ANALYSIS/OPINION:
It’s mushroom cloud after mushroom cloud for President Obama.
We’ll never see the internal polls, but the externals are awful: Down 8 percent to challenger Mitt Romney in the latest poll, with fewer than 180 days; disillusioned college kids, independents and the white working-class fleeing in droves. Even the barber-shops boys are mocking their Man. Makes sense that in Chicagoland, Obama Central, the internals they’re seeing are even worse.
Which explains this past week. Joe “Blunderbuss” Biden on May 6 blurts out that he’s totally cool with gays marrying. Mushroom cloud. Release the hounds: The vice president is at odds with the president. Monday, the White House slow-plays it (with spokesman Jay “Talking Points” Carney finally fully filling his role as Chief Buffoon). Tuesday, a fierce press corps demanding answers (ABC’s Jake Tapper gets his Underoos all in a wad.) Chief Buffoon repeating over and over, no change — until there’s a change. Oh, and North Carolina just happens to be busy voting down gay marriage.
Wednesday, the president suddenly announces a sit-down (with a friendly reporter, of course), and, oh boy, he’s gotta answer the gay marriage question now! (Or Jakewill really come at him.) The president does! He’s for it! (But let the states decide — bold new territory, except former Vice President Dick Cheney said the same thing three years ago.) The Associated Press says president has set a “world precedent.” And Thursday, off to Hollywood to party at George Clooney’s house (tears of joy wept for the smartest president ever). At the weekend, Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden celebrate with a round of golf.
The whole thing was (say it with me) — a setup. Send Joe out — he’s a goof, he might misspeak, who knows? — and then play it for all its worth. Work it for the week — the press will go along. Jobs? The economy? Please. We’ve got to get to the bottom of this gay marriage thing!
But even that bodes ill: The big brains on the yellow couches in the Oval Office are busy coming up with ways to distract from the economy by pandering to the most liberal people in America. They must’ve concluded they don’t have much else. Can they do it every week, for the next six months? Panic. Desperation.
By the way, why is it that when a Republican changes his mind, based on life experience, learned wisdom, he’s a “flip-flopper,” but when a Democrat changes his mind — opposes gay marriage, as Mr. Obama did, then takes no stance (politics), then suddenly supports it — he has “evolved”? You can look it up: the president has completely flip-flopped; still, it’s an “evolution,” according to the MSM.
Which brings us back to Wednesday, when ABC led the evening newscast with — no, not Mr. Obama’s flip-flop, but a report that Mr. Romney was mean to a kid 48 years ago when he was at boarding school. Seems the kid looked different — long blond hair — and Mitt and the boys dropped him, sheared the locks. Sure, a prank — or was Mr. Romney a homophobe, persecuting what The Washington Post said was a “presumed” gay student?
Now, Team Obama is known for sifting through the sordid pasts of every candidate it has faced: In fact, it’s the only way he won two races in Illinois, one for the Statehouse, one for U.S. senator. But here, in May, via The Washington Post, are they really going through the high school days of their coming opponent? Mr. Obama was fond of blowing a doob in college, but that’s not an issue. Mitt being mean to another boy nearly five decades ago? Smacks of desperation.
And it’s only May. Mr. Obama is already behind — well behind, according to the most accurate pollster from 2008 — and panicking. Worse, the enthusiasm of the base is dwindling. Kicking off his 2012 campaign, Mr. Obama played to empty seats in Ohio. What was a revolutionary movement four years ago is now just another callow political campaign, with the candidate willing to say whatever it takes to win supporters. Worse, the kids who supported him last time are bored.
The gay marriage move will, eventually, prove to be a major miscalculation. Trying to shore up the liberal and college vote — pushing the college-loan thing apparently was not enough — Mr. Obama just bolstered his opponent among Christians: Even as a Mormon, he might line up better with Christians who oppose gay marriage. There goes North Carolina, and maybe Virginia, too. Sure, Hollywood is more jazzed, but it will turn out not to be worth it: He just lost more votes than he gained.
However it plays out, the panic and desperation of Team Obama is palpable. And for the incumbent president to be forced to pander so cravenly to his base less than six months from Election Day: They definitely know something we don’t yet know — and it isn’t good.
• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at jcurl@washingtontimes.com.


2c)Author Klein: Obama Tried to Bribe Rev. Wright Into Silence



Best-selling author Ed Klein is out with a new book that levels a blockbuster charge against Barack Obama: The then-presidential candidate tried to bribe the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to buy his silence during Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Discussing his book “The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House” during a Wednesday appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, Klein said the bribery allegation came during a 2011 interview with the controversial Wright that Klein conducted and videotaped.

In that interview Wright “was throwing Barack Obama down the stairs,” Hannity observed. “I am going to play this first tape here, where basically he is offered money through a third party to basically shut up and not speak until the November election.”

On the tape, Wright says: “He offered me money not to preach at all between the explosion of the media in the first week in March and [the] November election.”

Hannity said: “In other words, is it an offer for an in-kind donation to buy the silence of somebody that could hurt his campaign? . . . And why is he saying it now? Why is he suggesting that they tried to buy his silence in 2008?”

Klein: “Because he feels that he has been turned by the Obama campaign into a pariah.”

In another portion of the taped interview, Wright states that Obama himself asked the pastor not to do any more public speaking until the election.

Klein told Hannity, as he writes in his book, that Obama asked for a private meeting with Wright about a week after Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia in March 2008. At that meeting, Klein recalls, Obama says “the trouble with you, Reverend, is that you have to tell the truth. And the Reverend Wright says to him, 'That’s not bad trouble to have, Mr. Obama.'”

After Hannity played the video clip of the conversation, he said: “Wow. So in other words he is basically saying I don’t have to tell the truth.”

Klein: “That’s right.”

Hannity: “So basically Reverend Wright is telling the world right now ... that Barack Obama is a liar.”

Klein: “That’s right.”

As for the title of his book “The Amateur,” Klein said he wants the American people to know about Obama that “this guy is temperamentally unsuited for the job of president.

“You look at Lyndon Johnson, he couldn't give a good speech. He couldn't read from the teleprompter, but he understood how to work the levers of power in Washington. Barack Obama is a wonderful speechifier, lovely guy. In front of the teleprompter, looks good, great tie. He has no idea how to work Washington. And he doesn't really have any interest in it, either.”
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3)Obama's Second Term Transformation Plans

By Steve McCann



The most significant accomplishment of Obama's first term is to make Congress irrelevant. Under the myopic and blindly loyal leadership of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats have succeeded in creating an imperial and, in a second term, a potential dictatorial presidency.
The 2012 election has often been described as the most pivotal since 1860. This statement is not hyperbole. If Barack Obama is re-elected the United States will never be the same, nor will it be able to re-capture its once lofty status as the most dominant nation in the history of mankind.
The overwhelming majority of Americans do not understand that Obama's first term was dedicated toputting in place executive power to enable him and the administration to fulfill the campaign promise of "transforming America" in his second term regardless of which political party controls Congress.That is why his re-election team is virtually ignoring the plight of incumbent or prospective Democratic Party office holders.  He has made Congress irrelevant.
During the first two years of the Obama administration when the Democrats overwhelming controlled both Houses of Congress and the media was in an Obama worshipping stupor, a myriad of lawswere passed and actions taken which transferred virtually unlimited power to the executive branch.
The birth of multi-thousand page laws was not an aberration. This tactic was adopted so the bureaucracy controlled by Obama appointees would have sole discretion in interpreting vaguely written laws and enforcing thousands of pages of regulations they and not Congress would subsequently write.
For example, in the 2,700 pages of ObamaCare there are more than 2,500 references to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. There are more than 700 instances when he or she is instructed that they "shall" do something and more than 200 times when they "may" take at their sole discretion some form of regulatory action. On 139 occasions, the law mentions that the "Secretary determines." In essence one person, appointed by and reporting to the president, will be in charge of the health care of 310 million Americans once ObamaCare is fully operational in 2014.
The same is true in the 2,319 pages of the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act which confers nearly unlimited power on various agencies to control by fiat the nation's financial, banking and investment sectors. The bill also creates new agencies, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, not subject to any oversight by Congress. This overall process was repeated numerous times with other legislation all with the intent of granting unfettered power to the executive branch controlled Barack Obama and his radical associates.
Additionally, the Obama administration has, through its unilaterally determined rule making and regulatory powers, created laws out of whole cloth. The Environmental Protection Agency on a near daily basis issues new regulations clearly out of their purview in order to modify and change environmental laws previously passed and to impose a radical green agenda never approved by Congress. The same is true of the Energy and Interior Departments among many others.
None of these extra-constitutional actions have been challenged by Congress. The left in America knows this usurpation of power is nearly impossible to reverse unless stopped in its early stages.
It is clearly the mindset of this administration and its appointees that Congress is merely a nuisanceand can be ignored after they were able to take full advantage of the useful idiots in the Democrat controlled House and Senate in 2009-2010 and the Democrat Senate in the current Congress.
Additionally, Barack Obama knows after his re-election a Republican controlled House and Senate will not be able to enact any legislation to roll back the power previously granted to the Executive Branch or usurped by them. His veto will not be overridden as there will always be at least 145 Democratic members of the House or 34 in the Senate in agreement with or intimidated by an administration more than willing to use Chicago style political tactics.
The stalemate between the Executive and Legislative Branches will inure to the benefit of Barack Obama and his fellow leftists.
The most significant power Congress has is the control of the purse-strings as all spending must be approved by them. However, once re-elected, Barack Obama, as confirmed by his willingness to do or say anything and his unscrupulous re-election tactics, would not only threaten government shutdowns but would deliberately withhold payments to those dependent on government support as a means of intimidating and forcing a Republican controlled Congress to surrender to his demands, thus neutering their ability to control the administration through spending constraints.
Further, this administration has shown contempt for the courts by ignoring various court orders, e.g. the Gulf of Mexico oil drilling moratorium, as well as stonewalling subpoenas and requests issued by Congress. The Eric Holder Justice Department has become the epitome of corruption as part of the most dishonest and deceitful administration in American history. In a second term the arrogance of Barack Obama and his minions will become more blatant as he will not have to be concerned with re-election.
Who will be there to enforce the rule of law, a Supreme Court ruling or the Constitution? No one. Barack Obama and his fellow-travelers will be unchallenged as they run roughshod over the American people.
Many Republicans and conservatives dissatisfied with the prospect of Mitt Romney as the nominee for president are instead focused on re-taking the House and Senate. That goal, while worthy and necessary, is meaningless unless Barack Obama is defeated. The nation is not dealing with a person of character and integrity but someone of single-minded purpose and overwhelming narcissism. Judging by his actions, words and deeds during his first term, he does not intend to work with Congress either Republican or Democrat in his second term but rather to force his radical agenda on the American people through the power he has usurped or been granted.
The governmental structure of the United States was set up by the founders in the hope that over the years only those people of high moral character and integrity would assume the reins of power. However, knowing that was not always possible, they dispersed power over three distinct and independent branches as a check on each other.
What they could not imagine is the surrender and abdication of its constitutional duty by the preeminent governmental branch, the Congress, to a chief executive devoid of any character or integrity coupled with a judiciary essentially powerless to enforce the law when the chief executive ignores them
Conservatives, Libertarians, the Republican Party and Mitt Romney must come to grips with this moment in time and their historical role in denying Barack Obama and his minions their ultimate goal. All resources must be directed at that end-game and not merely controlling Congress and the various committee chairmanships.
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4)Paul Ryan Schools Georgetown on How to Help the Poor

On April 26, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan delivered the 2012 Whittington Lecture at Georgetown University focused on his 2013 budget and its implications for poverty programs and the poor. That budget has now passed the House of Representatives.
Ryan addressed the Catholic institution "as a Catholic holding public office" trying to conform his work to Catholic "social doctrine as best I can make of it." He presented a vision that would be far more effective in helping the poor than current federal policies that have prevailed for decades. Georgetown is to be congratulated for giving him a high profile platform for presenting that vision. But too many among the faculty and students indicated that they were not interested in even listening to any new vision or policies, preferring to stick doggedly to the cutting edge ideas of 1935.
Ryan was greeted by a 50 foot banner asking the illuminating question, "Were you there when they crucified the poor?" That was accompanied by a letter from nearly 90 members of the faculty that already condemned his budget as a plan that "decimates food programs for struggling families, radically weakens protections for the elderly and sick, and gives more tax breaks for the wealthiest few." But Ryan's budget doesn't do anything like that, and the faculty members should have been ashamed to attach their names to a document reflecting political rhetoric and cheap party talking points rather than a serious discussion of the issues.
The letter continued with the same mindless political rock throwing, saying, "In short, your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ." Jesuit Father Thomas J. Reese intoned with prideful self-importance, "Our problem with Representative Ryan is that he claims his budget is based on Catholic social teaching. This is nonsense. As scholars, we want to join the Catholic bishops in pointing out that his budget has a devastating impact on programs for the poor."
But in his lecture Ryan demonstrated a far superior grasp of both Catholic social teaching and federal poverty policies than any of the 90 letter signers, none of whom displayed even a rudimentary understanding of his budget or that any of them had ever even cracked open Ryan's budget document, "A Path to Prosperity."
William McGurn accurately summarized Ryan's Georgetown critics in the May 1 Wall Street Journal, writing:
"So the Sermon on the Mount now becomes a call for a single-payer system of universal health insurance. In this worldview, those who believe otherwise, i.e. those who argue that you best help the poor by breaking down barriers to ownership and opportunity -- are not simply mistaken. They are selfish and uncaring....[Ryan's critics] assume only one possible interpretation of Catholic social teaching: their own."
Ryan began his lecture by explaining that civil public dialogue goes to the heart of the catholic principle of solidarity, "the virtue that does not divide society into classes and groups but builds up the common good of all." Then he responded to his Georgetown critics first by saying, "Simply put, I do not believe that the [Catholic] preferential option for the poor means a preferential option for big government. Look at the results of the government-centered approach to the war on poverty. One in six Americans are in poverty today - the highest rate in a generation. In this war on poverty, poverty is winning. So we need a better approach. To me, this approach should be based on the twin [Catholic] virtues of solidarity and subsidiarity--virtues that, when taken together, revitalize civil society rather than displacing it."
Ryan then explained his proposed reforms of programs for the poor, saying,
"Instead, our budget builds on the historic welfare reforms of the 1990s - reforms proven to work. We aim to empower state and local governments, communities, and individuals - those closest to the problem....My mentor, Jack Kemp, used to say, "You can't help America's poor by making America poor. The President's failed economic policies have driven poverty rates to record heights, and the mountain of new debt he's helped create, much of it borrowed from China or simply printed by the Federal Reserve, has made America poorer. Those unwilling to lift the debt are complicit in our acceleration toward a debt crisis, in which the poor would be hurt the first and the worst."
The strongly bipartisan 1996 welfare reforms to which Ryan refers involved the old, New Deal, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. That reform returned the share of federal spending on AFDC to each state in the form of a "block grant" to be used in a new welfare program redesigned by the state based on mandatory work for the able bodied. Federal funding for AFDC previously was based on a matching formula, with the federal government giving more to each state the more it spent on the program, effectively paying the states to spend more. The key to the 1996 reforms was that the block grants to each state were finite, not matching, so the federal funding did not vary with the amount the state spent. If a state's new program cost more, the state had to pay the extra costs itself. If the program cost less, the state could keep the savings. The reformed program was renamed Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).
The reform was opposed bitterly by the liberal welfare establishment. Their view was well expressed by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Urban Institute, and others who predicted that the reforms would produce a "race to the bottom" among the states, and that within a year a million children would be subject to starvation. Nancy Pelosi said the reform bill would force millions of additional children into poverty. Rep. George Miller (D-CA) said it would completely dismantle the safety net for children. Rep. Pete Stark said it would result in millions of homeless and hungry children in America. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) said it "will increase the number of children living in poverty and fail to move people off the welfare rolls and into the work force."
But quite to the contrary, the reform was shockingly successful, exceeding even the predictions of its most ardent supporters. The old AFDC rolls were reduced by two-thirds nationwide, even more in states that pushed work most aggressively, as those formerly on the program went to work, or married someone who worked.
As a result, in real dollars total federal and state spending on TANF by 2006 was down 31% from AFDC spending in 1995, and down by more than half of what it would have been under prior trends. At the same time, because of the resulting increased work by former welfare dependents, the incomes of the families formerly on the program rose by 25%, and poverty among those families plummeted. Haskins reports, "[B]y 2000 the poverty rate of black children was the lowest it had ever been."
Ryan's budget would extend these same 1996 reforms, which greatly benefited the poor as well as the taxpayers, to Medicaid, food stamps, and as many of the remaining 200 or more federal, means-tested welfare programs as possible. That would similarly benefit the poor, more effectively assisting in getting them back to work and out of poverty.
For example, the dozens of federal job training programs can be consolidated by the states into one or more effective, streamlined programs better targeted to working for the poor. The poor would potentially benefit the most from state reforms of Medicaid, which only pays doctors and hospitals 60% or less of costs for their health services to the poor. Consequently, the poor on Medicaid face grave difficulties in obtaining timely and essential health care, and suffer worse health outcomes as a result. Scott Gottlieb of the New York University School of Medicine writes in the March 10, 2011 Wall Street Journal ("Medicaid Is Worse Than No Coverage at All"), "In some states, they've cut reimbursements to providers so low that beneficiaries can't find doctors willing to accept Medicaid."
The deathly problem was illustrated by the case of 12 year old Deamonte Driver, from a poor Maryland family on Medicaid. When Deamonte complained of a toothache, his mother tried to find a dentist who would take Medicaid. But only 900 out of 5,500 dentists in Maryland do. By the time she found one, and got the boy to the appointment, his tooth had abscessed, and the infection had spread to his brain. Now she needed to find a brain specialist who took Medicaid. Before she could find one, the boy was rushed to Children's Hospital for emergency surgery. He called his mother from his hospital room one night to say, "Make sure you pray before you go to sleep." In the morning, he was dead.
States could better serve the poor by using Ryan's reforms to provide vouchers that would help to pay for the private health insurance of their choice in the marketplace. Such health insurance vouchers would free the poor from the Medicaid ghetto, enabling them to obtain the same health care as the middle class, because they would be able to buy the same health insurance as the middle class. That private insurance pays market rates for health care, which would enable the poor to actually get essential health care when needed.
Ryan is correct to point out that these 1996 reforms implement the Catholic principle of subsidiarity--that government programs should be administered at the closest possible level to those to be served. Ryan said at Georgetown, "We put our trust in people, not in government. Our budget incorporates subsidiarity by returning power to individuals, to families, and to communities." Too bad that Father Reese and the other Georgetown letter signers do not know anything about the 1996 welfare reforms and their breathtaking results. But it would not be remotely accurate to describe the resulting 50% savings of AFDC costs as decimating programs for struggling families, or the extension of such reforms to Medicaid as radically weakening protections for the sick. That is not adult discussion of the issues involved.
Ryan's Georgetown critics countered that Ryan's budget failed the Catholic principle of "subsidium," which means the higher levels of government must provide help with funding "when communities and local governments face problems beyond their means to address such as economic crises, high unemployment, endemic poverty and hunger." But the supreme ignorance of these critics regarding Ryan's budget leaves them at a loss again. Ryan's budget continues trillions in such federal subsidium to state and local governments for programs for the poor over the next 10 years, increasing it still more over current levels, more than will be needed in fact given the positive incentives resulting from Ryan's reforms. That is what happened with the overfunded 1996 reforms.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5)Leon Cooperman: US Needs Republican Sweep to Get Back on Track

November's presidential elections will seal the fate of the nation, and hopefully voters will oust President Barack Obama from the White House and most of the Democrats from Congress, says Leon Cooperman, Chairman and CEO at Omega Advisors.

"We have an election that I think is going to define the future of the company," Cooperman tells CNBC's "Squawk Box." 

"I want a Republican sweep. I'm not sure what's worse, a Democratic sweep or divided government. Everybody says divided government is good, but I think we need decisions to be made and these folks can't seem to make decisions," says Cooperman, who grabbed headlines in late 2011 when he published an open letter to President Barack Obama, accusing the president of fueling class warfare. 

Today, the nation is lacking leadership and partisan bickering gets in the way of policy and needed reforms.

"I'm on the republican side, not all the time, in this particular case, to be honest with you we need a unified government, we need basically decision making and we need leadership," Cooperman says. 

"Right now in the current system, these guys don't talk to each other. It's a real problem."

The economy continues to drag on President Obama's popularity.

A recent Gallup poll finds Obama's approval rating has fallen to 47 percent while satisfaction with the direction of the country is only at 24 percent.

"President Obama is running for re-election with Americans feeling about as dissatisfied with the country and the economy as they were in 1992 when George H.W. Bush lost," Gallup reports. 

"However, with a modest 47 percent job approval average in early May, his approval rating is nearly the same as in  2004 when George W. Bush won."