I was told this by a friend and fellow memo reader who checked it with Snopes. But then, one of my neighbors, another friend and fellow memo reader, did the following which is most revealing. As I understand it, Snopes is/was a couple, ie husband and wife.
Regardless, it's still a great letter and Sowell still remains bright and articulate (See 1 below.)
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What a coincidence. More under the rug shenanigans. Is anyone in politics above board? (See 2 below.)
Yesterday, I had a lengthy and wide ranging conversation with a someone who is extremely bright and one of the most connected members in our extensive family.
He actually had a three party meeting with Soros and walked me through some of the events that took place and came away completely turned off by Soros' personality and display of utter indifference to the third person's simple request. He also said he knows others who have had dealings with Soros as well and the man is without a shred of decency, is arrogant and self-absorbed dangerous.
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Mood remains somber among economists s it should. The co-ordinated effect of what the various Central Banks did should be viewed as a near term palliative and will not cure the patient, who remains quite ill. The effect f this action should be fleeting because, as I mentioned previously, it is more psychological than solution in terms of having a lasting effect.
It possibly serves to avoid a current crisis but there will be other crises ahead because the patient is sick from too much socialism. (See 3 below.)
And this from Porter Stansberry (edited.) (See 3a below.)
---
Dan Henninger has a novel idea. Go with what once worked and was changed because people thought we ought to democratize the selection of a party's candidate. (See 4 below.)
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If Henninger's idea is not radical enough we can always depend upon Andy Stern - former president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and now a senior fellow at Columbia University's Richman Center.
It is fitting that Stern is now at Columbia, one of the most radical large Eastern University's in America. What Stern helped orchestrate was a huge expansion in unionizing public workers and that in turn led to more government bloat, waste, corruption and pensions that are significantly unfunded because of their out sized demands.
Stern's visit to China and his thinking about centralized planning reminds me of what Amity Shlaes wrote about those FDR 'Brain Trust' members who visited Stalin, fell in love with what Uncle Joe was 'accomplishing' and came back advising FDR to mimic some of his programs.
No doubt China is going to lead the world in building enormous projects and accomplishing other economic wonders because its government can do so through edicts and has no competition. What Stern does not address is the fact that Chinese are not free by our standards and what Stern fails to discuss or recognize is the price the average Chinese pays because they are not free. Fast train wrecks that kill, food manufacturing that is tainted and kills and the list is endless.
Central planning simply centralizes corruption and other forms of bureaucratic mistakes which remain hidden from view until the kill. Keep on thinking as you do Andy and maybe one day you and Barney can run the whole show over here. (See 5 below.)
Meanwhile , Obama is doing a pretty good job of defending his lying Attorney General and other members if his team whose ideas of creeping Socialism are strangling our nation, encroaching on our freedom and costing us enormous amounts of money as the messiah pays back his worthy supporters.
And then we have Obama stuffing his pockets with funds after supping with all the fat cats he loves to tell the public need to pay more of their share so you can sit on your ass and complain. He never stops campaigning and raising money so we can enjoy four more years of his deceit. Go Obama! (See 6 below.)
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I have never doubted for a moment that Obama will seek to steal the upcoming campaign. Theft by Democrats probably helped elect Kennedy and certainly the Chicago crowd behind Obama is not above theft and running a divisive and nasty smear campaign. Acorns are nourishment to them. (See 6a below.)
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Christie's take on Obama's fear of Romney. (See 7 below.)
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Dick
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1)Info. I had already given up on Snopes and rely solely on Google who seem to have more information available from which you can draw your own conclusions.
Subj: Fw: Fw: SNOPES NO MORE
FYI: Author unknown. SNOPES NO MORE
Many of the emails that I have sent or forwarded that had any anti Obama in it were negated by Snopes. I thought that was odd. Check this out.
Snopes, Soros and the Supreme Courts Kagan
W-e-l-l-l-l now, I guess the time has come to check out Snopes!
Ya' don't suppose it might be a good time to take a second look at some of the stuff that got kicked in the ditch by Snopes, do ya'? We've known that it was owned by a lefty couple but hadn't known it to be financed by Soros!
Snopes is heavily financed by George Soros; a big time supporter of Obama.
In our Search for the Truth department, we find what I have suspected on many occasions.
I went to Snopes to check something about the dockets of the new Supreme Court Justice, Elena Kagan who Obama appointed and Snopes said the email was false and there were no such dockets so I Googled the Supreme Court, typed in Obama-Kagan, and guess what?
Yep you got it; Snopes Lied!
Everyone of those dockets are there.
So Here is what I wrote toSnopes:
Referencing the article about Elena Kagan and Barak Obama dockets:
The information you have posted stating that there were no such cases as claimed and the examples you gave are blatantly false.
I went directly to the Supreme Courts website, typed in Obama Kagan and immediately came up with all of the dockets that the article made reference to.
I have long suspected that you really slant things but this was really shocking.
Thank You, I hope you will be much more truthful in the future, but I doubt it.
That being said, Ill bet you didn't know this.
Kagan was representing Obama in all the petitions to prove his citizenship.
Now she may help rule on them.
Folks, this is really ugly.
Chicago Politics; and the beat goes on and on and on.
Once again the US Senate sold us out!
Now we know why Obama nominated Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court.
Pull up the Supreme Courts website, go to the docket and search for Obama.
She was the Solicitor General for all the suits against him filed with the Supreme Court to show proof of natural born citizenship.
He owed her big time.
All of the requests were denied of course.
They were never heard.
It just keeps getting deeper and deeper, doesn't it?
The American people mean nothing any longer.
It's all about payback time for those who compromised themselves to elect someone who really has no true right to even be there.
Here are some websites of the Supreme Court Docket:
You can look up some of these hearings and guess what?
Elena Kagan is the attorney representing Obama!
Check out these examples:
http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx?FileName=/docketfiles/09-8857.htm
http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx?FileName=/docketfiles/09-6790.htm
http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.aspx?FileName=/docketfiles/09-724.htm
If you are not interested in justice or in truth, simply delete.
However, if you hold sacred the freedoms granted to you by the U.S. Constitution; by all means,
PASS it ON! is there truly tyranny afoot?
p.s. I now use www.truthorfiction.com to get the correct info...
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2)Do you know the park in NYC that the Wall Street protesters are occupying?
Zucotti Park.
Did you know this park is not owned by the city? It is owned by Brookfield Properties.
Who was just hired by Brookfield Properties as an attorney? Vice President Joe Biden's son.
Who sits on the board of Brookfield Properties? Mayor Bloomberg's live in girlfriend.
Now, guess what company just recieved some of the last of the Obama Stimulus $$$$$$$.
Thaaaaaaaaaaaaat's right, Brookfield Properties. Isn't life great!
Hey, on a completely unrelated note, Wisconsin is shaping up to be the swing state in the 2012 presidential elections. Not Florida. Not Ohio. But Wisconsin .
Now, guess who owns the company that will be tabulating the electronic votes in Wisconsin. Thaaaaaaaaaaaat's right, the biggest contributor to Obama, George Soros. Whaaaaaaaat a coincidence!
Remember what Stalin said. "He who votes does not have power. He who counts the votes has power".
Need more go here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2790976/posts
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3)Economists Still See Deflation Gloom as Improving Data Doesn't Lift Mood
After concern last summer of an imminent double-dip recession in the U.S., the data got a bit brighter in the fall. The economy grew faster than expected in the third quarter and has created almost 2.8 million private- sector jobs since the labor market bottomed in early 2010.
“It looks like recovery to me,” says Chris Rupkey, a New York-based economist for Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. Even as he’s encouraged by an uptick in consumer spending and slow but steady gains in employment, Rupkey says he knows his optimism is a minority view.
Two and a half years after the official end of the recession, in June 2009, this recovery looks like none before it, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.
Daniel Tarullo, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, describes the economy as “slogging through the mud.” Arun Raha, chief economist for the state of Washington, chooses a different metaphor. “A return to normalcy seems like a mirage in the desert,” he wrote in a report in October. “The closer we get to it, the further it moves away.”
The trek through the sand (or mud) may be longer than many had anticipated -- at the Federal Reserve, in the White House or on Wall Street. Growth has picked up several times, only to stall.
In 2009, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke spotted “green shoots” suggesting a turnaround. He was premature. President Barack Obama in June 2010 started touting a Recovery Summer, only to suffer political embarrassment as stimulus spending failed to cure the jobs crisis. Another false dawn came and went in early 2011, as the labor market added about 200,000 jobs per month before slowing again.
Weakest Recovery
Measured from the December 2007 start of the recession, the rebound in production in the U.S. has been weaker than any recovery since World War II. After previous contractions, the economy has always topped its previous high within two years. This time it took almost four. Annual gross domestic product at the end of the third quarter was less than 0.1 percent higher, after adjusting for inflation, than its pre-crisis peak in 2007.
Job growth too has been more feeble than in past comebacks. Fewer Americans have work today than in April 2000, before the technology stock bubble deflated, even though the population has grown by 31 million. The gains in private-sector employment that reassure Rupkey have been partly offset by lost state and local government jobs, the result of plunging tax revenue and debts coming due.
Joblessness
October’s 9 percent unemployment rate was just 1 percentage point below its 2009 peak -- and more than 4 points higher than it was prior to the recession. The rate likely stayed at 9 percent in November, according to the median forecast of 79 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News ahead of the government’s report tomorrow.
Even with such discouraging news, the U.S. economy today is nowhere near as bad as in the Great Depression, when unemployment topped 20 percent and output shrank for three and a half years -- from 1929 into 1933 -- before recovery even began.
Still, some investors and analysts are batting around terms meant to distinguish today’s economic pain from the less distressing recessions and recoveries of past decades. “It’s the modern equivalent of a depression,” says Lacy Hunt, chief economist at Hoisington Investment Management in Austin, Texas.
Fisher Debt Deflation
What’s holding the economy back? Hunt, who has also worked on the staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and as chief economist at HSBC Holdings Plc in New York, says the U.S. is stuck in a debt deflation. The term was coined in 1933 by economist Irving Fisher, a prominent Yale University professor, as he tried to explain the Great Depression. Fisher’s reputation never really recovered from his claim on the eve of the 1929 market crash that stocks had reached a “permanently high plateau.” And yet, his debt-deflation theory has gained currency in the aftermath of the collapse of credit markets in 2008.
Fisher describes a vicious spiral in which liquidation of debt slows the economy, cuts the value of assets, curtails lending, reduces employment and leaves businesses with excess capacity. The subsequent loss of confidence just makes things worse.
Americans are clearly in a sour mood, as Fisher’s theory would predict. Consumers are only slightly less pessimistic than they were at the February 2009 nadir of the financial crisis, according to the University of Michigan Confidence Survey’s expectations index.
Globalization’s Impact
The downward spiral describes well what the economy is going through, says Daniel Alpert, a founder and managing partner of Westwood Capital LLC, the New York investment bank. “It’s a classic Irving Fisher debt deflation.”
The effects of deleveraging are being made worse by excess production capacity due to globalization, according to “The Way Forward,” a report co-authored by Alpert, Cornell University law professor Robert Hockett and economist Nouriel Roubini of New York University. Over the past generation, almost 2 billion new workers from developing Asia and eastern Europe have joined a more integrated global economy, the report explains. That has lifted millions of people out of poverty. It has also disrupted the worldwide balance between supply and demand. Swapping well- paid American workers for lower-paid Chinese or Indians means a loss of demand overall, Alpert says. Workers who are paid less buy less.
While some economists express optimism about a growing consumer class in emerging markets, Alpert and his co-authors emphasize the flip side: the growth in labor supply and productive capacity as developing countries become bigger players in international trade.
Excess Capacity
In the U.S., almost 14 million men and women are unemployed, and factories are operating at 78 percent of capacity, which is below the low point reached in the recession of 1990 to 1991, according to Fed data.
Alpert says unemployment is likely to climb again and may top 10 percent in 2012. He, Hockett and Roubini argue that, to boost demand, the government should oversee the spending of $1.2 trillion on the nation’s crumbling airports, roads, bridges and energy grid, tapping both public and private funds.
That won’t happen, of course. Money from the $787 billion economic stimulus bill that Democrat Obama signed in February 2009 is mostly spent. Republicans won control of the House of Representatives in 2010 with promises to curb spending and tackle the federal debt. They favor fewer government regulations and lower taxes as the recipe to strengthen the economy.
Political Disagreements
Obama’s stimulus package didn’t create the jobs he promised, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said at an Oct. 11 debate among candidates for the Republican presidential nomination: “The right course for America is not to keep spending money on stimulus bills, but instead to make permanent changes to the tax code.”
Romney has also said Obama’s auto industry rescue was wrong. Yet Michigan has been creating jobs since General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC emerged from bankruptcy with government backing in mid-2009. Bloomberg’s Economic Evaluation of States indexes, which incorporate data on employment, income and tax revenue, show that conditions improved more quickly in Michigan than anywhere else in the country except North Dakota in the two years ended in June 2011.
The struggling economy and the deep political divide in Washington are feeding off each other. Growth might pick up if politicians were working together, and cooperation between the parties might improve if the economy were healing more quickly.
Bernanke Surprised
Closing the government’s $1.2 trillion budget deficit would be easier if economic growth were stronger. If not for the recession, the U.S. likely would be collecting $600 billion more in annual tax revenue. For now, Republicans and Democrats offer mutually exclusive diagnoses of the economy’s ailments and preferred cures, and their squabbles -- such as the brinkmanship over the debt ceiling -- are hurting consumer and business confidence.
The Fed has been surprised that the economy has failed to gain momentum, Bernanke said during a Nov. 2 press conference: “The drags on the recovery were stronger than we thought.” In response, the Fed cut its 2011 and 2012 economic growth forecasts. The central bank sees the economy growing at an annual rate of 1.6 to 1.7 percent in 2011 -- more than a full percentage point below its June prediction -- and 2.5 to 2.9 percent in 2012.
The troubled housing market and consumer deleveraging have contributed to the weakness, Bernanke said, along with Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.
European Hazard
Demand in Europe is eroding as leaders struggle to keep the euro zone intact. Mario Draghi, who took the helm of the European Central Bank at the beginning of November, cut interest rates by a quarter point at his first policy meeting, while warning that Europe is on the verge of a mild recession.
Rupkey at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi is among those who take solace in the positive U.S. economic data in recent months. Americans may be complaining to pollsters, yet they are still shopping, Rupkey says. Consumer spending in October was 2 percent higher than a year earlier, after adjusting for inflation, and shopping over the Thanksgiving weekend gave a preliminary signal that holiday sales will be strong. Rupkey expects pent-up demand for big-ticket items such as homes and cars to begin making itself felt.
Maury Harris, chief economist at UBS Securities LLC, a unit of UBS AG, also says the data show that economic fundamentals are improving in the U.S. His team ranked as the top forecaster of the U.S. economy in the January issue of Bloomberg Markets.
While Bernanke remains concerned about household debts, they have become less burdensome by some measures. Consumers were spending about 11 percent of disposable income on mortgage and credit card payments as of June 2011 compared with nearly 14 percent as the financial crisis gathered force in September 2007.
Debt Burdens
Ethan Harris, co-head of global economic research at Bank of America Corp., doesn’t see that data as grounds for optimism. When the economy returns to normal and the Fed begins raising interest rates, he says, “these debt burdens are going to zoom back up again.” He expects the jobless rate in 2013 to be higher than today.
Household debt peaked at $13.9 trillion in mid-2008. After three years of repayments and write-offs, consumer obligations have been trimmed to $13.3 trillion, down just 4.6 percent from the high, according to the Fed. In the second quarter, the most recent data available, consumers made less progress whittling down their debt than in any quarter since the deleveraging began.
Chronic Ailments
Even if the danger of a new recession has eased, the economy has chronic ailments that defy easy solutions -- and have spawned the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York and elsewhere. The income of the average American household is less than 1 percent greater than it was in 1989.
Measured another way, the current era has been almost 10 times as damaging to household balance sheets as the mid- to late 1970s, generally regarded as a pretty miserable period for the economy. During the past six years, household net worth relative to disposable income has fallen by more than 20 percent, according to Fed data. During a similar span from 1973 to 1979 -- years that encompass both of the Middle East oil shocks, peak inflation above 12 percent and the address by President Jimmy Carter that became known as his “malaise speech” -- the ratio fell just 2.4 percent.
“We’ve had a recovery for 21 months, technically, but the standard of living has continued to decline,” says Hoisington’s Hunt, whose firm oversees $5.7 billion. “So the recovery is very incomplete,” he says.
Wounded Economy
The risk now is that a wounded U.S. economy gets hit with another shock -- this time coming when politicians in Washington can’t agree on a response and central bank officials already have deployed their most-effective tools. (The Fed’s benchmark interest rate has been near zero for three years.) Ripples from Europe’s sovereign debt crisis or some other disruption to the financial system could do the job.
“The worst-case scenario is that we allow the economy to sit in this non-recovery for so long that something comes along and causes that second recession,” says Ethan Harris, a former New York Fed staff economist. “Accidents happen. And if you’re growing at 1 to 2 percent, you’re just waiting for bad luck to hit.”
© Copyright 2011 Bloomberg News. All rights reserved.
3a) "...I'm inclined to agree with Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who's running for president. "Fiat money caused this European crisis and the financial crisis before it," Paul said in a statement posted on his website. "More fiat money is not the cure."
I'm not sure how anyone could come to any other conclusion… which makes yesterday's rally a head-scratcher. When governments start printing, shouldn't we all sell?
Government interventions never fail to fail. But the pervasive belief in their efficacy is no mystery. It's simply human nature. The French economist Frederic Bastiat said government is the great fiction by which everyone attempts to live at the expense of everyone else. Most folks are happy to take their share of newly printed dollars.
So when central banks print money, at the obvious behest of governments, to bail out big businesses and foreign governments… the markets go euphoric, with every Ameritrade accountholder buying like there's no tomorrow, hoping to cash out soon with a big win. We'll find out sooner or later that all the big Wall Street banks were buying like crazy yesterday, too. That's to be expected. They owe their existence to fiat currency. They're like fiat currency priests, paying homage to Pope Bernanke, spreading the unintelligible Latin word to the benighted masses, who might lose the faith if they heard it in their own tongue.
Or maybe I credit the masses too much. Maybe they're faithful followers, levered to the hilt, just like the big banks. Maybe they don't merely love low interest rates and quantitative easing. Maybe an easy-money policy is their only chance of feeling rich.
That's a sad commentary, isn't it? That so many people are praying for more money to be printed, so they can have a free ride? It's like praying to go broke so you can get a relative to bail you out. Or perhaps it's more like having gone broke and badgering your relatives until they cough up a bailout for you… which you proceed to spend on iPads and iPhones..."
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4)Bring Back the Smoke-Filled Rooms?
The campaign-finance laws have made the presidential selection process a self-destructive mess. Eliminate the limits on individual donations.
By DANIEL HENNINGER
In what all say is an "historic" election, the GOP is fielding its B team while the A team sits in the locker room. Since when does that win the big games?
Mitt Romney, stuck forever at 25%, has been a front-runner out of a Henny Youngman joke. Take my candidate—please. Gov. Romney has been such a front-runner that virtually any new face in the race momentarily catches him—Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry and now even an old face, Newt Gingrich.
The question asked everywhere is, Why is this the field? How did it come to this? Desperate questions bring desperate answers, such that I have been overheard mumbling of late: "Maybe it's time to bring back the smoke-filled rooms."
This was the nearly mythical system of selection in which party leaders and party bosses gathered over cigars, bourbon and branch to pick a candidate "who could win." The most famous smoke-filled room pick was William McKinley, anointed for the 1896 election by Ohio kingmaker Mark Hanna (though in fact Hanna got McKinley nominated over the opposition of GOP party bosses).
While I merely grumbled, my former Wall Street Journal colleague Robert W. Merry explicitly wrote "Bring Back Those Smoke-Filled Rooms" last month on the website of the National Interest magazine, which he edits. Notwithstanding distaste for the politicians picking candidates, he wrote, "consider the dangers inherent in our system now, when candidates emerge based on their own judgment of their overwhelming talents and virtues, rather than those of their political peers, and when the vetting process has been truncated to a point where it relies on happenstance to save the system from people nobody really knows and who may be hiding serious flaws"—he was writing about Herman Cain—"that add up to political liabilities. It was a pretty good system we had in the old days."
Notwithstanding that smoke-filled rooms are banned everywhere now, a serious problem remains: The refusal today of the best candidates to answer the call. Paul Ryan, Chris Christie and Jeb Bush were all heavily recruited by insiders and donors to get in the race. No dice.
Against this, one might argue that the Republicans merely are having bad luck with the election cycle. The off-year elections produced some of the best GOP politicians in years, but none are ready for 2012. The list includes Gov. Christie obviously but also Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Bob McDonnell of Virginia or GOP Senate freshmen Rob Portman of Ohio, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, and Marco Rubio of Florida.
But what if 2016 arrives, and they still won't run? Jon Huntsman says you have to be more than a little "nuts" to run for president. A willing Mitch Daniels dropped out at his family's insistence. And no wonder. Instead of a candidate-vetting process carried out quietly by party leaders, it's now done randomly by a Hydra-headed national media. Any flaw or past stumble is metastasized into a public nightmare for spouses and children. So they say No. In their place we get mysterious candidates who have wandered in from Nowhere Land or obscure state senate seats.
A system that drives out the best over time will drive down the country. There has to be a better way.
There is: Dismantle the presidential campaign-finance laws. For anyone normal, the federal fund-raising limitations are an overwhelming deterrent to running for the presidency. They are smothering good candidates in the crib.
No fiddling at the margins here. The solution is to go radical: Let any individual donor give as much money as he or she wants to any candidate—with full, immediate public disclosure.
Free yourself of the siren song of full public financing. It's not going to happen. Great cost is now part of the DNA of presidential campaigns, which have entered an era of unstoppably proliferating, for-profit media platforms.
Raising tens of millions of dollars in the small, individual giving limit of $2,400, often with daily phone calls from the candidates themselves, is exhausting and humiliating. Jack Kemp, who made a run in 1988, and Colin Powell reportedly refused to do it. The system is terrifying for anyone of modest means. A serious, informed candidate like Tim Pawlenty quits rather than risk massive personal debt. Why are there so many "debates" now? Because they are little more than a free-media chance to drive more fund raising.
These laws have broken the link between candidates and experienced party leaders who do know the difference between a long-haul competitor and the flavor of the week. Indeed, the parties are now little more than a vehicle to get on the ballot.
The reformers' great horror is candidacies funded and "controlled" by a George Soros from the left or you-know-who from the right. Nonsense. Available research—and a moment's thought—suggests this fear is wildly overblown. The reformers should wake up and smell the 21st century's inescapable transparency. The 1% have nowhere to hide.
The current presidential-selection process is a self-destructive mess, for both parties. Make the fund raising simpler. Eliminate limits on individual donations. Get the parties back in the game. Give better candidates a chance to compete. Save a country in peril. What more could you want?
Write to henninger@wsj.com
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5) China's Superior Economic Model
The free-market fundamentalist economic model is being thrown onto the trash heap
By ANDY STERN
Andy Grove, the founder and chairman of Intel, provocatively wrote in Businessweek last year that, "Our fundamental economic beliefs, which we have elevated from a conviction based on observation to an unquestioned truism, is that the free market is the best of all economic systems—the freer the better. Our generation has seen the decisive victory of free-market principles over planned economies. So we stick with this belief largely oblivious to emerging evidence that while free markets beat planned economies, there may be room for a modification that is even better."
The past few weeks have proven Mr. Grove's point, as our relations with China, and that country's impact on America's future, came to the forefront of American politics. Our inert Senate, while preparing for the super committee to fail, crossed the normally insurmountable political divide to pass legislation to address China's currency manipulation. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Gov. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama all weighed in with their views—ranging from warnings that China must "end unfair discrimination" (Mrs. Clinton) to complaints that the U.S. has "been played like a fiddle" (Mr. Romney) and that China needs to stop "gaming" the international system (Mr. Obama).
As this was happening, I was part of a U.S.-China dialogue—a trip organized by the China-United States Exchange Foundation and the Center for American Progress—with high-ranking Chinese government officials, both past and present. For me, the tension resulting from the chorus of American criticism paled in significance compared to reading the emerging outline of China's 12th five-year plan. The aims: a 7% annual economic growth rate; a $640 billion investment in renewable energy; construction of six million homes; and expanding next-generation IT, clean-energy vehicles, biotechnology, high-end manufacturing and environmental protection—all while promoting social equity and rural development.
Some Americans are drawing lessons from this. Last month, the China Daily quoted Orville Schell, who directs the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, as saying: "I think we have come to realize the ability to plan is exactly what is missing in America." The article also noted that Robert Engle, who won a Nobel Prize in 2003 for economics, has said that while China is making five-year plans for the next generation, Americans are planning only for the next election.
The world has been made "flat" by the technological miracles of Andy Grove, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. This has forced all institutions to confront what is clearly the third economic revolution in world history. The Agricultural Revolution was a roughly 3,000-year transition, the Industrial Revolution lasted 300 years, and this technology-led Global Revolution will take only 30-odd years. No single generation has witnessed so much change in a single lifetime.
The current debates about China's currency, the trade imbalance, our debt and China's excessive use of pirated American intellectual property are evidence that the Global Revolution—coupled with Deng Xiaoping's government-led, growth-oriented reforms—has created the planet's second-largest economy. It's on a clear trajectory to knock America off its perch by 2025.
As Andy Grove so presciently articulated in the July 1, 2010, issue of Businessweek, the economies of China, Singapore, Germany, Brazil and India have demonstrated "that a plan for job creation must be the number-one objective of state economic policy; and that the government must play a strategic role in setting the priorities and arraying the forces of organization necessary to achieve this goal."
The conservative-preferred, free-market fundamentalist, shareholder-only model—so successful in the 20th century—is being thrown onto the trash heap of history in the 21st century. In an era when countries need to become economic teams, Team USA's results—a jobless decade, 30 years of flat median wages, a trade deficit, a shrinking middle class and phenomenal gains in wealth but only for the top 1%—are pathetic.
This should motivate leaders to rethink, rather than double down on an empirically failing free-market extremism. As painful and humbling as it may be, America needs to do what a once-dominant business or sports team would do when the tide turns: study the ingredients of its competitors' success.
While we debate, Team China rolls on. Our delegation witnessed China's people-oriented development in Chongqing, a city of 32 million in Western China, which is led by an aggressive and popular Communist Party leader—Bo Xilai. A skyline of cranes are building roughly 1.5 million square feet of usable floor space daily—including, our delegation was told, 700,000 units of public housing annually.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government can boast that it has established in Western China an economic zone for cloud computing and automotive and aerospace production resulting in 12.5% annual growth and 49% growth in annual tax revenue, with wages rising more than 10% a year.
For those of us who love this country and believe America has every asset it needs to remain the No. 1 economic engine of the world, it is troubling that we have no plan—and substitute a demonization of government and worship of the free market at a historical moment that requires a rethinking of both those beliefs.
America needs to embrace a plan for growth and innovation, with a streamlined government as a partner with the private sector. Economic revolutions require institutions to change and maybe make history, because if they stick to the status quo they soon become history. Our great country, which sparked and wants to lead this global revolution, needs a forward looking, long-term economic plan.
The imperative for change is simple. As Andy Grove pointed out: "If we want to remain a leading economy, we change on our own, or change will continue to be forced upon us."
Mr. Stern was president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and is now a senior fellow at Columbia University's Richman Center.
By DANIEL HENNINGER
In what all say is an "historic" election, the GOP is fielding its B team while the A team sits in the locker room. Since when does that win the big games?
Mitt Romney, stuck forever at 25%, has been a front-runner out of a Henny Youngman joke. Take my candidate—please. Gov. Romney has been such a front-runner that virtually any new face in the race momentarily catches him—Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Perry and now even an old face, Newt Gingrich.
The question asked everywhere is, Why is this the field? How did it come to this? Desperate questions bring desperate answers, such that I have been overheard mumbling of late: "Maybe it's time to bring back the smoke-filled rooms."
This was the nearly mythical system of selection in which party leaders and party bosses gathered over cigars, bourbon and branch to pick a candidate "who could win." The most famous smoke-filled room pick was William McKinley, anointed for the 1896 election by Ohio kingmaker Mark Hanna (though in fact Hanna got McKinley nominated over the opposition of GOP party bosses).
While I merely grumbled, my former Wall Street Journal colleague Robert W. Merry explicitly wrote "Bring Back Those Smoke-Filled Rooms" last month on the website of the National Interest magazine, which he edits. Notwithstanding distaste for the politicians picking candidates, he wrote, "consider the dangers inherent in our system now, when candidates emerge based on their own judgment of their overwhelming talents and virtues, rather than those of their political peers, and when the vetting process has been truncated to a point where it relies on happenstance to save the system from people nobody really knows and who may be hiding serious flaws"—he was writing about Herman Cain—"that add up to political liabilities. It was a pretty good system we had in the old days."
Notwithstanding that smoke-filled rooms are banned everywhere now, a serious problem remains: The refusal today of the best candidates to answer the call. Paul Ryan, Chris Christie and Jeb Bush were all heavily recruited by insiders and donors to get in the race. No dice.
Against this, one might argue that the Republicans merely are having bad luck with the election cycle. The off-year elections produced some of the best GOP politicians in years, but none are ready for 2012. The list includes Gov. Christie obviously but also Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Bob McDonnell of Virginia or GOP Senate freshmen Rob Portman of Ohio, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, and Marco Rubio of Florida.
But what if 2016 arrives, and they still won't run? Jon Huntsman says you have to be more than a little "nuts" to run for president. A willing Mitch Daniels dropped out at his family's insistence. And no wonder. Instead of a candidate-vetting process carried out quietly by party leaders, it's now done randomly by a Hydra-headed national media. Any flaw or past stumble is metastasized into a public nightmare for spouses and children. So they say No. In their place we get mysterious candidates who have wandered in from Nowhere Land or obscure state senate seats.
A system that drives out the best over time will drive down the country. There has to be a better way.
There is: Dismantle the presidential campaign-finance laws. For anyone normal, the federal fund-raising limitations are an overwhelming deterrent to running for the presidency. They are smothering good candidates in the crib.
No fiddling at the margins here. The solution is to go radical: Let any individual donor give as much money as he or she wants to any candidate—with full, immediate public disclosure.
Free yourself of the siren song of full public financing. It's not going to happen. Great cost is now part of the DNA of presidential campaigns, which have entered an era of unstoppably proliferating, for-profit media platforms.
Raising tens of millions of dollars in the small, individual giving limit of $2,400, often with daily phone calls from the candidates themselves, is exhausting and humiliating. Jack Kemp, who made a run in 1988, and Colin Powell reportedly refused to do it. The system is terrifying for anyone of modest means. A serious, informed candidate like Tim Pawlenty quits rather than risk massive personal debt. Why are there so many "debates" now? Because they are little more than a free-media chance to drive more fund raising.
These laws have broken the link between candidates and experienced party leaders who do know the difference between a long-haul competitor and the flavor of the week. Indeed, the parties are now little more than a vehicle to get on the ballot.
The reformers' great horror is candidacies funded and "controlled" by a George Soros from the left or you-know-who from the right. Nonsense. Available research—and a moment's thought—suggests this fear is wildly overblown. The reformers should wake up and smell the 21st century's inescapable transparency. The 1% have nowhere to hide.
The current presidential-selection process is a self-destructive mess, for both parties. Make the fund raising simpler. Eliminate limits on individual donations. Get the parties back in the game. Give better candidates a chance to compete. Save a country in peril. What more could you want?
Write to henninger@wsj.com
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5) China's Superior Economic Model
The free-market fundamentalist economic model is being thrown onto the trash heap
By ANDY STERN
Andy Grove, the founder and chairman of Intel, provocatively wrote in Businessweek last year that, "Our fundamental economic beliefs, which we have elevated from a conviction based on observation to an unquestioned truism, is that the free market is the best of all economic systems—the freer the better. Our generation has seen the decisive victory of free-market principles over planned economies. So we stick with this belief largely oblivious to emerging evidence that while free markets beat planned economies, there may be room for a modification that is even better."
The past few weeks have proven Mr. Grove's point, as our relations with China, and that country's impact on America's future, came to the forefront of American politics. Our inert Senate, while preparing for the super committee to fail, crossed the normally insurmountable political divide to pass legislation to address China's currency manipulation. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Gov. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama all weighed in with their views—ranging from warnings that China must "end unfair discrimination" (Mrs. Clinton) to complaints that the U.S. has "been played like a fiddle" (Mr. Romney) and that China needs to stop "gaming" the international system (Mr. Obama).
As this was happening, I was part of a U.S.-China dialogue—a trip organized by the China-United States Exchange Foundation and the Center for American Progress—with high-ranking Chinese government officials, both past and present. For me, the tension resulting from the chorus of American criticism paled in significance compared to reading the emerging outline of China's 12th five-year plan. The aims: a 7% annual economic growth rate; a $640 billion investment in renewable energy; construction of six million homes; and expanding next-generation IT, clean-energy vehicles, biotechnology, high-end manufacturing and environmental protection—all while promoting social equity and rural development.
Some Americans are drawing lessons from this. Last month, the China Daily quoted Orville Schell, who directs the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, as saying: "I think we have come to realize the ability to plan is exactly what is missing in America." The article also noted that Robert Engle, who won a Nobel Prize in 2003 for economics, has said that while China is making five-year plans for the next generation, Americans are planning only for the next election.
The world has been made "flat" by the technological miracles of Andy Grove, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. This has forced all institutions to confront what is clearly the third economic revolution in world history. The Agricultural Revolution was a roughly 3,000-year transition, the Industrial Revolution lasted 300 years, and this technology-led Global Revolution will take only 30-odd years. No single generation has witnessed so much change in a single lifetime.
The current debates about China's currency, the trade imbalance, our debt and China's excessive use of pirated American intellectual property are evidence that the Global Revolution—coupled with Deng Xiaoping's government-led, growth-oriented reforms—has created the planet's second-largest economy. It's on a clear trajectory to knock America off its perch by 2025.
As Andy Grove so presciently articulated in the July 1, 2010, issue of Businessweek, the economies of China, Singapore, Germany, Brazil and India have demonstrated "that a plan for job creation must be the number-one objective of state economic policy; and that the government must play a strategic role in setting the priorities and arraying the forces of organization necessary to achieve this goal."
The conservative-preferred, free-market fundamentalist, shareholder-only model—so successful in the 20th century—is being thrown onto the trash heap of history in the 21st century. In an era when countries need to become economic teams, Team USA's results—a jobless decade, 30 years of flat median wages, a trade deficit, a shrinking middle class and phenomenal gains in wealth but only for the top 1%—are pathetic.
This should motivate leaders to rethink, rather than double down on an empirically failing free-market extremism. As painful and humbling as it may be, America needs to do what a once-dominant business or sports team would do when the tide turns: study the ingredients of its competitors' success.
While we debate, Team China rolls on. Our delegation witnessed China's people-oriented development in Chongqing, a city of 32 million in Western China, which is led by an aggressive and popular Communist Party leader—Bo Xilai. A skyline of cranes are building roughly 1.5 million square feet of usable floor space daily—including, our delegation was told, 700,000 units of public housing annually.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government can boast that it has established in Western China an economic zone for cloud computing and automotive and aerospace production resulting in 12.5% annual growth and 49% growth in annual tax revenue, with wages rising more than 10% a year.
For those of us who love this country and believe America has every asset it needs to remain the No. 1 economic engine of the world, it is troubling that we have no plan—and substitute a demonization of government and worship of the free market at a historical moment that requires a rethinking of both those beliefs.
America needs to embrace a plan for growth and innovation, with a streamlined government as a partner with the private sector. Economic revolutions require institutions to change and maybe make history, because if they stick to the status quo they soon become history. Our great country, which sparked and wants to lead this global revolution, needs a forward looking, long-term economic plan.
The imperative for change is simple. As Andy Grove pointed out: "If we want to remain a leading economy, we change on our own, or change will continue to be forced upon us."
Mr. Stern was president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and is now a senior fellow at Columbia University's Richman Center.
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6)COUNTDOWN TO VICTORY: 341 DAYS TO THE 2012 ELECTIONS
By Gary Bauer
Why Obama Says He MUST Be Reelected
Last night in New York City, Barack Obama, fresh from Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he once again attacked "the rich," held a fundraising dinner for folks who paid $35,800 a plate to hear him speak. (Just think of how many poor people they could have fed if they had donated $35,800 to a local food bank instead of to Obama!)
Obama told this select group, whom he normally might refer to as "fat cats," the number one reason why he needs to be reelected. Is it world peace? Poverty? Racial reconciliation? Ending income inequality? Or creating jobs? Wrong on all counts!
Obama reminded the crowd that ObamaCare will not be fully implemented until 2014. "And so," he said, "we're going to have to implement the Affordable Care Act in 2014 and that means I've got to win in 2012."
Funny, but that is one of the main reasons why he MUST be defeated!
OWS vs. The Tea Party
From the moment the Occupy Wall Street crowd first showed up in Zuccotti Park, Democrats and their liberal media allies were instantly infatuated with the radical movement. OWS was trumpeted as the left's answer to the Tea Party. And while the media were engaging in all kinds of ludicrous comparisons that attempted to romanticize the OWS mobs, the far more revealing contrasts between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street were ignored.
For example, the Tea Party movement, as the name implies, took its inspiration from our nation's founding and has a deep reverence for America's cultural history and heritage. It is genuinely representative of mainstream American values, especially the rule of law and respect for private property.
While Democrats and the media ridiculed the Tea Party as an "extreme" movement, it was Occupy Wall Street -- not the Tea Party -- that was endorsed by both the American Nazi and Communist Parties.
For the moment, big city Democrat mayors are tiring of the OWS extremists. In Los Angeles, the cops moved in just after midnight on Tuesday and arrested nearly 300 people. In their wake, the Occupiers left behind a wasteland. The Los Angeles Times reports that "crews in the hazmat suits" have collected 30 tons of trash and filth. Sure people have a right to protest, but they don't have a right to destroy property and create public health hazards.
The left just makes a mess of everything it does -- whether it's Occupy Wall Street, the labor unions or Barack Obama.
By the way, the Occupy movement has been associated with more than 5,000 arrests! How do you think the media would react if 5,000 Tea Partiers had been arrested?
Egypt Sinking
Last year the world media aimed their collective cameras at one square in Cairo where hundreds of thousands of Egyptians were demanding freedom. Big media commentators assured us that it was a new day in the Middle East. I remember the interviews with little Egyptian girls flashing the "V" sign for victory and telling viewers that with Mubarak gone Egyptian children like them would be able to grow up to be doctors, scientists or even movie stars! Those of us who suggested that crowds in one public square in Cairo do not necessarily represent the heartland of Egypt were brushed aside.
Now Egypt is voting, and early results suggest that in the newly "liberated" nation radical Islam will call the shots. The future for religious minorities, as well as little Egyptian girls, is likely to be bleak.
Preliminary results from the first round of voting shows, not unexpectedly, a strong finish by the Muslim Brotherhood with perhaps as much as 40% of the vote. But the Brotherhood looks progressive when compared to the Salafists who are doing surprisingly well too. The Salafists have been implicated in violent attacks on the Christian minority in Egypt. (Perhaps it is time for another exodus!)
The Salafists follow the Saudi brand of Islam and believe women should not participate in voting or public life. According to some reports, they received as much as 25% of the vote.
Elections will continue for several months, but it appears that the Brotherhood and the Salafists likely have a solid majority and could run the Egyptian Parliament. If so, you will see a less free Egypt that is more hostile to the U.S. and Israel.
Democracy takes more than elections. Most of all it requires an electorate that believes in pluralism, freedom of religion and the dignity and value of all citizens, including women. As of now it appears that electorate does not exist in Egypt.
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6a)Obama's ties with voter fraud
By Russ Jones
A conservative online media outlet is calling into question President Barack Obama's connection with an advocacy group known for voter registration fraud, as the president is leveraging his relationship with the group more than ever and has named a campaign effort in its namesake.
J. Christian Adams, an election attorney and contributor to PJ Media, says President Obama's re-election campaign has significant ties to Project Vote, which is an affiliate of ACORN -- one of the most corrupt advocacy organizations in recent memory.
"It was actually the first, and maybe one of the only clients that President Obama had when he was an attorney in private practice," Adams explains. "And during the 2008 election, he liked to distance himself from them. He said that he really didn't have a real serious role with them."
Despite the corrupt and fraudulent activities of ACORN and Project Vote, the attorney contends that President Obama has already dubbed the voter registration part of his 2012 campaign "Project Vote," which he does not find not surprising, given the president's history with the organization.
"It is clearly an intentional, in-your-face move," Adams decides. "They don't care about perceptions that most Americans have regarding these election crimes."
Adams goes on to note that according to some former employees-turned-whistleblowers, flooding election officials with an overwhelming number of new, faulty registration forms was planned conduct that was meant to cause turmoil.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7) Gov. Christie: Obama ‘Afraid’ of Romney
By Dan Weil
The Democratic National Committee’s recent flurry of attacks against Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney shows that the campaign of President Barack Obama views the former Massachusetts governor as a major threat, says New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie.
The Democratic attacks are “the greatest thing in the world” for Romney’s campaign, Christie said at a Republican Governors Association meeting Wednesday, Politico reports. “Let’s let the president and his henchmen keep doing it. That shows he’s the person they’re most afraid of. And that’s good news for us from a political perspective.”
Christie, who endorsed Romney after deciding against a presidential bid of his own, reiterated his disappointment with Obama’s job performance. “Real leadership is not what you see in the White House right now,” he said. “I think it’s a sad day in our country’s history to have a bystander in the Oval Office, and that’s we have.”
The rising Republican star scoffed at the notion that Republican voters feel little enthusiasm for Romney now. “If you define enthusiasm as being at 30 percent [in the polls] one day and then 8 percent two weeks later, I call that schizophrenia, not enthusiasm,” he said.
The other candidates “seem to be riding a roller coaster that they don’t know where it’s going to land. I know where it’s going to land for Mitt Romney. It’s going to land with the Republican nomination.”
Although former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has enjoyed a burst of popularity in recent weeks, Christie doesn’t think it will last. Other candidates too have enjoyed a brief surge in the polls, only to crash back down, he notes.
“Past is prologue,” Christie said. Gingrich might be different, “but every person who has come up and either come near Gov. Romney or risen above him turns out to then have fallen back down. We’ll all have to wait and see. Any of us would have lost a lot of money predicting some of the causes of some people’s downfalls in this race.”
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6)COUNTDOWN TO VICTORY: 341 DAYS TO THE 2012 ELECTIONS
By Gary Bauer
Why Obama Says He MUST Be Reelected
Last night in New York City, Barack Obama, fresh from Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he once again attacked "the rich," held a fundraising dinner for folks who paid $35,800 a plate to hear him speak. (Just think of how many poor people they could have fed if they had donated $35,800 to a local food bank instead of to Obama!)
Obama told this select group, whom he normally might refer to as "fat cats," the number one reason why he needs to be reelected. Is it world peace? Poverty? Racial reconciliation? Ending income inequality? Or creating jobs? Wrong on all counts!
Obama reminded the crowd that ObamaCare will not be fully implemented until 2014. "And so," he said, "we're going to have to implement the Affordable Care Act in 2014 and that means I've got to win in 2012."
Funny, but that is one of the main reasons why he MUST be defeated!
OWS vs. The Tea Party
From the moment the Occupy Wall Street crowd first showed up in Zuccotti Park, Democrats and their liberal media allies were instantly infatuated with the radical movement. OWS was trumpeted as the left's answer to the Tea Party. And while the media were engaging in all kinds of ludicrous comparisons that attempted to romanticize the OWS mobs, the far more revealing contrasts between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street were ignored.
For example, the Tea Party movement, as the name implies, took its inspiration from our nation's founding and has a deep reverence for America's cultural history and heritage. It is genuinely representative of mainstream American values, especially the rule of law and respect for private property.
While Democrats and the media ridiculed the Tea Party as an "extreme" movement, it was Occupy Wall Street -- not the Tea Party -- that was endorsed by both the American Nazi and Communist Parties.
For the moment, big city Democrat mayors are tiring of the OWS extremists. In Los Angeles, the cops moved in just after midnight on Tuesday and arrested nearly 300 people. In their wake, the Occupiers left behind a wasteland. The Los Angeles Times reports that "crews in the hazmat suits" have collected 30 tons of trash and filth. Sure people have a right to protest, but they don't have a right to destroy property and create public health hazards.
The left just makes a mess of everything it does -- whether it's Occupy Wall Street, the labor unions or Barack Obama.
By the way, the Occupy movement has been associated with more than 5,000 arrests! How do you think the media would react if 5,000 Tea Partiers had been arrested?
Egypt Sinking
Last year the world media aimed their collective cameras at one square in Cairo where hundreds of thousands of Egyptians were demanding freedom. Big media commentators assured us that it was a new day in the Middle East. I remember the interviews with little Egyptian girls flashing the "V" sign for victory and telling viewers that with Mubarak gone Egyptian children like them would be able to grow up to be doctors, scientists or even movie stars! Those of us who suggested that crowds in one public square in Cairo do not necessarily represent the heartland of Egypt were brushed aside.
Now Egypt is voting, and early results suggest that in the newly "liberated" nation radical Islam will call the shots. The future for religious minorities, as well as little Egyptian girls, is likely to be bleak.
Preliminary results from the first round of voting shows, not unexpectedly, a strong finish by the Muslim Brotherhood with perhaps as much as 40% of the vote. But the Brotherhood looks progressive when compared to the Salafists who are doing surprisingly well too. The Salafists have been implicated in violent attacks on the Christian minority in Egypt. (Perhaps it is time for another exodus!)
The Salafists follow the Saudi brand of Islam and believe women should not participate in voting or public life. According to some reports, they received as much as 25% of the vote.
Elections will continue for several months, but it appears that the Brotherhood and the Salafists likely have a solid majority and could run the Egyptian Parliament. If so, you will see a less free Egypt that is more hostile to the U.S. and Israel.
Democracy takes more than elections. Most of all it requires an electorate that believes in pluralism, freedom of religion and the dignity and value of all citizens, including women. As of now it appears that electorate does not exist in Egypt.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6a)Obama's ties with voter fraud
By Russ Jones
A conservative online media outlet is calling into question President Barack Obama's connection with an advocacy group known for voter registration fraud, as the president is leveraging his relationship with the group more than ever and has named a campaign effort in its namesake.
J. Christian Adams, an election attorney and contributor to PJ Media, says President Obama's re-election campaign has significant ties to Project Vote, which is an affiliate of ACORN -- one of the most corrupt advocacy organizations in recent memory.
"It was actually the first, and maybe one of the only clients that President Obama had when he was an attorney in private practice," Adams explains. "And during the 2008 election, he liked to distance himself from them. He said that he really didn't have a real serious role with them."
Despite the corrupt and fraudulent activities of ACORN and Project Vote, the attorney contends that President Obama has already dubbed the voter registration part of his 2012 campaign "Project Vote," which he does not find not surprising, given the president's history with the organization.
"It is clearly an intentional, in-your-face move," Adams decides. "They don't care about perceptions that most Americans have regarding these election crimes."
Adams goes on to note that according to some former employees-turned-whistleblowers, flooding election officials with an overwhelming number of new, faulty registration forms was planned conduct that was meant to cause turmoil.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7) Gov. Christie: Obama ‘Afraid’ of Romney
By Dan Weil
The Democratic National Committee’s recent flurry of attacks against Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney shows that the campaign of President Barack Obama views the former Massachusetts governor as a major threat, says New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie.
The Democratic attacks are “the greatest thing in the world” for Romney’s campaign, Christie said at a Republican Governors Association meeting Wednesday, Politico reports. “Let’s let the president and his henchmen keep doing it. That shows he’s the person they’re most afraid of. And that’s good news for us from a political perspective.”
Christie, who endorsed Romney after deciding against a presidential bid of his own, reiterated his disappointment with Obama’s job performance. “Real leadership is not what you see in the White House right now,” he said. “I think it’s a sad day in our country’s history to have a bystander in the Oval Office, and that’s we have.”
The rising Republican star scoffed at the notion that Republican voters feel little enthusiasm for Romney now. “If you define enthusiasm as being at 30 percent [in the polls] one day and then 8 percent two weeks later, I call that schizophrenia, not enthusiasm,” he said.
The other candidates “seem to be riding a roller coaster that they don’t know where it’s going to land. I know where it’s going to land for Mitt Romney. It’s going to land with the Republican nomination.”
Although former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has enjoyed a burst of popularity in recent weeks, Christie doesn’t think it will last. Other candidates too have enjoyed a brief surge in the polls, only to crash back down, he notes.
“Past is prologue,” Christie said. Gingrich might be different, “but every person who has come up and either come near Gov. Romney or risen above him turns out to then have fallen back down. We’ll all have to wait and see. Any of us would have lost a lot of money predicting some of the causes of some people’s downfalls in this race.”
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