As I reported yesterday, right before President Barack Hussein Obama took his ball and went home, walking out of the Debt Ceiling/Budget Meeting with Congressional Leaders on Wednesday, he warned Congressman Eric Cantor:

Eric, don’t call my bluff.

Obama told Cantor that he would take his case “to the American people.” Obama also told Cantor that no other president — not Ronald Reagan, the president said — would sit through such negotiations.

So, today, at 10 a.m. Central, (actually about 30 to 45 minutes later, Obama Standard Time) Obama is holding a Press Conference.

Remember, reporters, no shouting.  He’s sensitive.

Obama is going to be pleading his case to the American people as to why it’s imperative that he is allowed to order the raising of America’s Debt Ceiling.

The president has a huge problem, per thehill.com:

Only 27 percent of likely voters favor raising the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, while 62 percent oppose it, according to an exclusive poll for The Hill.

The poll found solid opposition from Republicans and also from independent voters, who are critical to President Obama’s re-election in 2012.

Barry…you got some ‘splainin’ to do!

This is not the first Hot Button Issue that the president has been on the opposite side from the overwhelming majority of the American people.  For instance:

1.  The Stimulus Bill – Even before it was signed into law by Obama, per rasmussenreports.com, 60% of Americans said that the  Stimulus Plan was what the Democrats wanted, and was not bipartisan.

Of course,  Obama went ahead and signed it into law…and it turned out to help America’s economy about as much as a screen door helps a submarine.

2.  Obamacare – On 3/22/10, before the passage of the Obamanation known as the National Healthcare Law, a poll was released by CNN/Opinion Research, in which the following question was asked:

As you may know, the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate are trying to pass finallegislation that would make major changes in the country’s health care system. Based on what you have read or heard about that legislation, do you generally favor it or generally oppose it?

Mar 19-21, 2010

Favor 39%

Oppose 59%

No opinion 2%

Obama signed the Bill into Law on march 22, 2010.  It will eventually wind up before the United Supreme Court, which will decide its Constitutionality.

3.  The Auto Bailouts – Back in 2008, Chrysler, Ford, and GM were seeking a total of $34 billion in federal loans to buy them time to restructure and stave off bankruptcy, which they said would cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. They presented recovery plans to Congress.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, from December 3rd of 2008,  found that 61 percent were against the loans, while 36 percent supported them. The poll also found 53 percent who said they don’t believe that aiding the automakers would help the broader economy at the time.

The support for the automakers was damaged, in part because of withering criticism of auto executives, who flew private jets to Washington to ask for money.

Of course, GM and Chrysler were bailed out, using our money.

ABC’s Jake Tapper reported on his blog, on June 3rd, 2011:

President Obama today will again herald the recovery of the U.S. auto industry and the success of the $80 billion financial bailout his administration sponsored for GM and Chrysler.

“If any of the Republicans running for president now had been president in 2009, auto workers wouldn’t be on the assembly line today, they’d be on the unemployment line,” White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said this morning on MSNBC.

But saving the auto companies from bankruptcy, and preserving thousands of American jobs, has cost taxpayers at least $14 billion, according to several estimates by government agencies and independent groups.

To put it in perspective, $14 billion is double the annual budget of the Transportation Security Administration, or roughly two months of operating expenses for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, based on 2010 figures.

Rasmussenreports.com conducted a poll on October 20, 2010, right before the political massacre known as the Midterm Election:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that most Likely Voters think their representative in Congress does not deserve reelection if he or she voted for the national health care law, the auto bailouts or the $787-billion economic stimulus plan. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Those votes also appear to be driving factors in the GOP’s consistent lead over Democrats on the Generic Congressional Ballot. Most strong supporters of President Obama believe those who voted for the measures should be reelected. Even more of those who Strongly Oppose the president disagree.

Forty-three percent (43%) of all Likely Voters say someone who voted for the health care law deserves to be reelected. Fifty percent (50%) oppose their reelection.

Thirty-six percent (36%) say if their local representative voted for the taxpayer bailouts of General Motors and Chrysler, he or she deserves to be returned to Congress. Fifty-three percent (53%) say that person does not deserve reelection.

Similarly, 41% say their representative in Congress should be reelected if he or she voted for the stimulus plan. But 50% don’t see it that way and say the individual should not be reelected.

And we all remember how the Midterms turned out.

So, the Question of the Day, is:

Why should we listen to you, Mr. President?

PAY ATTENTION, SCOOTER!…ON SECOND THOUGHT…DON’T.

Perhaps we news junkies should have had an inkling about what kind of a day President Barack Hussein Obama was going to have yesterday, when his Press Secretary, Jay Carney, scolded the reporters assembled for the daily press briefing over the time-honored practice of shouting their questions to the president.

Obama does not like the practice and has gone so far as covering his disdain for it by only allowing stills of his appearances at the press briefings, instead of live cameras, because they might capture Obama being the petulant snob that he is.

Carney explained why they only allowed still cameras in yesterday’s briefing:

People shouted questions at him. The purpose of the meeting is not to create a circus, but to negotiate, so today we’re doing stills only.

So, there!  Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.

Then, our petulant president got upset at the 2:45 p.m. meeting he held with Congressional leaders yesterday, and abruptly walked out of the meeting, according to politico.com.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told reporters in the Capitol after the meeting:

He shoved back and said ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’ and walked out.

Obama’s First Presidential Temper Tantrum (TM) comes on the heels of an announcement by Moody’s rating agency warning that American debt could be downgraded.

The president had a hissy fit when Cantor said the two sides were too far apart to get a deal that could pass the House by the Treasury Department’s Aug. 2 deadlineand that he would consider moving a short-term debt-limit increase alongside smaller spending cuts.  At that point, the former collegiate  guest lecturer, who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, began to lecture him.

Scooter upon telling the Congressman that he would take his case “to the American people” and that no other president, including Ronald Reagan,  would sit through such negotiations.

The president warned Cantor:

Eric, don’t call my bluff.

Of course, Scooter’s playmates say that Cantor got the indicent all wrong.  The Democrats said that Obama was “impassioned” but claim he didn’t exactly storm out of the room.

According to one of Obama’s minions:

Cantor’s account of tonight’s meeting is completely overblown. For someone who knows how to walk out of a meeting, you’d think he’d know it when he saw it. Cantor rudely interrupted the president three times to advocate for short-term debt ceiling increases while the president was wrapping the meeting. This is just more juvenile behavior from him and Boehner needs to rein him in, and let the grown-ups get to work.

So, there, again!  Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.

As he stormed out of the room, heading upstairs to Mama, Scooter said that

…”this confirms the totality of what the American people already believe” about Washington, according to a Democratic official familiar with the negotiations, and that officials are “too focused on positioning and political posturing” to make difficult choices.

The striking difference between what Rep. Cantor related about the presidential Temper Tantrum and Scooter’s account of the incident, is the fact that Cantor spoke directly to reporters about the president.  Obama’s minions told the story, trying to cover for Obama’s decidedly un-presidential actions.

Cantor went on to accuse the president and his Congressional minions of increasingly low-balling, over the last several days, the savings that could be achieved from proposals discussed by Vice President Joe Biden’s working group on deficit reduction.  According to Cantor, the group has not yet identified enough cuts to win House passage of a $2.5 trillion debt-limit increase, the size the president says is needed to get through the 2012 election.

Obama ordered Cantor that he would either have to agree to tax increases or give up on his demand that the debt hike be matched dollar-to-dollar to the cuts — that is, $2.5 trillion in deficit-reduction over 10 years in exchange for a $2.5 trillion hike in the debt ceiling.

Cantor said that when they return to the White House this afternoon, they are supposed discuss savings from health care programs, budget caps and options for raising revenue.  The president gave additional orders to the participants, according to the Congressman:

Then he said we also ought to get in the mode here, because we’re going to have to decide by Friday which way we’re going. He said really we ought to all start to think about things we can do rather than things we can’t.

Cantor said that he would be willing to take incremental steps to help solve the debt ceiling-increase issue.

However,  Obama said he wouldn’t do the debt-limit increase incrementally and that he would veto a short-term bill.

According to Cantor:

That’s when he got very agitated.

An anonymous [Democratic] witness said:

Obama lit him up. Cantor sat in stunned silence. “It was incredible. If the public saw Obama he would win in a landslide.”

Because, as we all know, American’s just loove a president who acts like a schoolyard bully when he can’t get his way...NOT.

Per Cantor:

I’m trying to represent where the votes are in the House. and we’ve always said the votes in the House are consistent with the principles that the speaker’s laid out that we’ve been operating on.  It is dollar-for-dollar match, it is the no tax increase and it is this other subject that we are discussing tomorrow the enforcement mechanisms … I understand why he’s frustrated. But again, we’re trying to get this thing done, and that’s why I was a little taken aback.

Obama has stated that he wants an assessment on Friday of where the process stands .

Obama is watching the calender, and has given a deadline of August 2nd for a decision to be rendered.

It just so happens that August 1st is the start of Ramadan, the Muslim Holy Days, during which the devout are not allowed to work.

Not to mention the fact that he and his family are heading up to Martha’s Vineyard in August for an extended vacation.

That’s our boy Scooter…always putting the welfare of America first.

**snort**

Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of General Electric, former owner of the NBC networks, lectured America’s Businessmen at a jobs summit at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Monday that businesses needed to take the lead on job creation.

Immelt’s lecture came at a conference filled with comments about all the government red tape and unneeded regulations that were preventing them from hiring Americans.

While Immelt was forced to admit that there needed to be some policy changes by Congress and the Obama administration, he fired back at those assembled, saying that the responsibility for hiring lay with businesses:

The people who are part of the business sector, the people in this room, have got to stop complaining about government and get some action underway.There’s no excuse today for lack of leadership. The truth is we all need to be part of the solution.

Immelt just happens to be the chairman of President Barack Hussein Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. According to him, the council has made a number of recommendations for changes in government policies that are supposed to help create jobs, such as the executive order announced Monday asking independent agencies to rid their books of old and outdated regulations.

Immelt told the Chamber Meeting that he is committed to working with Obama on other moves that can help hiring, and that he expects to have proposals by the end of the year that should help to create up to 1 million jobs.

However, after announcing how much he and the president truly care about America’s business owners, Immelt then scolded those assembled, lecturing them that it’s important that businesses take action — like taking some risks, and thinking about bringing back jobs that had been moved overseas.

Immelt said that if companies would examine the changing economics of some of those jobs, they would find it is beneficial to bring jobs back home, boasting that GE is in the process of moving some jobs back to Kentucky and Michigan.

Why did you move those jobs in the first place, Jeffrey? Too much Corporate Tax, even for you, Huh?

According to the president’s personal adviser, arguing between business groups and the government isn’t in the best interest of the nation’s economy:

We can’t always be fighting. We need to act, and the private sector can do more.

In other words:

SHUT UP AND EAT YOUR PEAS!

Questions have been raised concerning Immelt being appointed by Obama to head this influential Committee. Those questions concern whether or not the head of GE is using the position to “shill” for GE’s expansive business interests. Tory Newmeyer, in an article posted on fortune.cnn.com, on July 6, 2011, explains how those concerns are well-founded:

The charge from labor-friendly liberals and free-market conservatives has been the same: the appointment represents pure crony capitalism. The leaders of the largest U.S. multinationals are hardly the best suited to give advice on domestic job creation, the line goes, when they spent the last decade eliminating 2.9 million jobs at home and adding 2.4 million overseas. And in particular, the chief of GE, No. 6 on the Fortune 500, shouldn’t be charged with heading that effort, considering the company’s sprawling lobbying agenda in Washington.

The company spent more than $39 million on lobbying efforts last year alone, making it the third-biggest spender in the city, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And its advocacy reaches into just about every conceivable policy debate, from the narrow — the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act, the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act — to the sweeping, including the fights over health care and financial reform and a multibillion-dollar battle with Pratt & Whitney over a military jet engine.

Immelt himself has made clear that his part-time, volunteer work for the council won’t distract him from his day job. “This is my passion, I’m committed,” he told analysts on an earnings call in January. But he’s been more equivocal about how GE’s interests would inform his participation on the panel, officially known as the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

At a shareholder meeting in April, Immelt was confronted by an activist from a right-wing group behind an online campaign urging GE to fire him for cozying up to the Obama administration. David Ridenour, a vice president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, asked Immelt to explain whether he is representing shareholders or the broader American public on the council. The GE (GE) chief responded that he is representing his “best judgment, and frequently because of my point of reference, they’ll be associated with GE, but not all the time.” And he demurred on whether he’d oppose a council recommendation that hurts his shareholders. “I just don’t want to give this kind of black and white philosophy,” he said.

GE provides for Immelt’s travel to and from jobs council activities, company spokesman Andrew Williams says, noting that Immelt uses the trips to conduct company business. After a meeting in Durham, North Carolina last month, for example, Immelt visited a GE plant that assembles jet engines. And while Treasury provides most of the staff for the council’s work, GE has detailed one person to work on council business with Immelt.

Of course, Monday’s chamber meeting came on the heels of a truly horrendous monthly jobs report, which showed that only 18,000 Americans were hired nationally in June, raising America’s unemployment figures to 9.2 per cent, causing Immelt to proclaim:

We have a lot of work to do.

Ya think, DiNozzo?

Earlier in the meeting, Chamber President and CEO Thomas Donohue laid out his group’s broad plans to improve hiring, with the bulk of the Chamber’s focus on changes in government policies. Donohue called for the passage of pending free trade agreements, reform of visa rules to allow companies to hire skilled workers and recent graduates from overseas and to boost spending by foreign visitors. He also called for easier permitting of new projects and reform of government regulations.

Donohue said:

Can you blame these businesses? They don’t know what’s going to hit them next, and that’s what worries them the most.

Their employees aren’t too happy about Obama’s Economy, either.

President Barack Hussein Obama, earlier this afternoon, proclaimed, in a grieved voice, that he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks.

Obama told CBS Evening News Anchor Scott Pelley:

I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it

Obama has been predicting an economic Armageddon for the last several weeks in a desperate attempt to force Republicans to raise the Debt Ceiling and roll over in the Budget Battle, like a bunch of good little squishes.

The deadline given to Republicans by Obama for compliance with his royal decree is August 2nd, coincidentally (?) coinciding with the beginning of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan.:

Per holidays.net:

Observed by more than one billion Muslims around the world, Ramadan is a time for spiritual purification achieved through fasting, self-sacrifice and prayers.

Celebrated during the ninth month of Islamic calendar, the fast is observed each day from sunrise to sunset. Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five Pillars of Islam. The Islamic belief that requires that Muslims perform five central duties in order to strengthen their faith. While Islam has two major sects, the Sunnis and the Shiites, all Muslims aim to realize these five pillars in their lifetime.

Ramadan concludes with a 3-day festival known as “Eid” or “Eid ul-Fitr,” which literally means “the feast of the breaking/to break the fast.” The holiday marks the end of Ramadan, the holy month of fasting and is a culmination of the month-long struggle towards a higher spiritual state.

*Update Ramadan 2011: According to Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) Ramadan 1432 in North America, begins on the evening of Sunday, July 31, 2011, so that the first day of fasting would be Monday, August 1, 2011. Also According to Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) Eid-al-Fitr in North America is on Tuesday, August 30, 2011.

Obama told Pelley during an interview that will air Tuesday evening on the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley:

This is not just a matter of Social Security checks. These are veterans checks, these are folks on disability and their checks. There are about 70 million checks that go out.

Obama’s statements were in reply to what Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said in remarks earlier today on the Senate floor:

After years of discussions and months of negotiations, I have little question that as long as this president is in the Oval Office, a real solution is probably unattainable.

The president has presented us with three choices: smoke and mirrors, tax hikes, or default. Republicans choose none of the above. I had hoped to do good, but I refuse to do harm. So Republicans will choose a path that actually reflects the will of the people, which is to do the responsible thing and ensure that the government doesn’t default on its obligations.

Obama has repeate over and over again that he wants a deal that would allow the U.S. to avoid confronting the issue again until after the 2012 elections and vowed on Monday that he would “not sign a 30-day or a 60-day or a 90-day extension”:

This the United States of America and, you know, we don’t manage our affairs in three-month increments. You know, we don’t risk U.S. default on our obligations because we can’t put politics aside.

Well, just when we thought that McConnell had grown a spine and was edging toward fiscal reponsibility and, perhaps even, **gasp**, Conservatism, he came forth with this bright idea later this afternoon:

From townhall.com, a senior Republican aide explains Senator Mitch McConnel’s brilliant plan:

“Sen. McConnell has been in talks with Obama and Democrats. We wanted to do something serious and big. Yesterday, he asked point blank how much the Biden-led deal would actually cut from next year’s budget. The answer he received was $2 Billion, and it’s all smoke and mirrors. In exchange, [Democrats] want $1 Trillion in tax hikes. It’s not the kind of deal we’re at all interested in. We won’t accept guaranteed tax hikes in exchange for fantasy future spending cuts. It’s not going to happen. We’re going to fight like hell to do what we’ve said we want: Real spending cuts and caps, a vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment, and real entitlement reform. So this plan is a fallback option if all else fails. It’s modeled after the Congressional Review Act of the 1990s — which establishes expedited procedures by which Congress can disapprove executive agencies’ rules by way of a resolution of disapproval.”

Townhall’s Guy Benson explains further:

Republicans in Congress would agree to vote on legislation authorizing the president to propose three separate incremental debt ceiling increases, spaced over the remainder of his term. He would be required to couple each request with a corresponding set of spending cuts that exceed the dollar amount of his sought-after debt limit hike. These cuts would be of his choosing alone. The first pair of requests would come prior to the August 2 deadline. It would be for roughly $700 Billion. The next requests, for $900 Billion, would come in the fall, and the final tranche (also for $900 Billion) would be scheduled for summer of 2012 — in the thick of the campaign cycle.

In other words, McConnell’s plan is:  Let’s give Nero a match. Who cares if he burns down Rome, we won’t be held responsible.

Did the G.O.P. Elite not learn anything at all from the Mid-term Elections?

Yesterday, on NBC’s Meet The Press, moderated by Obama sycophant David Gregory, Treasury Secretary Turbo Tax Tim Geithner pronounced that many Americans will face hard times for a long time to come.

According to this rocket scientist, President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) rescued the United States from a second Great Depression and will keep working to strengthen the economy. However, Obama’s stooge says that it will be some time before many people feel like the country is recovering.

Geithner, during his thoughtful analysis, told Gregory that it’s a very tough economy.

Gee, DiNozzo.  Ya think?

Obama’s Treasury Secretary said that for a lot of people

…it’s going to feel very hard, harder than anything they’ve experienced in their lifetime now, for a long time to come.

Now, you can pick your jaw up off the floor.

Speaking of Geithner’s messiah, Obama met with House Speaker, Cryin’ John Boehner, and other Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle, yesterday, about raising the Debt Ceiling and the Battle of the Budget currently being debated in Congress.  The meeting lasted 75 minutes.

There was not any sort of agreement reached over how far the parties should go in cutting the deficit over the next decade or whether tax cuts and entitlement reductions should be a part of any deal. Congressional leaders will return to the White House today to continue talks, administration officials announced, with Obama holding a morning news conference before they do.

Oh, joy and rapture. If it’s the same ol’ garbage, like Obama slung around in Friday’s press conference in reaction to the horrendous Monthly Jobs Report, he can keep it to himself.

Yesterday, both sides accomplished nothing by digging in deeper into their held positions, leaving America with a history-making default, deadlocked talks, and a tanking economy brought about by a clueless, socialist White House.

Boehner announced on Saturday that the Republicans would not support the larger deficit-cutting plan Obama has proposed because it includes tax increases.

During yesterday’s meeting, Obama supposedly asked Republican leaders

If not now, when?

Well, Mr. President, if you are continuing with your plans to hasten America’s destruction through taxing those whose make our economic engine run, namely America’s business leaders and hard-working average Americans, Boehner’s reply should have been:

When Hell freezes over, Scooter.

Obama and the Democratats have responded to the impasse by whining and warning that, unless a deal is reached within two weeks, to give Congress time to approve it, the United States would default on its fiscal obligations for the first time.

When he was asked if they could reach a deal in the next 10 days, Obama, flanked by hiscongressional Democratic flunkies in the Cabinet Room before the meeting, said simply:

We need to.

…or I won’t be re-elected. (I added that.)

According to an anonymous Democratic sycophant…err…official, Obama pushed for his larger plan throughout the meeting. He reminded Boehner that the speaker had admitted that a smaller deal could be just as difficult to push through Congress as a large one, and he challenged Republicans to return to the White House on Monday with a plan to secure the 218 votes needed for a measure to pass the House. Then, like the petulant guest lecturer that he is, Scooter chastised the Republicans telling them to expect to meet daily until a deal is reached.

According to a senior administration official:

The president pushed to do something real and not just kick the can down the road. He said he was ready, willing and able to make the hard choices and hoped they would join him.

If he can have things his way.

On the Republican’s part, they suggested that a “contingency plan” is in the works to raise the debt ceiling if the gulf between the parties could not be bridged.

However, Obama wants no part of baby steps, saying that now is the moment to address the underlying causes of fiscal imbalance.

…so, I can brag about it during my re-election campaign. (I added that, too.)

Obama’s Obama’s slavish sycophants at washingtonpost.com are worried:

After weeks of debate, Obama may have a tenuous hold on the political high ground as he takes on a more visible role, urging party leaders to set aside ideology to trim an estimated $4 trillion from the deficit over the next decade.

Obama’s political strategy since his party loss the midterm elections has been to portray himself as a reasonable man in partisan Washington, at times angering Republicans and Democrats in doing so.

His proposal, which he has said would bring certainty to an economy constrained by anxiety over the nation’s fiscal condition, would involve spending cuts to agency budgets, including the Pentagon’s; ending the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans; and changing entitlement programs in ways his party has traditionally opposed.

Obama’s political advantage may fade quickly, though, if a deal cannot be reached before Aug. 2, the date the administration says the nation will begin to default on its obligations unless the borrowing limit is raised. Polls show that most Americans believe he has managed the economy poorly, and the unemployment rate’s jump to 9.2 percent in June has raised alarms within a White House looking toward reelection in 2012.

And after all, that’s what’s most important to Obama and the Democratic Party, right now.

Not the  citizens, nor the country, that they have sworn to protect, from enemies foreign and domestic.

Yesterday, I dissected President Barack Hussein Obama’s Press Conference in reaction to June’s horrible Monthly Jobs Report.  Obama spoke the same ol’ empty platitudes.

Someone else has had enough of those empty platitudes:  Former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin released the following note on Facebook yesterday, titled, The Sugar Daddy Has Run Out of Sugar; Now We Need New Leaders.

No dissection needed:

Barack Obama’s big government policies continue to fail. He should put a link to the national debt clock on his BlackBerry. The gears on that clock have nearly exploded during his administration. Yesterday’s terrible job numbers should not be a surprise because it all goes back to our debt. Our dangerously unsustainable debt is wiping out our jobs, crippling our economic growth, and jeopardizing our position in the global economy as the leader of the free world.

As a governor, I had to deal with facts, even unpleasant ones. I dealt with the world as it is, not as I wished it to be. The “elite” political class in this country with their heads in the sand had better face some unpleasant facts about the world as it is. They’ve run out of money and no amount of accounting gimmicks or happy talk will change this reality. Those of us who live in the real world could see this day coming.

Back in January 2009, as governor of Alaska, I announced: “We also have to be mindful about the effect of the stimulus package on the national debt and the future economic health of the country. We won’t achieve long-term stability if we continue borrowing massive sums from foreign countries and remain dependent on foreign sources of oil and gas.” Then I urged President Obama to veto the stimulus bill because it was loaded with absolutely useless pork and unfunded mandates. Everyone knows my early and vocal opposition to that mother of all unfunded mandates known as Obamacare starting back in August 2009, and many recall my objections to the Federal Reserves’ inflationary games with our currency known as QE2 from November 2010. It’s a matter of public record that I did not go to Harvard Law School, but I can add.

The same “experts” who got us into this mess are now telling us that the only way out of our debt crisis is to “increase revenue,” but not by creating more jobs and therefore a larger tax base; no, they want to “increase revenue” by raising taxes on job creators who are taxed enough already! As Margaret Thatcher said, “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” That’s where we are now. Hard working taxpayers have been big government’s Sugar Daddy for far too long, and now we’re out of sugar. We don’t want big government, we can’t afford it, and we are unwilling to pay for it.

This debt ceiling debate is the perfect time to do what must be done. We must cut. Yes, I’m for a balanced budget amendment and for enforceable spending caps. But first and foremost we must cut spending, not “strike a deal” that allows politicians to raise more debt! See, Washington is addicted to OPM – Other People’s Money. And like any junkie, they will lie, steal, and cheat to fund their addiction. We must cut them off and cut government down to size.

To paraphrase Hemingway, people go broke slowly and then all at once. We’ve been slowly going broke for years, but now it’s happening all at once as the world’s capital markets are demanding action from us, yet Obama assumes we’ll just go borrow another cup of sugar from some increasingly impatient neighbor. We cannot knock on anyone’s door anymore. And we don’t have any time to wait for Washington to start behaving responsibly. We’ll be Greece before these D.C. politicians’ false promises are over. We must force government to live within its means, just as every business and household does.

We can’t close our $1.5 trillion deficit overnight, but we must get as close as we can as soon as we can. Little nibbles here and there over 10 years (spun to sound like they’re huge budget cuts) aren’t anywhere near enough. I know from experience that cutting government spending isn’t easy. As governor, I made the largest veto cuts in my state’s history, and I didn’t make many friends doing it. But we will never recover, we will never get free of devastating debt, unless we make tough choices now. We don’t hear talk like this from leaders in D.C. or from those running for office because they say what they think we want to hear rather than what must be said.

We are in desperate need of real leadership, but President Obama’s solution to everything is to grow government by borrowing more money, spending more money, printing more money, and taxing our job creators. He once said that he “believes in American Exceptionalism…just as the Greeks believe in Greek Exceptionalism.” Well, the path he has us on will make us just as “exceptional” as Greece – debt crisis, stagnation, permanent high unemployment, and all.

As we approach 2012, there are important lessons we can learn from all of this. First, we should never entrust the White House to a far-left ideologue who has no appreciation or even understanding of the free market and limited government principles that made this country economically strong. Second, the office of the presidency is too important for on-the-job training. It requires a strong chief executive who has been entrusted with real authority in the past and has achieved a proven track record of positive measurable accomplishments. Leaders are expected to give good speeches, but leadership is so much more than oratory. Real leadership requires deeds even more than words. It means taking on the problems no one else wants to tackle. It means providing vision and guidance, inspiring people to action, bringing everyone to the table, and with a servant’s heart dedicating oneself to striking agreements that keep faith with our Constitution and with the ordinary citizens who entrusted you with power. It means bucking the status quo, fighting the corrupt powers that be, serving the common good, and leaving the country better than you found it. Most of us don’t see a lot of that real leadership in D.C., and it’s profoundly disappointing.

But let me tell you where real hope lies. It’s not the hopey-changey stuff we heard about in 2008. Real hope comes from realizing how God has blessed our exceptional nation, and then doing something about it. We have been blessed with natural resources, hardworking entrepreneurs, and a Constitution that preserves the greatest form of government ever devised by man. If we develop those natural resources, allow our entrepreneurs to keep and invest more of what they earn, and adhere to the time-tested truths of our Constitution, we will prosper and endure.

But first and foremost we must tackle our debt. We don’t have the luxury of playing politics as usual. We need real leaders who will put aside their own political self-interest to do what is right for the nation. And if they don’t emerge… well, America has a do-over in November 2012.

Hanging out on Conservative websites, I’ve watched Gov. Palin’s detractors camouflage their disdain for her by suggesting that she would make a great Energy Secretary under someone like Mitt Romney.

Pshaw.  Romney would make an adequate Financial Adviser under President Palin.

Or they downright insist (while holding their breath until they turn blue and jumping up and down), that SHE’S NOT RUNNING!

What these amateur political pundits fail to comprehend (even though they’ve been told over and over again) is that it is in Gov. Palin’s best interests not to declare if she’s running or not, until after July 27th, even if she wants to.

Y’see, that’s the final day for ethics complaints to be brought against her for any of her actions as Governor of Alaska.  Democratic operatives, and any of the other assorted fruitcakes, cannot file frivolous lawsuits against her in Alaska for the time she spent in office as Governor after July 27th, 2011.  After that, well…

GAME ON!

As the sun rose over America yesterday, a Monthly Jobs Report was issued that cast a shadow across our blessed land.

It was reported that only 18,000 jobs were added in the month of June, raising the reported Unemployment figure to 9.2 %.  Most economists had predicted that 100,000 jobs would be added.

This horrendous report arrived a day after Obama’s Senior Political Adviser, David Plouffe, said that

…people won’t vote in 2012 based on the unemployment rate.

Skippy, you and your boss, Scooter,  sure as all get out better hope that we don’t.

And , by the way, that’s easy for you to say, pinhead.  You have a job.

This report also arrives in the midst of a war between Obama and Congress over the raising the Debt Ceiling.  Obama has now decreed the arbitrary date of August 2nd for Congress to bow down to his wishes and raise the Debt Ceiling, so that he can put our nation further in debt.

Seeing his re-election campaign rapidly swirling down the toilet, President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) went on national television yesterday morning, arriving 30 minutes late to a press conference where he did not answer any questions, but, instead, made the same economic response speech that he’s made over and over again, sounding like an automated campaign telephone call, as his economic policies continue to fail and Americans continue to suffer:

Good morning, everybody. Obviously, over the last couple of days, the debate here in Washington has been dominated by issues of debt limit, but what matters most to Americans, and what matters most to me as President, in the wake of the worst downturn in our lifetimes, is getting our economy on a sounder footing more broadly so the American people can have the security they deserve.

That’s funny.  Americans thought that what matters most to you is tee time.  Fore!

And that means getting back to a place where businesses consistently grow and are hiring, where new jobs and new opportunity are within reach, where middle-class families once again know the security and peace of mind they’ve felt slipping away for years now. And today’s job report confirms what most Americans already know: We still have a long way to go and a lot of work to do to give people the security and opportunity that they deserve.

Well, genius.  here’s an idea:  Drop the corporate tax rate and encourage companies to remain in America and provide jobs for Americans, not East Indians in a Call Center on the Bay of Bengal.

We’ve added more than 2 million new private sector jobs over the past 16 months, but the recession cost us more than 8 million. And that means that we still have a big hole to fill. Each new job that was created last month is good news for the people who are back at work, and for the families that they take care of, and for the communities that they’re a part of. But our economy as a whole just isn’t producing nearly enough jobs for everybody who’s looking.

It’s your economy, Scooter.  YOU OWN IT.

We’ve always known that we’d have ups and downs on our way back from this recession. And over the past few months, the economy has experienced some tough headwinds — from natural disasters, to spikes in gas prices, to state and local budget cuts that have cost tens of thousands of cops and firefighters and teachers their jobs. The problems in Greece and in Europe, along with uncertainty over whether the debt limit here in the United States will be raised, have also made businesses hesitant to invest more aggressively.

Not to mention the fact that we have an anti-American Business President in the White House.  How’s Mr. Soros doing, Scooter?

The economic challenges that we face weren’t created overnight, and they’re not going to be solved overnight. But the American people expect us to act on every single good idea that’s out there. I read letter after letter from folks hit hard by this economy. None of them ask for much. Some of them pour their guts out in these letters. And they want me to know that what they’re looking for is that we have done everything we can to make sure that they are rewarded when they’re living up to their responsibilities, when they’re doing right by their communities, when they’re playing by the rules. That’s what they’re looking for, and they feel like the rules have changed. They feel that leaders on Wall Street and in Washington –- and believe me, no party is exempt –- have let them down. And they wonder if their efforts will ever be reciprocated by their leaders.

Not as long as you’re staying at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  But, don’t worry, Scooter, the America people plan to have the moving van on the Front Lawn in January of 2013.

They also make sure to point out how much pride and faith they have in this country; that as hard as things might be today, they are positive that things can get better. And I believe that we can make things better. How we respond is up to us. There are a few things that we can and should do, right now, to redouble our efforts on behalf of the American people.

If you would have been doing something positive in the last 2 1/2 years, instead of destroying this country, we wouldn’t be in this situation.

Let me give you some examples. Right now, there are over a million construction workers out of work after the housing boom went bust, just as a lot of America needs rebuilding. We connect the two by investing in rebuilding our roads and our bridges and our railways and our infrastructure. And we could put back to work right now some of those construction workers that lost their jobs when the housing market went bust. Right now, we can give our entrepreneurs the chance to let their job-creating ideas move to market faster by streamlining our patent process. That’s pending before Congress right now. That should pass.

You already tried to put people in nice houses that couldn’t afford it.  That’s what led to the Housing Bust in the first place.  If you have any questions, ask Barney Frank.

Today, Congress can advance trade agreements that will help businesses sell more American-made goods and services to Asia and South America, supporting thousands of jobs here at home. That could be done right now. Right now, there are a lot of middle-class families who sure could use the security of knowing that the tax cut that I signed in December to help boost the economy and put a thousand dollars in the pockets of American families, that that’s still going to be around next year. That’s a change that we could make right now.

Tax cut?  I thought you wanted to end the Bush Tax Cuts?  [Vinne Barbarino impression] I’m so confused.

There are bills and trade agreements before Congress right now that could get all these ideas moving. All of them have bipartisan support. All of them could pass immediately. And I urge Congress not to wait. The American people need us to do everything we can to help strengthen this economy and make sure that we are producing more jobs.

Then, get out of the way and let the American people work.

Also to put our economy on a stronger and sounder footing for the future, we’ve got to rein in our deficits and get the government to live within its means, while still making the investments that help put people to work right now and make us more competitive in the future. As I mentioned, we’ve had some good meetings. We had a good meeting here yesterday with leaders of both parties in Congress. And while real differences remain, we agreed to work through the weekend and meet back here on Sunday.

Speaker John Boehner:  “This is a Rubik’s cube that we have not worked out yet.” He stretched his arms wide to illustrate the gulf separating the two sides.

The sooner we get this done, the sooner that the markets know that the debt limit ceiling will have been raised and that we have a serious plan to deal with our debt and deficit, the sooner that we give our businesses the certainty that they will need in order to make additional investments to grow and hire and will provide more confidence to the rest of the world as well, so that they are committed to investing in America.

And then, you’re going to tax the stew out of them.  Brilliant.

Now, the American people sent us here to do the right thing not for party, but for country. So we’re going to work together to get things done on their behalf. That’s the least that they should expect of us, not the most that they should expect of us. I’m ready to roll up my sleeves over the next several weeks and next several months. I know that people in both parties are ready to do that as well. And we will keep you updated on the progress that we’re making on these debt limit talks over the next several days. Thank you.

No, thank you, Mr. President.  Americans needed a laugh after that horrendous Jobs Report…right before they cried.

Pass the Tylenol.

If you read the popularity polls, and/or listen to all of the “smart people” (i.e., the self-proclaimed and MSM-nominated political pundits) and the Elite of both political parties, Mitt Romney is the man to beat for the Republican Nomination for President of the United States.

Romney is presently in first place in fund-raising in all the polls which the MSM chooses to print.

Republican strategist Doug Heye is certainly singing his praises:

Certainly that is where Mitt Romney is now. He’s running really a strategy as a front-runner. He’s not engaging the other candidates. He’s focusing his attacks on Barack Obama. I think that’s smart

Smoke and Mirrors.

Americans in the Heartland do not like Romney. They don’t trust him.

Unfortunately for the guy in the white dress shirt, driving the pick-up truck, the Republican party is not just made up of Fiscal Conservatives (i.e., Moderates).

In order for Romney to grab the brass ring, he will have to earn the trust and admiration of Christian Conservatives and the Tea Party movement.

According to Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, a Tea Party organization:

My prediction would be is that somebody is going to fill that vacuum, the true fiscal conservative in the race.

Kibbe said that Tea Party activists are not just staring out their windows, waiting on the perfect candidate:

We’re not waiting. We’re shopping.

Last month, FreedomWorks held a planning session where 150 participants were asked to choose a candidate to run for president in 2012. Only one Tea Party activist at the meeting chose Romney.

How come? Simple. Americans know the successor to Bob Dole and John McCain when they see him.

Conservatives will never embrace the socialized state medical plan known as RomneyCare. And, instead of distancing himself from it, Romney has defended it, over and over again.

Per Kibbe:

If anything, he has doubled down (on health care).

Now, if you listen to some Republicans, who identify themselves as Evangelical, they’re still in mourning that Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is not running:

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, proclaimed:

No question Mitt Romney benefited from Huckabee not running. That left a huge vacuum.

Perkins says that while Romney is appealing to many social conservatives, there are still concerns over the contradictions (flip-flops) in his political history.

It’s fair to say there are those who see his record when he was governor of Massachusetts as not consistent with the platform that he ran on four years ago.

A lot of Reagan Conservatives throughout America’s Heartland are coming down with a case of deja vu:

It seems to be 2008…all over again.

Romney leads the field with 35% of the vote, in the latest WMUR poll in New Hampshire.

If you go back to a poll conducted by WMUR in July 2007, Romney was way out in front with 34%.

That is why, to average, God-revering, freedom-loving Americans, here in the Heartland, it appears to us that the Grand Old Party is trying to pull a fast one…again.

The overwhelming majority of Americans want a Reagan Conservative in the White House…period.  The want a president who is strong in all three areas which define a Reagan Conservative:  Fiscal Conservatism, Social Conservatism, and National Defense.

Lately, on the Internet and around the water cooler, there seems to be a push by a vocal (and, at times, an I’m-smarter-that-you-Christianists) minority, who are claiming that all the perfect presidential candidate for the GOP needs to be is a Fiscal Conservative (i.e., Moderate/Libertarian/or just downright Liberal).

The future existence of the United States of America cannot sit on a one-legged stool.

President Ronald Reagan spoke eloquently about what has to be done, and what it will take to make it happen, at his first Inauguration on January 20, 1981:

We must act today in order to preserve tomorrow. And let there be no misunderstanding–we are going to begin to act, beginning today.

The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we, as Americans, have the capacity now, as we have had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom.

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem.

From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.

We hear much of special interest groups. Our concern must be for a special interest group that has been too long neglected. It knows no sectional boundaries or ethnic and racial divisions, and it crosses political party lines. It is made up of men and women who raise our food, patrol our streets, man our mines and our factories, teach our children, keep our homes, and heal us when we are sick–professionals, industrialists, shopkeepers, clerks, cabbies, and truck drivers. They are, in short, “We the people,” this breed called Americans.

…Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have. It is a weapon that we as Americans do have. Let that be understood by those who practice terrorism and prey upon their neighbors.

I am told that tens of thousands of prayer meetings are being held on this day, and for that I am deeply grateful. We are a nation under God, and I believe God intended for us to be free. It would be fitting and good, I think, if on each Inauguration Day in future years it should be declared a day of prayer.

…Directly in front of me, the monument to a monumental man: George Washington, father of our country. A man of humility who came to greatness reluctantly. He led America out of revolutionary victory into infant nationhood. Off to one side, the stately memorial to Thomas Jefferson. The Declaration of Independence flames with his eloquence.

And then beyond the Reflecting Pool the dignified columns of the Lincoln Memorial. Whoever would understand in his heart the meaning of America will find it in the life of Abraham Lincoln.

Beyond those monuments to heroism is the Potomac River, and on the far shore the sloping hills of Arlington National Cemetery with its row on row of simple white markers bearing crosses or Stars of David. They add up to only a tiny fraction of the price that has been paid for our freedom.

Each one of those markers is a monument to the kinds of hero I spoke of earlier. Their lives ended in places called Belleau Wood, The Argonne, Omaha Beach, Salerno and halfway around the world on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Pork Chop Hill, the Chosin Reservoir, and in a hundred rice paddies and jungles of a place called Vietnam.

Under one such marker lies a young man–Martin Treptow–who left his job in a small town barbershop in 1917 to go to France with the famed Rainbow Division. There, on the western front, he was killed trying to carry a message between battalions under heavy artillery fire.

We are told that on his body was found a diary. On the flyleaf under the heading, “My Pledge,” he had written these words: “America must win this war. Therefore, I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone.”

The crisis we are facing today does not require of us the kind of sacrifice that Martin Treptow and so many thousands of others were called upon to make. It does require, however, our best effort, and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds; to believe that together, with God’s help, we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us.

And, after all, why shouldn’t we believe that? We are Americans. God bless you, and thank you.

No.  Thank you, Mr. President.

Yesterday, President Barack Hussein Obama, (You remember him, the guy was supposed to make the oceans rise and fall if he got elected ?) held a Twitter Town Hall, using the White House’s Twitter account.

Of course, this was nothing more than an effort by the rapidly failing POTUS to use the 96 character format in an effort to reach out to the young and impressionable and show them that he is still cool and how he just looooves using the new social media.

Back in 2008, Obama’s campaign was at the forefront of the new technology, through his use of the Internet as a campaign tool in the presidential election, and was lauded and envied by politicians and pundits from both sides of the aisle for its digital strategy. The campaign used Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube before campaigns made the social networking sites an integral part of their campaign strategy.

The Obama Braintrust used text messaging to reach millions of supporters to organize rallies and to raise money (Including all those anonymous donations from overseas…but I digress.). The campaign even started its own social network, through its website, Organizing for America, that allowed people to join the idol worship and commune with other simple, err, like-minded Obama supporters.

The Republicans eventually jumped on the Social Network Bandwagon. All of the major major presidential candidates are very active on all the social networks.

Even old fossil Newt Gingrich has joined up on Google+, which was only released last week and is still not open to the general public.

According to the “so-called” Social Networking Experts, our boy Scooter barely scratched the surface of the Tweeting possibilities yesterday.

Make no mistake. This was a political event. Among the eight “curators” selected by the boss of Twitter (a huge Obama supporter) to help find questions to ask the president, one was from Iowa and one was from New Hampshire.

In other words, all of the questions were screened by Liberals.

When a tweet of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio did not display correctly on the screen, Obama took a moment to poke fun at him, saying:

John obviously needs to work on his typing skills.

Of course, Scooter’s Henny Youngman impression, provoked spontaneous laughter from the live audience.

White House officials said that the point of yesterday’s event, was to give people in all corners of the country a chance to ask the president a question. The problem was with 169,395 tweets that included the #AskObama hashtag, you were more likely to have your questions answered by attending one of Obama’s staged pep rallies, err, town halls and raising your hand to ask a question..

The White House does not seem to understand why “Tweeting” is so popular. Their effort yesterday went against the basic principles of Twitter. It was uni-directional. Twitter is omni-directional, which is the point of the whole silly thing.

Scooter cheated. Not only did the President not type in his answers, they were much longer than the 140 characters Twitterers use to communicate.

While the president is making a big show out of using the new technologies, he’s not using them correctly.

He’s cheating, in order to get around the rules.

What is it about Liberals and cheating?

Have you heard about the cheating parties in Atlanta, GA Public Schools System?

Per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Across Atlanta Public Schools, staff worked feverishly in secret to transform testing failures into successes.

Teachers and principals erased and corrected mistakes on students’ answer sheets.

Area superintendents silenced whistle-blowers and rewarded subordinates who met academic goals by any means possible.

Superintendent Beverly Hall and her top aides ignored, buried, destroyed or altered complaints about misconduct, claimed ignorance of wrongdoing and accused naysayers of failing to believe in poor children’s ability to learn.

For years — as long as a decade — this was how the Atlanta school district produced gains on state curriculum tests. The scores soared so dramatically they brought national acclaim to Hall and the district, according to an investigative report released Tuesday by Gov. Nathan Deal.

In the report, the governor’s special investigators describe an enterprise where unethical — and potentially illegal — behavior pierced every level of the bureaucracy, allowing district staff to reap praise and sometimes bonuses by misleading the children, parents and community they served.

The report accuses top district officials of wrongdoing that could lead to criminal charges in some cases.

The decision whether to prosecute lies with three district attorneys — in Fulton, DeKalb and Douglas counties — who will consider potential offenses in their jurisdictions.

Back in February of 2009, the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) named Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Beverly L. Hall the 2009 National Superintendent of the Year, the top professional honor for a K-12 school administrator.

Also in 2009, Dr. Hall was  named Georgia Superintendent of the Year in December by the Georgia School Superintendents Association and one of the 100 most influential Georgians by Georgia Trend magazine.

AASA Executive Director Dan Domenech proclaimed, in announcing the award:

Beverly Hall is an outstanding superintendent whose leadership has turned Atlanta into a model of urban school reform. Throughout her long and successful tenure in Atlanta, Hall has accomplished significant gains in student achievement. She has demonstrated a commitment to setting high standards for students and school personnel, working collaboratively with the school board, and meeting the needs of the local community. AASA is proud to bestow this national honor on Hall.

Hall was the first Georgia superintendent to be named National Superintendent of the Year.

I wonder if they’ll rescind her awards due to this scandal?  I doubt it. 

Liberals avoid taking responsibility for their actions like Lindsey Lohan avoids sobriety.

What is it about Liberals and cheating?

They know that they can get by with it…at least in the short run.