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Nearly All Regulations Survive Obama 'Reforms'

Investors.com  "An IBD report last week noted that the Obama administration has imposed 75 major rules in its first 26 months. The Federal Register, the official record of rules and regulations, reports 4,200 regulations are in the pipeline. That excludes massive rules to come from the financial reform law and ObamaCare.

"Under Obama, employment at federal regulatory agencies has swelled 13% to over 281,000. Private jobs have shrunk by 5.6%."

One of the nastier regulations: the fairness doctrine.  So the next time you hear some Democrat whine about how Republicans want to take away your rights, remember which party actually spent decades trying to shackle the country's most basic right to free speech.

http://www.newsday.com/opinion/walt-handelsman-1.812005

Thoughts on the Obama presidency you won't hear on NBC, CBS, ABC and CNN

Letterman writer: Obama 'too competent' to make jokes about

What if Obama isn't so smart?  "In 2008, Obama was hailed as a genius, a "first rate intellect," the smartest man to ever be president, and we know now the first part is true. He is the political genius who shed 30 points in his first years in office.

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/

"He's the political genius who blew up his coalition in his first months in office, who led his party to annihilation in the 2010 midterms (while showing utter indifference to the fate of congressional Democrats), and gave the Republicans -- who were on the floor, in a coma -- more than they needed to come roaring back from the dead.

"He is the policy genius who "leads from behind," whose engagement ideas have gone nowhere, whose stimulus stimulated only the deficit, whose health care "success" helped kill off his recovery, and whose efforts to create jobs all fell flat."

Why Obama Can't Lead   "While in reality President Obama is the most powerful man in the world, his Chicago-forged sense of identity as a black political leader restricts him to complaining about why he can't effect meaningful change because of others, the excuse-du-jour now being the GOP House."

Stay on Vacation; spare us another stimulus.  "Here’s a different idea. More than two centuries ago, Adam Smith wrote that “little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice.”

"President Obama could try that approach — and he wouldn’t even have to come back from vacation."  Michael Tanner

From August 18:  You're no Lincoln; Obama’s presidential passion play  "There is, however, this difference: Americans were wrong about Lincoln because they were wrong about themselves 150 years ago. And as they passed through fire and blood, they came to see a greatness in Lincoln not unlike the greatness children see in their parents once they put away adolescent things. In our current national agony, exactly the opposite process has taken place. We have come to see a littleness, not a greatness, in Barack Obama. And it is not for him that we feel sorry, but for ourselves."

Reprised; Charles Krauthammer: Bad luck? Bad faith?  "For weeks, these calumnies have been Obama staples. Calumnies, because they give not an iota of credit to the opposition for trying to promote the public good, as presumably Obama does, but from different premises and principles. Calumnies, because they deny legitimacy to those on the other side of the great national debate about the size and scope and reach of government."

The Five Most Catastrophic Hidden Costs of the Obama Presidency  "In President Obama’s very first meeting with then-minority Republican congressional leaders, efforts at real bipartisanship were met by Obama’s gleeful assertion, “I won.”

"And Obama’s thrill of victory has become America’s agony of defeat. Can anyone anywhere put a dollar figure on this mountainous hidden cost? I would love to see someone try. In fact, I’m quite certain that you readers can think of vast uncounted costs I haven’t even thought of.

"Now, what does our Community Organizer in Chief do to quell the roiling flood waters? He pouts and goes out to play golf at the Vineyard. Have we actually seen the moment when the real sea of debt began to stop its threatening rise? In a word, No. In two, hell no.

"Obama lied; hope died."

"You just can’t put a price tag on so many opportunities lost."....

"I’m closing this piece with the very best Obama-debt analysis I’ve seen to date.  This video comes from the down-to-earth Political Math genius who explains astronomical numbers to math-challenged people like me.  Don’t deny yourself the opportunity of seeing this National Debt Road Trip in full.  It’s worth your gas – pun fully intended."  Below:

 

Syrian Activists Form Opposition Coalition; Don't blow this one, Obama!

GlobalSecurity.org  "Opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have formed a "national council" that they say will coordinate efforts to oust the embattled leader.

"Activists meeting in Turkey announced the group's formation on Tuesday, but they provided few details on the group's make-up."  Also here.

Syrian dissidents opposed to Bashar al-Assad give a press conference in Istanbul

Syria opposition tries to unite, divisions remain  "Syria's fragmented opposition took steps toward forming a national council Tuesday, but serious divisions and mistrust among the members prevented them from presenting a unified front against President Bashar Assad's regime more than five months into the country's uprising, participants said."

Michael Ledeen:  Lessons of Libya (and Syria, and, Some Day, Iran)  ...."Fourth, dithering makes things worse, and we dithered over Libya and Syria, and at best — at best — we are still dithering over Iran. .... Remember that the fear of mass slaughter there was what produced the Obama Doctrine: Lead With the Behind."

DEBKAfile:  Mass executions in Hama's main square as Syrian resistance mounts (Aug 5th)

Council on Foreign Relations:  Obama's Options in Damascus: "It is time for Obama to exercise leadership and press the United States' preferences for the region on Ankara. As Iran evidently explained to Turkey, the Turks must make a choice. The United States, for its part, does not owe Assad a soft landing."  ....

"Only a great power could do so and balance the complex agendas of the Middle East's several regional players. Turkey is not a great power. That role remains the United States' alone."  I'm afraid that is not Mr. Obama's position, meaning while he is in office the world is without that stabilizing force.

http://www.mideasttruth.com/cartoons.html

Post Quake, West Coast Teases East On Social Networks; Photo of devastation!

KCBS5 San Francisco  "“If you watch any type of national news, you would think that Washington, DC was a rubble of buildings,” she said.

"“Really all this excitement over a 5.8 quake??? Come on East Coast, we have those for breakfast out here!!!!” wrote Dennis Miller, 50, a lifelong California resident whose house in Pleasanton sits on an earthquake fault line."   Via Lucianne 

D.C. Earthquake Devastation