Is THIS the face of your next President?!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THAT’S the big question in political circles of late… I can recall telling friends during the 2008 campaign that I didn’t trust Hillary Clinton. There was just something…sinister…about her. I still don’t..and there probably still is. Witness the Benghazi fiasco, where she simply walked away. Because, as you know, “what difference does it make?” I’m wondering how things may have proceeded with her winning the nomination and the election that year. Despite what I feel are significant shortcomings, I suspect the past 5 plus years would have proceeded in a more productive fashion, as opposed to the disastrous, disaffected Barack Obama.

As for 2016, there doesn’t seem to be a viable Republican challenger on the horizon. Especially with Chris Christie and Marco Rubio seemingly bending over backwards to slight conservative supporters anywhere they can. They may as well just apply the (D) designation after their names. Especially the combative New Jersey governor.

Back to my original point, I found Charles Hurt’s piece in The Washington Times right on target. He takes a look at what may lie ahead for Mrs. Clinton. That, and the difference it will DEFINITELY make for YOU!

HILLARY 2016 – WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?

“The Clintons are getting the old band back together again for one last geriatric tour.

Hillary 2016. Because 22 years of Clintons dominating the Beltway isn’t enough.

Her campaign slogan: “Vote for me. I am a woman. What difference does it make?”

The Draft Hillary movement is really taking off. There hasn’t been this much excitement behind a Draft Hillary movement since, well, the last there was aDraft Hillary movement.

Remember that? Back in 2008? When she was the “inevitable nominee”? She was the “most electable” Democrat running? She was the only one who could beat the Republicans?

Didn’t exactly out as advertised. But this being the Clintons, there is no more shame in that than there is in the incident with the intern, sketchy stories about cattle futures or missing law firm records magically reappearing.

They’re not even changing the talking points. Once again, the nomination is hers for the asking. She is inevitable — again. It is time for a woman in theWhite House — again. She is the only electable Democrat in the mix — again.

She’s even picked up a Twitter handle and describes herself as a “glass ceiling cracker.” You go, girl!

Deep down, she’s got to be having flashbacks and night sweats thinking to herself: “I have seen this movie before and I really didn’t like how it ended.”

But what difference does it make? She’s Hillary Rodham Clinton .

The last time, her exhausting quest ended with her defeated and broke. Then she had to muster up the energy to dine on some seriously rancid crow and become the single most visible employee of the man who had beaten her.

He beat her because she had a history and he did not. He beat her because she had made very public decisions that he had not faced. He beat her because she supported a military action overseas that he was able to blithely campaign against. In the end, he beat her because people wanted something . They wanted change.

What difference does it make? In that , it was the difference between winning and losing.

So, what will have happened in eight years to make her not less, but more, appealing to voters? Absolutely nothing.

It is just eight years more of fraught Clinton history. Eight more years of public decisions that will be mercilessly picked apart. Eight more years further and further away from being something new. She will be a calcified statue representing the very opposite of change.

She will be forced to answer endless questions about the deadly terrorist attack in Benghazi. We will see the endless loop of her baring her teeth during a congressional hearing and angrily shouting: “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

Cruelest of all: She will be blamed and pay the political price for every single unpopular foreign military action the current president has launched during his tenure. She got beaten last time for being a war hawk. She’ll get beaten this time because President Obama became the drone-loving war hawk he had campaigned against.

In 2008, Mrs. Clinton cut an ad showing children asleep. The phone at the White House rings at 3 a.m. announcing some serious national security threat. The narrator intoned: “Who do you want answering the phone?”

Without mentioning Mr. Obama’s name, it was a bid to paint his lack of world experience as a frightening liability.

Well, Mrs. Clinton certainly does not share any such liability. But eight years on, we now know exactly what she will say if she ever does have to answer that phone at 3 a.m. in the White House .

What difference does it make.”

• Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com or on Twitter @charleshurt.

Anyone?…..Anyone?…

 

 

 

Is ANYONE ‘present’ out there?…ANYONE?…..

A question we should be asking everyday. I know I do!.

One of my favorite ‘teachers’, Ben Stein, has a take on the present state of affairs in our nation…He offers some thoughts on Hillary Clinton, ‘Bush 43’, and the current occupier of the White House….

DREAM SEQUENCES from The American Spectator

And Bush 43 looked great. Not so Mrs. Clinton.

Thursday
“Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley….where does that come from? Some famous movie. Rebecca? I think that’s it. Rebecca.

Anyway, last night I dreamed I was in Miami Beach, helping Tom and Kitty move out of a small house in South Beach. My father was still alive and he was helping, too. There were immense tropical insects, just monstrous crickets who breathed fog onto the windows where they landed. Now that I think of it, maybe I was in Palm Desert, California.

We had our dog, Susie, deceased, but alive in the dream, and she ran away. I chased after her and came to an immense department store, a bit like the Istanbul Grand Bazaar in Skyfall and a tiny bit like the Jelleff’s Department Store on Colesville Road next to the Silver Theater, where my sister Rachel used to shop in the 1950s.

There were woman fortunetellers and snake charmers and a whole host of glamorous looking people, sort of like the Beverly Hills Hotel when Phil DeMuth and I go there for brunch. It was wildly technicolored and gorgeous and lush with immense palm trees inside like the courtyard of the Pan-American Union long ago. Now it’s called the OAS.

I caught up with Susie and brought her out to our car, a pale blue 1955 Chevrolet 210 four-door sedan, which had been my family car through much of my youth.

(Finally, I persuaded my father to buy V-8 Fords, Chevies, and a Dodge — that was pure kindness on his thrifty part. He was a kind man.)

Then Phil DeMuth appeared to tell me I was not going broke after all, despite my fears and worries, and that I need not live in fear of poverty. He had charts and graphs to back up his claims.

As I talked to him, I noticed that Tom Cruise had pulled up next to him in a pickup truck. He talked to me in a friendly way, thanking me for the kindness I had shown him by writing so well about him in his role in Tropic Thunder. He told me he had been a fan for a long time. I was happy and walked with him as he walked into the huge store… maybe it was the Saks in Palm Desert… and then I told him I would stop following him and he walked away.

When I got back to our car, I saw that now Dustin Hoffman had pulled up next to our poor old Chevy, and he was in a pickup truck, too. He smiled and waved at me, and I felt happy.

I went back into our son’s former home and realized my father had left his sport jacket there. But my father was gone and that was when I woke up.

I cannot tell you how excited that dream made me. It was mostly the immense, gaudy store that did it. Also somehow, somewhere in the back of my mind was the thought that my father was there to help me.

Also, it was exciting to be friends with movie stars.

But I knew it was not real and so, back to sleep. When I awakened, to my shock there was Bush 43 speaking at the dedication of his library at SMU. He looked great, sounded great, deeply unpretentious, just a fine figure of a man. I felt deeply sad that he’s not in the White House any longer, although he made some horrible mistakes that he should have seen coming: mostly ignoring Afghanistan while he pursued a futile course in a sideshow in Iraq. Far worse that a mistake… a blunder. Who said that? Talleyrand? He also should not have allowed Lehman to fail. That had catastrophe all over it.

Still, it happened and it’s history now. Eventually, he bailed out Wall Street and saved the economy. So kudos for that. And mainly, he’s just a super likeable guy.

 

Mrs. Hillary Clinton looks decidedly unwell. I wonder how her health is. I hope she is all right. She needs a long rest, dry out her weary brain.

 

How brave Bush 41 is. Just looking at him is deeply moving. Hero in so many ways.

As to Jimmy Carter… well, he’s gotten the face he deserves.

 

The weather here in D.C. is perfect today. Alex and I sat out on our deck and watched the clouds go by and the planes land at DCA.

Relaxing. Almost too good to be true.

I came inside and watched the news. Chemical weapons in Syria. But the rebels are worse than Assad. He’s a killer and a butcher, but not totally out of control like the fanatical Islamists. What a nightmare Arab Spring has become. IT WAS SO AMAZINGLY EASY TO SEE IT COMING. Who did we think would replace Mubarak? Mohammed Thomas Jefferson and Ahmed James Madison? And the media was praising the rebels as if they were John Adams and Tom Paine. THE REBELS SAID THEY WANTED TO KILL ISRAEL AND AMERICA! What did we think they would be like in office?

Now, it’s all turned to mud and it’s going to get a lot worse.

And there is poor Obama. He drew a “red line” for Iran. They evacuated their bowels on him. He warned North Korea and laughed. He was going to “reset” relations with Russia. They are in a total mess. Honor the Russians’ incredible courage, but they are not our pals.

Have we ever had a more pusillanimous foreign policy? Have we ever shown ourselves to be weaker?

When in history did weakness win the day? What kind of dream world does Mr. Obama live in?

 

I heard Senator McCain on the C-Span network say that we could no longer defend the nation. This is serious business. Is Mr. Obama listening? And what a cruel blow that Sen. McCain lost in 2008. What a different country this would be if he had won. Does Mr. Obama even bother to listen to his generals and admirals? Or is his goal to end America?

“Nothing matters now but Obama’s subconscious,” said Phil DeMuth in 2008. What is the subconscious of a man abandoned by both father and mother? Actually, maybe that was a good thing given who they were. And this country has turned itself inside out for Mr. Obama for his whole life. Maybe he likes America. But should we have a President about whom we say “maybe”?”

 

“I either don’t have a clue…or I don’t care…you decide!”

The “fair share” business…

President Obama uses a LOT of catch phrases, platitudes, and downright LIES in his interviews and speeches…day in and day out. At the top of the list…or close to it is “fair share” when he refers to the nation’s wealthy. He LOVES throwing that around. And, unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know they are the targets of his political rhetoric. According to him, they’re practically the ONLY cause of our fiscal woes. They’re to blame for every financial affliction the nation faces.

What many DON’T realize, many of the “wealthy” are buds, bros, confidants, friends…what have you…of the President. Of course, I realize they probably get a heads up for what’s targeting their money down the road. It pays to be on the inside with the White House!

National Review’s Victor Davis Hanson takes a look at THE REAL FAT CATS that benefit one way or another from their chumminess with the President. Do you think ANY of them give a rat’s ass about the country?…the people looking for jobs?…struggling to pay bills?…

Let’s take a look, shall we?…

“Who exactly were the rich who, as the president said, were not “paying their fair share”? The rapper Jay-Z (net worth: nearly $500 million)? The actor Johnny Depp (2011 income: $50 million)? Neither seems to have heard the president’s earlier warning that “at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

Could both zillionaires simply have quit making money at $10 million — and thereby given their poorer audiences a break on ticket prices?

With all the talk of raising taxes on the supposedly conservative rich who make more than $250,000 per year, why not levy a $3 surcharge on tickets for movies, concerts, and sporting events to “spread the wealth” from multimillionaires? That way, LeBron James (approximate annual earnings: $53 million) or Oliver Stone (net worth: approximately $50 million) might at last begin to “level the playing field.”

Is Michael Moore (net worth: approximately $50 million) a one-tenth-of-one-percenter? If so, why do mansion-living-grandee movie directors like Moore and Stone need state subsidies and tax breaks to produce their films, when most states are nearly as insolvent as the federal government?

Warren Buffett likewise did not heed the president’s advice that after 2008 it was not the time to profit. Did he pay any attention to Obama’s additional warning that, “if you own a business, you didn’t build that”? Apparently not.

Otherwise, Buffett would not think that his own expertise and hard work had built Berkshire Hathaway, or that he has the right to leave his $50 billion fortune to nonprofit institutions of his choice — thereby shorting the Internal Revenue Service billions of dollars in lost estate taxes. With a trillion-dollar-plus annual federal deficit, either the Department of Housing and Urban Development or the Department of Health and Human Services surely could use Buffett’s loot far more than the already well-endowed Gates Foundation.

If the country is going to turn redistributionist, then we might as well do so whole-hog — given that eight of the wealthiest ten counties in America voted for Obama. Why not limit mortgage-interest deductions to just one loan under $100,000 — while ending tax breaks altogether for second and third vacation houses?

Under the present system, the beleaguered 99 percent are subsidizing the abodes of Hollywood and Silicon Valley “millionaires and billionaires” — many of whom themselves have been railing against the 1 percent. Should the government provide tens of thousands of dollars in tax breaks for a blue-state 1-percenter to live in tony Palo Alto or Newport Beach when there are plenty of fine homes far cheaper and sitting empty not far away in Stockton and Bakersfield?

Blue states usually have far higher state income taxes that are used as deductions to reduce what is owed on federal income tax. Why should working folks in Nevada or Texas have to pay their fair share, while Wall Streeters get huge federal write-offs from their New York or Connecticut state income taxes?

With the new obsessions over income and net worth, we might as well also means-test all federal programs. Should anyone — do we remember Solyndra? — be eligible for federal cash loans if he makes over $250,000 per year? Why would affirmative action apply to the children of millionaires like the offspring of Eric Holder, Susan Rice, or, for that matter, Barack Obama, while excluding the destitute children of Appalachian coal miners and the poor clingers of Pennsylvania?

Remember the revolving door that Barack Obama once promised to end? The former head of his Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag, used his title and insider contacts to walk right into a Citigroup fat-cat banker’s job that pays him an estimated $2 million to $3 million a year.

Clinton administration apparatchiks such as Jamie Gorelick, James Johnson, and Franklin Raines — without much banking experience — reaped millions of dollars working at Fannie Mae as it went nearly bankrupt. If you leave government and immediately make more than $1 million, why not pay a 50 percent tax on your income for five years — given that “somebody else made that happen”? Why does Google have tax havens in the Caribbean, and why do six-figure-income college presidents have their taxes paid by their universities?

For much of 2012, Obama waged a veritable class war against conservatives, as if they were all right-wing clones of Donald Trump and the Koch brothers. But modern Democrats — Nancy Pelosi, George Soros, Steven Spielberg, Brian Williams, or Oprah Winfrey — are as likely to be very wealthy as are Republicans, who increasingly better represent small-business owners desperately struggling to become affluent.

Next time around, Republicans might remind us of that paradox by nominating a small-business scrapper, who — unlike millionaires such as Al Gore, John Kerry, or Barack Obama — did not go to prep school and the Ivy League. And they might find better ways for those in academia, entertainment, sports, big law, and the media to pay their fair share.”

— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The End of Sparta. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com. © 2012 Tribune Media Services

‘Stale and Empty’

 

 

I could not have cared less about Barack Obama’s acceptance speech last night. As expected, it was mediocre, at best. What can he say? “Continue to believe in me!”?…”Give me another chance!”?…The damage is done, Mr. President. YOU and your party decided to proceed in a fashion that continues to inflict more damage instead of enacting meaningful repairs!

The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan offers her spot on, expert analysis of where we stand now…

The Democrats’ Soft Extremism

Obama is out of ideas, and Clinton’s speech was unworthy of him.

Barack Obama is deeply overexposed and often boring. He never seems to be saying what he’s thinking. His speech Thursday was weirdly anticlimactic. There’s too much buildup, the crowd was tired, it all felt flat. He was somber, and his message was essentially banal: We’ve done better than you think. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

There were many straw men. There were phrases like “the shadow of a shuttered steel mill,” which he considers writerly. But they sound empty and practiced now, like something you’ve heard in a commercial or an advertising campaign.

It was stale and empty. He’s out of juice.

His daughters have grown beautiful.

As for Joe Biden, I love him and will hear nothing against him. He’s like Democrats the way they used to be, and by that I do not mean idiotic, I mean normal—manipulative only to a normal degree, roughly aware of the facts of normal life, alert to and even respecting of such normal things as religious faith. I wish he did not insist on referring to his wife as “Dr. Jill Biden.” I’m sure she has many doctorates, but so do half the unemployed in Manhattan.

John Kerry was on fire. It was the best speech of his career. He drew blood on foreign policy: “Talk about being before it before you were against it!” Obama will take that message, on Afghanistan, into debate.

***

Was it a good convention?

Beneath the funny hats, the sweet-faced delegates, the handsome speakers and the babies waving flags there was something disquieting. All three days were marked by a kind of soft, distracted extremism. It was unshowy and unobnoxious but also unsettling.

There was the relentless emphasis on Government as Community, as the thing that gives us spirit and makes us whole. But government isn’t what you love if you’re American, America is what you love. Government is what you have, need and hire. Its most essential duties—especially when it is bankrupt—involve defending rights and safety, not imposing views and values. We already have values. Democrats and Republicans don’t see all this the same way, and that’s fine—that’s what national politics is, the working out of this dispute in one direction or another every few years. But the Democrats convened in Charlotte seemed more extreme on the point, more accepting of the idea of government as the center of national life, than ever, at least to me.

The fight over including a single mention of God in the platform—that was extreme. The original removal of the single mention by the platform committee—extreme. The huge “No!” vote on restoring the mention of God, and including the administration’s own stand on Jerusalem—that wasn’t liberal, it was extreme. Comparing the Republicans to Nazis—extreme. The almost complete absence of a call to help education by facing down the powers that throw our least defended children under the school bus—this was extreme, not mainstream.

The sheer strangeness of all the talk about abortion, abortion, contraception, contraception. I am old enough to know a wedge issue when I see one, but I’ve never seen a great party build its entire public persona around one. Big speeches from the heads of Planned Parenthood and NARAL, HHS Secretary and abortion enthusiast Kathleen Sebelius and, of course, Sandra Fluke.

“Republicans shut me out of a hearing on contraception,” Ms. Fluke said. But why would anyone have included a Georgetown law student who never worked her way onto the national stage until she was plucked, by the left, as a personable victim?

What a fabulously confident and ingenuous-seeming political narcissist Ms. Fluke is. She really does think—and her party apparently thinks—that in a spending crisis with trillions in debt and many in need, in a nation in existential doubt as to its standing and purpose, in a time when parents struggle to buy the good sneakers for the kids so they’re not embarrassed at school . . . that in that nation the great issue of the day, and the appropriate focus of our concern, is making other people pay for her birth-control pills. That’s not a stand, it’s a non sequitur. She is not, as Rush Limbaugh oafishly, bullyingly said, a slut. She is a ninny, a narcissist and a fool.

And she was one of the great faces of the party in Charlotte. That is extreme. Childish, too.

Something else, and it had to do with tone. I remember the Republicans in Tampa bashing the president, hard, but not the entire Democratic Party. In Charlotte they bashed Mitt Romney, but they bashed the Republican Party harder. If this doesn’t strike you as somewhat unsettling, then you must want another four years of all war all the time between the parties. I don’t think the American people want that. Because, actually, they’re not extreme.

***

Bill Clinton is The Master. That is stipulated. Almost everyone in the media was over the moon about his speech. It was a shrewd and superb moment of political generosity, his hauling into town to make the case, but it was a hack speech. It was the speech of a highly gifted apparatchik. All great partisan speeches include some hard and uncomfortable truths, but Mr. Clinton offered none. He knows better than so much of what he said. In real life he makes insightful statements on the debt, the deficit and the real threat they pose. He knows more about the need for and impediments to public-school reform than half the reformers do. He knows exactly why both parties can’t reach agreement in Washington, and what each has done wrong along the way. But Wednesday night he stuck to fluid fictions and clever cases. It was smaller than Bill Clinton is.

Still, he gave the president one great political gift: He put Medicaid on the table. He put it right there next to the pepper shaker and said Look at that! People talk Medicare and Social Security, but, as Mr. Clinton noted, more than half of Medicaid is spent on nursing-home care for seniors and on those with disabilities such as Down syndrome and autism. Will it be cut?

Here’s what I’m seeing the past 10 years. The baby boomers have been supporting their grown children and their aged parents. They are stressed, stretched and largely uncomplaining, because they know that as boomers—shallow, selfish—they’re the only generation not allowed to complain. And just as well, as complaints are the only area of national life where we have a surplus. But they are spiritually and financially holding the country together, and they’re coming to terms with the fact that it’s going to be that way for a good long time. They’re going to take a keen interest in where Medicaid goes.

Romney-Ryan take note: this will arrive as an issue.

***

So: was it a good convention? We’ll know by the polls, by the famous bounce, or lack of it. A guess? Dead-cat bounce. Just like the Republicans got.

Maybe Mr. Clinton made a bigger, more broadly positive impression than I suspect; maybe a sense the Democrats were extreme will take hold. People left both conventions talking about only one thing: the debates. They know they didn’t move the needle in Tampa and Charlotte. The people in charge of politics aren’t so good at politics anymore.

 

We’re sorry, Barack!

Will you vote for Barack Obama just because THIS guy says you should?..

Yep…it’s our fault! We just expected too much from the novice President. It was just unfair and unrealistic! Never mind that’s not how the media sold Barack Obama to the American voter.

I was hoping to see headlines this morning reading something like “CLINTON TELLS DEMOCRATS ‘YOU’RE IDIOTS TO SUPPORT THIS GUY!'” But..alas, he did his duty in an effort to excuse the past 4 years and how the damage…I mean..the job is not yet finished. THAT should be scary enough in itself. And, as Byron York points out, the former President was about the only one who could convince enough morons out there that Barack Obama deserves a second term. Despite the good possibility he knows better!

Bill Clinton: Please don’t judge Obama by the standards he set!

Campaigning in 2008, Barack Obama set the very highest goals for his presidency.  He would not only bring about economic recovery, he would lay the foundation for a new economy, bring Americans together, reduce the rancor of political debate, and even slow the rise of the oceans.  Now, as he runs for re-election, Obama is caught in a trap of his own making: Many Americans who voted for him, particularly independents, are judging him not so much by what he has done in office as by what he promised to do.  If voters hold Obama to that standard on Election Day, he will lose.

What Obama desperately needs to do in the campaign’s last two months is to lower expectations, to bring the high hopes of 2008 in line with the reality of 2012.  That might be an impossible job, but Team Obama realized there was just one Democrat capable of even giving it a shot: Bill Clinton.  So the former president was given the spotlight at the Democratic convention in Charlotte Wednesday night, his assignment to convince voters that the standards Obama set for himself in ’08 were unrealistic.

Clinton argued that the economic crisis Obama inherited was so serious that “No president — not me, not any of my predecessors, no one could have fully repaired all the damage that he found in just four years.”  Obama will need eight years to finish the job, and even if people don’t see things getting better now, they will if they’ll just vote for Obama.  “He has laid the foundation for a new, modern, successful economy of shared prosperity” Clinton said, “and if you will renew the president’s contract, you will feel it.”

“I believe that with all my heart,” Clinton added.  He said it with such apparent conviction that it’s likely some longtime Clinton watchers immediately assumed it was not true.  And it’s probably not.  But with Clinton, who knows?  Everyone knows he and Obama have had a difficult relationship.  Everyone knows what happened in the 2008 Democratic primaries.  But Clinton remains a Democrat, and he said what he needed to say.

Sincerity aside, there’s no doubt Clinton can make the case for Barack Obama’s re-election far better than Obama himself.  At age 66 and nearly a dozen years removed from the White House, Clinton remains the best simplifier, the best explainer, in American politics.  Obama can’t touch him.

So on Wednesday night, Clinton didn’t just make excuses for Obama, although he did a lot of that.  He also thoroughly rebutted the main lines of attack Obama faces from Republicans Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, and he did it in a way that anyone could grasp.  Clinton’s argument won’t change any Republican minds, but it could well make some independents a little less likely to side with the GOP.  If Obama’s advisers are smart, they’ll make ads from Clinton’s speech, and not from whatever Obama says Thursday night.

Of course Clinton did a lot of it on the fly.  Reporters who tried to follow along with the prepared text of the speech, sent out by the DNC shortly before Clinton took the stage, often had no idea where he was going.  The Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff counted and found that Clinton’s prepared remarks were 3,136 words, and the speech he actually delivered was 5,895.

Clinton may be the world’s best salesman, or one of the best, but there are limits to what a salesman can accomplish without a good product to sell.  For the 20-plus million Americans out of work, and the untold millions more who fear losing their jobs, and the millions who are so stressed out that they just don’t think they can take four more years like the last four — will many of those people be convinced to ignore their own suffering and vote for Obama again simply because Bill Clinton said so?  That seems highly unlikely.  As expected, Clinton made a great argument, and showed once again why he’s head-and-shoulders above Obama as a campaigner.  But changing the course of this election is another matter altogether.

The choice could NOT be more clear!

It has to be absolutely, completely, and totally obvious to America that the differences between the Republicans with Mitt Romney and the Democrats with Barack Obama are crystal clear. Gov. Romney confirmed that with his acceptance speech last evening. It was sincere, forceful, hopeful, and determined. He did an excellent job of presenting himself to the American people and what he believes. He contrasted himself as a man with answers. Answers millions of Americans THOUGHT they would get from Barack Obama four years ago. Instead, we found ourselves with a BAD President, steeped in arrogance and division. A President with nothing more than slogans to offer for the next four years.

I think the Republicans showed a united front to the voters. An organization that says things do not have to be the way they are today. Their core belief of success can easily override the contentious, foolish premise of today’s Democrat party. A party more focused on trying to convince the voters the Republican party is inherently evil and selfish instead of focusing on SOLUTIONS so many Americans are looking for.

What we saw in Tampa was serious individuals offering practical, sensible solutions to REAL problems you face every day….

Christie

Chris Christie told how his strong sense of determination was what is needed to face the difficult fiscal decisions we have ahead….

Davis

Artur Davis made a strong point with his observation that most Americans don’t even recognize the country as its become under Barack Obama….

Martinez

New Mexico’s Gov. Susana Martinez was a popular hit with her recollection of how common sense solutions offered by the Republicans were what she could relate to…not pandering and lies..

Ryan

Paul Ryan appealed to what most Americans can relate to. His personalized story revealed more of a man who knows what he’s talking about when it comes to sensible solutions.

Rubio

Florida’s Marco Rubio eloquently presented what it meant to him and his family being part of this country…

I think we’re left with a rock solid belief that these guys can turn things around. They KNOW it will not be easy. They KNOW they will have more than just POLITICAL opposition to EVERY SINGLE EFFORT they make get this country in the right direction again.

Next week, in Charlotte, the Democrats meet to validate Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Undoubtedly we can expect a gathering focused on nothing more than demonization of the opposition based NOT on fact…but on scare tactics..insinuation….and condescension…all mixed together with a big heapin’ helpin’ of media bias.

It should ALSO be obvious that Barack Obama has NOTHING….NOTHING …to tout as an accomplishment which generated popular appeal with the American people. Instead we  will see ‘a fluke’….a couple of weasels…and a couple of jokesters!

Sandra Fluke

Charlie Crist

That’s ALL they have to offer….sad…so sad….

2 ‘sides’ to every story!

 

 

Just in case you were thinking the Republicans have IMMERSED themselves in this abortion crap (which DOES have a tendency to get them OFF message!), Byron York @ the Washington Examiner sees the Democrats putting all of THEIR eggs…hey!…that’s a good analogy!…in ONE basket!….Hey RNC!…There’s a lesson to be learned here!!!!!!!

Voters fret about economy, Dems focus on abortion

“This election, to me, is about which candidate is more likely to return us to full employment,” says former President Bill Clinton in a new ad released by the Obama campaign. Most voters would agree, at least if one believes countless polls that show the economy and jobs are the nation’s top concern.

So why are Democrats planning to make their convention a celebration of abortion and gay marriage? The Obama campaign has given a new and prominent surrogate role to Sandra Fluke, the former Georgetown law student and full-time lefty activist who achieved notoriety after Rush Limbaugh called her a bad name because of her energetic promotion of taxpayer-financed contraception.

This week, Fluke’s role has been to attack Republicans over Rep. Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” statement. “Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan tried to distance themselves from the remark,” Fluke wrote in an Obama campaign email, “but the fact is they’re in lockstep with Akin on the major women’s health issues of our time.”

Fluke is just one part of the Democrats’ plan to target Akin and the GOP on abortion.The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard writes that the Democratic convention is becoming an “anti-Akin affair,” with party leaders lining up NARAL Pro-Choice America’s Nancy Keenan, Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards, the actress Eva Longoria, Sen. Barbara Mikulski and Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, in addition to Fluke, to highlight “women’s issues” in Charlotte.

There will be a lot of talk about abortion, all of it from one side. But not all Democrats agree with Fluke and her fellow speakers when it comes to abortion; in May of this year, Gallup found 34 percent of Democrats identify themselves as pro-life. And, perhaps more important to President Obama’s re-election prospects, 47 percent of independents describe themselves as pro-life.

Why would a party that wants to attract the largest possible number of votes this November make such extravagant pronouncements on abortion, knowing that one-third of its own members and nearly one-half of independents disagree?

And that’s just abortion. Democrats have already decided to make support for gay marriage a plank in the party’s platform. The party’s 15-member platform drafting committee unanimously voted to do so last month after hearing testimony from advocates of gay marriage. They did not invite any opponents of gay marriage to testify, suggesting that when it comes to writing a platform, the Democratic process is not entirely democratic.

According to the most recent Gallup poll on the matter, 65 percent of Democrats believe gay marriage should be legal, while 34 percent believe it shouldn’t. A full 40 percent of independents believe gay marriage should not be legal. And the Democrats are holding their convention in a swing state, North Carolina, where voters recently approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

The rational design behind all this is that Barack Obama can’t be re-elected without winning big among women. The newest Gallup polling shows equal gender gaps: Mitt Romney leads the president 50 percent to 42 percent among men, while the president leads Romney 50 to 42 percent among women. It’s a gap that has been consistent for months now, and Obama hopes to eke out a victory by making a few more women nervous about voting Republican in the last weeks of the campaign. “The Obama campaign believes that college-educated women, and the margin the president could win among them, will decide the election,” says a well-informed Democratic strategist not connected to the campaign.

But not all of this is a rational calculation. If you stand on the floor of a Democratic convention when a speaker is discussing abortion, you can feel the depth of the emotion that many Democrats feel on the issue. Conservatives like to say abortion is a liberal sacrament. Maybe that’s going too far, but it is very, very important. And when something means so much to a group of people, they can easily convince themselves that it means that much to others, too.

Meanwhile, the voters continue to say, overwhelmingly, that they want their president to focus on the economy and job creation. By choosing to spotlight abortion and gay marriage at their national convention, Democrats could give voters the impression that they’ve got their priorities all mixed up. Sandra Fluke may draw headlines, but does she really represent what voters think is most important?

Byron York, The Examiner’s chief political correspondent, can be contacted atbyork@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blog posts appear on washingtonexaminer.com.

‘Strategery’ for Mitt Romney…or ‘How to handle a LYING President’

“Now..ya’ll know, I ain’t done a damned thing worth sh*t since I been in office…but I want to lie to you about Mitt Romney and what he did at Bain…I also know ya’ll don’t give a f*ck or even know what that is…but I gotta come up with somethin’ to lie to you about..otherwise you won’t be STUPID enough to vote for me in November…”

As you likely know, the President has succeeded in turning the focus of the campaign to Mr. Romney’s time at Bain Capital…which, as “the President” noted above, most Americans have no clue what that is…or even care…

Some heavyweight advice, today, on the best way to handle this….’the Godfather’ weighed in on Friday:

” I’m getting bored with it all, folks. I frankly am getting bored with the technique and with the strategery and with all of the media. I don’t care when Romney left Bain.  It doesn’t matter a hill of beans when Romney left Bain.  The discussion ought to be, when is Obama gonna leave the White House?  What Romney did with his money is not my concern.  What Obama is doing with our money is my concern…”

“Who gives a flying whatever when Romney left Bain?  The media does and Obama does because that’s all they’ve got.  What a pathetic bunch of losers.  Everywhere:  White House, media, pathetic bunch of whining, spoiled brat losers.  The country’s going down the tubes, and we’ve got Obama out there saying,  “Well, my problem is I haven’t told enough stories.”  BS.  You’re telling lies every day.  You’re telling plenty of stories, and the biggest story you’re telling is that you don’t know what you’re doing..”

From Powerline:

BARACK OBAMA’S HIGH-RISK, HIGH-REWARD CAMPAIGN STRATEGY, AND HOW ROMNEY SHOULD RESPOND

As John pointed out earlier today, President Obama’s reelection strategy consists of attempting to destroy Mitt Romney, and this is a sensible strategy because Obama cannot run on his record. Even so, it may seem odd that Obama is pushing his Bain-related attacks so hard this early, at a time when the polls show him to be even or ahead in the race.

The Bill Clintons and the Ed Rendells of the Democratic Party have vouched for Bain Capital, and the “neutral” fact-checkers have rejected Obama’s claim that Romney had a meaningful role in the operation of Bain after early 1999. Yet, far from backing away from his attacks, the president is doubling down on them.

Why? Because Obama understands that this election won’t be decided by Bill Clinton, Ed Rendell, or FactCheck.org. It will be decided by swing voters in states like Ohio. I can only assume that Obama’s Bain-related attacks ads have scored well with focus groups consisting of these voters. Hence Obama’s hyper-aggressive approach – a high-reward strategy designed to knock Romney out of the box before he has the chance to define himself.

But like most high-reward strategies, Obama’s is also a high-risk one. The risk is that Obama’s attacks will be viewed as unfair and dishonest. If they are, then Obama will have squandered his only real asset in this campaign – the fact that the public still seems, somehow, to like him personally.

Obama’s Bain-related attacks won’t be viewed as unfair and dishonest just because Mitt Romney complains about them, though. The attacks must be shown to be unfair and dishonest.

This is where the fact-checkers and the Democratic politicians come into play. By doubling down on over-the-top Bain-related attacks even in the face of friendly and neutral criticism, Obama finds himself in a place where his dishonesty can be demonstrated through the use of friendly and neutral sources. A simple ad pointing out, for example, that FactCheck.org has called Obama’s attack “all wet” and that Bill Clinton has praised Bain Capital should do the trick.

Through this approach Romney gets to play defense and offense simultaneously. Defense because Romney defends himself against Obama’s attack, as he must. Offense because Romney shows Obama to be untruthful.

Will Romney take advantage of this opening? I don’t know what kinds of ads he’s running because currently he doesn’t seem to be running any in my media marketplace (which includes Northern Virginia).

An ad his campaign circulated over the weekend tries to turn Obama’s aggression against him, but doesn’t do so effectively enough, in my opinion. Here’s the script:

BOB SCHIEFFER, CBS NEWS: “[W]hen the president was elected, he talked about hope and change. Whatever happened to hope and change? Now it seems he’s just coming right out of the box with these old-fashioned, negative ads.”

BOB SCHIEFFER, CBS NEWS: “You know one of the refreshing changes when the President was elected, he talked about hope and change. Whatever happened to hope and change? Now it seems he’s just coming right out of the box with these old fashioned negative ads.” (CBS’ “Face the Nation,” 5/27/12)

DAVID BROOKS, THE NEW YORK TIMES: “[B]y starting negative, by going extremely tough and extremely hard, looking conventional, and frankly running ads that are inaccurate.”

DAVID BROOKS, THE NEW YORK TIMES: “And now I think he’s at risk of throwing that away by starting negative, by going extremely tough and extremely hard, looking conventional, and frankly running ads that are inaccurate. (NBC’s, “Meet the Press”, 5/27/12)

MARK HALPERIN, TIME MAGAZINE: “Barack Obama’s campaign and allies will run more negative ads against this Republican nominee, in 2012, than have ever been run in the history of the world.”

MARK HALPERIN, TIME MAGAZINE: “Look, we have a recent example of somebody who talked like this, Barack Obama, and he got elected, but he also ran more negative TV ads than anyone has ever run in the history of the world against John McCain. Barack Obama’s campaign and allies will run more negative ads against this Republican nominee, in 2012, than have ever been run in the history of the world.” (MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” 6/22/11)

SCHIEFFER: “Whatever happened to hope and change?”

BOB SCHIEFFER, CBS NEWS: “You know one of the refreshing changes when the President was elected; he talked about hope and change. Whatever happened to hope and change? Now it seems he’s just coming right out of the box with these old fashioned negative ads.” (CBS’ “Face the Nation,” 5/27/12)

Do you see the problem? Romney attacks Obama for negative ads, but barely mentions the fact that the ads are dishonest. Perhaps focus groups have convinced the Romney campaign that this is the better way to go. But I think it’s a mistake to let Obama off the hook for the substance of his ads and to rely instead solely on their negativity. Obama has gone beyond what the fact-checkers and President Clinton say is defensible. I’d hammer him for it.

Perhaps Romney is doing this in other ads. But I think it should be the sole focus of his advertising right now.

HEY…ROMNEY CAMPAIGN!….ARE YOU GUYS AWAKE OUT THERE?…..

Today’s Democrats

NRO’s Michael Walsh tries to make sense of it all!….

Honor Among Thieves – By Michael Walsh – The Corner – National Review Online

“Bill Clinton does not want Barack Obama to win,” says Dick Morris, and for once I agree with him. For Obama has made two fatal electoral mistakes during his tenure in office, both of which tell me he’s neither smart nor grateful, and certainly not wise in the ways of the criminal organization masquerading as the “Democratic party.”

As I’ve noted here (apropos of Wisconsin) and elsewhere, the best way to understand the modern Democrats is as the unholy love children of 1930s big-city political/gangster machines and 1960s Alinskyite Communists — now out and proud. But Obama, their chosen candidate, only had first-hand experience with the Alinsky crew; he’s too young to remember Tammany Hall and the heyday of the Daley Machine in Chicago. Oh, he’s got the brass-knuckles part down, all right (that’s part of Alinskyism) but he’s twice now violated the first rule of gangsterism: respect your elders.

That’s something that the Hot Springs–raised Clinton understands deep down in his bones. He grew up in a town dominated by my gangster, Owney Madden, was boyhood friends with the son of Madden’s lawyer, and often sat in Madden’s headquarters, the Southern Club on Central Avenue, watching the gangland greats come and go; to top it off, Clinton’s mother, Virginia Kelley, was one of Madden’s nurses. “Bubbles” was an open, check-your-guns-at-the-door city, nominally run by its corrupt mayor, Leo McLaughlin, but, like Arkansas itself, completely controlled by Madden and his New York associates, including Frank Costello.

Insiders know there’s no love lost between the Clintons and Obama, and that — since revenge is a dish best eaten cold — it was only a matter of time before Billy would introduce Barry to the joys of payback. That moment is now upon us.

Further, Obama made a colossal error in giving Bill Daley the back of his handduring the Chicago scion’s brief tenure as White House chief of staff. It’s easy to see the clumsy hand of Obama’s Svengali, Valerie Jarrett, in the Daley firing, and it’s pretty clear that no one in the Emperor’s bunker thought through the consequences of insulting the Daleys, especially with former ally Rahm Emanuel now sitting in Hizzoner’s Chicago office. Remember, too, that Emanuel is a former Clintonite whose principal interest lies in old No. 1. The idea that Rahm would lift a finger to save Obama the instant he determines Barry’s toast is ludicrous. If Walker wins big tonight in Wisconsin, expect a chill wind to start blowing east from Chitown toward Washington.

There is, after all, honor among thieves.

Shallowness and Slobs….

A couple of good pieces today, I happened across….

Victor Davis Hanson is right on target at National Review Online. He lays out perfectly…something most of us already knew…how Barack Obama’s lack of substance is more obvious than ever. The fact that he seeks guidance from Bill Clinton should be more than telling. What President has made his legacy based on what he perceives as his “personal popularity” more than Bill Clinton?

“I am soooo over all of this….”

PRESIDENTIAL NARCISSISM – Victor Davis Hanson

Former president Bill Clinton just appeared in a reelection television commercial for President Barack Obama. At one point, Clinton weighs in on the potential consequences of Obama’s decision to go ahead with the planned assassination of Osama bin Laden. He smiles and then pontificates, “Suppose the Navy SEALs had gone in there . . . suppose they had been captured or killed. The downside would have been horrible for him [Obama].”

There is a lot that is disturbing about Clinton’s commentary — and about the fact that such an embarrassment was not deleted by the Obama campaign. Clinton offers unintended self-incrimination as to why in the 1990s he did not order the capture of bin Laden when it might well have been in his power to do so — was it fear of something “horrible” that might have happened to his fortunes rather than to our troops? And, of course, such crass politicization of national security and the war on terror is exactly what Barack Obama accused the two Clintons of in the 2008 Democratic primaries. We also remember that Obama on several occasions chastised George W. Bush for supposedly making reference to the war on terror for political advantage, though he never did so in as creepy a fashion as Clinton. And aside from the fact that Barack Obama promised never to “spike the football” by using the SEAL mission to score campaign points, only a narcissistic Bill Clinton could have envisioned the death or capture of Navy SEALs not in terms of those men’s own horrible fates, but only as political “downside” for an equally narcissistic Barack Obama.

In Clinton’s defense, he spoke not just from his own selfish instinct to see presidential survival as more important than the fates of those who actually took the physical risk. Rather, a year ago Obama himself had already hijacked the mission with a flurry of self-referential pronouns: “Tonight, I can report . . . And so, shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta . . . I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden . . . I met repeatedly with my national security team . . . I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action. . . . Today, at my direction . . . I’ve made clear . . . Over the years, I’ve repeatedly made clear . . . Tonight, I called President Zardari . . . andmy team has also spoken . . .These efforts weigh on me every time I, as commander-in-chief . . . Finally, let me say to the families . . . I know that it has, at times, frayed . . .”

As for the civilian responsibility for approving such hazardous missions for our intelligence and military communities, Obama has never confessed, then or now, that most of the anti-terrorism protocols that led to critical intelligence about the probable whereabouts of bin Laden had been strongly opposed by Obama himself. Indeed, almost every Bush-Cheney policy that President Obama eventually embraced — renditions, tribunals, Guantanamo, the Patriot Act — was opposed by Obama as a state legislator, a U.S. senator, and a presidential candidate. Apparently, there is no loudly announced “reset” when it comes to the war on terror.

The logic of the narcissistic mind in matters of the war on terror works out something like this:

The president will take credit for all the successes on his watch, without ever acknowledging reliance on the policies put in place during the eight years before he took office, much less admitting that he once did his best to undermine all of those inheritances that he eventually found so useful. And in matters concerning his predecessor, Obama will damn Bush for the bad economy that he left to his successor and yet ignore Bush for the successful anti-terrorism protocols that he passed on.

Unfortunately, the latest triumphalism is a continuance of a long line of self-adulation that we have grown accustomed to in Barack Obama since he came to the public’s attention — the professor’s two memoirs without a single commensurate scholarly publication; the Latinate motto; the faux-Greek columns; the biblical quelling of the rising seas and cooling of the planet; the fallback retreat to the Victory Column when questions were raised about the appropriateness of the Brandenburg Gate as a venue for his speech; and so on. The common characteristics in Obama’s I/me/my career have been such rhetorical, visual, and symbolic efforts to mask an absence of accomplishment (e.g., why not even one Harvard Law Review article, or perhaps a single publication as a University of Chicago lecturer, or a successful program as a Chicago community organizer, or a signature piece of legislation as an Illinois legislator, or an acknowledged legislative record as a U.S. senator?).

In the world of a narcissistic Barack Obama, rhetoric need not translate into reality. The more emphatic and emotive the pledges to shut down Guantanamo, the more readily all such serial assurances could be ignored. The more idealistic support is expressed for public campaign financing and scorn for bundling, fundraisers, super PACs, Wall Street mega-donors, the revolving door, and lobbyists, all the easier it is to shun the former and embrace the latter.

The Obama way is to offer the boilerplate “I/me/mine/my team” speech, and then simply let events follow their own course — as if the fact that Obama weighed in rhetorically on a topic was ipso facto enough. “Make no mistake about it,” “I” have dealt with the jobs, deficit, debt, and sluggish-growth problems. Ergo, they no longer exist.

So “reset” is grandly proclaimed for Russia — with no acknowledgment that relations have so soured with Putin’s thugocracy that Moscow now threatens to take out proposed anti-missile sites in Eastern Europe. Libya is such a strong blueprint of Obama’s competent and moral “lead from behind” strategy in the Middle East that who cares that such a model will never be applied to an equally disintegrating Syria? That Obama gave the Iranians five deadlines to desist from nuclear acquisition should have been enough for them to desist: So it’s their problem, not ours. North Korea has been addressed, as if the rhetorical and the concrete definitions of that word were synonymous.

So what is the problem with a charismatic, narcissistic president? After all, most presidents by definition must be somewhat self-absorbed. Yet the rub is that the world has tuned Obama out. All his prime-time rhetoric from Afghanistan, the cool multicultural accentuation of Pakîstan and the Talîban, the photo-op reminders that it was Obama who ordered the mission that took out bin Laden — all this meant nothing to the Taliban, who will now patiently wait us out, unleash a North Vietnamese–like offensive very soon, and remind us that just because we don’t believe there are still things like victory and defeat in our messy wars, that does not mean there are not.

In other words, I worry that Vladimir Putin, the Iranian theocrats, the North Korean apparat, the Chinese central committee, the Muslim Brotherhood, and all the others who detest the United States have sized up Barack Obama. For 40 months they have acknowledged that his postracial image and his youthful charisma, as David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs rightly insisted, threw them for a loop — for a while. And that “for a while” is now ending, replaced with a new belief abroad that the more Obama talks about himself and his team, and the more emphatic he becomes with his “Make no mistake about it” and “Let me be perfectly clear” vacuities, the more he can at first safely be ignored, and then, quite soon, safely be taken advantage of.

The problem with a narcissistic president is not just that he sees the world as all about himself, but that the world soon sees that it is not about him at all.

— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institutionand the author most recently of The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.

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There were reports recently…don’t recall exactly where I saw them…about how the federal government is working on programs to battle obesity, but with a twist. By declaring it a national epidemic, they can utilize the situation as a new method to control yet another aspect of our lives. Personal responsibility has been thrown out the window. To put it simply, you’re too stupid to know what’s best for YOU!

That being said, it still doesn’t look encouraging out there…

At the End of the American Dream blog, they’ve come up with 24 facts that don’t exactly focus on the good side of society today….

An example: #11 Americans take more prescription drugs than anyone else on the planet.

You can find more here: End of the American Dream