By Gary DeMar. President Obama works under the premise that while you can’t fool all the people all the time, you can fool enough of the people all the time to get re-elected. His latest claim that he is not out to redistribute wealth but only to “invest” in America is a case in point.

In his exchange with Joe Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, in October 2008, just before a debate with then presidential candidate John McCain, President Obama said the following:

“My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. If you’ve got a plumbing business, you’re gonna be better off if you’re gonna be better off if you’ve got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you, and right now everybody’s so pinched that business is bad for everybody and I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

It was during this exchange that then candidate Obama offered justification for increasing the tax rate for people making more than $250,000 per year.

Now President Obama is telling his gullible audiences that that his call for tax increases on the rich is not an attempt to “redistribute wealth.” They are “investments”:

“So these investments — in things like education and research and health care — they haven’t been made as some grand scheme to redistribute wealth from one group to another. . . . This is not some socialist dream.

Read More at Godfather Politics.

In what appears to be the latest of many crimes resulting from the Obama Administration’s disastrous Mexican gun-running operation, a federal agent has been indicted for trying to smuggle high-powered weapons and large amounts of ammo south of the border.

The U.S. Border Patrol agent undoubtedly got his idea from a failed government project, dubbed Fast and Furious, that put U.S.-sold weapons in the hands of Mexican drug traffickers. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ran the once-secret program that allowed guns from the U.S. to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels. Instead, federal law enforcement officers lost track of hundreds of weapons which have been used in an unknown number of crimes.

The lost guns have been linked to violence on both sides of the border, including the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent (Brian Terry) in Peck Canyon Arizona. In that case, the guns—assault weapons known as AK-47s—were traced through their serial numbers to a Glendale, Arizona dealer that led to a Phoenix man the feds repeatedly allowed to smuggle firearms into Mexico.

Judicial Watch has sued the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the ATF for Fast and Furious records and has already obtained internal government documents exposing a high number of crimes connected to the experiment. For instance, a Fast and Furious firearm (7.62mm Romarm/Cugir) was involved in aggravated assault against a police officer in Arizona and in Mexico the weapons have been used in a number of violent crimes.

This week’s news of a Homeland Security agent getting busted only adds insult to injury. The Border Patrol officer (Ricardo Montalvo) from El Paso was arrested and charged for buying ammunition and firearms, such as AK-47 pistols, favored by Mexican drug cartels. The idea, according to a federal indictment cited in a news report, was to smuggle the goods to Mexico.

Read More at judicialwatch.org

In an interview with Congressman Paul Ryan on Tuesday’s NBC Today, co-host Ann Curry slammed the Wisconsin Republican’s proposed budget: “Where is the empathy in this budget?…Do you acknowledge that poor people will suffer under his budget? That you have shown a lack of empathy to poor people in this budget?” [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Curry cited a left-wing non-profit group in condemning the plan: “…the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities….says 62% of the savings in your budget would come from cutting programs for the poor. That between 8 and 10 million people would be kicked off of food stamps. That you would cut Medicare by 200 billion, Medicaid and other health programs by something like 770 billion.”

Curry failed to make any mention of the organization’s clearly liberal agenda. The Center of Budget and Policy Priorities mission statement reads: “The Center conducts research and analysis to help shape public debates over proposed budget and tax policies and to help ensure that policymakers consider the needs of low-income families and individuals in these debates. We also develop policy options to alleviate poverty.”

Ryan dismissed the slanted figures:

So, not only do I take issue with a lot of their analysis and their numbers, spending in all of these programs still increases under our budget. You have to remember food stamps quadrupled over the last decade. So what we’re saying is we have to bring spending to a more sustainable rate of growth. And we can’t keep spending at the pace we are on, otherwise we will have a debt crisis.

In response to Curry’s declaration that the poor would “suffer” under the budget proposal, Ryan pushed back:

Quite the contrary. Our poverty rates are the highest they’ve been in a generation. One out of six people are in poverty today. The President’s policies are not working and we’re advancing pro-growth policies to get people off of welfare on to work….We just don’t agree that throwing more money at failed programs works. We want to reform these programs so that they actually achieve the result of getting people on their lives of self-sufficiency.

Read More at Media Research Center.

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore Creative Commons

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright became a household name during the 2008 presidential campaign. The fiery preacher, who was President Barack Obama’s pastor for two decades, has since retired from his position at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois. However, he’s still an active figure in geopolitical and faith movements, as his bizarre commentaries often offend detractors and inspire intense debate.

Last week, Wright spoke at Metropolitan Baptist Church in Charleston, West Virginia, as part of a week-long revival event. His controversial words took aim at Thomas Jefferson, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the media and plenty of other targets.

“I’m not divisive, the media is divisive,” he said, going on to lament the soundbites he claims were unfairly used to disparage him during the 2008 campaign.

As could be expected, the three evening sermons he delivered during the revival often turned to themes and subjects much more controversial than alleged media bias.

“Believers beware,” Wright preached in one of his lessons. “There are some conversations you will find yourselves in in which there is no communication taking place.”

Read More at The Blaze. By Billy Hallowell.

Photo Credit: Floyd Brown (Creative Commons)