Liedership by the Panderer in Chief

[Tree]

Dragged to the truth by facts.  The obvious has even fallen onto The Huff Post.  4 dead Americans, no leadership just cover up for the cause of the attack for weeks and now a fact forced mea culpa.  What a tragedy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/09...d=webmail1

[Spartina]

Agree Tree. Pathetic.

[Palm]

Romney will make hay with this in foreign policy debate. Current admin very weak in standing up to foreign threats. I also see this AM that Al Quida is making a strong push again in Iraq since we pulled out and Iraqi citizens are fearing a return to the old ways.
http://news.yahoo.com/al-qaida-making-co...59290.html

Then this AM there was a very good editorial by Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution entitled, "Obama is chief of demagogy". After the last debate where Romney clearly had the upper hand, the next day Obama's response? "Romney is a phony." OK; read this:
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/...agogy.html

"Obama is chief of demagogy
By Thomas Sowell
Creators SyndicateWednesday October 10, 2012 6:10 AM

When President Barack Obama and others on the left are not busy admonishing the rest of us to be “civil” in our discussions of political issues, they are busy letting loose insults, accusations and smears against those who dare to disagree with them.

Like so many people who have been beaten in a verbal encounter, and who can think of clever things to say the next day, after it is all over, President Obama, after his clear loss in his debate with Mitt Romney, called Gov. Romney a “phony.”

Innumerable facts, however, show that it is our commander in chief who is phony in chief. A classic example was his speech to a predominantly black audience at Hampton University on June 5, 2007. That date is important, as we shall see.

In his speech — delivered in a ghetto-style accent that Obama doesn’t use anywhere except when he is addressing a black audience — he charged the federal government with not showing the same concern for the people of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina hit as they had shown for the people of New York after the 9/11 attacks, or the people of Florida after Hurricane Andrew hit.

Departing from his prepared remarks, he mentioned the Stafford Act, which requires communities receiving federal disaster relief to contribute 10 percent as much as the federal government does.

Senator Obama, as he was then, pointed out that this requirement was waived in the case of New York and Florida because the people there were considered to be “part of the American family.” But the people in New Orleans — predominantly black — “they don’t care about as much,” according to Obama.

If you want to know what community organizers do, this is it — rub people’s emotions raw to hype their resentments. And this was Barack Obama in his old community organizer role, a role that should have warned those who thought that he was someone who would bring us together, when he was all too well practiced in the art of polarizing us apart.

Why is the date of this speech important? Because, less than two weeks earlier, on May 24, 2007, the United States Senate had in fact voted 80-14 to waive the Stafford Act requirement for New Orleans, as it had waived that requirement for New York and Florida. More federal money was spent rebuilding New Orleans than was spent in New York after 9/11 and in Florida after Hurricane Andrew, combined.

Truth is not a job requirement for a community organizer. Nor can Barack Obama claim that he wasn’t present the day of that Senate vote, as he claimed he wasn’t there when Jeremiah Wright unleashed his obscene attacks on America from the pulpit of the church that Obama attended for 20 years.

Unlike Wright’s church, the U.S. Senate keeps a record of who was there on a given day. The Congressional Record for May 24, 2007 shows Senator Barack Obama present that day and voting on the bill that waived the Stafford Act requirement. Moreover, he was one of just 14 Senators who voted against — repeat, against — the legislation that included the waiver.

When he gave that demagogic speech, in a feigned accent and style, it was world class chutzpah and a rhetorical triumph. He truly deserves the title phony in chief.

If you know any true believers in Obama, show them the transcript of his June 5, 2007 speech at Hampton University (available from the Federal News Service) and then show them page S6823 of the Congressional Record for May 24, 2007, which lists which senators voted which way on the waiver of the Stafford Act requirement for New Orleans.

Some people in the media have tried to dismiss this and other revelations of Barack Obama’s real character that have belatedly come to light as “old news.” But the truth is one thing that never wears out. The Pythagorean Theorem is 2,000 years old, but it can still tell you the distance from home plate to second base (127 ft.) without measuring it. And what happened five years ago can tell a lot about Barack Obama’s character — or lack of character.

Obama’s true believers may not want to know the truth. But there are millions of other people who have simply projected their own desires for a post-racial America onto Barack Obama. These are the ones who need to be confronted with the truth, before they repeat the mistake they made when they voted four years ago.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. "

Sowell is black BTW

[Spartina]

I think the comments about how "unpatriotic" the deficit was back in 2008, combined with the latest illustration about the speech he gave about running from your record and making small things big back in 2008 is also very telling. How can you call someone else a phony when you are on the record saying these things back in 2008 given the current state of the deficit , the economy, and his record. Remarkable.

[Tree]

I think the comments about how "unpatriotic" the deficit was back in 2008, combined with the latest illustration about the speech he gave about running from your record and making small things big back in 2008 is also very telling. How can you call someone else a phony when you are on the record saying these things back in 2008 given the current state of the deficit , the economy, and his record. Remarkable.

Hey Harry, just think of how if elected, Obama will again blame his predecessor for the mess he inherited and that predecessor will be himself!

[Spartina]

I think we just wagged a stick in a hornets nest Tree...

[admin]

When Conservatives Loved Keynes

• 
  Jonathan Chait

  
  
• July 6, 2011 | 11:31 am

More From this Author

How the GOP Destroyed its Moderates

Leaving TNR

Rick Perry's Temporary Budget Sanity

While researching an item from earlier this morning -- yes, I do research, I just try to avoid talking to people -- I came across a fascinating exchange about the concept of economic stimulus. In 2001, the economy was undergoing a mild slowdown. Liberals generally argued that the scale of the problem was small enough for the Federal Reserve to handle with monetary policy, and didn't require a Keynesian fiscal stimulus. Conservatives took the opposite position. Here's a great exchange at a 2001 hearing in Congress between Paul Ryan, AEI economist Kevin Hassett, and Bob Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

Mr. GREENSTEIN. If I could just comment on it. As I have said before, I think the economic benefits are being overstated. The economy has slowed right now. I don't see how, particularly given the pace of the Senate, the checks are going to go out much before next summer. The CBO forecast you are operating on shows that by 2002 we have a full scale recovery from the recession.

I think we do have a problem right now, and our best mechanism right now is interest rates. I hope the Federal Reserve lowers them further. I think that is going to have a much bigger effect than anything you do on taxes because I don't think -- it is not that tax policy can't have a stimulative effect. It is very unlikely even this year to occur in time to make much difference.

Dr. HASSETT. I would just like to add, Mr. Ryan, that the economists who studied this were quite surprised to find that fiscal policy in recessions was reasonably effective. It is just that folks tried  a first punch that was too light and that generally we didn't get big measures until well into the recession. So the reason that in the past fiscal policy hasn't pushed us out of recession is that we delayed.

So I think that Mr. Greenstein agrees, and he is saying it is not likely that we would pass it soon but I would argue this is why we should.

Mr. RYAN. That is precisely my point. That is why I like my porridge hot. I think we ought to have this income tax cut fast, deeper, retroactive to January 1st, to make sure we get a good punch into the economy, juice the economy to make sure that we can avoid a hard landing.

The concern I have around here is that everybody is talking about let's wait and see, let's see if they materialize. Well, $1.5 trillion have already materialized in the surplus since then-Governor Bush proposed this tax cut in the first place. The economy has soured. The growth of the projections of the surpluses are higher. So we have waited and we do see, and it is my concern that if we keep waiting and seeing we won't give the economy the boost it needs right now.

Greenstein is taking the sensible position that the 2001 recession seems mild enough that Keynesian tax cuts will not be needed -- by the time their stimulative effect kicks in, the economy should be growing again. Hassett, the conservative, replies that Keynesian fiscal policy during recessions works, and the only problem is that it's usually too small. And Ryan agrees!

Ryan and Hassett, of course, fiercely opposed the concept of fiscal stimulus in 2009. I don't see how you can explain progressing from that position to opposing Keynesian stimulus during a severe liquidity trap, the worst economic crisis since the depression, except as a function of pure partisanship.

[TomCrooz]

How about this letter to 7,000 employees by a man who understands what it is like to build a business.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/49356069

[admin]

How about this letter to 7,000 employees by a man who understands what it is like to build a business. http://www.cnbc.com/id/49356069

It's a fine stunt, Tom. Reality, however..

Federal tax intake, at just over 15% of GDP, is already at a multi-decade low and corporate tax intake is at an all-time low:

[Petrovale]

STP, that's not a stunt. The entrepreneur in question is definitely not the only one voicing these concerns. Business will support the State when it, too, will take responsibility for generating real growth. Of late, the US, like many other Western countries, have a lousy record in this respect. "Reality", often, is not in the statistics you are referring to. The Polity and the Economy will have to create "Confidence" together. I think that's the essence of the political debate, not the statistics factory in Washington, D.C. The point being that there is no single politician or political combination capable of offering a generally acceptable solution, probably because their financial, industrial and popular constituents, if technocrats have any, are not understood. That's called an "Impasse", which is now evolving into a full blown "Crisis". A revolution is called for.