Conservative Happenings

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Have Polls Always Underestimated The GOP Vote?

Knowing that exit polling has historically overestimated the Democratic vote and knowing how much the final regular polling in the 1980 race understated Ronald Reagan’s support compared to Jimmy Carter, it is worth looking at what the final poll results said in other presidential election years.

The facts show a similar trend in a pro-Democratic direction almost uniformly. Historically speaking, pollsters have underestimated how many people would vote for the Republican presidential candidate:

Writing at National Review, reporter Jim Geraghty quotes an anonymous pollster who provides a helpful review of past polling data:

In 1992, Gallup’s final poll had Clinton winning by 12 percentage points, he won by 5.6 percentage points. In late October 1992, Pew had Clinton up 10.

In 1996, some reputable pollsters had Clinton winning by 18 percentage points late, and Pew had Clinton up by 19 in November; on Election Day, he won by 8.5 percentage points… In 2004, pollsters were spread out, but most underestimated Bush’s margin. (2000 may have been a unique set of circumstances with the last-minute DUI revelation dropping Bush’s performance lower than his standing in the final polls; alternatively, some may argue that the Osama bin Laden tape the Friday before the election in 2004 altered the dynamic in those final days.) In 2008, Marist had Obama up 9, as did CBS/New York Times and Washington Post/ABC News, while Reuters and Gallup both had Obama up 11.

Now, if this was just random chance of mistakes, you would see pollsters being wrong in both directions and by about the same margin in each direction at the same rate – sometimes overestimating how well the Democrats do some years, sometimes overestimating how well the Republicans do. But the problem seems pretty systemic – sometimes underestimating the GOP by a little, sometimes by a lot.

In 2004, the final telephone surveys mostly favored George W. Bush against John Kerry but the exit polls clearly did not. As usual, they overstated the Democrat vote (see our earlier report on reasons for this) which led many Democrats to expect that Kerry would win the popular vote and the presidency. When that did not happen, it triggered a widespread belief among hardcore Democrats that Republicans had somehow managed to “steal” the election in several different states, particularly in Ohio.

Via: Newsbusters

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The Sorry State Department

It should come as no surprise that the State Department has much to answer for in the abysmal manner in which it so disastrously allowed the horrific murder of the American Ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans by Muslims in Benghazi, Libya to occur. What took place was an act of barbarism deliberately planned and perpetrated on the very anniversary of the 9/11 atrocity by fellow Muslims against Americans upon American soil.

And who must bear full responsibility for not adequately protecting the hapless ambassador and his staff in Benghazi? Well, it has to be none other than Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, and appeaser to all and every tyrant and international thug in the world.

Her craven apologies to the ever hate filled and murderous Muslim world by blaming an amateurish video, purportedly the excuse for mass Islamic violence and killings, has been enough to make Neville Chamberlain look decidedly heroic and resolute. But then she takes her queue from her boss, the Appeaser and Apologist in Chief; Barack Hussein Obama.

We now know that the killings, using RPGs and incendiary devices, were a premeditated and well planned operation by Al Qaeda. Even the Libyan president has said so, yet Hillary Clinton and President Obama continue to falsely attribute the Arab bloodlust to the video. And the Secretary of State, a week before the atrocity took place, stated that the security measures in place at the Benghazi mission were “robust.”

Via: Canada Free Press

Youth Unemployment Tops 20%

Raising minimum wage is sure bet to create more jobless young Americans

The unemployment rate for 16 to 19 year olds was an astonishingly high 23.8 percent last month. The United States is facing a youth employment crisis.

Young workers are finding it increasingly difficult to enter the labor market, get their first job and work their way up the career ladder. Yet, during this time of persistently high youth unemployment, there have been calls to increase the minimum wage from $7.25 to as high as $10 per hour.

America's youth are having a hard time reaching the first rung on their career ladders. Now is a bad time to increase minimum wages and make that important step more difficult.

Higher minimum wages generate a tradeoff between higher wages for the employed and higher rates of unemployment. When minimum wages increase, many workers who earn less than the new higher minimum wage lose their jobs. Firms often decide that they can get by with fewer workers instead of paying higher wages.

As one might expect, David Neumark of the University of California's Irvinecampus and William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Board survey recent research on minimum wages and find that the least-skilled workers are hurt the most by minimum wages.

Minimum wages are particularly damaging for the future prospects of young workers as they typically earn the low wages that are impacted by the change in the minimum wage law.

In 2010, 50 percent of workers aged 25 and below, and 78 percent of teenagers earned less than $10 per hour. With youth unemployment topping 20 percent, it has become clear that employers are not willing to hire young workers at the current minimum wage, much less at an even higher one. It would damage the prospects of those willing but no longer able to work for wages below the minimum wage.

So in the short term, higher minimum wages make it difficult for young workers to find jobs. In the long term, higher minimum wages diminish the career prospects of young workers. Higher rates of unemployment mean that young workers do not have access to the resume-building activities associated with employment and do not gain the experience necessary to earn higher wages in the future.

Via: AEI

U.S. intelligence now says Benghazi attack "deliberate and organized"

(Reuters) - The top U.S. intelligence authority issued an unusual public statement on Friday declaring it now believed the September 11 attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, was a "deliberate and organized terrorist attack."

The statement by the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that it represented a change in the U.S. intelligence assessment of how and why the attack happened. During the attack on two U.S. government compounds in the eastern Libyan city, four U.S. personnel, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed.

Shawn Turner, spokesman for Clapper's office, said that in the immediate aftermath of the attack, U.S. agencies came to the view that the Benghazi attack had begun spontaneously after protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo against a short film made in California lampooning the Prophet Mohammad.

Turner said that as U.S. intelligence subsequently learned more about the attack, "we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists."

He said it remained "unclear" if any individual or specific group commanded the attack. U.S. agencies nonetheless believe that some of the militants involved in the attack were "linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al-Qaida."

In an apparent reference to a series of contradictory statements by some top Obama administration officials, Turner said intelligence agencies' "initial assessment" had been passed on "to Executive Branch officials and members of Congress, who used that information to discuss the attack publicly and provide updates as they became available."

Via: Reuters

Slacker-In-Chief

NEW YORK — Concerning the fun parts of his job, Barack Obama resembles the Energizer Bunny. If there are crowds to wow, entertainers to schmooze or donors to pitch, Obama is Johnny on the spot.

Too bad Obama's sparks stop flying when it comes time for the serious, heavy lifting of the presidency.

This phenomenon's most chilling example involves Obama's national security-related presidential daily brief. As the conservative Government Accountability Institute calculated, and Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen first reported Sept. 10, Obama attended only 43.8 percent of his daily briefings between Jan. 23, 2009, (three days after his inauguration) and May 31, 2012.

Available nearly every day, the briefing allows the commander-in-chief to hear directly from top intelligence professionals about the latest threats to U.S. safety. These experts are on hand to answer questions, hear suggestions and otherwise help Obama foil America's enemies.

But Obama has had higher priorities.

According to the institute's data culled from the official White House calendar and Politico.com's news coverage of that schedule, Obama chose to skip his daily briefings and, instead, simply read his briefing book.

This is a bit like studying one's chest X-rays at home while spurning a radiologist's offer to interpret them and answer pertinent questions.

In this sense, Obama quietly reviewed his national security X-rays alone during 56.2 percent of the time the institute analyzed. Obama missed 61.6 percent of these briefings in 2011.

Obama skipped his briefings between last Sept. 4 and 11, the entire week before the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, suffered an Islamic terror attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, technical officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

Who knows if a briefer's classified utterance, or a particularly astute question from Obama, might have triggered tighter security in Benghazi and perhaps prevented the murders of four Americans?

Even worse, as Thiessen reports, Obama postponed and eventually skipped his briefing on the day after these planned and deliberate assassinations. This liberated Obama for a truly indispensable responsibility that day. As American embassies burned brightly throughout the Islamic world, Obama jetted off on Air Force One for a campaign fundraiser in America's least solemn city — Las Vegas.

Via:San Angelo Standard Times

Top Five Worst Obamacare Taxes Coming in 2013

Of the twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare, below are the five worst that will be foisted upon Americans for the first time on January 1, 2013.

Of the twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare, below are the five worst that will be foisted upon Americans for the first time on January 1, 2013:

The Obamacare Medical Device Tax – a $20 billion tax increase: Medical device manufacturers employ 409,000 people in 12,000 plants across the country. Obamacare imposes a new 2.3 percent excise tax on gross sales – even if the company does not earn a profit in a given year. In addition to killing small business jobs and impacting research and development budgets, this will increase the cost of your health care – making everything from pacemakers to prosthetics more expensive.

The Obamacare “Special Needs Kids Tax” – a $13 billion tax increase: The 30-35 million Americans who use a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) at work to pay for their family’s basic medical needs will face a new government cap of $2,500 (currently the accounts are unlimited under federal law, though employers are allowed to set a cap).

There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are several million families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education. This Obamacare tax provision will limit the options available to these families.

The Obamacare Surtax on Investment Income – a $123 billion tax increase: This is a new, 3.8 percentage point surtax on investment income earned in households making at least $250,000 ($200,000 single). This would result in the following top tax rates on investment income:

	Capital Gains	Dividends	Other*
2012	15%	15%	35%
2013+ (current law)	23.8%	43.4%	43.4%

The table above also incorporates the scheduled hike in the capital gains rate from 15 to 20 percent, and the scheduled hike in dividends rate from 15 to 39.6 percent.

Of the twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare, below are the five worst that will be foisted upon Americans for the first time on January 1, 2013:

	Capital Gains	Dividends	Other*
2012	15%	15%	35%
2013+ (current law)	23.8%	43.4%	43.4%

The table above also incorporates the scheduled hike in the capital gains rate from 15 to 20 percent, and the scheduled hike in dividends rate from 15 to 39.6 percent.

Via: American for Tax Reform

Theodore Roosevelt: Progressive Crusader

Theodore Roosevelt, America’s 26th President, famously declared that the country ought to “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Good advice, especially in light of recent events. However, “when it came to the decibel level, [TR] did not always follow his own advice,” quips Jean Yarbrough in the latest “Makers of American Political Thought” paper from The Heritage Foundation.

And the volume of his rhetoric wasn’t the only place TR stumbled. Yarbrough, a professor of Social Sciences at Bowdoin College and the author of Theodore Roosevelt and the American Political Tradition, explains that TR was also the nation’s first “progressive” leader. “As President, he pushed executive powers to new limits, arguing that the rise of industrial capitalism had rendered limited government obsolete.”

For example, TR styled himself the “steward of the people.” This belief “unmoored presidential power from the Constitution and made it directly accountable to the people,” Yarbrough writes. “It is not uncommon today for progressives to give short shrift to constitutional questions or to cite phrases such as ‘We the people’ and ‘the general welfare’ rather than specific constitutional provisions to justify their proposals.”

Via: The Foundry

Carbon Tax: Won’t Reduce Deficit or Temperature

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) released a report that should be a cause for concern to all who believe in limited government. In it, CRS argues that a new tax on carbon could cut the deficit in half.

There is nothing special about a carbon tax in terms of raising revenue. CRS could have written that significantly increasing the income tax or payroll tax could cut the deficit in half. They could’ve written the same thing about instituting a new value-added tax as well.

But cutting the deficit isn’t as simple as increasing taxes. Higher taxes hurt the economy. CRS failed to mention the devastating impact that higher taxes would have on the economy. The extra revenue that would result from a carbon tax would certainly be lower than CRS estimates after considering the economic slowdown that would no doubt result.

About 85 percent of America’s energy needs are met by fossil fuels. A carbon tax would directly raise the cost of electricity, gasoline, diesel fuel, and home heating oil. This would disproportionately hurt lower-income families, who spend nearly a quarter of their budgets on energy.

But the economic pain for consumers doesn’t stop there. Businesses, faced with higher energy costs, would pass those costs on to consumers. Higher sticker prices for products lower consumer demand, and as a result, businesses must cut production and jobs.

Supposedly, the goal of a carbon tax is to reduce carbon emissions and do something about global warming, not to raise extra revenue. However, reduction in carbon dioxide emissions would yield negligible benefits in terms of temperature reduction.

Via: The Foundry]

It's Over

Give up -- Barack Obama has won. With the election only weeks away, it is clear from recent swing state polling that Mitt Romney has lost this election. According to the Quinnipiac numbers, in the battleground states of Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania, the president is ahead by 10%, 9% and 12%, respectively.

Romney can't win. Just ask any journalist or newscaster. He is toast -- stick a fork in him.

Bull...

If anything, the closer we get to Election Day, the more apparent it is that Obama is not only losing, but losing big. The Obama campaign, and by "campaign" I mean members of the media and polling organizations, is trying to convince prospective Romney voters to believe that all is lost -- in which case, they hope, we will stay home.

But just because they say so, that doesn't make it true.

Everyone knew from the outset that Obama, with his sad record of continuous failure on almost every front, was going to air out his inner bitterness and envy, and campaign negatively. But did anyone suspect that his sole hope for victory would rest on trying to suppress the vote of his opponent with naked media bias and polling -- most of which assumes a higher Democrat turnout than in 2008, when the electorate, many Republicans included, swallowed whole Obama's vision of "hope and change"?

Via: American Thinker

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Friday, September 28, 2012

U.S. Move to Give Egypt $450 Million in Aid Meets Resistance

The Obama administration notified Congress on Friday that it would provide Egypt’s new government an emergency cash infusion of $450 million, but the aid immediately encountered resistance from a prominent lawmaker wary of foreign aid and Egypt’s new course under the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The aid is part of the $1 billion in assistance that the Obama administration has pledged to Egypt to bolster its transition to democracy after the overthrow last year of the former president, Hosni Mubarak. Its fate, however, was clouded by concerns over the new government’s policies and, more recently, the protests that damaged the American Embassy in Cairo.

The United States Agency for International Development notified Congress of the cash infusion on Friday morning during the pre-election recess, promptly igniting a smoldering debate over foreign aid and the administration’s handling of crises in the Islamic world.

An influential Republican lawmaker, Representative Kay Granger of Texas, immediately announced that she would use her position as chairwoman of the House appropriations subcommittee overseeing foreign aid to block the distribution of the money. She said the American relationship with Egypt “has never been under more scrutiny” than it is in the wake of the election of President Mohamed Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.

“I am not convinced of the urgent need for this assistance and I cannot support it at this time,” Ms. Granger said in a statement that her office issued even before the administration announced the package.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, speaking at a meeting of the Group of 8 nations in New York, said on Friday that the world needed to do more to support the governments that have emerged from the Arab Spring uprisings, including those in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.

Via: NYT

Obama Campaign Greeting Card: ‘Mom…Can I Borrow $18,000 For Birth Control?’

The Obama campaign has launched a series of electronic greeting cards for women to use to promote the campaign’s message, and one has conservatives rolling their eyes because of its absurdity.

“President Obama summed up the Republican Party’s approach to women’s health when he said ‘they want to take us back to the policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century,’” the Obama campaign web page claims. “Send an eCard to say you won’t go back.”

One of the greeting cards attacks Romney for wanting to overturn Obamacare, claiming it will force women to find alternative sources of funds to pay for birth control, instead of getting it free from government handouts.

“Dear Mom,” the card reads. “Mitt Romney says he would repeal the Affordable Care Act. So here’s a quick question: Can I borrow $18,000 to help pay for my birth control? Thanks!”

The number, supposedly based on the lifetime costs of the typical woman who uses birth control regularly during her lifetime, is astronomical — especially considering the fact women and purchase a package of birth control pills for as little as $9 at a local drug store.

The other two e-cards in the series are meant to continue stirring up the so-called War on Women.

Meanwhile, it appears the Obama campaign just borrowed from Planned Parenthood’s talking pointsfor the e-card.

Via: Life News

41 MILLION TEA PARTY SUPPORTERS SET TO VOTE

The Tea Party is regularly ridiculed and declared "dead" by the mainstream press and their elitist allies in Washington and Hollywood. Not surprisingly, when Tea Partiers show up and rally by the thousands, they get all but ignored, while 30 Occupy Wall Street crazies in masks will always get wall-to-wall coverage and admiration. TV shows and movies take cheap shots at Tea Party conservatives, often linking them to murder-of-the-week cases on insipid crime procedurals or dismissing them as “birthers.” But a new Associated Press poll shows tea party supporters may have the last laugh in November.

The AP/GFK poll shows that 31% of likely voters consider themselves Tea Party supporters. With 131 million votes cast in the 2008 elections, that translates into an incredible voting bloc of 41 million Tea Party supporters waiting to cast ballots. These voters have already made their voices heard in Wisconsin earlier this year, as well as in Republican primaries in Texas and Nebraska.

That 31% of likely voters figure is greater than the 19% who described themselves as either strongly or somewhat liberal. Surprisingly, liberals have escaped media characterization as being a small, fringe-like group with little power or influence. At 19% of likely voters, self-described liberals would have a turnout of 25 million voters, some 16 million fewer voters than the Tea Party.

The good news for Mitt Romney and other Republican hopefuls is that the Tea Party supporters also appear ready to turn out in much higher numbers than all other voters. For instance, while they only made up 23% of the initial polling sample, which was a sample of all adults, their numbers improve as unlikely voters were removed by the AP from the data. When unregistered and unlikely voters were taken out of the poll, their share of the vote increased by 35%, to nearly one-third of the voting population.

Meanwhile, self-described liberals fell 11% from the initial sample to the likely voter sample, while moderates increased by 3% and conservatives increased by 8%. This enthusiasm gap could make the difference in November. Once unregistered and unlikely voters were removed from the AP poll sample, Obama’s share of the vote plummeted by 10%, while Romney’s share of the vote increased by 28%. That support is driven, of course, by a supposedly dead movement. Overall, the poll shows a statistical tie with Obama at 47%, and Romney at 46%.

Via: Breitbart

Obamanomics: Chicago PMI Shows Sharp Contraction In Economy, Back To Recession Levels…

Business activity in the U.S. Midwest contracted this month for the first time since September 2009, as new orders sank, a report showed on Friday.

The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago business barometer fell to 49.7 from 53.0 in August. Economists had forecast an unchanged reading of 53.

A reading below 50 indicates contraction in the regional economy.

The forward-looking new orders index plummeted to 47.4, from 54.8. while the gauge of employment sank to 52.0 from 57.1 last month.

Following the report, stocks added to their losses on the final trading day of the third quarter and amid uncertainty ahead of the result of stress tests on Spanish banks.

Via:CNBC

Crowder: A Selfish Millennial's Guide To The 2012 Election

Yes, I am a Millennial. Unfortunately I’m a part of the “self-esteem” era, where people my age tend to be very selfish. Not only that, but I’ve been raised with a generation of people who’ve often never been taught the constitutional parameters of government nor it’s originally intended role in American society.

Certainly not in school anyway.

So when it comes to the United States government, it’s only natural for young people to want more free crap. We’ve seen this simple ideal spur an entire movement of fickle young people through the recent Occupy protests.

Enter President Obama, the king of promising #MoreFreeCrap! So it makes sense that most young people voted for him in 2008 and that many plan to do so again this November.

Listen, I love free stuff. I’m a buffet’s worst nightmare. My picture is still on the wall at the Bellagio. I don’t, however, believe that we should vote based on the ideal of #MoreFreeCrap.

Via: Fox News

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Union Contract: Teachers Can Be Caught In School Drunk Five Times and On Drugs Three Times Before Being Fired

Forget zero tolerance. Bay City Public School teachers for years could be caught repeatedly under the influence of illegal drugs or alcohol without being fired.

Teachers in possession or under the influence of illegal drugs could be caught three times before they lost their job, and they got five strikes if they were drunk on school grounds before being fired. A school district official said the language in the union contract that protects teachers for those instances "was incorporated into the teacher Master Agreement in 1997."

Those protections also were included in the Bay City Education Association teacher’s contract that was agreed to in January in section 16.1300 "Controlled Substances" on page 92. That contract expired June 30 and negotiations on a new contract are ongoing.

Students weren’t given as many chances. The code of conduct for middle school and high school students states that if they are found to be under the influence or in possession of illegal drugs, they get a 5-day suspension or a 3-day suspension with counseling on the first offense.

A teacher caught selling drugs in class would get a 3-day suspension without pay with mandatory counseling, but wouldn’t be fired unless the teacher did it a second time.

"They must have had been high to approve that contract because no sober person would agree to that kind of policy," said Leon Drolet, chairman of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance. "The role models are held to a lower standard than the students. That just sends a horrible message. If anything is indicative of how far school boards are willing to bend to kiss the rings of union leaders, this is it.

"That is an absolute disgrace," he said.

The provision of the teachers' contract that allowed up to five strikes for being under the influence of alcohol and three strikes for being under the influence of illegal drugs before being fired was ruled as unenforceable by Public Act 103 in July 2011. However, the union contract states that if Public Act 103 is struck down, the policy goes back into effect for teachers.

Via:Michigan Capitol Confidential

MSNBC’S Harris-Perry Says Voter ID Laws Discriminate Against “Transgender Americans”…

MSNBC doesn't just oppose voter-ID reforms on behalf of blacks. In an interview with the DC gay newspaper The Washington Blade, weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry insisted "voter suppression efforts continue to impact transgender Americans." It came with a lot of leftist lingo.

“They don’t look like what their photo IDs are,” she said. “So if they are self-presenting in front of an election official and they have an ID that says male or female and they’re sort of gender self-presenting in a non-conforming way, of course you end up with the possibility of shame or embarrassment or not being believed to be who you are.” They also don’t have birth certificates with names and gender markers that “are not informative of what their current life is.” Biological truth is an ideological lie:

“All of those things impact the ability of people to have the kind of state-issued ID that is allowable in a lot of these states around voting,” she said. “And so the idea that a person would be a perfectly eligible American citizen who has an opinion about voting and is kept out of it because of those sorts of issues — it goes to the heart of helping us understand that these efforts are really voter suppression efforts, not efforts to keep the election process above board.”

Wouldn't it be easier for election monitors if the "trans voter" presented themselves at the polls in a way that resembled their photo ID? Common sense never gets in the way of the libertine Left.

Harris-Perry complained that some minority actvists are very cool in advocating for "trans people" on this issue. She said she has a better understanding of the issue because she said “her gender non-conforming niece frequently confronts questions when she presents herself as male, but her student ID lists her gender as female.”

“Because I am tuned into that, I have a sense of it but I don’t think that it has been part of our civil rights framework to say wait a minute yes, race is important here, but here’s how race is at the intersection of all of these other identities as well,” said Harris-Perry.

“We’re only just kind of getting to the back end of the third wave of the feminist struggle. So part of it is ignorance, but that’s only part of it. The other part of it is for many folks they are actively homophobic and disinterested in whether or not these sort of suppression efforts impact LGBT communities and as a matter of political strategy they think talking about it is a bad idea for building the coalitions they hope to build for social action.”

Via: Newsbusters

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DEMOCRATS: INVESTIGATE BENGHAZI ATTACK AFTER THE ELECTION

Don’t be fooled by the supposedly bipartisan effort to investigate the Obama administration’s actions after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya. Democrats are no more serious about challenging their leader in the White House than they have ever been.

Trying to pass off his actions as part of a bipartisan effort at investigation, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) started circulating a letter that his aides said would be asking for more information.

Republicans claimed that there were now calls from both parties for an examination of Obama and his administration’s actions; Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said:

It's my understanding today that all members of the Foreign Relations Committee — both Democrats and Republicans — are asking the administration for answers. So this is now something that certainly could never be colored as partisan.

John McCain had harsh words for Obama and his minions, calling Obama’s contention that the anti-Islamic video was to blame for the attack “unbelievable” and “disgraceful.”

When asked why Obama and his pals would act in such a way, McCain blasted:

Some allege that maybe it’s because they’re trying to convey to the American people that al Qaeda is no longer a threat, and that when Osama bin Laden left that was the case, but the reality is that al Qaeda is well and thriving in some places.

But here’s the salient point, and how the Democrats are duping the public into thinking that they truly want an investigation: Kerry and his pals’ letter to Thomas Nides, deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, is asking for more information and a full briefing after the Senate returns in November.

Via: Breitbart

Where do “Obama phones” come from?

OBAMA HAS MY VOTE, HE GAVE ME A FREE PHONE...

This video of an Obama supporter bragging about having an “Obama phone” has gone viral on the web, but where do these “free cell phones” come from?

The program is called Lifeline, established in 1984, originally created to subsidize landline phone service for low income Americans, funded by government-collected telecommunication fees, paid by consumers.

In 2008, the program was expanded to support cell phones which quickly escalated the cost of the program. In 2008 the program cost $772 million, but by 2011 it cost $1.6 billion.

A 2011 audit found that 269,000 wireless Lifeline subscribers were receiving free phones and monthly service from two or more carriers. Several websites have been created to promote “free” government cell phones, including the”The Obama Cell Phone” website at Obamaphone.net.

Rep. Tim Griffin R-Ark. has proposed a bill to eliminate federal subsidies for free cell phones and has produced a great YouTube videohighlighting the runaway cost of the program. The program has also been highlighted for reform by Senator Claire McCaskill D-Mo.

Pressure to reform the program led the FCC to announce an effort in February to “reduce the potential for fraud while cutting red tape for consumers and providers” by the end of 2013.

Via: Washington Examiner

Opinion: It's Always the Economy, Stupid

Stupid," in the famous quotation from 1992's Clinton vs. Bush campaign—"It's the economy, stupid"—is whoever thinks a U.S. presidential election is about something else. All presidential elections are about the economy. Yes, there are other issues, but it's also true that a whale has pilot fish. Still, most politicians would rather talk about anything but the economy, which they see in one of two ways—as a personal piggy bank or a mystery. Neither is discussable in public. This is the sixth presidential election since "stupid" was first identified, and nothing has changed.

Barack Obama has reduced the whole economic record of his first term to one word: Bush. He's talking about the next U.S. economy, in which, he says, some people will be making windmills. Or capturing the rays of the sun.

His rebooted challenger, Mitt Romney, led an audience in Nevada last week through his plan to revive the economy. Mentioned first, and so presumably most important, he'd pursue "energy independence." Second most important: Crack down on trade "cheaters." That would be China, which is a long way from Vegas.

Next Wednesday night, these two will be hauled onto a stage in Denver for their first debate on "domestic issues," a euphemism for the economy. Nothing—and that includes Jim Lehrer—can make these two talk about the economy as it's understood by the average American voter. But the odds are Mitt Romney will talk about it and Barack Obama won't

Via: Wall Street Journal

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Friday, September 28, 2012

Don’t be fooled by the supposedly bipartisan effort to investigate the Obama administration’s actions after the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya. Democrats are no more serious about challenging their leader in the White House than they have ever been.

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