama signed an additional $410 billion in spending that President Bush refused to do in his last months in office. Then there is the $825 billion Stimulus bill that was proposed and passed by the Democrat majority Congress and signed into law by President Obama - intending to 'jump start the economy' and prevent the unemployment rate from exceeding 8%. All told - what was actually spent in FY2009 was about $3.6 trillion. Government revenues were only about $2.1 trillion - leading to a deficit of $1.5 trillion...or $1.25 trillion if we exclude the $247 billion that President Bush contributed.

Despite the facts, the President is now running on the 'Nutting Accounting Rules'...

From the above look at history, let's look at some charts that highlight this President's economic and spending policies...

In the above link of James Pethokoukis' blog post, he uses this chart to measure the spending of President George W. Bush against that of President Obama by looking at spending as compared to a level of GDP.  During President Bush's term in office, his spending averaged 20.5% of GDP.  Under President Obama his spending in FY2010-12 has been basically 24% of GDP...and his FY2013 budget proposed 'only' 23.3% of GDP for its spending goal....but this budget was unanimously defeated in Congress over the last several months.

If we look only at what was proposed for federal spending by the President's for FY 2008-2011, we see the 2 that are 'owned' by George W. Bush ($2.9 trillion and $3.1 trillion) and compare them to the 2 that are 'owned' by Barack Obama ($3.55 trillion and $3.82 trillion).  Anyway you look at it, President Obama has increased spending by at least $700 billion (nearly 20%) over President Bush's proposed FY2009 level.

Let's look at it from a basis of whom added the most to the national debt.  Again, President Bush isn't without fault as debt nearly doubled during his eight years in office.  But we're on a pace to add nearly $6.5 trillion in the 4 years of the Obama Administration...this is not a sustainable trend...as the following graph illustrates....

The Heritage Foundation talks about the differences between a courageous budget and a dangerous budget....

First, in an increasingly dangerous world with a rising China, intransient resistance from Russia, and instability across the Middle-East, it makes no sense for the U.S. to spend less on defense now than it did in the late 1990s, when it saw fewer threats. Any defense budget should be driven by the threats the U.S. faces, which in the current world means making additional investments.


Specifically, after years of war, U.S. forces need recapitalization investments to restore them to full fighting strength and modernization investments to make sure they are armed with the most advanced weaponry on the planet. The current approach puts the U.S. at greater risk by weakening the military exactly when it needs more support.


Second, a true deficit reduction strategy would tackle the main cause of U.S. debt: entitlements. Entitlements currently consume around 10 percent of the U.S. economy; in 1965, they consumed around 2.5 percent. If nothing serious in done soon, by 2045—a mere 33 years from now—entitlements will consume over 18 percent of the U.S. economy. At that point, the federal government will spend every dollar it brings in on entitlements, leaving no room for defense, other discretionary spending, or even interest on the debt.

President Obama, and the Congressional Democrats (if they offered a budget) only offer dangerous budgets designed to appeal to their special interests.

Speaking of the economic recovery that we are stagnating through...the WSJ notes how the recovery went wrong despite Obama's massive spending...

The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis tracks economic performance for each recovery and compares gross-domestic-product growth and job growth, the two most important indicators of economic performance. Over the past 60 years, there have been 11 recessions and 11 recoveries.


Sadly, this recovery is near the bottom of all 11. Cumulative nonfarm job growth is just 1.9% 34 months into recovery, the ninth-worst performance and well below the average job growth of 6.5%. Cumulative GDP growth is just 6.8% 11 quarters into this recovery, less than half the average (15.2%) and the worst of all 11.


But wouldn't things be even worse without massive fiscal and monetary stimulus? It's true that monetary policy by the
Federal Reserve has resulted in extraordinarily low interest rates, almost zero for the past three years. Normally, low interest rates would result in increased borrowing by individuals and businesses, generating increased economic activity. Its positive effects in this recovery, however, have mainly been to help the government borrow more cheaply, large banks recapitalize quickly, and homeowners refinance at low rates.

…

The president has said, over and over again, that he wants to increase taxes on businesses—small and large—and on financially successful individuals. He doesn't quite articulate the point that way, but that is the effect. After all, he says millionaires and billionaires aren't paying their fair share. He forgets, or simply does not know, that the top 1% of earners actually pay as much as the bottom 90%, and the bottom half pay no income taxes at all.


In this negative environment, businesses are less willing to invest in the future, and individuals are less willing to spend what they can. Meanwhile, savers and retirees have seen much of their income decline because of low interest rates. The massive costs of all the stimulus have been wasted because of the heavy counterweight put on the economy by the administration's antibusiness and pro-redistribution policies.

As we wind down for today - two quick videos....

'He promised change...but things changed for the worse....'

And the latest Mitt Romney ad....

This Day in History

23rd

1701 - British privateer, Captain William Kidd is hanged for piracy and murder at London's Execution Dock

1911 - The New York Public Library is dedicated in New York City. The structure, occupying a two block section of Fifth Ave between 40th and 42nd Street, was the largest marble structure ever constructed in the US.

1934 - Criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are shot to death by Texas and Louisiana state police near Sailes, Louisiana. During their 2 year crime spree, they were responsible for killing 13, including 9 police officers.

1945 - Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Nazi SS, commits suicide one day after being arrested by the British.

1949 - The Federal Republic of Germany is established as an independent nation.

1960 - Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion announces that Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann had been captured and would stand trial in Israel. His trial would begin in April 1961. He was found guilty in December 1961 and sentenced to death for his war crimes. He was hung on May 31, 1962.

1960 - A tsunami caused by an earthquake off the coast of Chile kills 61 people in Hilo, Hawaii.

24th

1543 - Nicolaus Copernicus, known as the father of modern astronomy, dies.

1775 - John Hancock becomes the president of the Second Continental Congress

1883 - The Brooklyn Bridge, the first span connecting the cities of New York and Brooklyn, opens. Construction took 14 years, and 27 lives. When it opened, it was the largest suspension bridge ever built.

1941 - HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy, is sunk in a brief fight with Germany's largest battleship, the Bismarck near Iceland. Only 3 members of the Hood's 1,500 man crew survived. The Hood, launched in 1918, was Britain's largest battlecruiser. HMS Prince of Wales, a newly commissioned battleship still carrying a number of workmen onboard, was also damaged in the engagement with the Bismarck and the German cruiser Prinz Eugen. The Bismarck suffered only minor damage - but the damage to a fuel tank would later prove critical.

1976 - Transatlantic supersonic passenger flight service opened with Concorde flights from London and Paris to Washington DC.

Quick Hits - May 22, 2012

Still in catch up mode....

Formed in 1911, the NAACP was created to fight 'Jim Crow' and segregation, including the disenfranchisement of African Americans.  It was one of the organizations leading the fight to gain the civil rights victory in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka in 1954.  From that victory, it expanded its efforts which culminated in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

[Side note - on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, only about 60% of Democrats voted for passage, while 80% of the Republicans voted for passage.  In the Senate, without the strong Republican support, the Act was in real trouble because of its opposition by southern Democrat segregationists.]

Unfortunately for an organization with a rich history based on principles as opposed to partisan politics, the modern day NAACP has moved fully to embrace partisan politics and advocating progressive policies.  This was placed on display on May 19th when the NAACP leaped to provided President Obama political cover on his 'evolution' regarding same-sex marriage, voting to support the President and calling same-sex marriage a civil right. 

By taking this step, however, the leadership of the NAACP seems out of step with their primary membership, as African-Americans have strongly opposed same-sex marriage.  Earlier this month in North Carolina, about 60% of the African-Americans casting ballots voted to support the state's ban on same-sex marriage.  In 2008, during the controversial California Proposition 8 vote, African-American voters opposing same-sex marriage made the difference in the passage of the proposition.

The leadership of the NAACP released the following statement...

"The mission of the NAACP has always been to ensure the political, social and economic equality of all people," Roslyn M. Brock, the chairman of the NAACP's Board of Directors, said in a statement. “We have and will oppose efforts to codify discrimination into law.”


“Civil marriage is a civil right and a matter of civil law."

Here's their mission statement / charter from 1911...

To promote equality of rights and to eradicate caste or race prejudice among the citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of colored citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for the children, employment according to their ability and complete equality before law.

The bar has moved from fighting caste or racial prejudice, securing justice in courts, and equal employment opportunities to 'social and economic equality'...a migration from the traditional value of equality of opportunity to desiring an equality in results as embraced by Marx and Engels.  I wonder, though, if they are looking to ensure economic equality, does that mean they support the 50% of Americans who don't pay any federal income taxes will have to start paying?  Or are they telling us that some are more equal than others?

Notre Dame University and over 40 other Catholic institutions have initiated a lawsuit against the Obama Administration over the HHS Obamacare contraception mandate which requires all organizations to provide, free of charge, contraceptive, sterilization, and abortifacient services and products to those covered on their health insurance policies regardless of any moral or religious objections they have towards those products and services.  The institutions say in their lawsuit that the mandate is unconstitutional.

The archdiocese of New York, headed by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archdiocese of Washington, D.C., headed by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the University of Notre Dame, and 40 other Catholic dioceses and organizations around the country announced on Monday that they are suing the Obama administration for violating their freedom of religion, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.


The dioceses and organizations, in different combinations, are filing 12 different lawsuits filed in federal courts around the country.

The President of Notre Dame has also released a statement over the lawsuit contesting the Administration's mandate...

Let me say very clearly what this lawsuit is not about: it is not about preventing women from having access to contraception, nor even about preventing the Government from providing such services. Many of our faculty, staff and students — both Catholic and non-Catholic — have made conscientious decisions to use contraceptives. As we assert the right to follow our conscience, we respect their right to follow theirs. And we believe that, if the Government wishes to provide such services, means are available that do not compel religious organizations to serve as its agents. We do not seek to impose our religious beliefs on others; we simply ask that the Government not impose its values on the University when those values conflict with our religious teachings.

We are two weeks from the June 5th recall election in Wisconsin, and the Democrats in the state are starting to panic as they are finding that their message for replacing Republican Governor Scott Walker is not resonating with the Wisconsin voter.

By virtually every objective measure, Walker has been an extraordinarily successful governor. In just 16 months, the state has erased a $3.6 billion budget deficit, and according to figures released this month by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, it will have a $154.5 million surplus on June 30, 2013. Property taxes, which had risen by more than 40 percent since 1998, are down for the first time in years. The unemployment rate is down from 7.7 percent when Walker took office in January 2011 to 6.7 percent in April 2012. Last week, the state’s Department of Workforce Development released numbers showing that Wisconsin had gained some 23,000 jobs in 2011—correcting a misleading earlier report suggesting the state had lost more than 30,000 jobs over the same period. The subjective measures look good for Walker, too. On the stump, Walker is fond of citing Chief Executive magazine, which had ranked Wisconsin as the 41st-best state for business in 2010 and now ranks it 20th. Walker also points to a survey by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce that found only 10 percent of business owners thought the state was headed in the right direction in 2010, while an eye-popping 94 percent think so today.

Wisconsin is a model - but not a model of the success of progressive pro-public sector union policies.  Walker's reforms, and in particular the controversial legislation which reduced some of the power of public sector unions, has turned the fiscal direction of the state around in just one year.  Without massive layoffs and without massive reductions in services.
Despite the whinging from the unions, the reforms have not been as draconian as they are being portrayed as being.  Union members, like teachers, now have to pay more out of their pocket towards their healthcare and retirement benefit packages....but the amounts they are paying are still substantially less than employees pay on the average in the private sector.  While there are still concerns with the fiscal viability of some of the pension programs, they have not been fundamentally changed. 

Some collective bargaining rights have been removed from the unions - primarily the one's which require the hiring entity, the city / town / school district, from purchasing the health insurance coverage from only one source - the union itself - at highly inflated rates.  Now these entities can shop for coverages on the open market, saving millions.  Finally, the public sector unions now have to collect their dues from their members directly, not get it handed to them via payroll deduction.  Now unions need to justify their benefit to their members in order to get paid.

Compare the changes in Wisconsin to the state that is currently ranked as the 50th best state for business....California.  Unlike Wisconsin, California remains dominated by progressives and progressive policies.  While the majority of the country moved to the right in 2010, California moved even more to the left - with every major statewide office being won by a progressive, including the Governorship, with Gov. Moonbeam returning to Sacramento.  Since 2010, the state's economic condition has gotten worse, not better.

The Orange County Register published an editorial about the state's finances and Governor Moonbeam's solutions - hiking $7 billion in taxes to cover a $16 billion deficit for the current fiscal year.  According to the Governor, we have a revenue problem, highlighted by the state bringing in several billion less than anticipated as a result of the continued stagnant economic conditions and high unemployment in the state.  But as noted in the editorial, our biggest problem is spending....as the State is now spending $30 billion more than was spent on all state government functions in 2007-8, the last fiscal year before the recession.

The governor's best solution is to plead poverty and lower himself to beg voters to increase taxes. His outlook is fanciful, much like the Greeks'. Both are about to learn that responsible people who earn their own money have limits to how much they will turn over to irresponsible people.

…

In fairness, we can't lay this entire mess at Brown's feet. It also comes from decades of mismanagement, overspending, tax-gouging and gratuitous pay and retirement benefits for public unions, who not so incidentally bankroll the campaigns of Brown and his Democratic legislative buddies, all of whom perpetuate this disaster, with more than a little help from Republicans all too often.


Brown wants voters to believe the government is impoverished, that colleges are about to crumble, teachers will queue up in soup lines, and beaches will be overrun with grunion. OK, the grunion scare may not be on Brown's list of alarming warnings. Yet.


The fact is, California's state budget spends $30 billion more than was spent on all state government functions in 2007-08, at the peak of the pre-recession bubble. That's a 15-percent increase. Are you spending 15 percent more than you spent in 2007-08?


Indeed, Brown proposes increasing spending for K-12 schools from $29.3 billion in last year's budget to $34.0 billion by the end of 2013. That's austerity necessitated by poverty?

…

The progressives who hold California in a death grip will argue that they are going to make painful, massive budget reductions to state government's tax-devouring beast. It's a specious claim. Brown proposed to spend $12.4 billion more in the coming year than in the current year. Faux cuts while larding it on.


The governor boasts that his realignment and reorganization of prisons is a budgetary blessing by shifting prisoners to counties. It's more accurately passing the buck. Actually, it's passing the bill without providing enough bucks to pay for it.

Most risible is Brown's claim of major pension reform. His less-than-modest tweaking applies only to newly hired employees and completely ignores the elephant in the room: hundreds of billions of dollars in unfunded liability for thousands of retired and current government employees.


The nickels and dimes Brown's feeble pension reforms might save are predicated on the hiring new employees. Here's a way to save much more: don't hire new employees.

We have two states - two different approaches towards addressing a major fiscal challenge as well as an adverse business environment which inhibits job creation and hiring.  (Remember, in 2010, Wisconsin was the 41st best state, California the 50th best state to do business in.)  With this comparison of steps - which state is recovering and which state continues to stagnate and endure greater fiscal challenges?

This comparison is why so many have become refugees from the Golden State- and more are seriously considering becoming Golden State refugees.

The prime time cable news hosts on MSNBC are regular fodder for ridicule.  This goes far beyond their bias, and directly to just how clueless they really are.  One has to wonder what the color of the sky is on the planet they are residing on, because it's not blue.

The blowhard bully, Ed Schultz, is convinced that the most under-covered story right now in the country is that the 'wealthy' are not paying their 'fair share' of taxes....

What’s the most under-covered story right now?


That the wealthy doesn’t pay their fair share. I used to be in the middle class, now I’m in the 1 percent. I can’t believe the tax cuts that are available. I’m living it. I can tell you that it wouldn’t affect me a bit if the rates went to 39 percent. Most of the people in the major media are in the 1 percent. There aren’t any poor cable hosts.

Is this a case where, like a broken clock, Schultz is right twice a day?  After all, the top 1% pays 40% of all federal income taxes.  They also pay more than the bottom 95% of taxpayers.  50% of all taxpayers actually pay no federal income taxes.  None of these are fair to the 1%. 

The problem is, Schultz wants the 1% to pay even more - despite the evidence that increasing their income tax rate to 39% will, at best, only cover about $30 billion of the President's $1.3 trillion deficit this year.  But will Ed put his money where his mouth is?  Of course not - he knows he's free to pay more to the government than his current legal obligation, but he will not. 

Speaking of taxes and spending, should we, the US taxpayer, be on the hook to provide National People's Radio, the People's Broadcasting Service, and other public broadcasting outlets half a billion dollars in fiscal year 2013?

While so many Americans are making sacrifices around the country to make ends meet, CPB appears unwilling to do the same,” DeMint and Lamborn wrote in a letter to Senate and House appropriators. “Now is the appropriate and necessary time for the government to end taxpayer subsidies for CPB.”


Liberals are fighting back to keep the money flowing. The special-interest group Free Press, which advocates for greater government control over media and the Internet, claims the federal subsidy is necessary to save public-broadcasting jobs.


This tiny federal investment is vital to helping support programming that commercial media won’t showcase and provides an important foundation for stations around the country to build on.


DeMint and Lamborn don’t consider it such a “tiny federal investment,” particularly given the rapid growth of public broadcasting’s federal subsidy in the past decade. Writing on DeMint’s new Pickpocket blog, Amanda Carpenter noted:


Even though media has become more accessible than ever, funding for CPB has exploded. Between 2001 and 2012, the CPB’s appropriated funding escalated by nearly 31 percent, from $340 million to $444.1 million.

Ed, you should make your check payable to the 'Corporation of Public Broadcasting'.

There are few more examples of excessive government reach combined with a complete lack of common sense than the approach towards air safety than the TSA.  Not only does the TSA regularly undertake sexual assaults on passengers who are treated as cattle - but the organization is also incapable of running on a budget or providing effective protective security.

According to the head of the Department of Homeland Security, the 'system' is working when a bomber on board an aircraft has a mechanical malfunction as he tries to detonate the bomb he is wearing.

To reward this incompetence, Senate Democrats are proposing to double the one way security fee from $2.50 per passenger to $5 per passenger in order to address their budget shortfalls...as millions in unused equipment sit in warehouses around the country. 


Speaking again of money and incompetence, how about the $1.5 billion to $2 billion a year we're giving Egypt.

An Islamist who believes that the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States were an American conspiracy is the front-runner in Egypt’s presidential race, a new poll shows.

Another Obama foreign policy success...leading from behind...

The USS Iowa, pictured above firing her 16" main battery, is now under tow in the Pacific, transiting from San Francisco to Los Angeles where the ship will become a floating museum.  Scheduled to arrive on May 24th, the Iowa will open as a floating museum in mid-July.

The USS Iowa is the last of the 4 Iowa class battleships to become a floating museum.   These are also among the last battleships ever built, ordered by the US Navy in 1939 and 1940 and commissioned in 1943 and 1944.  All four saw action during World War 2.  2 others were proposed for the class, the USS Illinois was started in January 1945, but cancelled in August 1945 when she was only 25% complete.  The USS Kentucky was started in 1944, and construction was suspended in 1947 when she was 75% complete.  Her bow was used to repair the USS Wisconsin in 1956, and she was scrapped in 1958.

The other members of the Iowa class of battleships include, the USS New Jersey, now a museum in Camden, New Jersey, USS Wisconsin, now a museum in Norfolk, Virginia, and the USS Missouri, now a museum at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

This Day in History

1455 - The opening battle of England's War of the Roses takes place at St. Albans - about 20 miles north of London.  King Henry IV was captured by the victorious Yorkists.

1856 - Southern Congressman Preston Brooks savagely beats Northern Senator Charles Sumner in the halls of Congress as tensions rise over the expansion of slavery.

1939 - Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini sign an alliance, the 'Pact of Steel' creating the Axis powers.

1972 - President Richard Nixon arrives in Moscow for a summit with Soviet leaders.

1993 - Johnny Carson hosts the Tonight Show for the last time. He was the host of the program for 30 years.

Quick Hits - May 20 & 21, 2012

Apologies, other priorities took precedent the last couple of days...

Settling in to his new eternal place in hell, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence officer who was convicted in the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, has died in Tripoli, Libya.  270 people were killed when the airliner exploded and crashed into Lockerbie, Scotland.  al-Megrahi was serving a life prison in a Scottish prison in 2008 when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.  He was released in August 2009 on 'compassionate grounds' which permits terminally ill prisoners to die at home.  At the time of his release, doctors estimated he only had 3 months to live.

When the convicted terrorist arrived back in Libya, he received a hero's welcome.  This welcome, along with his early release, and the fact that he was not quite as terminal as doctors proclaimed, caused outrage with many.

Which is it?

The Washington Post, shilling for President Obama's reelection, released a story on Sunday that highlighted on the results of the G-8 meetings held at Camp David.  According to the Washington Post, the G-8 leaders released a statement that rather than imposing strict fiscal austerity steps to have EU member nations spend within their means and, if needed, reform their entitlement programs which account for the majority of the government spending, more government spending is the solution for Europe to revive the struggling economies throughout the Eurozone.  This happens to match the preferred direction of both President Barack Obama and newly elected French President Francois Hollande - calling for more spending and embracing Keynesian economics despite the evidence in both Europe and the US that these steps do not revive economies and only deepen the hole that countries find themselves in.

Let's jump to a European paper to see how they are reporting the G8 meeting.  UK's left leaning paper, Guardian, apparently doesn't feel like it has to shill for President Obama.  Their article on this issue is, 'Merkel Stands Firm on Greece'.  Rather than embracing more government deficit spending, German Chancellor Angela Merkel remains consistent in her insistence that struggling nations adopt strict austerity measures around reduced spending in order to break the cycle.

Angela Merkel has declined to shift position on fresh measures to stimulate demand in the euro area, including the idea of eurobonds, leaving other EU countries hoping she will adopt a more conciliatory mood when the EU heads of government meet on Wednesday for the next round of discussions.


Barack Obama left the German chancellor in no doubt that he would like to see her adopt a less confrontational stance towards the Greek government, during a heated two-hour discussion at the G8 summit at Camp David, outside Washington.


Obama, facing a presidential election in November, cannot afford US jobless numbers to rise this autumn, a serious possibility if there is no return of confidence in Europe. He is said to understand the necessity for the Greeks to undertake spending cuts, but stressed the same austerity approach across Europe would simply lead to recession.

President Obama, as evidenced by his policies here in the US, sees no challenge with continued out of control spending in a futile effort to 'stimulate' the stagnant US economy.  He's also pressing on the German Chancellor to blink when confronted by the Greek's - and keep lending them money to cover their debt obligations because he does not want economic challenges from Europe to remind the American people in an election year that his policies are the same ones that brought Greece, Spain, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and France to their current economic conditions.

UK newspaper, Telegraph, offered an excellent commentary about the challenges the Eurozone is facing over their decades of embracing a statist / socialistic economic and social policy asking if they are finally starting to waken from their utopian dream?

This is not just a story of bureaucratic grandiosity, or of German insistence on domination. Certainly it is true that there is an irreconcilable cultural clash between the more puritanical North and the, shall we say, more indulgent South. It turns out that Marx was wrong about economic conditions determining political behaviour: a nation’s religion and geography are much more likely to affect its economic attitudes than the other way round. But it is not the dream of European co-operation that was doomed from the start: given the ancient hatreds and unforgivable sins of the past, that was difficult, but it was not impossible. What has made the project unworkable is the insistence that the EU be a vehicle for democratic socialism: the impossible dream was not European unity but universal “social solidarity” stretching across a continent, for which the single market was simply a milch cow to produce the funds.


Unfeasibly enormous social security and entitlement promises were made on the basis that the free market would always provide. Nobody bothered to ask what would happen when the market faltered or fluctuated (as genuinely free markets do) or when the sense of entitlement outgrew the wealth that could be created. The problem is not unique to Europe. They are facing the same question in the US, where benefits programmes – particularly social security (the US federal pensions system) and Medicare – have become as untouchable, and as financially unsustainable, as they are here.

There is something intellectually bankrupt about a willingness to ignore the financially unsustainable entitlements, and maintain massive spending to achieve 'fairness' or 'social justice' as defined by a government, while not taking steps to be fiscally responsible.
We see signs of this intellectual bankruptcy all around us - with the greed (laziness?) to get something 'for nothing' or 'what we're due' dominating far too many.  Much of this is ideologically driven - where the liberal fascists continue to insist that their direction is the best solution, despite it's economic failures pretty much everywhere it's been tried.  We're told that those failures are not indicative of the bankruptcy of the ideology - but the failures to adequately implement it correctly.  Either it was a failure to do it sufficiently 'big enough' or from implementation mistakes....but, we're promised, the NEXT TIME will work...really it will.

This is the message that comes from the leader of the Greek far left party, Syriza, Alexis Tsipiras.  Syriza is expected to be the big winner in the next round of Greek elections on June 17.  He is already playing chicken with the EU - wanting to maintain Greece's unsustainable spending and entitlement programs and getting the EU, ECB, and IMF to continue to send billions to Greece to cover its debt obligations.  In other words- he wants things to stay the same even though the statist left policies have bankrupted his nation.

Tsipiras is betting that the EU is going to blink - back off on their demands for Greek austerity and keep the funds flowing because they don't want Greece to default....kick the can down the road.  The problem is that Greece's bill is due and it has no more credit.  Germany, the primary lender to Greece, appears unwilling to send more of its good money into the black hole that is Greece.  Germany is also unwilling to risk its own pain to let the Greeks avoid pain.  But Tsipiras has two fundamental errors in his strategy. 

One is that the Germans are very unlikely to help Greece without Greece making some fundamental changes.  The second is that the problem with Euro-socialism is Euro-socialism.  The closest a nation has come to making this work is Germany - and even with them, the bill is eventually going to come due.  (Were it not for the US basically handling Germany's national security issues for the past five decades - it would be at that point now.)

Tsirpiras looks at the election of fellow leftist Francois Hollande and thinks that this is a message telling him that the EU will be forced to blink by political pressures.  I think he is misreading the circumstances entirely - and that the Greek government is going to not only default and exit the Euro, but implode.  When that happen's, what is next?  A return to a military dictatorship?

As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes in the Telegraph,

As for Greece, let us expose all these empty threats for what they are. Greece can leave the euro without being thrown to the wolves. It can avert disaster. Once it has lanced the boil and restored a viable exchange rate, rich Greeks will bring back their capital. The Chinese will invest, so will the Russians, so indeed will the Germans – particularly the Germans. Devaluation crises are two a penny. They happen all over the world, very frequently. We have reams of clinical data and the verdict is that countries usually recover quickly.


There may be hyperinflation if the Greeks screw it up but that would be an unforced error. They can impose capital controls to prevent a terms of trade shock and a drachma overshoot. They are already just 1pc shy of a primary budget surplus so it is far from clear why the government machinery would collapse. The IMF is there to help manage the transition. That is what the IMF is for.


It is possible – perhaps likely – that Greece would be growing briskly again within 18 months, led by a tourist boom and by import substitution as local manufacturing rebounds.

The best course for Greece is to lance the boil and take the pain today...it will be less than the pain tomorrow. That's also the best fiscal course for the EU - and the US.

Our President is an ideologue. 

That is the only explanation for the insistence to continue down a path despite empirical evidence that the path is the wrong one.  Since President Obama has taken office, spending has increased to an unprecedented in peacetime 24% of GDP.  At best, whether our highest income tax rate is 91% (the 1950's) or 28% (the 1980's) - the revenue to the Federal Government is 20% of GDP.  The delta between this revenue and the Obama level of spending has brought us to four consecutive years of budget deficits over one trillion dollars.  Compare this to the $168 billion deficit we had in 2007 - the last year before the 2008-9 recession struck. 

http://www.heritage.org/federalbudget/embed?chart=total-tax-burden#

Today, after adding more to the national debt in 39 months (about $5 trillion) than the preceding Administration did in 8, President Obama has brought this country to a debt level that is 103% of GDP - and on a path that emulates Greece.  The spending has not been stimulative - our GDP growth remains <2% annually, and real unemployment exceeds 11%.  But with this, our President sees no reason to change course....like in tax policy.  Michael Barone notes...

Barack Obama doesn't seem to care about these things. In the 2008 campaign, ABC News' Charlie Gibson asked him whether he would increase the capital gains tax rate even if it meant reducing government revenue, as has happened in the past.

Yes, Obama said, "for purposes of fairness." He wants to take away money from people who have earned it even if government gets less to spend.

Obama argues that government spending can generate growth. But money spent propping up state and local public employee unions and funding supposedly shovel-ready projects -- major features of his 2009 stimulus package -- didn't do much for the economy.


In contrast, Obama's former chief economist Christina Romer and her husband, David, in a 2010 academic paper, wrote that "exogenous" tax increases, like letting the "Bush tax cuts" expire after the recession is over, are "highly contractionary."


"Our estimates suggest that a tax increase of 1 percent of GDP reduces output over the next three years by 3 percent," the Romers wrote. "The effect is highly significant."


Higher taxes are the prime ingredient of European austerity. The danger is that with sluggish growth, revenues will languish and the bond market will shut down, as in Greece. Then spending gets cut with a meat cleaver, not a scalpel.


House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan understands this. House Democrats' "balanced approach" -- with tax rate increases -- "just means let's start European austerity right now," he told The Washington Examiner last week.

On Fox News Sunday, Republican Congressman Paul Ryan debated former Obama Economic Advisor Austan Goolsbee on this and other economic issues that face us. Goolsbee does not do well.

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer notes that it was the economic policies of Barack Obama and his team, including Austan Goolsbee, that resulted in the first downgrade of the US credit rating - and that if President Obama is reelected, we will be downgraded again.

Last August, the United States lost its AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor’s and was downgraded to AA+, after Congress broke a stalemate and agreed to spending cuts that would reduce the debt by over $2 trillion. Krauthammer said the U.S. could suffer another downgrade if President Barack Obama is reelected.


“No, but I think if we reelect Obama, we will have a downgrade, probably a default — something like a default, not a real default,” Krauthammer said. “But we’re going to head that way, obviously, because you can’t sustain trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.”


The Washington Post columnist went on to explain why the debt ceiling fight won’t be the cause of any such downgrade.


“So a downgrade will come, but not over a debt ceiling thing, for the following reason: If Romney wins, this is a moot issue,” he said. “There’s not going to be a showdown. If Obama wins, it’s also a moot issue, because we’re going to be dealing with 18 other issues — the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, of the payroll tax, there’s going to be a tsunami of taxes and an increase in spending, as well.

American Crossroads has released a new advertisement on President Obama and his record...

President Obama's campaign is continuing to launch attacks on Mitt Romney and Bain Capital...

Watching Obama campaign ads or MSNBC, one could easily come to the conclusion that Bain Capital makes money by destroying the companies it owns. So for voters unsure about the business that Mitt Romney founded but still reluctant to trust the financial analysis offered by community organizers, some perspective might be helpful.


The basic Obama-liberal critique goes like this: Bain buys a company, loads it with debt and then sucks out cash before foisting the wounded business upon an unsuspecting buyer or a bankruptcy court. In the risk-taking world of private equity such a scenario can certainly happen, and it's true that Bain likes management fees and dividends as much as the next partnership.
…
The liberal critique of private equity assumes that the financial industry is full of saps who have been eager to lose money across the table from Bain for 28 years. This is the same financial industry that the same liberal critics say is full of greedy schemers when it comes to padding their own pay or ripping off consumers. But financiers can't be both knaves and diabolical geniuses at the same time.


Learning about Bain successes like Staples or Gartner or Steel Dynamics confirms the logical conclusion that Bain had to be creating value along the way—for investors, for lenders, and that means for workers too.

Powerline blog picks up on this - and the fact that despite prominent Democrats like Harold Ford or Newark Mayor Cory Booker denouncing this tactic, the Obama campaign is going to treble down on the message....

Here is the video. Obama displays his trademark incoherence as he tries to explain why Bain Capital is central to the campaign. Asked a multi-part question that included his views on private capital, he starts to say that the distinctive feature of private capital is that the people who run such firms are focused on making a profit. Then you can see the wheels turning as he realizes that what he just said didn’t make any sense, since it didn’t distinguish private capital from any other business. So he backs up and starts over, explaining that as president, he has to think about more than just making a profit; rather he has to think about all Americans’ well-being. That is true enough, of course, as far as it goes. But right now the form of well-being that Americans are most concerned about is a better job market. Businesses grow when they are profitable, and they hire employees when they grow. Obama reveals himself as just another in a long line of liberals who claim they want more and better jobs, but can’t bring themselves to endorse the profits that alone make jobs possible.

Apparently, prominent Democrats speaking out against this tactic is putting the Obama campaign into damage control mode....

The Obama campaign is in full damage-control mode one day after Newark Mayor Cory Booker publicly derided Democrats’ assault on presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney over his record at Bain Capital.


Chief Obama strategist David Axelrod today publicly rebuked Booker, a popular and high-profile surrogate for the campaign, saying he was “just wrong.”


“I love Cory Booker. He’s a great mayor. If I were, if my house was on fire, I’d hope he were my next door neighbor,” Axelrod said on MSNBC, referring to Booker’s rescue of a neighbor last month.


“I agree with what he said later. I think this was a legitimate area for discussion,” Axelrod said of Booker’s subsequent comments clarifying the issue.

But Booker isn't the only Democrat already tired and made uncomfortable by Obama's divisive attacks on the risk-takers who create the jobs and this country's wealth. Below you'll see an ad the Romney campaign released today with more Democrats going "off-script" on the subject of Bain -- an ad that not only proves Romney already has a rapid response team up and running but that it's a very effective rapid response team.


If Obama loses the Bain Capital battle, he'll probably lose the election. All a failed incumbent can do is toxify their opponent into some unelectable, and this is a failed incumbent who has staked his entire campaign on divisive class warfare and envy.

Another repeating meme from the Obama Campaign and their surrogates? Attacking private citizens supporting Mitt Romney in a manner that would result in bellowing cries of 'McCarthyism' if done from the right....

Then we have this example of liberal fascism as a North Carolina High School teacher is captured on video suggesting that a student could be arrested for their criticism of President Obama....

NC teacher captured on video suggesting student could be arrested for Obama criticism –
A North Carolina high school teacher was captured on video shouting at a student who questioned President Obama and suggesting he could be arrested for criticizing a sitting president.


The Salisbury Post, which first reported on the YouTube video, did not identify the teacher in question, who is reportedly on staff at North Rowan High School. The video does not show faces, but the heated argument in the classroom can clearly be heard.


"Do you realize that people were arrested for saying things bad about Bush?" the teacher said toward the end of the argument, telling the student, "you are not supposed to slander the president."

We know there is a double standard, but.....

Speaking of liberal pinheads, a new biography of Walter Cronkite written by acclaimed historian / biographer Douglas Brinkley, reveals that the Mr. Cronkite was not only very biased, but extremely unethical in his journalistic practices - using his postiion as America's top anchor to promote the hard left and damage the right.

All of this apparently comes as a surprise to Howard Kurtz, who grew up idolizing Cronkite and can't quite shake off the worship of his false idol even when confronted with the facts. Still, there is an interesting admission early on in Kurtz's piece about how the media landscape has changed:


Had Cronkite engaged in some of the same questionable conduct today—he secretly bugged a committee room at the 1952 GOP convention—he would have been bashed by the blogs, pilloried by the pundits, and quite possibly ousted by his employer. That he endured and prospered, essentially unscathed, until his death in 2009 reminded me of how impervious the monopoly media were in those days, largely shielded from the scrutiny they inflicted on everyone else.

Cronkite, who probably did more for the North Vietnamese victory in South Vietnam than a dozen divisions, apparently also taught these values to the man who succeeded him at the CBS Evening News anchor desk - Dan Rather, the man behind 'Fake, but Accurate', who continues today to argue that his use of fraudulent and fake documents to press an attack against President George W. Bush were a legitimate story and ethical behavior.

Remember this bio of President Obama done by his literary agent?

This is the one that declared Barack Obama was 'born in Kenya'.  Obama's literary agent said that the description of him being born in Kenya was the result of the agent's typo - and was his mistake.

No one buys that.  This existed from 1991 to April 2007 in this form.  The information didn't come from the agent, but came from Barack Obama.  Why?  So Barack Obama could market and differentiate himself - just as Elizabeth Warren described herself as a Native American to get jobs (and be celebrated) in the Ivy League schools of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard.

Another item that blows the literary agent's argument out of water - the bio was edited multiple times before Obama's birthplace was corrected. 

The biolgraphy provided by Barack Obama to his literary agent specified his birthplace as Kenya. Over the next 17 years, despite multiple revisions to the bio, the Kenyan birthplace remained a fundamental part of the bio. In December 2004, the bio was updated to reflect Barack Obama's election to the US Senate - but the Kenyan birthplace remained. When Barack Obama announced his candidacy for President of the US on Feb. 10, 2007 - as the above link shows - his Kenyan birthplace remained. The above link shows another image of the bio from April 3, 2007, the Kenyan birthplace is still referenced. Sometime between this date and April 21, 2007, the bio was edited, because on April 21, 2007, the bio finally reflected the birthplace as Hawaii.

The ends justifies the means - and with progressives like this, all that counts is the ends for them - and their agenda.

Ethics and character just get in the way. And words like 'fairness' and 'social justice' are just more means to the ends (duping real people to subscribe to the ends of fairness, liberty, and freedom).

This Day in History

May 20th

1862 - President Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act into law.  The act gave 160 acres of land to any applicant who was the head of a household, over 21 years old, and settled on the land for 5 years or paid a fee to accelerate the transfer of ownership.  By the end of the Civil War, more than 15,000 land claims had been made.

1873 - Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a US Patent for blue jeans.

1927 - Charles Lindbergh, piloting a single engine monoplane named 'Spirit of St. Louis', takes off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, NY attempting the world's first solo non-stop flight between New York and Paris. 

1940 - German army units in northern France capture the port city of Abbeville on the English Channel - cutting off the British Expeditionary Forces from the main French armies in the South and pinning the BEF with their backs to the sea.

1941 - German paratroopers begin an airborne invasion of the Greek island of Crete.

1956 - The US drops a hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll.  This was the first air drop of a hydrogen bomb - and the bomb was the equivilant of 15 megatons of TNT.

May 21st

1881 - The American Red Cross is founded

1927 - After covering 3,610 miles in 33 1/2 hours, Charles Lindbergh lands in Paris, France - completing the first transatlantic solo non-stop flight.

1932 - Five years to the day of Lindbergh's transatlantic flight, Amelia Earhart becomes the first pilot to repeat his solo nonstop transatlantic flight flying from Newfoundland to Ireland in 15 hours.

1982 - During the night of May 21st, British forces conduct an amphibious landing on the beaches around San Carlos on East Falkland Island - a major step towards evicting the invading Argentinian forces from the Falklands.  By dawn, the British established a secure beachhead for offensive ground operations.