Obama Saved by Sandy!

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What goes around comes around:

Click on 1948 Cartoon below - 1948 Cartoon

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A little sardonic humor found in restrooms:

If life is a waste of time, And time is a waste of life, Then let's all get wasted together And have the time of our lives. Armand's Pizza, Washington , DC

 

Fighting for peace is like Screwing for virginity.  The Bayou, Baton Rouge , LO

 

No matter how good she looks, Some other guy is sick and tired Of putting up with her shit. Men ' s Room Linda's Bar and Grill, Chapel Hill , NC

 

=0 A It's hard to make a comeback When you haven't been anywhere. Written in the dust on the back of a bus, Wickenburg , AZ

Make love, not war. Hell, do both. GET MARRIED! Women's restroom The Filling Station, Bozeman , MT

 

If voting could really change things, It would be illegal. Revolution Books New York , New York .

 

If pro is opposite of con, then what is the opposite of progress? Congress! Men's restroom House of Representatives, Washington , DC

 

Express Lane: Five beers or less. Sign over one of the urinals Ed Debevic's, Phoenix , AZ

 

You're too good for him.. Sign over mirror in Women's restroom Ed Debevic's, Beverly Hills , CA

 

No wonder you always go home alone. Sign over mirror in Men's restroom, Ed Debevic's, Beverly Hills , CA

 

~~~ and perhaps the most realistic one ~~

 

A Woman's Rule of Thumb: If it has tires or testicles, You're going to have trouble with it.  Women's restroom Dick's Last Resort, Dallas , TX 0A

                         

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Tom Sowell writes about "cool." (See 1 below.)
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Five problems and mediocrity.  (See 2 below.)
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Stand down! (See 3 below.)
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Obama and Israel. (See 4 below.)
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Obama's solution for increasing  private sector jobs create a  new government appointee - DUH! (See 5 below.)
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Just a few glaring liberal versus conservatives contrasts when it comes to that squishy word
' fairness:'

What is fair about 1% paying 70% and 48% pay no federal income taxes?

What  is fair about crafting legislation which  brought the middle class down while trying to bring the bottom up?  I referring to mandating banks to make home loans to those who could not afford  the payments. GW warned about this but Barney, Dodd, Schumer would not listen because they wanted to lock in votes.

What is fair about obsessing over those on the bottom, and there will always be a bottom, and not extolling the virtues of Capitalism which has produced more for more than any system in the world?

What is fair about waiting to tell the truth about defense firings, the assassinations in Libya, the effect of many of the provisions  of 'Obamascare' being deferred etc. until after the election?
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Obama can consider himself blessed because Sandy took the attention of the nation when his lying about Libya , which the liberal press and media seem not to care about, got shoved out of the way.
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Dick
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1)'Cooling Out' the Voters

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• Thomas Sowell 

Confidence men know that their victim -- "the mark" as he has been called -- is eventually going to realize that he has been cheated. But it makes a big difference whether he realizes it immediately, and goes to the police, or realizes it after the confidence man is long gone.

So part of the confidence racket is creating a period of uncertainty, during which the victim is not yet sure of what is happening. This delaying process has been called "cooling out the mark."

The same principle applies in politics. When the accusations that led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton first surfaced, he flatly denied them all. Then, as the months passed, the truth came out -- but slowly, bit by bit. One of Clinton's own White House aides later called it "telling the truth slowly."

By the time the whole truth came out, it was called "old news," and the clever phrase now was that we should "move on."

It was a successful "cooling out" of the public, keeping them in uncertainty so long that, by the time the whole truth came out, there was no longer the same outrage as if the truth had suddenly come out all at once. Without the support of an outraged public, the impeachment of President Clinton fizzled out in the Senate.

We are currently seeing another "cooling out" process, growing out of the terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi on September 11th this year.

The belated release of State Department e-mails shows that the Obama administration knew, while the attack on the American consulate was still underway, that it was a coordinated, armed terrorist attack. They were getting reports from those inside the consulate who were under attack, as well as surveillance pictures from a camera on an American drone overhead.

About an hour before the attack, the scene outside was calm enough for the American ambassador to accompany a Turkish official to the gates of the consulate to say goodbye. This could hardly have happened if there were protesting mobs there.

Why then did both President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice keep repeating the story that this was a spontaneous protest riot against an anti-Islamic video in America?

The White House knew the facts -- but they knew that the voting public did not. And it mattered hugely whether the facts became known to the public before or after the election. What the White House needed was a process of "cooling out" the voters, keeping them distracted or in uncertainty as long as possible.

Not only did the Obama administration keep repeating the false story about an anti-Islamic video being the cause of a riot that turned violent, the man who produced that video was tracked down and arrested, creating a media distraction.

All this kept the video story front and center, with the actions and inactions of the Obama administration kept in the background.

The White House had to know that it was only a matter of time before the truth would come out. But time was what mattered, with an election close at hand. The longer they could stretch out the period of distraction and uncertainty -- "cooling out" the voters -- the better. Once the confidence man in the White House was reelected, it would be politically irrelevant what facts came out.

As the Obama administration's video story began to slowly unravel, their earlier misstatements were blamed on "the fog of war" that initially obscures many events. But there was no such "fog of war" in this case. The Obama administration knew what was happening while it was happening.

They didn't know all the details -- and we may never know all the details -- but they knew enough to know that this was no protest demonstration that got out of hand.

From the time it took office, the Obama administration has sought to suppress the very concept of a "war on terror" or the terrorists' war on us. The painful farce of calling the Fort Hood murders "workplace violence," instead of a terrorist attack in our midst, shows how far the Obama administration would go to downplay the dangers of Islamic extremist terrorism.

The killing of Osama bin Laden fed the pretense that the terrorism threat had been beaten. But the terrorists' attack in Libya exposed that fraud -- and required another fraud to try to "cool out" the voters until after election day.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)5 Problems With America That Have Given A Mediocrity Like Obama A Chance To Be Reelected

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• John Hawkins 

"Look at the string of broken promises. If you like your health care plan, you can keep it. Try telling that to the 20 million people who are projected to lose their health insurance if Obamacare goes through or the 7.4 million seniors who are going to lose it.

Or remember when he said this: I guarantee if you make less than $250,000, your taxes won’t go up. Of the 21 tax increases in Obamacare, 12 of them hit the middle class.

Or remember when he said health insurance premiums will go down $2,500 per family, per year? They’ve gone up $3,000, and they’re expected to go up another $2,400.

Or remember when he said, “I promise by the end of my first term I’ll cut the deficit in half in four years”? We’ve had four budgets, four trillion-dollar deficits.

...We’ve got to tackle this debt crisis before it tackles us. The president likes to say he has a plan. He gave a speech. We asked his budget office, “Can we see the plan?” They sent us to the press secretary. He gave us a copy of the speech. We asked the Congressional Budget Office, “Tell us what President Obama’s plan is to prevent a debt crisis.” They said, “It’s a speech, we can’t estimate speeches.”

You see, that’s what we get in this administration — speeches — but we’re not getting leadership." -- Paul Ryan

"(Obama) said that by now we'd have unemployment at 5.4 percent. The difference between where it is and 5.4 percent is 9 million Americans without work. I wasn't the one that said 5.4 percent. This was the president's plan. Didn't get there.

He said he would have by now put forward a plan to reform Medicare and Social Security, because he pointed out they're on the road to bankruptcy. He would reform them. He'd get that done. He hasn't even made a proposal on either one. He said in his first year he'd put out an immigration plan that would deal with our immigration challenges. Didn't even file it.

...The middle class is getting crushed under the policies of a president who has not understood what it takes to get the economy working again. He keeps saying, "Look, I've created 5 million jobs." That's after losing 5 million jobs. The entire record is such that the unemployment has not been reduced in this country. The unemployment, the number of people who are still looking for work, is still 23 million Americans.

There are more people in poverty, one out of six people in poverty. How about food stamps? When he took office, 32 million people were on food stamps. Today, 47 million people are on food stamps. How about the growth of the economy? It's growing more slowly this year than last year, and more slowly last year than the year before.

...The president has tried, but his policies haven't worked. He's great as a speaker and describing his plans and his vision. That's wonderful, except we have a record to look at." -- Mitt Romney

Barack Obama is a small little man trying and failing to do a very big job. He has been one of the worst, if not the worst President in American history. Based solely on his performance, Barack Obama should be losing this election in a 50 state landslide. Yet, here we are going into the final week before the election and Mitt Romney is barely ahead in a nip and tuck race. Could that be because some people don't like Romney? Sure, but there's a lot more going on and no matter who wins this election, the Republican Party and the conservative movement need to start addressing the underlying structural issues that are allowing a mediocrity like Obama to compete for the presidency despite the fact that he's proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's unworthy of the office.

1) Cheap Borrowed Money: On an intellectual level, most Americans may be able to comprehend that the country is in deep financial trouble, but they're not feeling the squeeze. Part of that is because Western Europe is having its own financial troubles and it's driving cheap borrowed money here, but it's also because the Fed is playing sleazy financial games to cover up our weakness. Interest rates are being kept artificially low and in 2011, the Fed bought 61% of our debt. So, we have a 16 trillion dollar debt we can't pay for, we're running a trillion dollar plus deficit a year, people from both parties say it's "unsustainable," and yet the public isn't being forced to make any hard choices at all. Essentially, the only thing of significance we've agreed to cut in the last four years is the military budget and both Obama and Romney agree those cuts will never happen. It's hard to convince the public that there's an impending crisis when Republicans are calling for tax cuts, Democrats are calling for more spending and everything seems to be humming along just like it always has.

2) A Style Over Substance Mentality: One of the great ironies of modern American life is that as the number of news sources Americans have access to have proliferated, news organizations have become more and more enamored with covering gaffes and clever put-downs to draw an audience in an increasingly competitive market as opposed to hard news. As a result, increasingly, Americans seem to be less willing or perhaps even less able to comprehend the crucial issues that confront the country. Barack Obama, to his everlasting shame, has taken full advantage of this trend. In 2008, his campaign was about "Change," "Hope," "Unity," and in 2012 it has been "Big Bird," "Binders," and Bayonets." If we become so shallow as a people that elections are primarily decided by trivia instead of the issues that will really determine the fate of our nation, then ultimately we’re doomed to fail.

3) A Left-wing Takeover of Colleges, the Media, and Hollywood: The Left has completed its "long march through the institutions" and now it owns Hollywood, colleges, and the mainstream media. People tend to notice Hollywood stars spouting off, but Hollywood is really effective because it habitually treats far left-wing beliefs as the cultural norm while Christian and conservative beliefs are almost always portrayed as backwards and mean-spirited. In our colleges, Communists, terrorists, and far left-wingers indoctrinate naïve students with a poisonous miasma of liberal beliefs. Meanwhile, most of the mainstream media, fromThe New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, etc., etc., etc. act as press flacks for the Democratic Party. Whatever story the Democrats want out there, they push it. Stories that are bad for the Left are either completely ignored or treated as insignificant. When conservative state legislators help fund public colleges that teach kids to hate them and conservatives watch TV shows, movies, and cable news networks that smear their beliefs over a morning paper that mocks God and looks down its nose at people with traditional values, it's no surprise the Left has a huge advantage. Vladimir Lenin once said, "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them," and today, conservatives are funding the very people who are hanging our country by the neck until it dies.

4) Racial Polarization: Democrats start every election with 90% of the black vote and roughly 65% of the Hispanic vote as a given. Some of this is based on issues. Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely than other Americans to be poor and impoverished Americans are more likely to find the Democrats' offers of free goodies to be appealing. However, much of it is cultural and the fruit of the liberal strategy of falsely calling Republicans racist. In fact, that's pretty much the ONLY thing Barack Obama has had to offer to black Americans. They've gone backwards economically, illegal aliens have taken jobs that would have gone to black Americans, and Obama has fought against God's definition of marriage and school choice, both of which are popular with African-Americans. It's not much better for Latinos. Helping illegal aliens to stay here doesn't help American Hispanics; to the contrary, it hurts all low income workers and costs the middle class money. The only people who really benefit are corrupt business owners who get below market labor and liberal politicians who eventually want to turn illegals into votes. Yet, as long as the Republicans refuse to do serious outreach and liberals can keep locking up huge percentages of the vote just by crying racism, they'll keep getting a much larger share of the black and Hispanic vote than they deserve based on their performance in office.

5) Entitlement Culture: Because America has done so well for so long, we've started to embrace a "participation trophy" mentality. Instead of believing you should be rewarded for what you produce, many Americans have embraced a different concept that Thomas Sowell describes:

"One of the consequences of such notions as ‘entitlements ’ is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence."

Large swathes of our society now believe that they are owed an education, medical care whether they pay for it or not, money and food stamps if they're out of work, free birth control, free government cell phones, help with their mortgage, and medical care and money for a decade or two after they retire. In the scheme of things, that wouldn’t be so bad except for one thing: What seems to be conspicuously absent from these beliefs about what people are "owed" simply for being American citizens is whether or not they’re ever going to pay enough money into the system to FUND all of these things.

Barack Obama has played on this mentality and he has pursued a strategic goal of making as many Americans as possible reliant on the government. Every American who works for the government, gets welfare and food stamps, or sees April 15th as a payday instead of a time to pay out, is likely to be another vote for the Democratic Party. It may be terrible for the country to build up an army of sponges, parasites and takers, but it’s good for the Democratic Party. Don't think that "The Food Stamp" President is unaware of that fact either.

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3)

Stand-Down Order In Benghazi Attack Still A Mystery

Posted 07:06 PM ET

Benghazi: The president says the election has nothing to do with four brave Americans getting killed, but, as in 1980 at another embassy, it should — just as it matters who gave the order to stand down.

We have speculated that a reason the cries for military help during the seven-hour assault on our consulate in Benghazi were ignored was due to fears of another "Blackhawk down" incident as in Somalia under President Clinton or a repeat of the Desert One mission that crashed and burned in the Iranian desert in a failed attempt to rescue our hostages in Tehran in 1980.

After all, according to Richard Miniter's book "Leading From Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him," it was at the urging of White House adviser Valerie Jarrett that President Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden three times before finally approving the May 2, 2011, Navy SEAL mission. Her concern: the political harm to Obama if the mission failed.

As we've written, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has falsely said we didn't have real-time intelligence of the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi. The administration has also suggested it was the CIA that put the brakes on any attempt at relief or rescue.

ABC's Jake Tapper reports that a CIA spokesman, presumably at the direction of CIA Director David Petraeus, has put out a statement saying, "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate."

Someone did, and the question is who?

We know that the mortars firing at the roof of the CIA annex, where former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were still fighting six hours into the attack, were "painted" with a laser targeting device as the two repeatedly requested backup support from an AC-130 Specter gunship. AC-130s are commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to support Special Operations teams involved in intense firefights. They are deadly accurate, with little risk of harm to civilians.

The fighting at the CIA annex went on for more than four hours, more than enough time for any planes based at Sigonella Air Base in Italy, just 480 miles away, to arrive. According to Fox News, two separate Tier One Special Ops forces were told to wait, among them Delta Force operators. So who told them to wait?

Curiously, Gen. Carter Ham, head of U.S. Africa Command, has been relieved of his post after only a year and a half on the job. According to James S. Robbins in the Washington Times, Ham got the same emails regarding the terrorist attack by the al-Qaida linked Ansar al-Sharia and immediately began organizing a rescue attempt.

Gen. Ham is said to have told the Pentagon he had a rapid response team ready and was told to stand down. Ham then reportedly said screw it, he was going to send help and was promptly told he was being relieved of his command.

Coincidence or cover-up?

In an interview with Denver News 9 reporter Kyle Clark on Friday, President Obama dodged the question of whether cries for help were ignored and who gave the orders, saying only: "The election has nothing to do with four brave Americans getting killed and us wanting to find out exactly what happened."

Oh, yes it does, Mr. President, just as it did in 1980.

You are the commander in chief, and the American people want to know what you did when the phone was ringing at 3 a.m. and why no help was sent.

At least President Carter tried to send help. You didn't. Why? And we don't need some lame excuse about faulty intelligence.

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4)OBAMA'S REAL RECORD ON ISRAEL

Anne Bayefsky
FoxNews, October 23, 2012
 

During the final debate, President Obama pointed to his 2008 pre-election visit to Israel’s Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, as an answer to Governor Romney’s criticism of his foreign policy on Israel.  That same stop was made by over a million visitors and hundreds of world leaders and dignitaries the same year.  Invoking it as a means to establish the President’s pro-Israel credentials is an insult to the intelligence of voters who care about the welfare of the Jewish state….

Undoubtedly, keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive is a service not only to Jews but to anyone interested in preserving and protecting universal human rights and freedoms.  But the question before American voters, who value our special bond with the Middle East’s only democracy, is whether the specifics of the president’s four-year record are consistent with the well-being of the people who live and breathe Jewish self-determination as a bulwark against modern anti-Semitism….

President Obama has never visited Israel during his time in office, despite having been as close as thirty minutes away in Egypt, and managing to go to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iraq. President Obama told Jewish leaders in July 2009 that he was deliberately adopting a policy of putting daylight between America and Israel.

President Obama has legitimized the UN body most responsible for demonizing Israel as the world’s worst human rights violator.  The president joined the UN Human Rights Council in 2009 and is now seeking a second 3-year term, despite Israel’s requests that he do the opposite.

President Obama made Israeli settlements the key stumbling block in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Starting in 2009 he chose to castigate Israel publicly, often, and in extreme terms at the General Assembly and the Security Council. The Palestinians took the president’s cue and ended direct negotiations until such time as Israel capitulates, even though the subject is supposed to be a final status issue. President Obama treated Israel’s Prime Minister to a series of insulting snubs during his visit to the White House in March 2010.

President Obama cut a deal with Islamic states at a May 2010 meeting of parties to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, contrary to assurances given to Israel. He agreed to help convene a 2012 international conference intended to pivot attention towards disarming Israel and is currently negotiating the details of this diplomatic onslaught.

President Obama introduced in his September 2010 address to the General Assembly, a September 2011 timeline for full Palestinian statehood and membership in the UN, thus encouraging Palestinians to push the same unilateral move.   President Obama suggested in May 2011 that Israel use the 1967 borders as a starting point for negotiations – knowing full well that Israel considers those borders to be indefensible, and that agreements require the border issue to be determined by the parties themselves.

President Obama created a “global counter-terrorism forum” in September 2011 and invited eleven Muslim states to join – on the grounds that they were “on the front lines in the struggle against terrorism.”  At the insistence of Turkey, he then denied entry to Israel. President Obama told French President Nicolas Sarkozy in November 2011 – when he thought he was off-mike – that he regretted having to deal with Israel’s Prime Minister.

President Obama asked Congress in February 2012 to waive a ban on American funding of UNESCO. The ban had been imposed following UNESCO’s recognition of Palestinian statehood and was consistent with U.S. law denying funding for any international organization that recognized Palestinian statehood in the absence of a peace agreement with Israel.

President Obama has indeed put daylight between American and Israeli policy on Iran.  In August, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dempsey said: “our clocks are ticking at different paces” and he wouldn’t be “complicit” in an Israeli effort to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In September Secretary Clinton explained this divergence. In her words, the Iranian threat is “existential” only for Israel;  only Israel is “right in the bull’s eye.”  President Obama’s “pro-Israel” policy, therefore, is to wait past the point that the intended victim of the planned genocide believes is safe. President Obama denied Prime Minister Netanyahu’s request to meet with him in September, despite the Iranian peril.

President Obama’s UN ambassador, Susan Rice, didn’t even attend the Israeli Prime Minister’s speech to the UN General Assembly in September – during which he made a plea for global attention to the Iranian threat. And on Monday night, at the final debate, Governor Romney answered the question he was asked about what poses the greatest threat to our national security with “a nuclear Iran,” while President Obama responded “terrorist networks.”

Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. An Iranian nuclear weapon will result in a nuclear arms race in the most volatile region of the world. And it will make the chance of nuclear weapons ending up in the hands of terrorists all the more likely. It isn’t hard to figure out which man will better partner with Israel to combat anti-semitism today and ensure that the lesson of Yad Vashem is more than a glib debating point.

----------------------------------------------------------5) Secretary of Say What?

Obama now says he wants a cabinet officer for business. Seriously.

The brain trust behind President Obama's re-election campaign has a new idea, and what a revelation it is. A week from Election Day, Mr. Obama has disclosed to the voters that in a second term he'll create more private jobs by creating . . . one more government job.

Specifically, and all of a sudden, Mr. Obama wants a new Cabinet-level post that will be known as the Secretary of Business. "I've said I want to consolidate a whole bunch of government agencies," he said Monday, in a performance that captured his Presidency in miniature. "We should have one Secretary of Business, instead of nine different departments that are dealing with things like getting loans to SBA [the Small Business Administration] or helping companies with exports. There should be a one-stop shop."

Mr. Obama then blamed Republicans for opposing this inspiration that no one had ever heard of until he disclosed it to the hosts of MSNBC's "Morning Joe." He said his re-election "clears away a lot of the ideological underbrush," and that the GOP will then join him to "start looking at a whole bunch of issues, as I've said, has historically not been that ideological."

Mr. Obama said Republicans haven't wanted to streamline government because they're supposedly "protective about giving up their jurisdiction over various pieces of government." This will be news to Paul Ryan and the tea party.

Maybe Republicans would have opposed the Secretary of Business if they'd learned about it somewhere besides cable news, but who knows? The reasons could include turf, but also the fact that the government already has an agency with a "focus on expanding the American economy and job creation" and that "invests in America's long-term growth and competitiveness"

It's called the Department of Commerce, with its very own Secretary, and the quotes in the preceding paragraph are how the White House describes its mission in its 2013 budget. Mr. Obama wants to expand Commerce spending by 5% to some $8 billion annually. Extra credit goes to anyone who can name the acting Commerce Secretary. No Googling.

Perhaps nobody knows who Rebecca M. Blank is because the real Secretary of Business in Mr. Obama's first term has been Valerie Jarrett, his Hyde Park confidante turned White House fixer. Ms. Jarrett knows nothing about business or the economy, with the possible exception of the political economy of the Chicago wards, which may explain why the Administration's idea of helping business has been to dispense subsidies and other favors to politically favored donors and their green energy firms.

As for real CEOs, they started out giving the President the benefit of the doubt but grew disillusioned as Mr. Obama unleashed a torrent of new regulations and pursued his liberal social agenda instead of nurturing an economic recovery.

As CEO complaints grew, the White House famously challenged the Business Roundtable and Business Council to identify pending rules that were harming job creation and economic growth. The lobbies responded in summer 2010 with a 54-page compendium, but they got no substantive response. Even after Republicans took the House in 2010, the White House did virtually nothing as Mr. Obama chose to campaign for re-election as the populist scourge of rapacious capitalists.

But now, after four years, he wants a Secretary of Business. Believe it.

On the other hand, some of the "ideological underbrush" that Mr. Obama told MSNBC that his re-election will clear away is opposition to higher taxes on business, especially small business. His multiple tax increases would hit the S corporations, partnerships, limited liability companies, sole proprietors and other pass-through businesses that employ 54% of U.S. workers and pay taxes under the individual tax code. Mr. Obama is so bent on raising these tax rates that his aides are threatening a veto if Congress dares to extend them in a lame-duck session.

The reality is that most businesses don't want their own cabinet department. They'll invest more and hire more workers if Washington would impose fewer costs, reform the tax code, and stop trying to allocate capital for political reasons. Rebuilding business confidence doesn't require a Secretary of Business but a new President.

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