Bloodthirsty Liberal

While eagerly waiting Aggie’s next installment of “It’s Unexpected!”™, let’s revisit exactly why unemployment numbers are so “unexpectedly” high (and, no it’s not because the economy is racist):

[S]ince deep recessions are generally followed by more robust recoveries, this should have been one of the strongest recoveries ever.

So what went wrong? All the available Keynesian levers for achieving economic growth have been pulled, yet the recovery is one of the weakest since World War II. The problem lies with the way the “stimulus” was carried out, the uncertainty of looming higher taxes, and the antibusiness rhetoric and regulatory strong-arming of this administration.

First, exactly how weak has this recovery been? 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.

…

[W]e borrowed $5 trillion, for which we will pay interest for who knows how long, in order to stimulate the economy now.

There’s little doubt that this level of spending—$5 trillion in an economy with an annual GDP of about $15 trillion—has a temporary stimulative effect. The question is, was it a good investment? For the most part the money was spent poorly and we will get very little future value from it. Billions were spent to reward favored constituencies like government employees and the auto industry. Billions more were spent on training programs that don’t work and unemployment insurance that reduces incentives to actually find work. Little went toward building infrastructure or other assets that will help the nation create wealth over time.

This is what Rush told us: the stimulus was a slush fund. It had nothing to do with “investment”. That’s why we hear voices calling for more of the same—because so few dollars were actually directed toward the creation of wealth (preferring to “spread” it instead).

[F]or rational people to spend or invest requires confidence in the future. The “animal spirits” so necessary for a true recovery have been dampened by this administration’s policies and rhetoric.

Indeed, this administration has been overtly hostile to business across the economy except for progressive favorites like electric cars or wind and solar power. It has tightened regulatory screws on the coal industry and all other fossil-fuel providers, enacted health-care “reform” based on false estimates of its likely costs and effects, unleashed a hostile National Labor Relations Board on businesses, and passed financial regulations in the form of Dodd-Frank along with hundreds of other regulatory actions that put increased burdens on the private sector. Meanwhile, the president has yet to pass a budget or announce a plan to rein in government expenditures.

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.

So, it’s as we’ve been saying: this “recovery” is all Obama. He owns it. And Mitt Romney better not let him forget it.

We don’t trade in the nasty innuendo and racist demagoguery surrounding the Reverend Jeremiah Wright here, no sir, not us, uh-uh, no way.

BUT, we allow that others do:

Our friend Doug Schoen, the Democratic pollster, is a political centrist, ideologically much closer to the post-1994 Bill Clinton than to Barack Obama. That makes all the more troubling his advocacy of government censorship of political speech, the kind of expression that is at the core of First Amendment protection.

Schoen finds it “more than just disquieting” but “shameful and embarrassing” that, as the New York Times reported (and we noted) last week, Chicago Cubs part-owner Joe Ricketts considered funding an anti-Obama super PAC ad that would have reminded voters about the president’s “spiritual mentor,” Jeremiah Wright. Under political pressure, Obama in 2008 repudiated the America-hating pastor, whose views even the New York Times concedes are “clearly racist.”

“Speaking frankly,” Schoen writes, “racially divisive negative advertisements of this sort do not belong in a presidential election. Whether one supports the president or not, he should be judged on his record, and an ad hominem attack of any sort should have no home in the public arena.”

He would like to use the power of the government to suppress this speech of which he disapproves, as he has made clear in other columns. His complaint about the Ricketts ad that wasn’t shows just what a pernicious idea this is and why the Supreme Court was right to uphold free speech in the celebrated case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Schoen and the rest of the press are discovering that the marketplace of ideas functions like any other market: there is supply and demand, and no amount of manipulation or regulation can succeed in stifling the natural direction of information toward wider dissemination. In the old days, sure—even among the mainstream media today—information unflattering to the press’s preferred candidate (and boy do they have their preferences) was buried, ignored, or locked in a broom closet (literally). JFK’s sexual dalliances, to choose the most obvious example, would make Bill Clinton look like the before picture for a Cialis ad.

Jeremiah Wright would not be an issue today if the press in 2008 had fully explored his beliefs and his significance in Obama’s life and personal development. I still don’t know what Obama knew about Wright and when he knew it—but I know he lied and is lying today. He lied about Ayers and Dohrn, stonewalled on his birth certificate, and still refuses to release some of the most basic background material that other candidates routinely release.

But all of this stuff has been smuggled as it if were pornography from under the counter, or samizdat publications from behind the Iron Curtain. We are made to feel dirty just for asking WTF about “God damn America” and “US of KKKA” and “America’s chickens… [can't forget the pause] are coming home to roost!”

Politicians since Nixon (and certainly before) have learned the hard way that it’s not the crime, but the cover-up, that does them in. Obama committed no crime in befriending a racist minister and two former members of the Weathermen. But the press has committed the highest crime of all in suppressing the truth—often with such determination and contempt as would have made Stalin nod in appreciation.

Except Capone was born in America.

It figures the Mafia was once known as “The Black Hand”:

Three years ago, President Obama cut a secret deal with pharmaceutical company lobbyists to secure the industry’s support for his national health care law. Despite Obama’s promises during his campaign to run a transparent administration, the deal has been shrouded in mystery ever since. But internal emails obtained by House Republicans now provide evidence that a deal was struck and GOP investigators are promising to release more details in the coming weeks.

“What the hell?” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, who is now Obama’s campaign manager, complained to a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) in January 15, 2010 email. “This wasn’t part of our deal.”

This reference to “our deal” came two months before the final passage of Obamacare in an email with the subject line, “FW: TAUZIN EMAIL.” At the time, Billy Tauzin was president and CEO of PhRMA.

The email was uncovered as part of investigation into Obama’s closed-door health care negotiations launched by the House Energy and Commerce committee’s oversight panel.

“In the coming weeks the Committee intends to show what the White House agreed to do as part of its deal with the pharmaceutical industry and how the full details of this agreement were kept from both the public and the House of Representatives,” the committee’s Republican members wrote in a memo today.

You scratch my back, I don’t shoot you in yours.

“The investigation has determined that the White House, primarily through Office of Health Reform Director Nancy Ann DeParle and Messina, with involvement from Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, was actively engaged in these negotiations while the role of Congress was limited,” the committee members wrote. “For example, three days before the June 20 statement, the head of PhRMA promised Messina, ‘we will deliver a final yes to you by morning.’ Meanwhile, Ms. DeParle all but confirmed that half of the Legislative Branch was shut out in an email to a PhRMA representative: ‘I think we should have included the House in the discussions, but maybe we never would have gotten anywhere if we had.’”

Oh, I know! Four hundred and thirty five members with four hundred and thirty six opinions! You’re better off doing it yourself.

That’s okay, Barack, you’ll get ‘em next time:

Another day, another congressional shutout of O’s latest unserious gimmick. That makes three in the past year. The Senate torpedoed his last budget 97-0 in May 2011, then the House dropped a goose egg on him in March with a robust 414-0 tally. Now this.

610-0:

Republicans forced the vote by offering the president’s plan on the Senate floor.

Democrats disputed that it was actually the president’s plan, arguing that the slim amendment didn’t actually match Mr. Obama’s budget document, which ran thousands of pages. But Republicans said they used all of the president’s numbers in the proposal, so it faithfully represented his plan.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, even challenged Democrats to point out any errors in the numbers and he would correct them — a challenge no Democrats took up…

The White House has held its proposal out as a “balanced approach” to beginning to rein in deficits. It calls for tax increases to begin to offset higher spending, and would begin to level off debt as a percentage of the economy by 2022. It would produce $6.4 trillion in new deficits over that time.

…

Said Mitch McConnell of Reid’s refusal to offer his own budget, “They’re so unserious they won’t even vote for a budget that was written by a president of their own party. It doesn’t get more irresponsible than that.”

I didn’t know what to do with this story as a stand-alone—but it fits here:

Democratic leaders have defiantly refused to lay out their own vision for how to deal with federal debt and spending, arguing that last summer’s debt-ceiling deal essentially serves as an actual budget. While a budget resolution is non-binding, they say, the Budget Control Act was signed into law.

But a few centrists in the 53-member Democratic conference expressed frustration with their party’s budget inaction.

“Anything we can do to force the Senate to deal with the debt is important to do, and the sooner the better,” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who caucuses with Democrats, told POLITICO. “I don’t think [Democrats] will offer their own budget and I’m disappointed in that.”

Freshman Sen. Joe Manchin has often said he would have been “impeached” if he failed to produce a budget as West Virginia governor, though he conceded there are differences between the state and Senate budget processes.

“Sure I have a problem with [failing to offer a budget]. As a former governor, my responsibility was to put a budget forward and balance it, so anyone who comes from the executive mindset has a problem with that. I don’t care if you’re Democrat or Republican,” Manchin said in an interview.

I don’t know if two Democrats (one technically an Independent) qualifies as “a few”, but I take the point. While the Blue Dog Democrat may be extinct, there might still be a few in the remotest parts of the country that are genetically distinct.

As a former Democrat (for over 25 years), I can’t even imagine what I ever saw in these people.

Democrats to white middle-class voters: drop dead

Rudy is the quintessential average white guy, right down to his last name. “It literally is Guy,” he said, laughing at the irony.

Born in New Eagle and raised in Charleroi in Pennsylvania’s Monongahela Valley, Guy comes from a long line of Democrats. “My grandfather worked at Corning Glass, my father worked in the mines, the steel mill and finally at Corning,” he recalled. “The family always had union ties, and that usually meant a tie to the Democratic Party.”

That’s no longer true for him, however: “As my life started to improve financially, I realized that unions seemed to be damaging the economy and Democrat legislation always seemed to impact my wallet.”

…

His story is not much different than that of those West Virginia Democrats who protest-voted for a convicted felon over a sitting president in last Tuesday’s state primary.

Yes but, to quote John Kerry, the felon had “better hair”.

The problem for President Barack Obama and down-ticket Democrats on November’s ballot is that average white guys aren’t just found in West Virginia; they’re in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other states, too, and they can tip this fall’s election.

According to Gallup’s latest battleground numbers, Obama’s main electoral strengths are with voters who are nonwhite, nonreligious, single or postgraduates. Republican Mitt Romney’s strength is with white voters, particularly men, those who are religious, and those who are 30 or older.

Romney leads Obama with white male and female voters and does significantly better among men, 59 percent to 32 percent.

Among white women, Romney leads by nine points, 50 percent to 41 percent.

So, it’s not just white men (racist, all of them) who are leaving Barack in droves; it’s white women, too:

They’re at the Republican Party HQ, Cleavon!

But wait a minute, you say—didn’t I read somewhere that the Democratic strategy was to write off the whole caucasian demographic?

So who abandoned whom?

RUSH: There is a fascinating story in the New York Times by Thomas Edsall: “The Future of the Obama Coalition.” Let me read this first paragraph to you. “The Future of the Obama Coalition — For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.” The Democrat Party is just abandoning white working class voters. The Democrat Party is punting. The Democrat Party is saying, “Sayonara, we don’t care.” They are going after the welfare state full-fledged. They are going after the entitlement mentality people in this country full-fledged. They’re not making any pretenses.

…

Here’s a pull quote. “A top priority of the less affluent wing of today’s left alliance is the strengthening of the safety net, including health care, food stamps, infant nutrition and unemployment compensation. These voters generally take the brunt of recessions and are most in need of government assistance to survive. According to recent data from the Department of Agriculture, 45.8 million people, nearly 15 percent of the population, depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to meet their needs for food.”

…

“All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.” So the Democrat Party, according to the Obama coalition, according to the New York Times, is going after the entitlement class, the welfare dependent class and the elite in academia, art, human resource management, lawyers, librarians, and social workers and so forth. What a coalition, the backbone of America. And that’s who they’re going after. They’re ceding it, c-e-d-i-n-g. They are ceding working class voters.

It’s kind of funny, in a sad and frightening way. Even voters given two fat middle fingers right in their face are slow to face up to the truth (which was revealed six months ago in this and other stories, after all). Sad because the media are so biased, this confession isn’t part of daily political discourse. Frightening because Obama may yet pull it off.

To our America readers: want to feel proud?

Medical device manufacturing is one of the nation’s most dynamic and vibrant industries. The United States is the global leader in medical technology innovation, and it is one of the few major industries with a net trade surplus. This industry is responsible for more than 400,000 American jobs—and is indirectly responsible for almost two million more that supply and support this highly skilled workforce. Most important, its products are essential elements of modern medical care. They include everything from CT scanners and pacemakers to blood pressure cuffs and robots used by surgeons.

As the old joke goes: coffee break’s over; everyone back on their heads.

Yet instead of protecting this paragon of American ingenuity and innovation, the Obama administration and Congress have viewed the industry as a cash cow from which they could milk profits to help pay for the president’s health law. So they added to the Affordable Care Act a 2.3% excise tax on medical devices that will take effect at the beginning of 2013.

This tax is especially pernicious because it is assessed on sales, not profits. To put this in perspective, imagine that you’ve manufactured medical devices and had sales of $1 million, after all your costs and expenses—everything from materials and labor to research and development—your profit was $100,000. The excise tax would be $23,000, wiping out almost 25% of your profits.

Many medical device companies have to ramp up sales before they become profitable. Due to the long, draconian and sometimes unpredictable regulatory process that must be negotiated before a product can be sold, it can take from $70 million to $100 million in total sales before these businesses make their first cent of profits. Nevertheless, they would have to pay the excise tax on their revenue.

The nation’s medical device industry is vulnerable. It is not comprised of behemoths: 80% of its companies have 50 or fewer employees, the very businesses we are relying on to turn the U.S. economy around. The new excise tax comes when regulatory delays and uncertainty are increasing, and as many device firms are shutting down or moving abroad to take advantage of the more favorable tax and regulatory climate in Europe. The tax will force companies to lay off employees, cut back on research and development, or diminish capital investment.

Another symbolic news story (see below): government can encourage private industry (often best by leaving it the hell alone), or it can prey on it. I’ll give you one guess.

I’m reminded of an episode of The Sopranos.

At the brokerage, Christopher is apologizing for the Monkey Boys’ behavior. Then he calls them into the office for a stern dressing-down…. They explain the concept of “pump-and-dump,” and how they’re pawning all the stock off on old ladies. It’s up to eighty, though, and they want to sell. Christopher teaches a little Racketeering 101, laying down the primary rule: “When you’re bleeding a guy, you don’t bleed him dry right away. You wait, so you can bleed him next week, and the week after.”… Christopher goes on to tell them, “If any more Porsches disappear, make it two towns over, and I want a taste.”

And we all know what happens when Christopher doesn’t get his “taste”.

Your government at work.

I can get you two on the aisle in the orchestra, half price—but that’s my final offer. Make that quarter-price. Ten percent. I can’t go any lower.

Oh, just take them!

Richmond, Va. — President Barack Obama has been in campaign mode for months, but he made it official Saturday in front of enthusiastic young supporters at two events that illustrated some old strengths and significant new hurdles for the incumbent.

If a white Republican had kicked off his candidacy in the capital of the Confederacy, wouldn’t the press have raised a stink? Just asking.

Anyway…

The big Obama show — heralded by a huge “Forward” banner atop OSU’s Schottenstein Center and a fire-’em-up presidential introduction from first lady Michelle Obama — was less targeted at the national media than his 2007 announcement in Springfield, Ill., when the Obama campaign sought to project the image of an unstoppable nationwide movement.

This time, Obama’s team is localizing its message and targeting key constituencies — students, veterans, women, Latinos, African Americans — in too-close-to-call states such as Ohio and Virginia, while firing up young voters and volunteers whose support Obama sorely needs.

If the carefully choreographed kick off was any indication, Obama will face some challenges in recapturing the 2008 magic — especially among young voters who weathered three years of souring job prospects and rising college costs.

The campaign was only able to muster 14,000 supporters at the first event in an arena designed to hold more than 18,000. Several thousand empty seats ringed its upper deck, mostly out of view from the cameras.

Unless, of course, the cameras showed the crowd. But why would they do that? That would be reportage, news. Not their line of work, don’t you know.

So, the candidate who once promised to bring us together, to unite in post-partisanship is appealing to key demographics in battleground states. I feel so included!

No wonder no one gives a hoot. He’s a slightly swarthier Walter Mondale.

Looks like no one likes you. Forward my a**.

It’s not farfetched or outrageous to say that Obama would like to model the USA after European socialist states: ObamaCare, limitless welfare (which increases in good times as well as bad), ignoring the day of fiscal reckoning, confiscatory taxation, etc. (Heck, remember the conversation we reported the other day where an administration official attending the Nobel ceremony noted that in any other country but the US, Obama would get 70% of the vote?)

Let’s look at what else comes with that:

One of the curious things about modern politics is that the Jewish Question is never far from the surface. That this is true in places without Jews like Indonesia and Saudi Arabia is not surprising. But consider the state of British politics.

The upcoming election for the mayor of London pits the affable Tory incumbent, Boris Johnson, against a former mayor, Labor firebrand Ken Livingstone. An outspoken socialist who spent decades as a party activist, council member, member of parliament and then mayor from 2000 to 2008, Livingstone is famous for championing of public transport over private automobiles, as well as for securing cheap oil for London buses from Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

All mayors of major cities have foreign policies but Livingstone’s animosity towards Israel and the Bush administration is unusually pronounced. In 2003 he called Bush “’the greatest threat to life on this planet” and in 2005 he effectively blamed the London bombings on the US war in Afghanistan and the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

Livingstone’s calling a Jewish reporter “a concentration camp guard” and recent remarks that Jews are too rich to vote for him in the upcoming election have raised a few eyebrows but have not put him out of the race (although recent questions about tax-dodging and having secretly paid a mother of an unacknowledged child from public funds might yet.)

These slaps at Jews have been matched by his public embrace of radical cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi and mayoral patronage of the equally radical Islamic Forum of Europe, which received a million pounds to build a new headquarters.

And he’s the nice guy!

The pandering at the heart of George Galloway’s stunning return to parliament was even more blatant. A campaign leaflet made his pitch bluntly: “God KNOWS who is a Muslim. And he KNOWS who is not… Let me point out to all the Muslim brothers and sisters what I stand for. I, George Galloway, do not drink alcohol and never have. Ask yourself if the other candidate (Labor candidate Imran Hussain) in this election can say that truthfully. I, George Galloway, have fought for the Muslims at home and abroad, all my life, and paid a price for it. I, George Galloway, hold Pakistan’s highest civil awards.”

Livingstone’s campaign and Galloway’s reelection demonstrates several things about the state of politics and society in modern Britain. First, it is possible to be elected to parliament solely on the basis of religious appeals in Muslim majority districts. But these appeals also have a very real material side, namely the patronage that will flow into community, read religious, organizations.

Second, there are essentially no limits to inflammatory rhetoric, especially when directed at the United States, Israel or Jews. The British establishment and electorate have long tolerated or downplayed Galloway’s rhetorical and practical support for dictators ranging from Saddam to Qaddafi to Assad, his incitement against Israel and Jews, along with his breaking of international sanctions on Iraq, from which he took money as part of the UN “oil for food” scandal, and his theatrical convoy supplying money to Hamas.

That’s right, the wholly discredited and roundly despised George Galloway won another seat in Parliament.

And he’s got company:

Livingstone and Galloway are distinctively boorish but their eagerness to lash out against Jews and Israel is shared with other leftist politicians and parties around the world. Israeli injustices take their breath away, and local Jewish communities and individual Jews irritate them endlessly.

Galloway’s parliamentary colleague Jeremy Corbyn, a member of both the Labor party and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, is obsessed with Israel, as is Liberal Democrat Jenny Tonge, who famously opined that Israeli doctors should disprove allegations of having stolen organs from Haitian earthquake victims.

…

Sigmar Gabriel, chairman of the German Social Democratic Party and a likely candidate for chancellor, recently denounced Israel’s “apartheid regime.”

And those are just the elected officials! There are also the cultural figures, led most notably by Günter Grass.

And this fellow, we mentioned the other day:

The Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung, who made anti-Semitic remarks suggesting a connection between Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik and Israel’s Mossad, drew criticism not only in Israel, but also on the pages of Scandinavian newspapers.

Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet published in October an article by journalist John Faerseth, who attended one of Galtung’s lectures at the University of Oslo, where he outlined his doctrine in front of a cheering crowd.

Throughout the article, Fearseth slams Galtung, who is dubbed “the father of peace studies”, saying the “findings” on which he bases his theories against Jews are “dubious” at best.

Norwegian magazine Humanist published a correspondence between Galtung and Fearseth, in which Galtung claimed, as he did several times in the past, that the Jews control world media.

Fearseth wrote a response article together with a Dagbladet reporter, in which they called Galtung a provocateur who uses his authority to “incite classic anti-Semitic propaganda.”

Meanwhile, the editors of Humanist published a special column in which they expressed their reservations over Galtung’s article, explaining why the magazine chose to give him a platform to spew his hate.

Well, that last part sounds reasonable enough. I’d like to read more spewed hate. When can I look forward to the gay-bashing article, the editorial call for ethnic cleansing, the provocative piece on the superiority of some people over others based solely on skin color? We’ll condemn them unanimously, of course, but if Galloway gets a platform, I want a whole dais, complete with styrofoam columns.

Anyway, good for those Norwegians who condemned this.

Now, will they condemn this too?

The Anti-Defamation League has slammed Noway’s prime minister over failing to condemn anti-Israel slogans at the country’s May Day event.

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, head of the governing Labour Party, was silent in the face of official anti-Semitic and anti-Israel banners.

Marchers at the event’s parade held banners proclaiming 11 official slogans, including “Israel = Apartheid” and “Boycott Israel!”

Stoltenberg did not comment about the slogans, though he was the featured speaker at the May Day celebration of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO) in Bergen.

“It is extremely troubling that given the nature of these anti-Israel slogans, their official status at the parade, and the fact that they were written about by newspapers days before the event, Prime Minister Stoltenberg still participated and did not speak out against these vile, offensive statements,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director.

Politicians, academics (albeit it “peace studies”), labor—even the press. All dominated by the Left, and all riddled with Jew-hatred. If anyone would care to dispute or disclaim, I’m all ears.

Speaking of all ears, is this coming soon to a president near you?

No, not the one of him tucking into a feast cocker spaniel au vin, or catching crickets in his mouth. His defenders would just celebrate him as a man of many cultures (which indeed he is).

And not even this video, a longer version of which is making the rounds of the Internet (hat tip reader Judi).

No, the video Barack Obama doesn’t want you to see—more embarrassing than a sex tape with Tonya Harding, more damning than a youthful clip of him with a clip—is this clip right here:

Be afraid, Democrats. Be very afraid.

PS: The longer version of the first video correctly points out that in order for America to fail, Americans first have to want her not to succeed. That is accomplished by underplaying America’s successes and denigrating her history. The education system has been handling that for decades, and generations of young voters coming into the system are responding to a president who preaches the same message they’ve grown up to believe is true.

The title is even more of an oxymoron than you can imagine:

When Europe’s finance ministers meet for a group photo, it’s easy to spot the rebel — Anders Borg has a ponytail and earring. What actually marks him out, though, is how he responded to the crash. While most countries in Europe borrowed massively, Borg did not. Since becoming Sweden’s finance minister, his mission has been to pare back government. His ‘stimulus’ was a permanent tax cut. To critics, this was fiscal lunacy — the so-called ‘punk tax cutting’ agenda. Borg, on the other hand, thought lunacy meant repeating the economics of the 1970s and expecting a different result.

Three years on, it’s pretty clear who was right. ‘Look at Spain, Portugal or the UK, whose governments were arguing for large temporary stimulus,’ he says. ‘Well, we can see that very little of the stimulus went to the economy. But they are stuck with the debt.’ Tax-cutting Sweden, by contrast, had the fastest growth in Europe last year, when it also celebrated the abolition of its deficit. The recovery started just in time for the 2010 Swedish election, in which the Conservatives were re-elected for the first time in history.

Liberals often point to the welfare states of Scandinavia as an alternative to the stricter free market economies.

Yeah, right:

‘Sweden was a textbook case of European economic sclerosis. Very high taxes and huge regulatory burden.’ An economic crisis in the early 1990s forced Sweden on the road to balanced budgets, and Borg was determined the 2007 crash would not stop him cutting the size of government.

‘Everybody was told “stimulus, stimulus, stimulus”,’ he says — referring to the EU, IMF and the alphabet soup of agencies urging a global, debt-fuelled spending splurge. Borg, an economist, couldn’t work out how this would help. ‘It was surprising that Europe, given what we experienced in the 1970s and 80s with structural unemployment, believed that short-term Keynesianism could solve the problem.’ Non-economists, he says, ‘might have a tendency to fall for those kinds of messages’.

Oh my, whoever could he mean?

He continued to cut taxes and cut welfare-spending to pay for it; he even cut property taxes for the rich to lure entrepreneurs back to Sweden. The last bit was the most unpopular, but for Borg, economic recovery starts with entrepreneurs. If cutting taxes for the rich encouraged risk-taking, then it had to be done. ‘In most cases, the company would not have been created without the owner,’ he says. ‘There would be no Ikea without [Ingvar] Kamprad. We would not have Tetra-Pak without [Ruben] Rausing. They are probably the foremost entrepreneurs we have had in the last few decades, and both moved out of Sweden.’

But they were not rich, I say, when they were starting out. ‘No, but they were becoming rich. If you have a high wealth tax and an inheritance tax, people emigrate because it becomes too costly to own a company. Ownership is a production factor. Entrepreneurs are a production factor. Yes, these people are rich and you can obviously argue that we want to encourage social cohesion. But it is also problematic if you drive out entrepreneurs from your country, because they are the source of job creation.’

For pete’s sakes, Obamabots, even Sweden has wised up. Obama’s alleged smarts are anything but—and they’re forty years out of date. He sounds like the Ramparts magazines of my youth. He is President Bell-Bottom, the Sideburn-in-Chief of the United States.

Aggie’s three-word summation of the state we’re in.

Mark Steyn goes on at greater length—but reaches the same conclusion:

In the end, free societies get the governments they deserve. So, if the American people wish to choose their chief executive on the basis of the “war on women,” the Republican theocrats’ confiscation of your contraceptives, or whatever other mangy and emaciated rabbit the Great Magician produces from his threadbare topper, they are free to do so, and they will live with the consequences. This week’s bit of ham-handed misdirection was “the Buffett Rule,” a not-so-disguised capital-gains-tax hike designed to ensure that Warren Buffett pays as much tax as his secretary. If the alleged Sage of Omaha is as exercised about this as his public effusions would suggest, I’d be in favor of repealing the prohibition on Bills of Attainder, and the old boy could sleep easy at night. But instead every other American “millionaire” will be subject to the new rule — because, as President Obama said this week, it “will help us close our deficit.”

…

According to the Congressional Budget Office (the same nonpartisan bean-counters who project that on Obama’s current spending proposals the entire U.S. economy will cease to exist in 2027) Obama’s Buffett Rule will raise — stand well back — $3.2 billion per year. Or what the United States government currently borrows every 17 hours. So in 514 years it will have raised enough additional revenue to pay off the 2011 federal budget deficit.

…

Sometimes societies become too stupid to survive. A nation that takes Barack Obama’s current rhetorical flourishes seriously is certainly well advanced along that dismal path. The current federal debt burden works out at about $140,000 per federal taxpayer, and President Obama is proposing to increase both debt and taxes. Are you one of those taxpayers? How much more do you want added to your $140,000 debt burden?

…

For what Obama’s spending, there aren’t enough of them, or us, or “the rich” — and there never will be. There is only one Warren Buffett. He is the third-wealthiest person on the planet. The first is a Mexican, and beyond the reach of the U.S. Treasury. Mr. Buffett is worth $44 billion. If he donated the entire lot to the government of the United States, they would blow through it within four and a half days. Okay, so who’s the fourth-richest guy? He’s French. And the fifth guy’s a Spaniard. Number six is Larry Ellison. He’s American, but that loser is only worth $36 billion. So he and Buffett between them could keep the United States government going for a week. The next-richest American is Christy Walton of Walmart, and she’s barely a semi-Buffett. So her $25 billion will see you through a couple of days of the second week. There aren’t a lot of other semi-Buffetts, but, if you scrounge around, you can rustle up some hemi-demi-semi-Buffetts: If you confiscate the total wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans it comes to $1.5 trillion, which is just a little less than the Obama budget deficit for a year.

Even an entertaining thought experiment like this almost misses the point: confiscation. We were founded as a free society for which taxes were a reasonable expense for the common wealth; Obama is leading us by the hand toward a state that owns the wealth and leaves us with what it sees fit. As reader Judi reminded us yesterday, everything this man does, from tax demagoguery to health care, is about consolidating power.

When he’s not talking up his buddy Warren, the Half-Millennium Man has been staggering around demonizing Paul Ryan’s plan, which would lead, he says, to the end of the weather service, air-traffic control, national parks, law enforcement, and drinkable water. Given what’s at stake, you might think then that the president would have an alternative plan. But he has none, save for his proposal to pay off the 2011 federal deficit by the year 2526. The Obama No-Plan plan means the end of everything. That really ought to be the only slogan the Republicans need this fall:

What’s yourplan?

And all you hear are crickets chirping.

We know what that sounds like.

At least his is a loud voice:

It’s not the millionaires, it’s the debt. Just repeat that. It’s not the millionaires, it’s the debt.

And Santelli makes the best point when he says his children’s future is threatened more by 15.6 trillion than it is by a million.

But my point would be that the numbers don’t matter. We don’t have the right to confiscate another’s property (or money) just because we want it. One’s rights don’t go down as one’s income goes up. If we even entertain the argument, we’ve already established what we are and are just haggling over price. Not sure how the majority of the country sees it, though.