Obama criticizes Bush spending, deficits. Calls for even more of both.

Near the end of what was supposed to be an address on Iraq tonight, Barack Obama made a pitch for even bigger spending and intrusive government.

"Unfortunately, over the last decade, we have not done what is necessary to shore up the foundation of our own prosperity. We have spent over a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has short-changed investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits. For too long, we have put off tough decisions on everything from our manufacturing base to our energy policy to education reform. As a result, too many middle class families find themselves working harder for less, while our nation's long-term competitiveness is put at risk."

So, Obama insinuates that George W. Bush slashed back "investment" in welfare spending, leaving him with no choice to but drastically increase spending to play catch-up.

With Americans of all political stripes outraged over Obama's policies of out-of-control spending and uncontrolled, unchecked government power, does this rationalization for even more statism pass the smell test?

Not even close. Another Obama misrepresentation.

"Entitlement spending has reached a record 14 percent of GDP...Other spending categories that have grown rapidly since 2000 include: anti-poverty programs (89 percent faster than inflation), K–12 education (219 percent), veterans spending (107 percent), and Medicare (81 percent)." - The Heritage Foundation, Brian Riedl, June 1, 2010, "Federal Spending by the Numbers 2010"

And as for Obama criticizing Bush for the former president's reckless deficit spending?

Obama's first fiscal year deficit will be larger than all of Bush's deficits combined.



http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

DGA claims $1 million from Fox e-mail

In an e-mail going out shortly to supporters, the Democratic Governors Association says it's raised $1 million off appeals pegged to News Corp.'s contribution to the Republican Governors Association and asks for more.

Prediction: They didn't really raise $1 million off the e-mail and had a large donor give the remainder to get to $1 million.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

If half-hearted promises and contempt are leadership, then American troops disappove of Obama leadership

This is a pretty stunning smackdown. Mr. Obama goes on primetime television this evening to deliver his "we're withdrawing from Iraq, but not really, and could be back soon" address:

A Military Times poll this year of its subscribers -- which include active-duty, reserves and guard troops, and some retirees and family members -- found that a majority disapproved of his leadership as their commander.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Government blocks rebuilding of New Orleans, but city's schools prosper under market reforms

Much to the chagrin of school union bosses, New Orleans' children are seeing dramatic improvements in learning and achievement now that their schools are free from top-down government control.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Obama sics bureaucracy on 23,000 Gulf jobs

From the Monday, Aug. 30 Wall Street Journal (Page A4)

The [Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement] has issued only three new permits to start wells in shallow water since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig, according to the agency's website. The agency issued three to six permits a week prior to the accident, industry officials say.

Louisiana's lieutenant governor, Scott Angelle, who has participated in talks with Mr. Bromwich's agency, said the government was effectively shutting down shallow-water drilling.

"Someone is slow-walking this deal," Mr. Angelle said, referring to shallow-water permits.

The Obama administration says that there is no moratorium on shallow-water drilling...

Despite the fact shallow-water rigs have had no spills and a stellar safety record, radical green activists have targeted them -- and the jobs they provide -- for extinction. The elimination of offshore energy exploration would not only send a shattering new ripple of unemployment through an economy already broken by radical green activism, but would send gasoline prices even higher.

Under legislation sought by Western Tradition Partnership, Washington bureaucrats would no longer have the unchecked power to simply make up their own regulations.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Cross-posted at Western Tradition Partnership, http://www.westerntradition.org

UN probe: ‘Little evidence’ for ‘man-made global warming’ claims

London’s Daily Express reports this morning on what Western Tradition Partnership has been telling Americans for three years — the “green” agenda is based on an anti-scientific hoax.

The world’s leading climate change body has been accused of losing credibility after a damning report into its research practices.

A high-level inquiry into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found there was “little evidence” for its claims about global warming.

It also said the panel had emphasised the negative impacts of climate change and made “substantive findings” based on little proof.

The review by the InterAcademy Council (IAC) was launched after the IPCC’s hugely embarrassing 2007 benchmark climate change report, which contained exaggerated and false claims that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.

The panel was forced to admit its key claim in support of global warming was lifted from a 1999 magazine article. The report was based on an interview with a little-known Indian scientist who has since said his views were “speculation” and not backed by research…

…Among the blunders in the 2007 report were claims that 55 per cent of the Netherlands was below sea level when the figure is 26 per cent.

It also claimed that water supplies for between 75 million and 250 million people in Africa will be at risk by 2020 due to climate change, but the real range is between 90 and 220 million.

The claim that glaciers would melt by 2035 was also rejected.

The probe into the UN climate panel comes months after leaked e-mails revealed much of the “man-made global warming” activist community’s political agenda is based on claims scientists admit were falsified and the result of “tricks.”

Why would radical greens lie about mythological “man-made global warming?” Former U.S. Senator Tim Wirth (Democrat-Colorado) offers one reason:

“What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

WTP will continue to fight efforts by radical green-allied politicians to impose a national energy tax on Americans — one based on this admittedly falsified activist “research” – during the lame duck session of Congress.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Cross-posted at http://www.westerntradition.org

Senate GOP about to get a little more constitutional

Tim Carney, writing in today's Washington Examiner:

...But Joe Miller, the former judge and Army veteran who appears to have beaten (Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski) in the primary, pending counting of all absentee ballots, is of a different stripe. Miller is not merely conservative, he's unyielding, supremely self-confident, and self-reliant. He will come to Washington seeing the whole town and its customs -- quite possibly including collegiality and tradition of the Senate -- as the enemy.

It's the same story in the Utah Senate seat...

...Bennett's replacement -- former gubernatorial aide Mike Lee -- promises to be something beyond just a "balky Republican senator." Lee's stump speech sounds like a lecture on the Constitution, and how nearly everything Washington does is outside of its legitimate authority. He takes pretty seriously the oath of office to defend the Constitution, and it wouldn't be surprising to see him filibuster a harmless Republican measure that isn't explicitly authorized by Article I, Section 8...

...Put Miller and Lee in the same chamber, and the legislative calendar could back up worse than the Washington Beltway at rush hour. One Republican operative, comparing these future senators with the upper chamber's current gadflies, said Lee and Miller will make Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn look like lapdogs.

If Miller and Lee set the tone of the incoming freshman class, that could ensure that Colorado's Ken Buck, Nevada's Sharron Angle, and Kentucky's Rand Paul -- if they win -- never fully assimilate to the Old Boys (and Girls) Club.

All I have to say is...bwaa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Gallup: GOP generic ballot lead grows to 10 percent

Aug. 30 release from the Gallup organization:

Republicans lead by 51% to 41% among registered voters in Gallup weekly tracking of 2010 congressional voting preferences. The 10-percentage-point lead is the GOP's largest so far this year and is its largest in Gallup's history of tracking the midterm generic ballot for Congress.

And that's among registered voters. When you narrow the sample down to likely voters, the lead almost certainly grows even larger.

The ten-point lead is twice the size of the previous-largest ever margins, five point leads in June 2002 and July 1994.

Republicans gained eight House and two Senate seats in 2002, defying the trend of the president's party losing seats in the midterm elections. They captured 54 House and eight Senate seats in 1994, winning control of both chambers for the first time since 1954.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Thank you, Charlie and Maxine.

"...for the first time in months, Republicans now hold a slight edge on the issues of government ethics and corruption, 40% to 38%."

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

This is how liberals debate

From U.S. News and World Report's Paul Bedard:

One of Washington's principal supporters of the Tea Party movement, former GOP Majority Leader Dick Armey's FreedomWorks, has been receiving death threats and profanity-laced phone calls as it gets involved in the fall elections. The number and intensity have reached such heights that the organization is leaving its downtown location near the FBI and moving to a high-security building near the U.S. Capitol...

...FreedomWorks provided some of the recordings of the threatening calls to Whispers and they include physical threats and profanity aimed at the group, Tea Party spokesmen and even conservative talkers. "You guys better watch it," says one caller. "Now, we are going to destroy and obliterate Rush [Limbaugh] and Sean Hannity," said another. "Those two guys are dead."

Having worked at several conservative non-profits, I can tell you explicit death and bomb threats can be a near-daily occurance. When you're dealing with people who view Americans as nothing more than livestock that need to be herded and cared for by the state, they view any deviance from their views as an attack on the state -- one that must be neutralized by force, if necessary, for your own good.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Sandlin: Elect me and I'll stop the arrogant, liberal Democrats

Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin, running for Congress in South Dakota, has rolled out this ad where she vows she'll go to Washington to stop the arrogant, liberal Democrats who want to take away your guns, raise your taxes and grow the government.



The catch? She's Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin, incumbent Democrat. And she voted to give Nancy Pelosi the speaker's gavel and the power to take away your guns, raise your taxes and grow the government.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Obama's drill ban helps lines Soros' pockets

The Obama administration predicts his ban on deep-sea energy development will kill 23,000 jobs, but all is not lost. It's predicted to be a financial windfall for Brazil, where a certain controversial foreign investor has made a near-billion dollar investment in their deep-sea energy reserves.

Manhattan Institute senior fellow Robert Bryce, writing in today's Washington Examiner:

As long as the Obama administration continues its moratorium on drilling in the deepwater in the Gulf of Mexico, Petrobras, the Brazilian national oil company, will continue to thrive...

...Here’s the punch line: thanks to the moratorium in the Gulf, Petrobras will likely be able to get its hands on yet more deepwater offshore drilling rigs, at cheaper rates, than it could have prior to the Macondo blowout...

...The Brazilians are eager for rigs because their drilling programs have uncovered enormous reserves. In 2007, the company announced that its new offshore Tupi field may hold up to 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent. The field is the world’s second-largest oil discovery in the last 20 years.

Since then, Petrobras has been announcing new offshore discoveries on a regular basis. Within five years, the company hopes to double its oil production, to some 4 million barrels per day, an astounding amount of growth for a company that is already among the world’s biggest oil producers...

And by "foreign investors" I mean "George Soros," the Daddy Warbucks of the liberal movement whose billions laid the groundwork for the election of Barack Obama.

Bloomberg Financial News reports as of June 30, 2008, the radical left-wing Hungarian billionaire purchased an $811 million stake in Petrobras.

In just the last few years, Soros has funneled close to $100 million to various radical left-wing groups that support Obama and the radical environmentalist agenda.

After Soros purchased his Petrobras stock, Obama loaned the company $2 billion in taxpayer cash. Now, Obama's instituted an offshore energy ban the White House admits hurts 23,000 working families. The only person who seems to benefit is Soros.

If you still haven't put two and two together, Barack Obama is paying off a political debt by liquidating the Gulf Coast economy and mortgaging 23,000 American jobs.

Great moments in fail

ABC's "Top Line" hosted the spokesmen of the Republican and Democrat national committees to discuss the results of Tuesday's primaries, in particular Alaska where Tea Party conservative Joe Miller appears to have upset incumbent Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse (whom I criticized when serving as spokesman for the LNC for his bizarre Aug. 2009 claim the Tea Parties were a corporate-funded conspiracy carried out by plants) jumped on the opportunity, touting the possibility Democrats could now take the seat from Republicans.

Unfortunately for Woodhouse, he couldn't even name the Democrat nominee he was just seconds earlier claiming could win the election.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Who's abandoning the White House this morning?

Left-leaning talk show host David Letterman:
“He’ll have plenty of time for vacations after his one term is done.”

The CEO of Intel:
"No country was more attractive for start-up capital... We seemed a generation ahead of the rest of the world in information technology. That simply is no longer the case."

Unionized government workers:
"Officials representing 7,000 members of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFL-CIO), National Council 118, in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unanimously voted “no confidence” in ICE Director John Morton and ICE Assistant Director Phyllis Coven, who heads the agency’s Office of Detention Policy and Planning."

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

One of the better story leads ever written

The Minneapolis city attorney's office has decided to pay seven zombies and their attorney $165,000.

Kudos, Randy Furst of the Star Tribune.

The cost of ObamaCare? So far, $70.5 million per patient.

The Obama administration sent $141 million in taxpayer funds to New Jersey to fund new health insurance coverage created under the ObamaCare system of government-controlled health care.

So far, two people have signed up for ObamaCare coverage.

That's $70,500,000.00 in spending per patient just for coverage, not actual care. Remember, ObamaCare was sold as a way of controlling the costs of health care.

Horizon Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Jersey spokesman Tom Vincz notes that 600 applications were downloaded. Even if every single one of them signs up (the actual number will be nowhere close to that) it still works out to $117,500.00 in taxpayer spending per patient just for coverage, not actual care.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Helpful hint for Delta customers

Do not use the inflight sound system. On two different flights this morning the sound system randomly blasted extremely loud, painful static bursts into my ears. The woman sitting three seats over could hear it, even though we were in flight, she was busy reading and I was wearing earphones. Eight hours later and my ear is still killing me.

Teacher union bosses fail at subtraction

Government teacher union bosses have spent $6 million on ads since March attacking New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for wanting to cut runaway spending by schools instead of feeding their habit with yet more tax hikes, confident New Jerseyans back their agenda of bigger and endless spending.

Apparently pensions costs, budget numbers, tax rates and dropouts aren't the only government teacher union bosses can't keep a lid on. Christie's approval rating has jumped 17 points since April.

A new Quinnipeac poll finds 51 percent of voters approve of Christie's job performance, while only 36 percent disapprove. That's a significant leap from June, when 44 percent approved and 43 percent disapproved. Rasmussen Reports also has Christie's approval rating at 51 percent.

Back in April, around the time the union boss/taxpayer-supported attacks ads began airing, Christie's approval was at around 33 percent.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

What's Wrong?

Can you spot the two errors in this lead paragraph from Reuters?

New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed to a nine-month high last week, yet another setback to the frail economic recovery.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

ObamaCare already falling short of coverage promises, pushes employers to cut jobs and wages

The claim:

"The recent health reform package made 4 million small business owners eligible for a health care tax credit that covers up to 35 percent of premiums." - WhiteHouse.gov, Aug. 10, 2010

The truth:

"Supporters claim four million small businesses are eligible for the credit, but the fact is less than two million small businesses will receive it. And those that do receive a credit aren’t guaranteed a large check." - Bill Rys, tax counsel at the National Federation of Independent Business

And it gets better. ObamaCare include provisions encouraging employers to cut their employees' wages, stop hiring or lay people off so they can qualify for the handouts.

"At most, the credit offsets 35 percent of the insurance costs of a small business. However, this percentage phases out as the number of employees rises above 10 or the average wage (not including the owner’s income) rises above $25,000. Importantly, both of these phase-outs operate simultaneously," writes Rys.

So not only does ObamaCare only offer tax credits to half the businesses the White House implied, businesses must limit their pay and hiring to be eligible and those that still don't qualify will struggle to stay in businesses as they face health insurance costs sent skyrocketing by government control.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Minnesota may be "psychotic," but at least it won't capsize.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

"Abortion is a womens' issue" debunked again. By women.

Some encouraging news from the latest Rasmussen Reports polling:

Nearly half (48%) of U.S. voters continue to believe that an abortion is too easy to obtain in this country, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Fifteen percent (15%) say it’s too hard to get an abortion in America, and 23% think the level of difficulty is about right. Fourteen percent (14%) are not sure.

This is in line with findings on this question in surveys for over four years now.

Well, clearly that's because men are anti-choice and skewing the polling! After all, isn't securing an unfettered right to an abortion a "woman's issue" and aren't candidates with pro-life views "throwing away the womens' vote?"

"Women (53%) feel more strongly than men (42%) that abortions are too easy to get...58% of women believe that abortion is morally wrong in most cases, compared to 49% of men.

The poll finds "forty-nine percent (49%) of all voters describe themselves as pro-choice, while 43% say they are pro-life." I'd like to see a breakdown of the "pro-choice" and pro-life segment by what they define that as. Many people who describe themselves as pro-choice will, when asked to define that position, express outright opposition to the use of abortion as birth control, supporting abortion only in the cases of rape, incest and endangerment of the mothers' life, positions no "pro-choicer" would ever embrace -- except when it can be lumped in with their numbers to claim a "pro-choice" majority.

But looking again at the breakdown by sex,one of the reasons men are more "pro-choice" than women is because ending a pregnancy and leaving a woman without children makes her sexually available again. Male lions, for example, will often eat newborn cubs to "turn off" a lioness' maternal hormones and bring her back into heat for breeding again.

Could it be that abortion is simply an animalistic way for men to control women, and that supporting the right to life is the true "womens' agenda?" Scientific polling, and basic biology, seem to agree.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

FactCheck: Obama lied. Republicans won't fix Social Security.

The Washington Examiner's David Freddoso points us to this gem from FactCheck. "The president claims Republican leaders are as eager to 'privatize' Social Security as they are to repeal his health care law. That's not true."

We find the president’s claim to be mostly false.

■Few if any Republicans now in Congress have ever pushed for total "privatization" of Social Security. What President Bush proposed in 2005 was to allow workers under the age of 55 to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in private accounts. Most of their taxes would have continued to go into traditional Social Security.
■Bush’s proposal to create private accounts had so little Republican support in 2005 — when the GOP controlled both the House and Senate — that it was never introduced as formal legislation. We’ve seen no evidence to suggest the idea is any more popular among Republicans now.
■Only one Republican "leader" is currently pushing publicly for Bush-style private accounts, as part of an overall budget plan. He is Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the senior GOP member of the House Budget Committee. His plan currently has only 13 cosponsors, none of them in the GOP House leadership.

In other words, Obama was lying when he claimed Republicans of having small government principles. Not sure if the GOP should be excited about that one.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Where is the long-overdue economic recovery? Buried under a heap of Obama tax hikes

Why are more and more Americans needlessly unemployed? Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics and a Keynesian, points his usually government-spending-loving finger squarely at Barack Obama's love of punitive taxation.

The well-to-do appear unusually sensitive to changes in their finances, probably because their nest eggs are significantly smaller with the drop in stock and housing prices. Only the top 3 percent of households would have to pay higher taxes if the president got his way, but this rarefied group currently accounts for a fourth of consumer spending. If they pull back, even a bit, the recovery could be derailed.

Successful small-business owners, who power the nation’s job-creation machinery, make up one-third of these high-income taxpayers. They have set up their businesses so that their profits are taxed at personal rates. Raising marginal tax rates, even a little, on those who have suffered during the past several years would be a mistake.

Zandi is no free-market conservative. In fact, he's open to the long-discredited idea of spurring economic growth by exploding government spending. But Zandi says this economic slowdown is like few others.

What does Keynesian Zandi prescribe?

Past experience with fiscal austerity at home and overseas strongly suggests that it is best for the economy’s long-run performance to restrain government spending rather than raise taxes, but taxes must also be part of our national debate.

In this recession, the government has necessarily made a string of momentous economic policy decisions. Some have worked well; others have been a disaster. We can’t afford any more mistakes.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

James J. Kilpatrick, 1920-2010

James J. Kilpatrick, noted conservative commentator, author and columnist, sharp defender of federalism and states' rights and former segregationist who became a defender of a black handyman falsely convicted of murder, has passed away Sunday in Washington.

"Mr. Kilpatrick popularized interposition, the doctrine that individual states had the constitutional duty to interpose their separate sovereignties against federal court rulings that went beyond their rightful powers and, if necessary, to nullify them, an argument traced to the writings of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John C. Calhoun," The New York Times reports in his obituary this morning.

Though he changed his once-segregationist views on race, Kilpatrick did not embrace the power of the federal government to impose policy on the states outside its constitutional limits, brilliantly defending the conservative point of view, mostly notably on "60 Minutes" "Point/Counterpoint" segment through the 1970s.

A patriot to the end, Kilpatrick's home in Virginia's Blue Ridge mountains flew two flags, that of the United States and that of the Revolutionary War's Culpeper Minutemen.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

Marshall calls out McDonnell for yet more runaway spending

Months after signing off on a budget that funds Planned Parenthood and taking a tax surplus and handing it out to government employees instead of refunding overtaxed citizens, Bob McDonnell is once again jumping at the chance to make sure Virginia government doesn't go on a diet. McDonnell is happily accepting his share of Nancy Pelosi's government union bailout rather than challenge local school boards to stop their runaway spending on bloated administrations.

At least one Republican is doing the right thing -- calling out McDonnell.

"To spend this money is to tacitly accept that [Republican congressmen] voted against Virginia's better public interest and that [Democrats] cast the better vote for Virginians," says Marshall.

Marshall is right. Big, bloated, expensive government is not in the public interest. Neither is taking part in the Obama administration's plan to pump taxpayer money into Democrat campaigns this election season by laundering it through government unions.

Between this, giving away the tax surplus to government workers, the near-million dollars in stormwater pork, funding Planned Parenthood and his defending the unconstitutional road tax from a lawsuit by citizens, is there any runaway spending Bob McDonnell doesn't like?

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com

How out of touch are Democrats?

Liberals are calling the Republican opposition to a $26.1 billion bailout of government unions "the kind of vote to build an election around."

One problem. The American people overwhelmingly disagree.

Leftist blogger Steve Benen, writing for Washington Monthly this morning, clucks:

"The public is probably pretty accustomed to Republican lawmakers balking at every piece of legislation, and this jobs bill fit into the larger pattern -- 98.8% of House Republicans opposed the measure, as did 95% of Senate Republicans....the campaign ads seem to write themselves in a situation like this. Indeed, this is a debate to build an election around -- with a struggling economy, Democrats proposed a fiscally-responsible plan to save hundreds of thousands of jobs..."

What Benen refers to as a "jobs bill" is, in fact, what "the public is probably pretty accustomed to" -- Democrats shoveling billions of dollars into the pockets of political organizations that cut checks to Democrats, specifically government unions, with an important midterm election just 83 days away.

But that aside, is Benen correct is his assumption Americans back Democrats on this union bailout?

Absolutely not. Name one bailout bill Americans support.

But Benen is correct in one sense. This is "the kind of vote to build an election around." By calling House members back from their districts to funnel billions of taxpayer money to their campaign supporters, Democrats have perfectly crystallized the case against them -- explosive Big Government spending that only gets results for Democrat campaign treasurers.

http://DonnyFerguson.blogspot.com