Quick Hits - October 7, 2012

The Results of the Oct. 3rd Debate

The above picture is from Bill Whittle (Afterburner series often featured) and from his Facebook page.

Barack Obama is jetting into Tinseltown / LALA land for another star-studded fundraiser of the usual Hollywood 'stars' in a $25,000 a plate event.  Will the 'O' man be able to mollify the concerns of his wealthy sycophants in the wake of Wednesday's dismal performance.  Bill Maher, the million dollar contributor to Obama's Super-PAC, referenced during his show this week that from the results of the debate, it appeared as if Barack Obama took his million dollar contribution and used it to buy a lot of weed to smoke.

The listless performance by the President started a number of supporters to wonder if he really wants reelection.  He halted debate practice because of boredom and it becoming 'a drag'.  His body language gave all the impressions of someone who not only doesn't like being challenged - but seemed to wonder if the job is worth the aggravation and being challenged.

Some of the media, after asking many of these same questions, is coming back around to their blind obedience to 'The One', so it is likely that the hard left pinheads of Hollywood will join the rest of the campaign team and blame the debate performance on John Kerry, or Jim Lehrer's moderation, or Mitt Romney's 'lies'.

But a second subpar debate performance by Obama will be treated how?

Today, on ABC This Week, hosted by the former Clintonista sycophant, George Stephanopoulos, featured the NY Times columnist Paul Krugman making a complete fool of himself as he tried to defend the President's debate performance, the success of Mitt Romney's, and the mainstream media's inability to effectively spin the debate to Barack Obama's favor...

The hyper-partisan Krugman claims that 'the press just doesn't know how to handle flat out untruths' as he attempts to define the numerous factual misrepresentations made by President Barack Obama as 'minor fudges' and those made by Mitt Romney 'flat out untruths'.

So pathetic was the spin of Krugman that Mary Matalin, the 'better half' of James Carville, hammered the perpetually dishonest Paul Krugman (as often noted by the NY Times own ombudsman) by telling him....

"You are hardly credible on calling someone else a liar."

On Fox News Sunday, the main fireworks came from a debate between Maryland's hard left progressive Governor, Martin O'Malley, and the Republican Senator from New Hampshire, Kelly Ayotte.  Martin went on the attack, repeatedly referencing the canard around Mitt Romney's '$5 trillion tax cut for the wealthy' and the lack of specifics around which deductions Romney would cut - ultimately citing the oft discredited study by 3 Obama sycophants (including economist William Gale) which fabricated large elements of the Romney plan.

Ultimately, Martin tried to push the meme that none of the current deficits and none of the $6 trillion added to the national debt under President Obama's term in office are his fault - but the fault of George W. Bush.  He doubled down on this level of stupid by touting the President's budget plan - the same budget plan that failed to garner a single Congressional vote of support in either 2011 or 2012.

Ayotte countered the meme on the simplistic attack on the '$5 trillion tax cut for the wealthy' with facts - noting that Martin, as Obama did, failed to also see that a major part of the Romney plan is related to generating economic growth to reduce the effects of fundamentally changing our tax code (2.3% GDP being the amount needed to replace the revenues lost in the 20% across the board tax rate reduction)

Martin ultimately was saved from a TKO in the same manner as suffered by Barack Obama by moderator Chris Wallace jumping a little harder to Martin's defense than Lehrer did for the President.

What's utterly amazing to me is just how fixated the progressives are to the fascist use of the 'Big Lie' in order to try to mask the effects of their failed policies.

This is an updated version of a chart that has been done for each of the last three years to compare and contrast the budget policies of the previous administration with those of the current administration.

FY2007 was the last budget year where President Bush (43) enjoyed a Republican Congress.  The annual deficit for that year was $187 billion - the fourth consecutive decrease in the deficit as the tax cuts and growing economy combined to bring in record level revenues for the federal government.

FY2008's budget was impacted by the effects of the 2008 recession - which ended in June 2009.  During the housing crisis and related financial crisis, President Bush and the Democrat controlled Congress combined to start the bailout process (TARP and other initiatives) for key elements of the financial industry.  This combined with the retraction of the economy led to FY2008 generating a nearly $500 billion deficit - the worst of the Bush years.

The budget for FY2009 was supposed to be set before October 2008 - but the Democrats in Congress refused to work on a budget, confident that their candidate, Barack Obama, would win in November 2008 and work with them to set a properly progressive budget.

Within days of taking office, the President and his huge progressive majority in Congress, worked to not only define a new budget with substantially higher spending, but also massive expansions of the TARP program to industries and companies outside the financial industry as well as a $850 billion 'stimulus' package that was to prevent the unemployment rate from exceeding 8% and in the summer of 2012, deliver a 5.6% unemployment rate and GDP growth of at least 4.5%.

This exploded the national deficit for the year to over $1 trillion - for the first year in the history of the country.

Spending and deficits under President Obama did not fundamentally change in either FY2010, FY2011, or FY2012 - each exceeded over $1 trillion as he did nothing to reduce spending - which in 2011 was 33% higher than the federal government's spending level in FY2008.  Spending is now 24% of our GDP - a level not seen since the massive effort made by the government for the Second World War.

The deficits also soared despite the best estimates / claims of either the Obama economic team or the Congressional Budget Office that spending and deficits would drop.  In fact, in FY2012, the current year, both the CBO and Obama budget's predicted no more than ~$600 billion in deficts - while in reality, we exceeded $1.1 trillion - an unprecedented fourth consecutive year of more than $1 trillion deficits and the addition of $6 trillion to the national debt.

President Obama's own budgets continue to try to run the canard that we will not have greater than $1 trillion budgets in the next couple of years - but spending remains excessive and the effects of the Obama economic policies (<1.5% annual growth - and continued slowing of growth) which means that without a fundamental change on November 6th, next year again will see a >$1 trillion deficit.  But these plans also show that the so-claimed improvements in the economy will stall in FY2015 / FY2016 and deficits, promised to be halved, will once again (and for the ongoing future) exceed $1 trillion per year.

This is why the President's budget plan for FY2012 and FY2013 failed to receive even 1 vote from the Democrats in the House or the Senate.

The more the President, and his sycophants like Maryland's tax and spend Governor, try to spin this - the more they will fail.  This economy belongs to Barack Obama and the progressives - no one else.

The requirements that were put in place to require Pakistan to meet obligations regarding their anti-Islamic fundamentalist terrorist efforts as well as halting their efforts to circumvent nuclear proliferation restrictions in order to receive billions in US foreign aid were "quietly waived" in August by the Obama Administration's State Department.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, just days after the Islamic terror attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya that murdered 4 Americans, including the US Ambassador to Libya), and the storming of 4 US Embassies in Arab countries (Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen), advised Congress that the Administration was ignoring the will of Congress to make the aid subject to specific Pakistani actions and will give Pakistan billions in US taxpayer funds.

Change we can believe in, eh?

I wonder if there is a relationship to these actions and the sudden increase in campaign contributions being received by the Obama Administration which is rumored to be part of a major foreign campaign donor scandal that is said to be disclosed early this week.  Katie Pavlich, an editor at Townhall.com wonders just how bad this scandal will be?

Since last week, the news sphere has been buzzing about the possibility of an Obama campaign foreign donor scandal being the big October surprise of 2012. Since the Washington Examiner first reported the story last week, many are asking how the Obama campaign will handle foreign donation allegations expected to go public Monday in a major magazine and national website story. The Obama campaign has already tried to block the story from publication and although the details of the scandal are still under wraps, we do know taxes and unsecured credit card transactions are about to cause a major headache for the Obama campaign.

In Venezuela, dictator Hugo Chavez is facing the electorate in what many observers call his toughest electoral fight yet - as a 'mini Hugo' - not quite as hard left as Hugo, tries to end the bombastic Chavez's 14 years in power.

But what is one of the most reprehensible and disgusting news items from this weekend comes from the vile anti-Israel US based activist group titled the 'Free Gaza Movement'.  Yesterday, on their official twitter account, they sent out a tweet that claimed Jews were responsible for the Holocaust - 'Zionists operated the concentration camps and helped murder millions of innocent Jews'.

The Free Gaza Movement is best know for their efforts to provision ships and attempt to run the joint Egyptian-Israeli blockade of Hamas dominated Gaza.  One of these efforts famously ended in so-called peaceful demonstrators violently attacking and murdering Israeli's send to enforce the blockade they run with Egypt to prevent the smuggling of weapons to terror groups based in the Gaza like Hamas.

Discover the Network, a website created and run by former leftist radical David Horowitz, details the vile beliefs, members, advisers, and actions of the hard left anti-Semitic Free Gaza Movement.  This is a who's who list of those with terrorist connections, anti-Semitics, those who see / call for the utter destruction of Israel, and the hard radical left - including John Pilger, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, former Congresswoman and certified anti-semitic moonbat Cynthia McKinney, Mohammed Sawalha (a senior member of the UK's Muslim Brotherhood chapter - and possessing close ties to Hamas terrorists), Ken O'Keefe (a dual US / UK citizen with terror connections to Hamas), Adam Shapiro (rabid radical leftist), Huwaida Arraf (co-founder of the radical leftist International Solidarity Movement), Desmond Tutu (Anglican Bishop, Nobel Prize laureate, and anti-Semite), and Claire Short (former UK Sec of State for International Development).

Don't believe me?  Research these groups and names in the above link for Discover the Network.  You will see the unvarnished truth about these enemies of civilization - particularly Western Civilization.  Like Rachel Corrie of the International Solidarity Movement....

This Day in History

1780 - American patriots in North Carolina score a major victory over the British forces, primarily composed of Loyalist colonists, at the Battle of King's Mountain.  The Loyalist forces suffered 157 killed, 63 wounded, and 698 captured to only 28 killed and 60 wounded by the patriots.

1871 - The most devastating fire in US history ignited on this day in Wisconsin.  Over the course of the next day 1,200 people would lose their lives and over 2 billion trees would burn - but the fire would be overshadowed by the Great Chicago Fire which would start the next day 250 miles away.

1913 - For the first time, Henry Ford's entire Highland Park, MI automotive factory would be run on a continuously moving assembly line - revolutionizing manufacturing.  The assembly line would reduce the time to manufacture Henry Ford's Model T from 12 1/2 hours to just 93 minutes per vehicle.

1943 - The Japanese on Wake Island, captured late December 1941 from the US, execute 96 American prisoners of war.  The 96 were held on the island as slave labor as other captured Americans, including civilian workers, were sent to other Japanese prison camps.

1949 - The Soviet Union proclaims the creation of the Democratic Republic of Germany (East Germany), their answer to the creation of West Germany less than 5 months earlier.  The Democratic Republic of Germany would cease to exist in 1990 as Germany was re-unified as the communist bloc in Eastern Europe collapsed.

1985 - Palestinian terrorists seize control of the liner, Achille Lauro, in a brazen terrorist hijacking.  The terrorists, members of the Popular Front for the Palestinian Liberation Front, and led by Abbu Abbas, were the terrorist wing of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).  Gathering the American tourists on board, the terrorists murdered the wheelchair bound 69 year old American, Leon Klinghoffer and tossed him overboard.  The callous murder of Mr. Klinghoffer turned opinion against the PLO, forcing the PLO head, Yassir Arafat to abandon Abbu Abbas.  With no escape, Abbas agreed to surrender the ship in exchange for safe passage to Libya.  However, the USN intercepted the plane carrying the terrorists and forced it to land at a US base in Italy.  After tense negotiations, the Americans agreed to let the Italians take custody of the terrorists - but the Italians permitted Abbas to leave the country and escape justice.  Abbas did not return to US custody until 2004 when he was captured hiding in Iraq....later dying in US custody from natural causes.

2001 - President George W. Bush announced to the American people the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, the US invasion of the Taliban dominated nation of Afghanistan - which hosted and protected al-Qaeda - the Islamic terrorist organization behind the 9/11/01 terror attack less than one month earlier.

2003 -California Governor Gray Davis is successfully recalled by Californian voters, blamed by the voters for the state's dismal economic conditions.  On the same day, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected to replace Mr. Davis as California's Governor - successfully parlaying his Hollywood fame into a political victory by a nearly 1 million vote margin over the Democrat Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamonte who sought to succeed Davis if he was successfully recalled.