Obama remains the intellectual 'music man' fraud he always was/is.
The press and media have circled the wagon and you will not see or hear anything critical. Cal Thomas said: ' the press and media are in so deep for Obama that when they come up for air they get the bends!' (See 1 and 1a below.)
Compare Obama to Dr. Carson.
In my book, some of America's great blacks citizens were/are Thurgood Marshall, Rev. Martin Luther King, Justice Thomas, Tom Sowell, comedian Bill Cosby, Satchmo and now Dr. Carson.
These, and many more like them, are the ones who paved the way for those of their race to benefit from the greatness, the ultimate fairness of our nation that permitted the reaping of our constitutional and capitalistic blessings.
These are the ones who spoke/speak truth to their own and understand that liberal theocracy is simply another form of enslavement.
These are the ones the black community should have their progeny look up to but it is the Jesse Jackson's, his corrupt son , Sharpton, etc. who are idolized, capture the press and media's attention because they are the loud mouths, the stirrers. Yet, Jackson's et. al message leads to dead ends and contemporary enslavement. Jackson etc. are nothing less than shake down artists and pimps for liberals. Their message is one of handout entitlements and resentment.
Click here:Best explanation of birth EVER! (See 1a below.)
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Has Boehner finally gotten his act together? Sequestration was Obama's idea and, to his chagrin, Republicans did not buckle. Now Obama find sequestration is akin to castration and he will be hard pressed to raise more money to fund his habitual spending habits.
Boehner has decided to let the Senate run with the ball as the House lays back and observes. (See 2 below.)
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Dick
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1)- State of the Union Address on Foreign Policy: Careful Phrasing Conceals Disasters
Barry Rubin - PJ Media
While the State of the Union message was overwhelmingly domestically oriented, the foreign policy sections were most interesting. I’ll review them here.
The president began in the same neo-patriotic mode used in the second inaugural address, with a special emphasis on thanking U.S. troops. He used the imagery of the end of World War Two paralleling the return of troops from Iraq to promote his idea that the American economy must be totally restructured.
Obama defined his main successes—careful to credit the military (whose budget he seeks to cut deeply and whose health benefits he’s already reduced) rather than his usual emphasis on taking the credit for himself—were the following points:
“For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq.
“For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country.
“Most of Al Qaida’s top lieutenants have been defeated. The Taliban’s momentum has been broken. And some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.”
Now there certainly have been accomplishments on these three fronts but these claims are also profoundly misleading and very carefully worded. Let’s take them one at a time.
–It is true that U.S. forces are largely out of Iraq yet this was inevitable, with one key reservation. There was no likelihood they would be there in a large combat role forever. Whatever one thinks of the invasion of Iraq, the American forces were staying for an interim period until the Iraqi army was ready. Any successor to George W. Bush would have pulled out the combat forces.
The reservation, of course, is that it was the success of the surge—which Obama opposed and his new secretary of defense (yes, he will be confirmed) Chuck Hagel opposed. So he is taking credit for a policy that was inevitable and that was made possible by a success that he was against.
Lest you think that assessment is unfair to Obama consider this: he did absolutely nothing to make this outcome happen. No policy or strategy of his administration made the withdrawal faster or more certain.
–This is a strange phrase: “For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country.” It is a new way of putting the Obama killed Osama meme while hinting that al-Qaida is not a threat to the United States. Well, as Benghazi shows, al-Qaida is still a threat but wording the sentence the way Obama did implies otherwise without saying so and looking foolish at making an obviously false claim.
–Notice a very strange and ungrammatical formulation: “Most of Al Qaida’s top lieutenants have been defeated.” I think this can only be understood as an incomplete change in the traditional slogan that al-Qaida has been defeated. The administration can no longer make this argument so it is looking for something that gets in bin Ladin’s assassination and that of other al-Qaida leaders (al-Qaida has been decapitated) with hinting that al-Qaida has been defeated.
In other words, someone did a bad job of proofreading the speech. Of course, all of this glosses over the fact that al-Qaida hasn’t been defeated. It is on the march in Mali, the Gaza Strip, Somalia, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Yemen, and other places.
Incidentally, al-Qaida will always be defeated politically because it has no strong political program or structure. That’s why al-Qaida kills but the Muslim Brotherhood wins. And Obama is helping the Muslim Brotherhood.
As for the Taliban, again there is a cute formulation: its “momentum has been broken.” In other words, the Taliban has survived, it is still launching attacks, and it might even take over large parts of Afghanistan after American troops leave. Momentum has been broken is just a fancy way of saying that its gaining power has been slowed down. Of course, after American troops leave, that momentum will probably speed up again.
In his second mention of foreign affairs, Obama spoke of economic issues, he says:
“My message is simple. It is time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America. Send me these tax reforms, and I will sign them right away.”
In fact, though, businesses are not fleeing the United States because the wages are lower there while the Obama Administration puts into effect increasingly tight and costly regulations and imposes higher costs (including the impact of Obamacare). Moreover, wages are lower overseas.
Obama’s policies don’t—in the strict sense of the term—reward businesses for shipping jobs overseas; they merely punish businesses for remaining in America. Taxing executives more while adding to the regulatory and cost burden will make things worse.
He continues:
“We’re also making it easier for American businesses to sell products all over the world. Two years ago, I set a goal of doubling U.S. exports over five years. With the bipartisan trade agreements we signed into law, we’re on track to meet that goal ahead of schedule.
“And soon there will be millions of new customers for American goods in Panama, Colombia, and South Korea. Soon, there will be new cars on the streets of Seoul imported from Detroit, and Toledo, and Chicago.”
This sounds good but it’s a fantasy. To speak of doubling U.S. exports is insane except for one point. If Obama’s policies lead to massive inflation and the decline of the dollar, foreign customers will want to unload their dollars and take advantage of relatively falling American prices. This will not, however, benefit the American people much.
If one wants to analyze Obama’s claims the auto industry is the place to start. Look at the policies of General Motors, the most favored and government-influenced of all American companies, which has shipped jobs overseas. If American cars are on those foreign streets, it will be because they were manufactured in China. (I wonder if Obama’s choice of South Korea rather than China as the Asian country in his list was deliberately made to conceal that fact.)
And then, par for the course, he announces a new and unneeded additional bureaucracy called the Trade Enforcement Unit that will carry on investigations that could be done by existing institutions.
That’s how Obama creates jobs.
He continues,
“I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here. We’ve subsidized oil companies for a century. That’s long enough.”
Well, in fact it is easy to show that his investments in wind, solar, and battery industries have been an abject failure. One would have thought Obama would avoid that topic except that his immunity to prosecution by the mass media makes him bold here. There are deep structural reasons why China is ahead—lower wages, lower costs, less regulation, and less safety. That’s not going to change. Obama is doubling down on a losing proposition.
Then he produces a real whopper:
“Ending the Iraq war has allowed us to strike decisive blows against our enemies.”
This is a coded reference to the anti-Iraq war argument that intervention in that country was tying down American forces that could be used elsewhere. Obama is saying: Now that we are out of Iraq we’ll really get those terrorists!
Yet Obama has claimed victory over the terrorists while U.S. forces in Iraq were at their height. His own statements undercut that argument. And what big new way is the United States been striking blows at its enemies since the withdrawal? I cannot think of anything (continued drone strikes in Yemen?). But if you think that the Benghazi terrorists (not the California videomaker), the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas in particular, the Syrian Brotherhood and Salafists, Hizballah, etc., are “enemies” then how has the Obama Administration escalated efforts against them now that it has pulled all those troops out of Iraq and can spare them for other operations?
Like much of Obama’s speech, if one actually pays attention to the language and claims, it dissolves into ridiculousness.
Obama continues:
“From Pakistan to Yemen, the Al-Qaida operatives who remain are scrambling, knowing that they can’t escape the reach of the United States of America.”
I see no evidence of that. The biggest hits to the al-Qaida leadership, except for the killing of bin Ladin—happened during the Bush Administration. Of course, Obama carefully picked his examples. Where other than Pakistan and Yemen might they live in fear? Certainly not in Libya.
Then we come to the “Arab Spring”:
“As the tide of war recedes, a wave of change has washed across the Middle East and North Africa, from Tunis to Cairo, from Sana’a to Tripoli.”
Obama could have said the same thing two years ago. Since then, however, the shaky coalition government in Tunisia is crumbling after the most courageous opposition leader was assassinated and the Brotherhood is tightening its hold. In Egypt, the Brotherhood is in power and at the very moment Obama was speaking was engaged in repressing street protests. In Yemen, substantially nothing has changed. In Tripoli (it was wise not to mention Libya’s other main city, Benghazi) there is a reasonable level of success.
Perhaps the greatest change in governance has come in Iraq, but Obama doesn’t want to mention that because that would imply a tip of the hat to George W. Bush. By the way, is Obama going to urge Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority leader, to hold elections when he visits Ramallah in late March? He’s still governing three years after his term ended.
It was wise for Obama to emphasize who is leaving rather than who is coming into power:
“A year ago, Gadhafi was one of the world’s longest-serving dictators, a murderer with American blood on his hands. Today, he is gone.”
Hm, someone in Libya with “American blood on his hands”? Glad there’s nobody like that around anymore!
“And in Syria, I have no doubt that the Assad regime will soon discover that the forces of change cannot be reversed and that human dignity cannot be denied.”
Oh, I’ll bet that a lot of Syrians are going to learn that human dignity can be denied in the face of ethnic massacres and a new regime where the Muslim Brotherhood rules and Salafists run around free to do as they please. (Though for U.S. interests it will be an improvement things could have been much better if America helped the moderates instead of the Islamists.)
“And while it’s ultimately up to the people of the region to decide their fate, we will advocate for those values that have served our own country so well. We will stand against violence and intimidation. We will stand for the rights and dignity of all human beings, men and women, Christians, Muslims, and Jews. We will support policies that lead to strong and stable democracies and open markets, because tyranny is no match for liberty.”
Strange, but the democratic opposition movements say the precise opposite. See for example the open letter to Obama, written in the last few days, by an Egyptian human rights’ activist begging the president to stop helping and praising the oppressive forces!
“And we will safeguard America’s own security against those who threaten our citizens, our friends, and our interests. Look at Iran. Through the power of our diplomacy, a world that was once divided about how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program now stands as one. The regime is more isolated than ever before. Its leaders are faced with crippling sanctions. And as long as they shirk their responsibilities, this pressure will not relent. Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal.”
But Iran will get nuclear weapons, it continues working on them at a full pace, and you will spend this year in fruitless negotiations to try to persuade them to stop.
“The renewal of American leadership can be felt across the globe. Our oldest alliances in Europe and Asia are stronger than ever. Our ties to the Americas are deeper. Our iron-clad commitment — and I mean iron-clad — to Israel’s security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries in history.”
Really? That’s not what I hear from people all over the world. It is the absence of American leadership they feel, sometimes to their great cost. Ask the Poles, and the Czechs, and the Saudis, and the democratic oppositionists in Iran and Syria, and so on. Ask the Peruvians and the Colombians if they feel American leadership is protecting them from Venezuela and other radical forces in the region.
And it is true that military cooperation with Israel is good—which is to say, normal not the greatest in history—but what Israeli leader believes that Obama can be relied on? The ones I speak to usually say something like this: “I never thought I’d see the day when we couldn’t depend on America.”
Incidentally, a number of analyses I’ve seen since writing this article emphasize Obama’s nice sentence about Israel as it is of great importance or is some kind of revelation. For goodness sakes, it is standard–even though he repeated the word “iron-clad”–and denotes absolutely nothing new. I don’t think Obama will do much in regards to bilateral relations but let’s be frank here: Since Obama believes he knows better what Israel security needs are than do its leaders then anything he does is “pro-Israel” even if it is against Israel’s will. I’m not trying to make any dramatic point here–again, bilateral relations will continue to be okay–but to point out the bizarre way Obama’s statements get interpreted in order to praise him. The same applies to his standard sentence on keeping all options open regarding Iran’s nuclear program.
“From the coalitions we’ve built to secure nuclear materials, to the missions we’ve led against hunger and disease, from the blows we’ve dealt our enemies, to the enduring power of our moral example, America is back. Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”
Think about the kind of mental construct that could produce this paragraph, which is unintentionally revealing. It shows Obama’s pattern of either refusing to acknowledge legitimate dissent (all the experts agree with me) and that he knows best (Israel doesn’t know what’s good for itself).
Yes, Mr. President, a lot of people around the world don’t think that America is back or that it still protects their back. And they do know what they are talking about and can cite many specific examples from your administration.
The next paragraph requires no comment from me. See if you can finish it and not be laughing:
“That’s why, working with our military leaders, I’ve proposed a new defense strategy that ensures we maintain the finest military in the world, while saving nearly half a trillion dollars in our budget.”
Not budget cuts to the military but “saving” money. So that it can be spent on green energy projects?
1a)
Who Is Really Helping the Middle Class?
Listen to what a famous Democratic president said during his state of the union speech “The lessons of history … show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.”
No of course that wasn't President Barack Obama, but in fact it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his 1935 State of the Union address.
Earlier this week, the recently re-elected president gave us his State of the Union address, wherein he claimed he wants to help the middle class.
The middle class in America, according to the Census Bureau, is defined as those with a median income of $50,000. That means half of the families are above that level, and half are below it.
Well, let’s look at the people who are above the middle-class threshold and those who are below the threshold to see how the middle class could be helped by both groups.
In 2012, the cost to U.S. taxpayers of the food-stamp program hit $78 billion. The number of recipients and the cost of the program have exploded. However, the president won't mention this.
A large reason is the disintegration of the family. Over 40 percent of all children in America were now born out of wedlock in 2011. Among Hispanics, it was 53 percent, while among African Americans, it was 73 percent.
Food stamps are feeding children abandoned by their own fathers, and taxpayers are taking up the slack for America’s deadbeat dads.
Imagine if every middle-class family could share that $78 billion.
Of course, I didn’t hear anyone blame those who have burdened the system by having children out of wedlock.
Instead, I heard about the wealthy needing to pay their fair share.
The fact is a family of four with an income of $50,000 pays federal income tax of $729, which is a 1.4585 rate.
A family of four with an income of $148,000 pays of federal tax of $18,563, which is a rate of 12.54, almost nine times higher.
And a family with an income of $350,000 pays federal tax of $81,481, which is a rate of 23.28 percent, more than 16 times higher the tax rate of the middle-class folks who make $50,000.
The fact is those who earn $50,000 per year have children who will more than likely qualify for a large amount of financial aid if they decide to attend college, whereas the higher-earning families have to pay the full amount for their children.
After hearing all these “facts,” I have one simple question.
Which group is paying their fair share to help the middle class?
About the Author: Bill Spetrino
Bill Spetrino is a member of the Moneynews Financial Brain Trust. Click Here to read more of his articles. He is also the editor of the Dividend Machine. Discover more by Clicking Here Now.
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Neurosurgeon who upstaged Obama to star in Hannity Special tonight.
Dr. Ben Carson is fast becoming America’s Doctor.
And he will make an hour-long house call with Sean Hannity in a Hannity Special on Fox News Friday night.
Along with a handful of guests in an on-set audience, of which I will be privileged to be one.
Dr. Carson, of course, has been in the news lately for this speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. In which, with a surgeon’s precision, the good doctor deftly dissected both Obamanomics and Obamacare — with President Obama seated two seats away.
If you aren’t yet familiar with Dr. Carson you should make the time.
Here is a man whose single mother, one of 24 children — you read that right — married at 13, had two children (Ben and his brother Curtis), eventually finding out that her husband had an entirely different wife and family. Which is to say, he was a bigamist and soon departed from Ben’s family when the discovery was made by Ben’s mother. He was as well a man with an alcohol problem. Mom had a third grade education.
Not exactly an auspicious start for a young African-American kid in Detroit.
But Mom — that would be Sonya Carson — presented with her share of life lessons that every human being walking must face, was paying attention to her two boys. First, she set the example herself. Determined to avoid the welfare system, she worked “constantly,” Carson tells us. Her faith in God having her insist to her son, “Bennie, we’re going to be fine.”
No. she said, you cannot watch television all the time. She laid down a rule — one of many. Young Ben would not be allowed more than two or three TV programs a week. What he must do instead is read two books from the Detroit public library — and write book reports on each.
So began Ben Carson’s lifelong love affair with education — with reading. Dutifully, he would make the trek to the library, read the two books of his choice, write up book reports — and get them back from his mother with a check mark to acknowledge his work.
Did I mention that Sonya Carson couldn’t read? No matter — only much later would young Ben figure this out. In the meantime Ben Carson went from being called “dummy” by his fifth grade friends to a top student at Yale University not to mention the top of his class at the University of Michigan Medical School. And now one of the world’s most accomplished (not to mention famous) physicians, presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush.
With his low-key bedside manner that doctors the world over must surely envy, Carson’s story is the stuff of Hollywood movies — and in fact there is a movie. A movie based on Carson’s own autobiography Gifted Hands, starring Cuba Gooding Jr. as Ben Carson. Here’s the trailer for the film and over here some excerpts.Here’s a link to the book version as well as Carson’s current bestseller America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great.
What’s striking when one reads Gifted Hands is seeing just how Carson refused the lure of blaming his problems on race. When one reads Carson in Gifted Hands — and goes back to read President Obama in Dreams From My Father — the difference between the two men is striking.
Here’s Carson on race and what he refused to do:
I could easily have decided that life was cruel, that being Black meant everything was stacked against me
Contrast this with Obama on race and what he has spent a lifetime doing:Black survival in this country had always been premised on a minimum of delusions; it was such an absence of delusions that continued to operate in the daily lives of most black people I met.This is the bleak Obama world view that led to the building of a political career seamlessly meshing and manipulating resentment — racial, class, and gender resentment — into a “transformed” American way of life.Ultimately en route to making all of America, as noted in this space before, a society of beggars.That is an America in which Sonya Carson and her son refused to live. Mrs. Carson, her son notes, was an extremely observant woman. While working two and sometimes three jobs at a time she cared for children and cleaned houses as a domestic. Applying her power of observation to wealthy employers, she would come home at night and tell her son:“This is what wealthy people do. This is how successful people behave. Here’s how they think.” Then: “Now you boys can do it too, and you can do it better!”Is it any wonder that the Carson speech — make that Carson’s life — has hit millions of American with the force of a thunder clap?There is another interesting aspect of Carson’s life that stands in stark contrast with American liberalism. Compare this from Carson’s approach to his medical studies:I started learning how to study, no longer concentrating on surface material and just what the professors were likely to ask on finals. I aimed to grasp everything in detail. In chemistry, for instance, I didn’t want to know just answers but to understand the reasoning behind the formulas. From there I applied the same principle to all of my classes.Catch that? He would “grasp everything in detail” and apply to all of his classes and each subject.Contrast Carson’s approach to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s approach to passing a health care bill — Obamacare — that would take over the entire American health care system. Think of that famous Pelosi line about passing the massive 2,000 page Obamacare bill:“But we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it.”Which is to say, neither Pelosi or her colleagues deigned to read the bill they were passing. Decidedly the opposite of Carson’s approach to “grasp everything in detail.” No wonder there are people wondering why American health care is suddenly being consumed with people and institutions demanding exemptions from this or that regulation or laying off employees or spending hours on end trying to appease an angry Catholic Church because of various mandated rules are blatant violations of the Constitution.Back in May of last year Carson went to Emory University to make the case for opposing political correctness. Saying:I think the other thing that threatens the prosperity and the vitality of our nation is political correctness. Many people came to this nation, and they were trying to escape from societies that try to tell them what they could say and what they could think. And here we come, reintroducing it through the back door.
And we need to remember that it is not important that we all think the same thing. And the emphasis should not be on us saying the same thing; the emphasis should be on us learning to be respectful of individuals who have a different opinion. That’s one of the things that made America great: the ability to engage in dialogue.And I’ve always said, “If two people think the same thing about everything, one of them isn’t necessary.” We need to be able to understand that if we’re going to make real progress.There was a time in the history of the world when there was great intolerance for anybody who thought differently than the mainstream. It was called the Dark Ages. There are some things that can be learned, even in places and in societies where we think we know everything. Because if you look over the course of time, you will find a migration of what is thought to be the truth. And if we all engage in appropriate intellectual discussion, I think we will get there much faster.
What does this mean for Carson in practice?
In practice this means Carson himself doesn’t hesitate to violate all the soul-shrinking nostrums of political correctness, as his Prayer Breakfast speech demonstrated. He thinks America is awash in malpractice cases not because doctors are so incompetent in America — but because of a system that is tailor-made for trial lawyers. The man who had his father walk out the door dares to say fathers are essential to family life. And to critics who are furious that he stood up at the Prayer Breakfast and criticized the President who was sitting two seats away, Carson gently reminds that America is not a monarchy.
Where have we heard Carson-like thoughts just this week?
That’s right: from Senator Marco Rubio the other night in his response to the Obama State of the Union Address. Rubio sent chills down the backs of liberals when he emotionally noted his immigrant background and his middle class upbringing. Rubio is “dangerous” said ex-Obama aide Van Jones.
What drove the liberal concern? When Rubio said:
The State of the Union address is always a reminder of how unique America is. For much of human history, most people were trapped in stagnant societies, where a tiny minority always stayed on top, and no one else even had a chance.But America is exceptional because we believe that every life, at every stage, is precious, and that everyone everywhere has a God-given right to go as far as their talents and hard work will take them.Like most Americans, for me this ideal is personal. My parents immigrated here in pursuit of the opportunity to improve their life and give their children the chance at an even better one. They made it to the middle class, my dad working as a bartender and my mother as a cashier and a maid. I didn’t inherit any money from them. But I inherited something far better — the real opportunity to accomplish my dreams.This opportunity — to make it to the middle class or beyond no matter where you start out in life — it isn’t bestowed on us from Washington.
Notice anything here?
On Friday night Ben Carson will be on the Hannity show discussing his life and how a young black kid got to where he is today. On this past Tuesday night, a Latino Marco Rubio was on television talking about just what his parents did to help him get to where he is today.
Neither man — one black and one Latino — spends a minute of his time playing the race card, playing the class warfare card, pitching to resentment. What they both have in common is a love of America, and the learned experience that hard work and discipline will bring success.
Rubio burst onto the national scene three years ago.
Carson, who has been on the national scene but as a physician not as visible as a politician, has now suddenly burst into the larger American consciousness. “Ben Carson for President” suggested theWall Street Journal.
What does Ben Carson have to say about that?
America will find out tomorrow night.
But the overwhelming response to Sonya Carson’s son Ben — the man who simply refused to believe he couldn’t make his dreams come true — dreams that have now saved one human life after another, many under dramatic circumstances like separating Siamese twins joined at the head — has been overwhelmingly positive.
As the Obama years roll on, as America becomes financially sicker by the day, its health care system and so much else in serious trouble, it isn’t brain surgery to realize just why so many Americans have stopped to listen to Dr. Ben Carson.
And why so many will doubtless tune in to this particular Hannity Special.
Finally, America’s Doctor is in the house.
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