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Politics And One Mother With A Keyboard. Because in front of every informed voter is a frightened politician.
The campaign also features a website that gives foreign travellers some useful tips about American life and culture. For instance, it warns: "Health care is superior in the US but it can be very expensive because there is no universal health care." The site also cautions that "some banking networks charge fees of $1-2 per transaction," for ATM withdrawals. (In fact, some charge $3.) And: "Be aware that Americans are fanatics about showering and hygiene."The whole ghastly idea came from
"The campaign, set to launch next year, is the brainchild of the Corporation for Travel Promotion (CTP), a private-public partnership formed to encourage tourism, with a marketing budget of $200 million. The corporation calls the push "the first-ever coordinated global marketing effort dedicated to welcoming international travelers to the United States."I think the key phrase is "private-public partnership" which to me translates into government-run advertising pretending to be a private company sort of the same good tax dollar investment as Fannie Mae. If this suckfest of a logo is any indication of the craptacularness of the ad campaign then we will not have to worry about being overrun by smelly international tourists.
We sent a new class of leaders to D.C., but immediately the permanent political class tried to co-opt them – because the reality is we are governed by a permanent political class, until we change that. They talk endlessly about cutting government spending, and yet they keep spending more. They talk about massive unsustainable debt, and yet they keep incurring more. They spend, they print, they borrow, they spend more, and then they stick us with the bill. Then they pat their own backs, and they claim that they faced and “solved” the debt crisis that they got us in, but when we were humiliated in front of the world with our country’s first credit downgrade, they promptly went on vacation. No, they don’t feel the same urgency that we do. But why should they? For them business is good; business is very good. Seven of the ten wealthiest counties are suburbs of Washington, D.C. Polls there actually – and usually I say polls, eh, they’re for strippers and cross country skiers – but polls in those parts show that some people there believe that the economy has actually improved. See, there may not be a recession in Georgetown, but there is in the rest of America. Yeah, the permanent political class – they’re doing just fine. Ever notice how so many of them arrive in Washington, D.C. of modest means and then miraculously throughout the years they end up becoming very, very wealthy? Well, it’s because they derive power and their wealth from their access to our money – to taxpayer dollars. They use it to bail out their friends on Wall Street and their corporate cronies, and to reward campaign contributors, and to buy votes via earmarks. There is so much waste. And there is a name for this: It’s called corporate crony capitalism. This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk. No, this is the capitalism of connections and government bailouts and handouts, of waste and influence peddling and corporate welfare. This is the crony capitalism that destroyed Europe’s economies. It’s the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest – to the little guys. It’s a slap in the face to our small business owners – the true entrepreneurs, the job creators accounting for 70% of the jobs in America, it’s you who own these small businesses, you’re the economic engine, but you don’t grease the wheels of government power. So, do you want to know why the permanent political class doesn’t really want to cut any spending? Do you want to know why nothing ever really gets done? It’s because there’s nothing in it for them. They’ve got a lot of mouths to feed – a lot of corporate lobbyists and a lot of special interests that are counting on them to keep the good times and the money rolling along.Follow the link Psst! Just Asking! to see who said what. (Hat tip: Instapundit)
President Obama stepped up to a podium in the East Room of the White House that night to announce bin Laden’s death. That rapid announcement, explained Pfarrer, posed a major threat to U.S. national security. “There was a choice that night,” Pfarrer told TheDC. “There was a choice to keep the mission secret.” America, Pfarrer explained, could have left things alone for “weeks or months … even though there was evidence left on the ground there … and use the intelligence and finish off al-Qaida.” But Obama’s announcement, he said, “rendered moot all of the intelligence that was gathered from the nexus of al-Qaida. The computer drives, the hard drives, the videocasettes, the CDs, the thumb drives, everything. Before that could even be looked through, the political decision was made to take credit for the operation.”
A rediscovered video from Barack Obama’s 2004 Senate race shows him road-testing his current rhetorical techniques, pitching far-left policies, and depicting business and the marketplace as negative forces. ...... [snip].....The 2004 video also showcases several recurring features of Obama’s speeches — his use of the passive tense to glide past controversial issues, his passive-aggressive portrayal of himself as the reasonable moderate among extremists, and his promises of benefits without costs. The video features several segments of Obama pitching himself in an African-American church, complete with a minister’s Sunday cadence. “I believe we can provide homes to the homeless, food to hungry, clothes to the naked,” he preaches while an organist backs him up. He cites his work as a “political organizer” working with several churches to ameliorate the impact of steel-industry shutdowns. But doesn’t offer any examples where his work, or entrepreneurs’ work, helped attract or create new jobs. However, he does say that his organizing work registered more people to vote for the Democratic Party.
But it turns out that the rich actually got poorer under President Bush, and the income gap has been climbing under Obama. What's more, the biggest increase in income inequality over the past three decades took place when Democrat Bill Clinton was in the White House. The wealthiest 5% of U.S. households saw incomes fall 7% after inflation in Bush's eight years in office, according to an IBD analysis of Census Bureau data. A widely used household income inequality measure, the Gini index, was essentially flat over that span. Another inequality gauge, the Theil index, showed a decline. In contrast, the Gini index rose — slightly — in Obama's first two years. Another Census measure of inequality shows it's climbed 5.7% since he took office. Meanwhile, during Clinton's eight years, the wealthiest 5% of American households saw their incomes jump 45% vs. 26% under Reagan. The Gini index shot up 6.7% under Clinton, more than any other president since 1980.
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The fair-lending task force's original policy paper undercuts the notion the financial crisis was all about banker "greed," though it certainly played a role after the fact. Rather, it offers compelling evidence that the crisis evolved chiefly from government mandates and threats to increase lending to applicants who could not afford them.Strangely enough, I remember reading about the study mentioned above way back when. It's nice to have someone other than President Bush to blame. Now, how do we dismantle this group?
I wrote yesterday that the occupiers aren’t a political movement, they are a crime wave. Until now, however, it has been hard to keep up with all of the occupiers’ misdeeds, most of which are reported, if at all, in local press outlets. Now there is a single web site, OWS Exposed, devoted exclusively to revealing the truth about the disreputable, crime-ridden, far left Occupy Wall Street movement. Check it out, for the news reporting that our major news outlets generally prefer not to do. Also, you can go here to sign a petition asking President Obama to stop fomenting class warfare. OWS Exposed is a brand new site, but it looks like the Occupy movement will be around for a while longer, so watch for content to be added daily. UPDATE: As always, the Left doesn’t like to be exposed. The people who run OWS Exposed spent much of the day yesterday dealing with denial of service attacks by enraged liberals. The site is working again today. FURTHER UPDATE: OWSExposed.com is down again this morning, due to more denial of service attacks by liberals. I find it somewhat ironic that the occupiers, who purport to be defending rights of free speech, try to shut down the web sites of those who comment on their activities.Support the good guys and visit Occupy Wall Street Exposed Today! Oh, and Powerline!