Weiner’s NY District elects Republican Turner in special election
It is time for Democrats across the United States to panic, as a Congressional district that has not elected a Republican in almost 90 years handed an easy victory to the GOP candidate. The victor Bob Turner cast his effort as a referendum on President Obama, a chance to send a message to Washington. As the Washington Post put it, “President Obama suffered a sharp rebuke Tuesday when voters in New York elected a conservative Republican to represent a Democratic district that has not been in GOP hands since the 1920.
In 2010, Anthony Weiner won the district by almost 20 points, while Turner’s margin is 8 points, so a 27% reduction in the Democrat’s vote share has happened. Every Democrat in the House of Representatives and Senate (not mention at the state and local level) has to be doing the mental math, and wondering if they will looking for work as a lobbyist in 2013.
Richard Baehr notes: “Dems outspent the GOP in New York 9 by almost 10 to 1. Not much to show for it. The Republican Jewish Committee spent some money, but the GOP House committee did not. SEIU was out in force yesterday as well as teacher union people. All to no avail. It looks like Turner won the Jewish vote.”
Of course, Democrats are lamely attempting to spin. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, chair of the DNC: It’s a very difficult district for Democrats,” said Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, noting its Democratic margins there tend to be the second lowest of all the districts in New York City.
It’s so difficult for Democrats that in a bad year for Democrats (2010), the Democrat only won by 20 points. I would love to hear what DWS hears from her House colleagues who won by less than 20 points in 2010.
Read More at American Thinker By Thomas Lifson, American Thinker
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Perry: Romney Sounds Like a Liberal
A day after they clashed at a GOP presidential debate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry told conservatives in rival Mitt Romney’s home state that their former governor sounds like a liberal.
And without naming him directly, Perry said Romney has changed his position on Social Security.
“Other candidates in this race have used words like ‘fraud’ and compared it to a criminal enterprise,” Perry said, referencing language Romney used in his book to discuss issues involving Social Security. “Under the media spotlight, they change their tune and they start sounding like liberals.”
Perry made the comments at a dinner hosted by a Massachusetts conservative think tank, roughly a mile from Romney’s campaign headquarters.
He did not clarify how Romney sounds like a liberal, nor did he take questions from voters or reporters.
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The Third Rail Unplugged
For decades now political consultants, especially those of the Florida sub-species, have been able to charge big bucks to advise Republican candidates not to say anything about Social Security during campaigns. It’s the “third rail” of politics, they breathlessly warn. Touch it and your political career goes up in smoke.
On the other side, consultants have cashed in advising Democrats to attack all Republican candidates on Social Security, early and often — to charge that these heartless villains are constantly conniving to snatch your widowed mother’s Social Security check from her arthritic fingers, regardless of what these candidates have really said or done on this issue. The Democrats’ court eunuchs in the main(left)-stream media have been happy enough act as megaphones for this scam.
This strategy — duck and cover on one side, Big Lie on the other — enjoyed some plausibility for the longest time. Countless candidates over the years found that just mentioning the words “Social Security” in Florida lost them more votes than mentioning the word “education” gained them. After all, Florida has the highest percentage of residents aged 65 or over — 17.4 percent — of any state. (If you must know — West By-God Virginia is second at 16 percent, Maine third at 15.9. Alaska has the fewest wrinklies at 7.7 percent. I can use that word because I turn 69 next month.)
But then the ideas of Marx, Darwin, and Freud also had some surface plausibility when they were first sprung on an unsuspecting world. And we wasted most of a century taking them seriously. But we’ve pretty much — save for in faculty lounges, news rooms, and behind some pulpits — de-constructed these three quacks. And it’s time to unplug the third rail too. A Florida Senate candidate showed us how last year.
The candidate who wrote the new rules for political discussion of Social Security is now U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. He didn’t just touch the third rail. He grabbed it. And he wasn’t electrocuted.
Read More at The American Spectator By Larry Thornberry, The American Spectator
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Maxine Waters is Right: Obama’s Jobs Plan Stinks
Of California’s 12.1 percent unemployed, not many of them are teachers. Teachers here, thanks to their powerful public employee union, are doing pretty good, pulling down well above average wages and excessive pension rights that taxpayers really cannot afford, which contribute mightily to our state government’s perpetual debt crisis, itself a huge drag on the economy in general. Yet of the unemployed in California, almost 35% are young people in the recent high school graduate age category who are without work. Of those, about half of young black males are unemployed in California – three years into Barrack Obama’s presidency. Over 21% of black Californians in general are unemployed. Where is their hope in Obama’s plan for a job? Well, they have very little hope under Obama.
The Obama national jobs plan outlined this week is pretty simple: hire more teachers. But of course unemployed young black men in California don’t have the college education to qualify for the necessary teaching credential. Oh, and Obama’s plan calls for continuing to pour more concrete in government road projects. However, unemployed young black men, being new to the workforce, don’t have the skills to get admitted into the construction trade unions that might benefit from more stimulus spending on road construction, let alone the seniority in the union to actually get hired to work on a project. Obama’s plan for small business is to offer more loan programs through the Small Business Administration. However, what small businesses need is tax relief incentives to do more hiring, not bureaucratic loan programs that take weeks to apply forandcomplete the application forms and even then are impossible to meet the qualification regulations. Not much hope there for any employment boost, including for black and Hispanic youth, where the unemployment problem is worst.
It is this dirth of a real jobs program that has prompted California Congresswoman Maxine Walters to call out Obama and say, “treat blacks like they were from Iowa!”, meaning, give them the same special attention that the presidential candidates are giving to the citizens of America’s earliest presidential primary state. Record unemployment levels in California call for attention to the unemployed across the board, not just black unemployed, but there is no denying that among black and Hispanic youth the problem is most acute. Walters and Obama’s problem, along with many leaders in the minority communities, is their lack of willingness to embrace new,targeted solutions in the minority communities, such as the “enterprise zones” called for by famous economist Dr. Arthur Laffer, which would eliminate job killing Federal and state regulations in designated urban areas to draw capital investment and new job growth. But more than one black economic writer has blasted the idea as “ghettoizing” and leading to creation of “sweatshops” instead of new jobs. Union rhetoric. So the stasis of ideas simply leads to new extensions of Federal and state unemployment compensation, leading to even more government debt, and undoubtedly sets a stage for more youth crime, leading to a host of other undesirable outcomes for the people affected, and for taxpayers.
Reaction on Capitol Hill to Obama’s new jobs plan has been to see it for what it is: just more politics. Obama is simply pandering to his public employee union supporters and giving himself an excuse on his dismal jobs performance when the Republican House of Representatives ultimately decides most of the plan is worthless. Regardless, even people who should be Obama’s core supporters, like California’s Maxine Walters, can see that his economic policies are not “creating jobs”. And the deeper analysis is that Obama’s policies are destroying wealth, and without wealth, there can be no money in the private sector to hire anybody, let alone youth unemployed.
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Read More at CA Political Review By James V. Lacy, California Political Review
Videos: Obama Lied About Troops on the Ground in Libya
This author has observed, “If the media wanted to conserve resources, they could simply fuse the words ‘The Obama administration lied’ to the opening line of each day’s edition and fill in the blank appropriately.” Today proved no exception. Despite President Barack Obama’s assurances that no ground troops would ever be sent to Libya, the Pentagon confirmed Monday that U.S. soldiers are on the ground.
Four servicemen landed in Tripoli over the weekend. The newly elected commander of the Tripoli Military Council, Abdel Hakim Belhaj (aka Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq), is an al-Qaeda asset and founder of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) who twice met with Osama bin Laden. Belhaj has claimed U.S. agents tortured him for days, but he does “not want revenge.”
Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby refused to answer whether Obama would send additional troops to the region.
This contrasts with Obama’s pledge on March 18, as he launched his war-by-decree, when he stated, “The United States is not going to deploy ground troops into Libya.” A few days later, Obama reaffirmed, “I said that America’s role would be limited, that we would not put ground troops into Libya…Tonight, we are fulfilling that pledge.”
White House officials have insisted this weekend’s deployment in no way constitutes a violation of Obama’s no-troops promise, because these soldiers are only assigned to determine whether it is safe for U.S. diplomats to return to the country. However, they are armed and may defend themselves if attacked.
Read More at Floyd Reports By Ben Johnson, The White House Watch
Michelle Obama shows extreme disrespect to US flag?
Here’s a link to the video: https://www.joemiller.us/2011/09/video-is-michelle-obama-disrespecting-american-flag/
By James Robbins (Washington Times):
The internet was buzzing Tuesday night with video of First Lady Michelle Obama apparently showing extreme disrespect to the American flag at a ceremony in honor of the victims of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. As police and firefighters fold the flag to the sound of marching bagpipers, a skeptical looking Mrs. Obama leans to her husband and appears to say, “all this just for a flag.” She then purses her lips and shakes her head slightly as Mr. Obama nods.
Just for a flag? Even with all her years being around those who hold high public office Mrs. Obama does not seem to understand the purpose and importance of ceremonies. They reaffirm the bonds of loyalty and fellowship that cement our national unity. Yes, at one level a flag is just a colorful piece of cloth. But it symbolizes much more. It is the emblem of our land and all its ideals. It has been present at every major event of any importance to the country, battles, celebrations, meetings, and the lunar landings. It is a symbol of unity that transcends party, faction and time. It is something uniquely and explicitly American. Men and women have fought and died for it. Our enemies hate us for it and burn it in the streets. All that should mean something.
Read more at the Washington Times HERE.
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Imminent Financial Collapse in Europe?
By Michael Snyder (September 12, 2011):
Are we on the verge of a massive financial collapse in Europe? Rumors of an imminent default by Greece are flying around all over the place and Greek government officials are openly admitting that they are running out of money. Without more bailout funds it is absolutely certain that Greece will soon default on their debts. But German officials are threatening to hold up more bailout payments until the Greeks “do what they agreed to do”. The attitude in Germany is that the Greeks must now pay the price for going into so much debt. Officials in the Greek government are becoming frustrated because the more austerity measures they implement, the more their economy shrinks. As the economy shrinks, so do tax payments and the budget deficit gets even larger. Meanwhile, hordes of very angry Greek citizens are violently protesting in the streets. If Germany allows Greece to default, that is going to start financial dominoes tumbling around the globe and it is going to be a signal to the financial markets that there is a very real possibility that Portugal, Italy and Spain will be allowed to default as well. Needless to say, all hell would break loose at that point.
So why is Greece so important?
Well, there are two reasons why Greece is so important.
Number one, major banks all over Europe are heavily invested in Greek debt. Since many of those banks are also very highly leveraged, if they are forced to take huge losses on Greek debt it could wipe many of them out.
Secondly, if Greece defaults, it tells the markets that Portugal, Italy and Spain would likely not be rescued either. It would suddenly become much, much more expensive for those countries to borrow money, which would make their already huge debt problems far worse.
If Italy or Spain were to go down, it would wipe out major banks all over the globe.
Recently, Paul Krugman of the New York Times summarized the scale of the problem the world financial system is now facing….
Financial turmoil in Europe is no longer a problem of small, peripheral economies like Greece. What’s under way right now is a full-scale market run on the much larger economies of Spain and Italy. At this point countries in crisis account for about a third of the euro area’s G.D.P., so the common European currency itself is under existential threat.
Most Americans don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the financial condition of Europe.
But they should.
Right now, the U.S. economy is really struggling to stay out of another recession. If Europe has a financial meltdown, there is no way that the United States is going to be able to avoid another huge economic downturn.
If you think that things are bad now, just wait. After the next major financial crisis what we are going through right now is going to look like a Sunday picnic.
The following are 20 signs of imminent financial collapse in Europe….
#1 The yield on 2 year Greek bonds is now over 60 percent. The yield on 1 year Greek bonds is now over 110 percent. Basically, world financial markets now fully expect that Greece will default.
#2 European bank stocks are getting absolutely killed once again today. We have seen this happen time after time in the last few weeks. What we are now witnessing is a clear trend. Just like back in 2008, major banking stocks are leading the way down the financial toilet.
#3 The German government is now making preparations to bail out major German banks when Greece defaults. Reportedly, the German government is telling banks and financial institutions to be prepared for a 50 percent “haircut” on Greek debt obligations.
#4 With thousands upon thousands of angry citizens protesting in the streets, the Greek government seems hesitant to fully implement the austerity measures that are being required of them. But if Greece does not do what they are being told to do, Germany may withhold further aid. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble says that Greece is now “on a knife’s edge”.
#5 Germany is increasingly taking a hard line with Greece, and the Greeks are feeling very pushed around by the Germans at this point. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard made this point very eloquently in a recent article for the Telegraph….
Germany’s EU commissioner Günther Oettinger said Europe should send blue helmets to take control of Greek tax collection and liquidate state assets. They had better be well armed. The headlines in the Greek press have been “Unconditional Capitulation”, and “Terrorization of Greeks”, and even “Fourth Reich”.
#6 Everyone knows that Greece simply cannot last much longer without continued bailouts. John Mauldin explained why this is so in a recent article….
It is elementary school arithmetic. The Greek debt-to-GDP is currently at 140%. It will be close to 180% by year’s end (assuming someone gives them the money). The deficit is north of 15%. They simply cannot afford to make the interest payments. True market (not Eurozone-subsidized) interest rates on Greek short-term debt are close to 100%, as I read the press. Their long-term debt simply cannot be refinanced without Eurozone bailouts.
#7 The austerity measures that have already been implemented are causing the Greek economy to shrink rapidly. Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos has announced that the Greek government is now projecting that the economy will shrink by 5.3% in 2011.
#8 Greek Deputy Finance Minister Filippos Sachinidis says that Greece only has enough cash to continue operating until next month.
#9 Major banks in the U.S., in Japan and in Europe have a tremendous amount of exposure to Greek debt. If they are forced to take major losses on Greek debt, quite a few major banks that are very highly leveraged could suddenly be in danger of being wiped out.
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Europe Facts, Not Fiction: Usage Of ECB Deposit Facility Goes Parabolic, Sov CDS Wider Across The Board
While the market continues to trade purely on rumor, counter-rumor and refutation of a refutation, the facts demonstrate that Europe is ugly and getting worse. Today’s now daily update focuses on continuing deterioration in both liquidity and solvency. First, the usage of the ECB Deposit Facility soared to €198 billion on Monday from €182 billion on Friday. This is a massive €118 billion increase in the past month alone. As the chart below demonstrates, a good word to describe the chart is parabolic. Furthermore, USD Libor continues to rise and has now risen nearly 40 days in a row. While not nearly parabolic, it is time to shift attention away from Credit Agricole, which is still the most “funding challenged”, and focus on CSFB which once again rose by 0.01%, and threatens to overtake the troubled French bank in pole position. Time to refocus the shorts from France to Switzerland? Lastly, the CDS are ugly across the board.
Keep your “bulwarks” Barry and just SHOOT THE BUNNY: America needs fuel not tree hugging smugness
The recent Texaswildfires have consumed nearly 4600 square miles of vegetation destroyed over 1000 homes and taken several lives. If only Texas´ (not to mentionArizona,Californiaand New Mexico´s) forests could have been systematically harvested to help our economy!
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case as Obama´s Director of the Bureau of Land Management, Bob Abbey, has opposed recent legislation proposed under H.R. 1581 (The Wilderness and Roadless Area Release Act of 2011) sponsored by Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.). Abbey, it appears, is going for the jugular to rouse a nation impervious to 9% plus unemployment and defend the environment by comparing this GOP initiative to: “…shooting a small rabbit with a large gun, leaving almost no meat on the bone.”
At stake is lifting Forest Service protections to nearly 36 million acres of inventoried road-less lands as well as compelling the Bureau of Land Management to release over 6 million acres of Wilderness Study Areas to permit mineral development, and thinning forest areas to obtain economic benefit and logging. But according to Harris Sherman, Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment at the Agriculture Department, so called “road-less areas” “ …support biodiversity and contribute habitat for one- fourth of federally listed species ….while serving as a ´bulwark´ against nonnative and invasive species.”
For those who can live without “bulwarks” on approximately 65,600 square miles (aland mass nearly as big as Washington State) that render huge swaths of territory propitious for the propagation of such bambi like creatures as grizzlies, mountain lions and coyotes (spotted in such remote places as Manhattan) then you’re in for some news if not rabbit meat. Established technology enables one to pelletize (if not make into firewood) this endless font of biomass that could otherwise fuel out of control house burning wildfires.
For a mere $43,900 an entrepreneur can obtain equipment to produce wood/cellulose pellets to sell to local buyers for home heating. Logging corporations, no doubt, make heftier investments and would be delighted to start building lumber access roads to help Obama have some “shovel ready” jobs to brag about creating.
Read More at Coach is Right By Carlos Calianka, Coach is Right