Senator Coburn recently remarked that the recent order by Obama, ordering all employers to offer health insurance that covers birth control, sterilizations and abortion pills, regardless of any religious objections….is not that big a deal:

“This is blown out of proportion,” he said. “It is an important point in terms of religious liberty, but it’s a consequence of having too big of a government.”

I don’t agree that it’s blown out of proportion but I do agree on the reasons why no one should be surprised.

This was what ObamaCare was about in the first place. To place every American under the power of the federal government. To rule every aspect of your life. It’s just another power grab by the federal government, and this Administration, at the expense of the States and the individual.

Daniel Henninger:

The Catholic Church has stumbled into the central battle of the 2012 presidential campaign: What are the limits to Barack Obama’s transformative presidency? The Catholic left has just learned one answer: When Mr. Obama says, “Everyone plays by the same set of rules,” it means they conform to his rules. What else could it mean?

This battle is to repeal ObamaCare, plain and simple.

Oh wait, Romney is going to be our nominee…

Nevermind.

Exit quote:

“We are all familiar with an individual mandate that was authorized by the U.S. Congress and notoriously upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court: the affirmative duty of persons of Japanese descent to report to a Civil Control Station. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1943). The distinction between mere prohibition and command played a large role in the internment cases. . . . Korematsu is a perfectly fine precedent: it has never been overruled. Moreover, it is the feds’ best and only precedent. So why don’t they cite it?”

A Previous Subtle Effort By The Same Obama Propagandists

How symbolic, the red and blue spheres merge and the resultant color is a deeper shade of blue. Propaganda is considered effective if it is subtle and delivers a covert or subliminal message without the subject being aware of the intent. In this image, the profile of Obama was superimposed over the merging of Conservatism and Socialism with the profile of Obama and the result is a deeper shade of blue; picturesque and convenient, Obama brings the country together and we are united under a deeper shade of Marxism. It was created by the same team that made the Chrysler commercial; it hasn’t achieved fruition, but not for a lack of effort by Obama and his lackeys.

Our public school systems have been infiltrated with the Leftist Part Line for decades. At first the message was so vague, we thought it was merely coincidences, teachers and text writers surely couldn’t be so blatant and obvious with their political agenda; oh, but think back, while we refused to call liars and Socialists as such, they increased their efforts and relied on terrorists like Bill Ayers, confidant to our president, for the Leftist message now in our children’s text books.

Now, either Eastwood has allowed himself to be duped like a moron or he is a part of the deception; regardless of his intent, he has been used as a key element in the Leftist propaganda movement. Unfortunately, we have all been played for dupes by the creative schemers of the Left for while Eastwood tells America we are at the halftime of the recovery, during the halftime of the largest event in television history, the insidious message is implied that America needs to give Obama four more years to complete his anemic recovery, that seems to elude everyone but billionaires, bankers, and others on the dole.

The fact that Chrysler is staging a fart, stumble, fall type recovery based mainly on enriching Obama cronies and unions with our taxpayer money is pushed from our consciousness; since, we receive the subliminal message to equate the auto maker’s efforts with our fight against terrorism, the struggle of Obama to win reelection, and the struggle of the two athletic teams. In the excitement of the neo-gladitorial struggle portrayed on the boob tube, we are supposed to lose ourselves in the excitement and intellectual numbness of the game, much like the games in Rome that staged to entertain the masses or the mob in Rome to keep them content and less likely to riot. Thus in a similar way, we are played for fools by the people who stage our games; no they aren’t staged to prevent us from rioting, but what an excellent time to exploit our self-imposed stupor to insinuate a covert message to reelect our failed president by one of his corporate acquisitions, with a percentage of Obama’s funny stash money, more commonly known as tax payer money.

Oh, but you say the message is vague and imprecise, how can you make the connection: sorry people, the message is supposed to be vague and imprecise, it is supposed to leave a subliminal impression that will encourage the mobs of unthinking drones to vote for Obama once again; after all, hasn’t he struggled valiantly to repay his contributors and unions with taxpayer money, at least when he can find time between golf games and vacations. The fact that the connection is obvious to those who are alert and cognizant means the message is there. If you want to deny it, like Eastwood who so gallantly gave his check to charity, but also willingly gave his image and voice to the Marxism of Obama, means you either endorse the Socialist cause or you are to dense to notice the ever deepening pool of Obama Socialism.

Presidents of both parties have long extolled the virtues of renewable or green energy. But no president has embraced the concept, nor has spent so much taxpayer money on the idea with nothing to show for it but a string of bankrupt companies, as has Barack Hussein Obama. He has even made the idea a cornerstone of his political and environmental platforms. Yet despite dismal failure, his green energy vision remain undaunted, and he continues to spend taxpayer money and offer all manner of provably untrue or conveniently incomplete success stories.

For example, in his State of the Union speech, Obama said, “It was public research dollars, over the course of 30 years, that helped develop the technologies to extract all this natural gas out of shale rock – reminding us that government support is critical in helping businesses get new energy ideas off the ground.” That preposterous claim is completely untrue. Fracking has been used since 1947, and was originally developed by Stanolind Oil and Gas Corporation, and improved by a small-time, independent oil man named George Mitchell.

In the “great timing” department, Obama said, “In three years our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries.” Two days later, Ener1, high-tech battery manufacturer and the recipient of a $118 million federal grant, filed for bankruptcy. But, the Obama administration advisers promise that battery costs will fall. Why do they think that? The National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences reported that lithium-ion batteries, like those most used in electric vehicles, is not an “emerging” technology, but is quite mature. Dramatic cost drops are most often associated with new technologies.

Obama’s green-energy program has yielded thousands of jobs. The Department of Energy (DOE) reported that $38.6 billion worth of federally backed loans to green-energy companies has created 3,545 new permanent jobs, with each job costing taxpayers $5 million. It would be much cheaper to have simply supported/subsidized these workers until they died. The wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal industries admit that they would cease to exist without mandated consumption orders and massive production subsidies.

Obama’s DOE predicts that consumption of renewable energy will go from 8.4% of total US energy consumption to 10.8% in 2035, with most of that growth coming from government consumption orders. When we total the billions of taxpayer dollars we’re spending on renewable or green energy, that’s not much of a technological revolution. Technological breakthroughs do occur, often without warning. But there is no reason to believe that President Obama is a better energy future forecaster than are market capitalists who stand to gain billions in profits by making good investments in future technologies So for all you green-energy environmentalists, it’s time to put up (especially your own money) or shut up. Speaking of putting up, environmentalists, why are Chevy Volt sales so dismal?

The recent bankruptcies of DOE green-energy loan recipients and the record of bad DOE bets over the past three years caution taxpayers against future crony paybacks, er, taxpayer-backed loans, er, “investments.” American voters should not confuse hope with certainty.

But that’s just my opinion.

Find more articles like this one at RWNO, my personal web site.

At last Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast Obama claimed that his policies are motivated by “God’s command to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’.” He then conflated this law of love with the golden rule, and made a blatantly dishonest claim about Islam:

I know the version of that Golden Rule is found in every major religion and every set of beliefs — from Hinduism to Islam to Judaism to the writings of Plato

In fact, Islam repeatedly and explicitly rejects the law of love, teaching instead a law of hate.

When Jesus was asked “who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29), he answered (via the parable of the good Samaritan) that everyone is everyone’s neighbor. Islam, in contrast, instructs Muslims to be good only to other Muslims. Koran, verse 48.29:

Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and those with him are firm of heart against the unbelievers, compassionate among themselves.

Verse 3.28 says that Muslims can only pretend to befriend infidels:

Let not the believers Take for friends or helpers Unbelievers rather than believers: if any do that, in nothing will there be help from Allah: except by way of precaution, that ye may Guard yourselves from them.

Of course we are very familiar with this in practice, as one revealed terror-plotter after another is described by surprised neighbors and co-workers as the nicest guy.

“That” Golden Rule vs. “The” Golden Rule

I guess Obama can call the law of love “that Golden Rule” if he wants, but there actually is a corollary of the law love (implied by the law of love but not implying it) that is called THE Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12). There is a hadith in Islam (a reported saying of Muhammad) that is similar in form to the Golden Rule, but opposite in substance. It only calls for goodwill towards other Muslims:

None of you will have faith till he wishes for his (Muslim) brother what he likes for himself.

Bukhari 1.2.13, translated by M. Muhsin Khan.

Preceding hadiths back up Kahn’s non-universalist translation of the Muslim version of the Golden Rule. Bukhari 1.2.10 reads:

The Prophet said, “A Muslim is the one who avoids harming Muslims with his tongue and hands…”

In Islam the principle of reciprocity is extended only between Muslims, which makes it a principle, not of reciprocity at all, but of bigotry and prejudice. Islam is the only religion of any significance that does not embrace a universal principle of reciprocity.

Islam rejects even the idea of cooperation. Koran, verse 9.28:

O ye who believe! Truly the Pagans are unclean; so let them not, after this year of theirs, approach the Sacred Mosque. And if ye fear poverty, soon will Allah enrich you, if He wills, out of His bounty, for Allah is All-knowing, All-wise.

i.e. Go broke rather than have dealings with infidels.

Not loving: the Koran’s endless instructions to subjugate and kill infidels

Verse 9.29:

Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

Another murderous verse (Koran 9.5) is the infamous “verse of the sword,” so central to traditional Islamic doctrine:

Slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush.

Etcetera ad nauseum.

Well meaning left-wing multiculturalists convince themselves that these verses are no worse, and no more relevant, than God’s Old Testament instructions to the Jews to annihilate one people after another on their mission to conquer the promised land, but those were not universal instructions to conquer everybody. They are framed as specific permissions from God to attack a specific people at a specific place and time. In accordance with this specificity, these Bible verses have rarely if ever been used as a justification for aggressive conquest.

Not all Christians have always heeded the law of love in its properly universal Christian form, but that was no fault of the Bible, while to Christianity’s great credit its various churches have all long since dedicated themselves to understanding and following the law of love as well as flawed human beings are able, and Judaism has done the same.

Decades before Jesus declared that the commandments to love God and to Love your neighbor are all the law and the prophets, Rabbi Hillel had said the same about the golden rule:

“What is hateful to thee, do not unto thy fellow man: this is the whole Law; the rest is mere commentary.”

Orthodox Islam, in contrast, is aggressively carrying its law of hatred and violent aggression to every corner of the globe.

Our taqiyyist president

Obama quite obviously “don’t know much about history,” and “don’t know much about a science book,” but he does know the Koran. He studied it for years as a child and even took classes in “menjaji,” or Koran recitation in Arabic, which is the gold standard of fundamentalist Islamic education.

Hatred of the infidel is not hidden in Islam. It is the essence of it. No one can study Islam at all without comprehending this, and Obama surely does comprehend it. His claim that Islam embraces the law of love can only be a strategic lie, what in Islam is called taqiyya, and the fact that he seems to be engaging in taqiyya is pretty good evidence that Barack Hussein Obama actually is Muslim and is using the Oval Office to promote Islamic supremacism.

Obama’s claim that he is Christian, not Muslim, is not probative because Islam’s very first instruction to converts is that they should lie about their religion. Tabari 8.23 (one of the hadiths, or reported sayings of Muhammad):

en Nu’aym came to the Prophet. ‘I’ve become a Muslim, but my tribe does not know of my Islam; so command me whatever you will.’ Muhammad said, ‘Make them abandon each other if you can so that they will leave us; for war is deception.’

If Obama is Muslim, he would lie about it. Muslims who live amongst Christians are supposed to pretend that they are Christian, if by doing so they can advance the cause of Islamic conquest.

In one set of hadiths, Muhammad asks who will murder a man whose poetry Muhammad finds offensive. He then grants a volunteer (Muhammad bin Maslama) permission to lie to the victim in order to get close enough to do the deed, and the volunteer proceeds to pretend that he has turned against Muhammad (i.e. that he is no longer a Muslim). This is regarded by orthodox Islam as model behavior.

In sum, Obama is certainly lying about Islam, and hence is almost certainly an orthodox Muslim who embraces the Islamic law of hate. So what else is new? Honestly, we knew this before the 2008 election.

(As for the sheer destructiveness of the policies that Obama claims to be required by love, don’t be such a wuss: “You’ve gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet.”)

What is Mitt Romney doing in the Republican Party? (Although a better question might by why has the Republican Party strayed so far to the left that a guy like Mitt Romney could be its standard bearer…)

Everyone knows the story of Mitt Romney. He ran Bain Capital and financed a number of new businesses and helped rescue others. True, he and Bain failed a few times, but Bain Capital did what it was supposed to do, which is make money for its shareholders. At the end of the day Bain Capital was a net plus in that it actually produced prosperity (and jobs) for a significant number of people, and that accomplishment cannot be obviated simply because they could not rescue every firm they took a position in.

In 1994 Romney sought to unseat Ted Kennedy from the US Senate but lost as Kennedy pilloried him for lacking core (political) convictions. The fact that he had difficulty establishing a coherent message didn’t help. He lost badly. In 2002 he headed west to manage the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. By all accounts he did a tremendous job and accomplished the financial equivalent of a perfect game, making the Olympics profitable for the host city.

Then of course there was his stint as governor of one of the bluest states in the union, Massachusetts. Like Scott Brown, a Republican in Teddy Kennedy’s neighborhood can be expected to be a RINO, and Romney certainly fit the bill. On a variety of issues both social and economic Romney was… shall we say purple in his approach. But at the end of the day he was more conservative than his predecessor in one of America’s most liberal states.

Add to that the fact that he’s a good looking guy with a great family and he seems like a poster child for putting Barack Obama in the unemployment line. It’s claimed he’s the Republican who can deliver Massachusetts and other key states like as Pennsylvania, Florida and probably Ohio and Nevada.

The problem is, he won’t.

When conservatives stand by conservative ideals, when conservatives clearly and coherently articulate the conservative principles of limited government, fiscal restraint and low taxes, they win. Not sure? In the three Reagan elections (counting Bush-41 in ’88 as an extension of Reagan’s policies) the GOP garnered 54% of the popular vote and beat the Democrats by an average of 11.9%. Contrast that with the elections since Reagan, beginning with Bush 41’s second run. Over the course of those five elections, the GOP has garnered an average of 44.4% of the vote while the Democrats earned an average of 48.3%. The GOP went from an average of 11.9% ahead to an average deficit of 4.4%. That is a 15 point swing in the wrong direction. What’s the difference? Solid conservative vs. milquetoast moderate. Unfortunately Mittens Romney is an extension of that milquetoast strategy.

Ominously, while 2012 may be the most important American election in a century, the two candidates seeking the White House are not going to be particularly distinguishable to voters – if we assume Mittens gets the nomination. Everyone knows that Barack Obama is a statist with socialist & populist instincts. Romney, in slight contrast, may be a capitalist, but on government policy he’s not enormously different. He supported the government’s TARP bailouts of the banks, he regularly plays the populist card of middle class tax cuts while arguing for increasing taxes on the rich, and of course there is RomneyCare, his signature achievement in Massachusetts that was literally the blueprint for the thing he rails against at every whistle-stop event: ObamaCare. Then there is his 59 point tax plan which does little to streamline the tax code and of course penalizes those earning over $200,000 a year. Finally there is his bizarre suggestion last week that the minimum wage should be indexed to inflation, something even our Socialist in Chief has not suggested. (Is it possible that the financial genius Mitt has no clue about how actual economics work?)

At this critical time when the United States is so clearly heading down the road to perdition what the country needs is someone to stand up on the biggest soapbox he can find and sing the praises of the capitalist system and make a clear and articulate argument for small, constitutional, limited government. We need someone to inspire and challenge the American people to throw off the yoke of the nanny state and pick themselves up by their bootstraps and in doing so become the economic vanguard of the world once again. Unfortunately, what we get instead is a GOP candidate who is in many respects largely indistinguishable from his statist, redistributionist opponent.

There is an old saying that you can’t fight something with nothing. In the case of Mitt Romney the GOP is hoping to fight the omnipresent government type Obama with the slightly less onerous, big government type Romney. Conservatives despise Barack Obama and they would likely turn out to vote if the GOP were to trot out Mickey Mouse to run against him. They won’t require the GOP to light a fire under them to get them to the polls. The middle sea of “moderates” on the other hand won’t respond to nothing. If the mass of largely disengaged Americans who are not political junkies finds that there is little or nothing to distinguish the candidates from one another then they will likely remain on the sidelines and not bother to vote. In a tight race intensity is the key to success. As such, Romney is a losing candidate. As can be seen by the fervency of the not-Romney elements of the GOP, the anemic turnout in Florida and Romney’s canned speeches and uninspiring debate performances, Mitt Romney is incapable of stirring the animal spirits of the base, never mind the general public.

Barack Obama is salivating at the prospect of facing off against Mittens. Knowing that Romney is incapable of articulating or defending strong conservative principals or even inspiring his own party – never mind the muddling middle – Obama can do what he does best: demagogue Republicans (up and down the ticket) and inspire his base with populist platitudes that are like blood in the water to the left. The result will not only be another four years of Barack Obama, but it will likely mean something of a bloodbath in the down ticket races as well, from the House to the neighborhood dog catcher.

Mitt Romney may be the candidate who finally puts an end to a Republican Party that has outlived its usefulness and ushers in a truly conservative Tea Party driven party. One might wish that GOP good riddance. The only question is however, will the United States as we know it survive another four years of Barack Obama so that there’s something left for the Tea Party calvary to come to the rescue of?

Romney is not my first choice in the Republican primary.  Nor is he my second.  On some days, he is not even my third choice.

It does not bother me that he is rich; I have no problems with the sort of work he does, but I do abhor dishonesty, and it riles me that he is buying this election with a staggering number of dishonest ads.

I also have problems with Romney’s core.  Is he really a conservative, or is he just portraying himself as one because he thinks that will get him the presidency?  Bachmann, Santorum, Palin, Cain, Paul?  I know where all of these people stand and I trust that what they say is what they actually believe.  Romney got elected in a blue state saying some very liberal things.  He passed the precursor to Obamacare, so he’s done some very liberal things.

Some people change.  Some people govern, find themselves, and become more conservative.  But Romney’s dishonest negative ads make he think, maybe this guy is dishonest himself,

You see, conservatives Republicans see their candidates very differently than Democrats see theirs.  You talk to any Democrat about Barrack Obama and his shortcomings, and he will defend Obama to the hilt, blame Bush or blame Republican obstructionism.  Those liberals who might say something ill about Obama might admit, “He just isn’t doing enough;” as if putting 2 car companies, the entire housing market, the student loan sector, the banking industry and soon the medical sector under government control is not going far enough.  Or, appointing two Supreme Court judges who could care less about the founding principles or the constitution; they will vote for their left-wing ideas every time, and write supporting opinions for same even if they have to quote Venusian law in order to support their position.  Not nutty enough for some liberals.  That is the worst you will hear about Obama from his fan base/supporters.

For most conservatives who are paying attention, if you ask them what’s wrong with Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, Paul, McCain or Bush, make sure you have 30 minutes each, at least, to allow them to unload.  That’s how we’re different from liberals.  We don’t like our own guys most of the time, and we’ll let you know why.

Conservatives aren’t looking for a messiah; conservatives aren’t looking for a utopia; we know that this is a real world with flawed candidates; so we just want someone who will actually uphold the constitution and protect our freedoms.

Many of us would love a government that was so not in our lives that, we might even forget to vote.

We all know that Romney probably doesn’t have a conservative core.   It’s possible that he does, but I doubt it; and about 60% of the Republican electorate seem to feel the same way.   This is why he may get a majority of the votes, but not over 50%.  Even though he has been campaigning now for 6 years and even we have heard for the past 6 months that he is our inevitable nominee.  We still don’t like him much.

But, who we like less?  Obama.  After 3 years, with our economy not really recovering, with food stamp usage soaring, with the most anemic “rebound” from a recession in American history, this guy is not able to re-calibrate.  It is not in his DNA.  None of his programs are really working and there are a stack of ignored jobs bills stacked up in the Senate—but, it would never occur to President Obama to try something different.   It never occurs to him to take one of the small jobs bills and say, “You know, I disagree with this in principle, but I believe as President of the United States, I should at least give it a try.  Reid, let this come up for a vote, and if it passes, I will sign it.”  Not going to happen.  Not now.  Not next month.  And not over the next 5 years.   For whatever reason, Obama is so steeped in his political theology that he cannot even consider that he is wrong.  He cannot even consider an alternate approach, even though half of the country would like to see him try something different.

When the American people sent him a message in 2010, and trounced the Democrats in the House, in historic proportions, President Obama never thinks, “Okay, this is what the American people want…maybe I should listen to them?”  All he does is try to set himself up politically against the House, and “run against a do-nothing Congress.”  It is political strategy to him; nothing else.

Now, he will use a conservative vocabulary when he gives a speech.  He knows that polls well.  He’ll talk about tax cuts all day long, but he has never proposed any tax cuts at any time ever.  The best Obama has done is he has gone along with the current tax rates or he does something known as tax credits.  A tax credit is, “I, the government, will give you, the taxpayer, money, if you do what I tell you to do.”  That is not a tax cut.  2 or 3 years from now, the same people who pass these tax credits will rail against them as evil tax loopholes for the rich.   Just in case you didn’t know, this has already happened.  Democrats have come out against tax credits which they themselves passed a few years back.  Most voters did not even know.

So, back to Romney.  Probably not a true conservative; probably not a true conservative core.  But he may be our candidate.

What are our options?  Stay home and don’t vote?  Send a nasty note to the GOP saying revoke my membership?  Vote for some 3rd party candidate?

Here is the end result for all 3 of those approaches: Obama gets elected for a second term, and he may even see this as a mandate for more of the same.

I know one person who suggested a mass exodus from the Republican party to a 3rd party so that we would keep this discussion alive.  You do know about Ralph Nader’s party right?  Do you know its name?  When was the last time you heard Nader spout his viewpoints?

In the past year, Ron Paul has done more for the libertarian cause than all of the libertarians added together over the past decade.  I am not a libertarian, but I do know their positions, and this is because of Ron Paul—who is a Republican running as a Republican.  If Ron Paul recognizes that he is more credible as a Republican than as running for the Libertarian party, maybe he knows something?

Don’t try to tell me Congress will control Obama.  We have spent around $1.5 trillion more than we take in for each of the past 3 years, and one of those years was with a Republican-controlled House.  Do you really think this will change in Obama’s second term?  The House, theoretically, could shut this spending down…but they did not.

We already know who Obama will nominate for the Supreme Court.  Do you think that will change?

We already know that Obama will do everything in his power to take over more sectors of the economy.  It is in his DNA.  He believes that if government runs the show, that things will be more fair.  He believes that if we just take a few more dollars from the rich and give that to his rich cronies and to the poor, that things will be better.

Here’s what we get with Romney.  It may not be his first instinct to move in a conservative direction.  Fine.  However, it will not be in his first instinct to take over any sector of our economy.  What about Massachusetts healthcare, you say?  That is with an 80% Democratic state congress.   The likely makeup of Congress this coming term, if he gets any grandiose ideas, is to say, “No you don’t, Mr. President.  That’s not happening.”  Well, we can hope, anyway.

When it comes to a Supreme Court nominee; we will have to take Romney’s word on that.  He has named off legitimate, constitutional justices as his preferred choice.  Maybe he’s lying?  I don’t know.  But, at the very least, he gives a full-throated support to our good justices.  Do you think Obama would ever appoint a Scalia, a Roberts or a Thomas?  Never.  Not on your life.  However, there is a reasonable chance to suppose the Romney would.  That 5th constitutional vote on the court is EVERYTHING.  That will affect life in the United States for the next 30 years.

Next, legislation.  It is my understanding to the House has passed 30 jobs bills and they are sitting in the trash can over at the Senate.  They won’t be looked at, they won’t be debated and they will not be voted on.

Let’s say that Romney was in charge.  Do you think that Speaker of the House Boehner might talk to him about this?  Do you think that there might be a push from the House for him to support these bills?  Again, under Romney, that is likely; under Obama, not a chance.

Let me remind you about FDR.  He took a tough recession and drove us into the Great Depression.  Did he change his mind?  Did he try something new?  For 12–13 years, even though some of his own cabinet began to disagree with his approach, he determined that the solution is government.  Government is always the solution.  Do you think that Obama is any less an ideologue?

So, sure, Romney is an establishment Republican; he’s a country club Republican and I’m a Sam’s Club Republican.   I have no problem with his wealth; I just don’t trust his core.

But I know that he will be better than Obama.  At the very least, Romney can be pushed to the right and he will probably select a good judge or two.  But as the saying goes, we cannot let the perfect get in the way of the good.

This Article will be in the Conservative Review #214 when it is published this Sunday (2/5/2012)   (HTML)  (PDF)

Barack Obama: On the eighth day, God said “raise taxes”

President Barack Obama has been taking lumps from Republicans for years over his support for Wall Street and health care reform, but today at the National Prayer Breakfast he claimed support from on high to defend two of his most controversial legislative achievements.

“And so when I talk about our financial institutions playing by the same rules as folks on Main Street, when I talk about making sure insurance companies aren’t discriminating against those who are already sick, or making sure that unscrupulous lenders aren’t taking advantage of the most vulnerable among us, I do so because I genuinely believe it will make the economy stronger for everybody. But I also do it because I know that far too many neighbors in our country have been hurt and treated unfairly over the last few years, and I believe in God’s command to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’”

Sure you do.

“I know the version of that Golden Rule is found in every major religion and every set of beliefs — from Hinduism to Islam to Judaism to the writings of Plato,” Obama added.

If nothing else works, let’s try guilt:

“And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense. But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that ‘for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,’” Obama said, noting Jewish and Islamic teachings say much the same thing.

Three years into Obama’s Presidency we learn that we didn’t just elect a President, we elected an evangelical. Well, that does explain the “pitchforks” thing.

So how do you like him now?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hypocrisy….thy name is Obama: (h/t Gateway Pundit)

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been traveling around the country and talking with folks about my blueprint for an economy built to last. It’s a blueprint that focuses on restoring the things we’ve always done best. Our strengths. American manufacturing. American energy. The skills and education of American workers.

And most importantly, American values like fairness and responsibility.

We know what happened when we strayed from those values over the past decade – especially when it comes to our housing market.

Lenders sold loans to families who couldn’t afford them. Banks packaged those mortgages up and traded them for phony profits. It drove up prices and created an unsustainable bubble that burst – and left millions of families who did everything right in a world of hurt.

It was wrong. The housing crisis has been the single biggest drag on our recovery from the recession. It has kept millions of families in debt and unable to spend, and it has left hundreds of thousands of construction workers out of a job.

Who created the policies that forced these banks to make loans to people who had no business getting those loans?

And who helped push those policies?

Why Mr. Obama did.

And now he wants to whine that the banks shouldn’t of given those high-risk loans out when they were REQUIRED to?

Now, we know what happens, because we’ve just seen it — what happened when we stray from those values. We saw what happened over the past decade when we strayed from those values — especially when it comes to the massive housing bubble that burst and hurt so many people. Millions of families who did the right and the responsible thing, folks who shopped for a home that they could afford, secured a mortgage, made their payments each month — they were hurt badly by the irresponsible actions of other people who weren’t playing by the same rules, weren’t taking the same care, weren’t acting as responsibly. By lenders who sold loans to people who they knew couldn’t afford the mortgages; and buyers who bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford; and banks that packaged those mortgages up and traded them to reap phantom profits, knowing that they were building a house of cards.

So which is it? Could those people afford that house or not?

Either way, these banks were FORCED to give these loans by the social do-gooders and this was one of the major reasons for the collapse in our economy, as Mata pointed out in her “US Economy – A “perfect storm” of housing and lending events” post.

But now we see the line of attack Obama will be using this election season. And what better foil does he have to use it against than a Mitt Romney?

It appears we need to focus on keeping the House and taking the Senate this election season, because we are going to get another four years of Obama.

Today, I received an email from a very liberal Obama supporter which contained a reference to the following link:

Dishonest Fox Chart: Food Stamps Edition

This article portrays Fox News and Newt Gingrich as being dishonest about the number of SNAP (food stamps, for those of you in Rio Linda) recipients that have been added to the rolls since Obama became “The Precadent”. In the article, they reference the Annenberg Foundation’s FactCheck.org, which, in turn purports to prove that Fox and Gingrich are lying.

Being the curious type, and knowing that “Obama the Humble” and “Ayers the Terrorist” both worked together at the Annenberg Foundation Challenge, I decided to check out the raw data from which they got their analysis. Here is what I found:

I used the end of the previous president’s term(s) through the end of the next president’s term(s) to determine the net change in average participation.

As one can see, during Obama’s three years in office, on average, over 16 million new people have been enrolled in the SNAP program. In the FactCheck article they state: “We asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition service for month-by-month figures going back to January 2001.” They do not show or give a link to those figures, however, I found this table on the USDA web site, which has a different set of numbers from the table above.

Using the data from the previous link, the number of people on food stamps at the end of the Bush administration was 31,567,037, while the current number (not including November or December of 2011) is 46,224,722. FactCheck calculates that to be 14.2 million, while claiming 14.7 million were added during Bush’s 2 terms. My math tells me that the real answer is 14,657,685 added during Obama’s ¾ of a term.

Since I could not find the same monthly tables that Annenberg used for the years 2000 through 2008, I can’t check the rest of their assumptions, however, since they are so slipshod in their math skills, one has to wonder if they are purposefully trying to excuse Obama and blame Bush or just sloppy. Then again, FactCheck is run by the Annenberg Foundation, one of Obama’s former hangouts.

I’m a huge fan of lotteries. It is one of the few taxes that citizens pay willingly. Spending a dollar for the prospect of winning a hundred million is kind of fun. And the fact that the state’s provide the fig leaf of responsibility by suggesting all funds go to support education makes players feel like they are doing their part to support the kids… Imagine, a way of taxing people that is actually voluntary!

Unfortunately however, most taxes are anything but voluntary, particularly those levied by the federal government. In 2011 the federal government took in $2.3 trillion in taxes. Not only did all of that get spent, but about $1.4 trillion more. And now Barack Obama is in charge of the spending machine. In the three years he has been President, Obama has spent over $11 trillion. That includes not only the $6.6 trillion Uncle Sam took in in taxes, but an additional $4.6 trillion that has been borrowed on your behalf, or at least for which you have the responsibility to repay. If we split that sum up amongst every one of the 310 million people in the country that would mean that Barack Obama has racked up $15,300 in debt on behalf of every American… in a mere three years.

I’d like to give that $4.6 trillion sinkhole a little perspective. Imagine that instead of that money going to failed green jobs scam companies like Solyndra or to university research departments to play World of Warcraft, something completely different happened. Imagine that on January 20, 2009 Barack Obama had knocked on your door, teleprompter in hand, and said “(Insert taxpayer’s name here) I’d like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to be your President. And to show my gratitude I’d like to give you $5,000 a year each of the next three years. Now, you’ll have to pay it back of course, but I’ll spread the payments over 30 years and give you an interest rate of about zero.” You think to yourself “If I don’t take the deal he’s just going to barrow it in my name and spend it on poetry readings or some such thing.” Deciding you could come up with much better places to spend the money, you respond “Thank you Mr. President. I’ll take the checks.”

Wow. He gives you the check. Now you have a $5,000 you didn’t have the day before. You start dreaming…”What am I going to spend my new found money on?” Well, if you were an average driver, who uses approximately 700 gallons of gas a year, you could pay for gasoline for the year and still have about $3,000 left over. You could then spend $720 on clothes, $1,000 on entertainment and still have enough left over to cover half of your healthcare expenditures. “Not bad” you think.

Now of course, that is just one $5,000 check. Given that the average American home has 2.6 people in it, the President quickly takes the $5,000 check back and gives you a $13,000 family sized check instead. You think “Wow, almost $40,000 over three years! Now that’s some serious cash!” At $13,000 the government just covered more than 80% of the total cost of what the average American family spends on housing. That’s pretty nice. At a rate that is lower than your mortgage as well. “This is going to be great” you tell yourself.

Then, suddenly, just as the President is about to leave you stop dreaming and start thinking about the big picture. “Mr. President! Wait! $13,000 a year for my family would be nice, God knows we could use it, but I don’t want to bankrupt the country or close down the government or endanger the national defense.” “Good citizen” President Obama calls you, “Don’t worry about that, we’ll make do with the just the $2.2 trillion or so we take in in taxes annually, which is, exactly what we spent way back in the ancient period known as 2004.” – remember this is a dream.

The wheels start turning in your mind… How different is your life in 2009 relative to 2004, and how much did a bigger government have to do with making it better or worse? Recognizing that the growth in government didn’t do much to make life any better over that time, you decide you can indeed live with a government budget circa 2004. “Ok, Mr. President, never mind, I’ll keep the money! Thank you!”

Of course, that was all a dream. Unfortunately for you – and the rest of America – you are apparently too stupid to know what to do with your own money, or in this case, the money the government borrows but forces you to pay back. As such, no mortgage payments for you. No gas money, movie money, no check to cover your family’s annual food and insurance bills combined. No, unfortunately, while you are indeed on the hook for the money, guys like Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Barney Frank get to decide where all that money (and much more) goes…

Fundamentally that is the problem. And it’s not just money. Nor is it just the federal government. Increasingly it’s all levels of government and it’s seemingly about everything. Rather than parents being responsible for their kid’s fitness, schools have to ban burgers and pizza. Rather than drivers being able to purchase the kinds of vehicles they want, the government mandates auto companies sell cars no one wants and forces drivers to put inflation spurring ethanol into them. Rather than consumers and markets deciding what banks, and energy companies and health insurance companies should succeed, the government sticks its nose in virtually everywhere at almost every turn.

At the end of the day, few people could or would run their lives the same way the government runs the country – and unfortunately running the country is exactly what governments try and do. Fantasy budgeting and accounting, a distinct lack of accountability, a nonexistent correlation between success and continued funding, and a Pollyanna notion that all human problems and foibles can be obviated by government fiat.

Whether we get another four years of Barack Obama (God help us…) or a first term of one of the big government “conservatives” currently vying for the GOP nomination, voters should understand that the deficits and the regulation creep and the basic suffocation of the capitalist system that made America great will not be put asunder until we nominate and elect a President who:

1. Recognizes that the power of the federal government is constrained by the Constitution, particularly the 10th Amendment;
2. Understands that role of government is to do only those things which citizens cannot do themselves and nothing more;
3. Has the intelligence to know where the line between the two is;
4. Has the courage to tell voters to begin acting accordingly.

That doesn’t sound like too difficult a task. One wonders why the GOP can’t seem to figure it out.