Economics: The politics of blame

Politico  "The clarity of the downgrade intensifies suggestions that the next year will be in no small part about pinning blame. Republican presidential candidates will blame Obama, and if he wants to escape that, he's likely to launch a more aggressive and direct round of finger-pointing at Republican Congressional leaders than we've seen to date."  Via Taegan D. Goddard's Political Wire

Obama partisans ignore facts when bashing Bush  "As far as tax cuts are concerned, Bush did indeed cut taxes for the wealthy -- along with everybody else who paid income taxes. But does Brown remember that tax revenues actually increased in the years after the Bush tax cuts took effect?"  Byron York.

Obama’s Two Financial Crises  "Why is Barack Obama president of the United States? Media coddling? A weak McCain campaign? A strong, if dishonest, effort by Obama to present himself as a pragmatic centrist? All of these things played a role, but the advent of the subprime crisis at the height of the 2008 presidential campaign was the decisive factor. No drama Obama responded well, while McCain seemed over his head."

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

Iran Commander: We Have Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles

Reza Khalili  "The radicals ruling Iran have now passed a major threshold in both their nuclear and missile programs. Barring any military action, which seems unlikely, there is no stopping them.

"We only have ourselves to blame as it is now certain that the Jihadists in Tehran will have nuclear bombs with the delivery system to target any country on the planet. Though the West relies on the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction, it will find how wrong this policy is with Iran."

Related: Iran's Nuclear Program  "American officials have also suggested that technical complications may have slowed Iran, which was once seen as being only a year or two away from a bomb. But the single biggest factor was seen as being the so-called Stuxnet worm, which analysts describe as likely the product of an Israeli-U.S. collaboration. They described it as the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever deployed."

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report July 20, 2011: Stuxnet returns to bedevil Iran's nuclear systems

"But then, they were stunned to discover that the Stuxnet virus, far from being eradicated, was back with a vengeance and on the offensive against their centrifuges. Iran was forced to adopt a course it had avoided last year, namely to destroy the entire plant of approximately 5,000 working centrifuges and replace them all with new machines."

From the left:

How Iran defeated Obama  "Obama rashly dismissed this highly promising approach. Instead, yielding to his ill-intentioned advisers, he pressed for a new round of Security Council sanctions against Iran. But by making an enemy of Iran, he has simply increased the bill the United States will eventually have to pay – in Afghanistan, and no doubt in Iraq and elsewhere as well."

hyscience.com/

Obama’s Hopeless Iran Strategy  November 04, 2010  "Sometimes, in diplomacy, creative ambiguity can be helpful. But, in the looming showdown over the Iranian nuclear programme, it’s time for some plain speaking."

From the right:

Andrew C. McCarthy;  Understanding Obama on Iran  "It would have been political suicide to issue a statement supportive of the mullahs, so Obama’s instinct was to do the next best thing: to say nothing supportive of the freedom fighters. As this position became increasingly untenable politically, and as Democrats became nervous that his silence would become a winning political round for Republicans, he was moved grudgingly to burble a mild censure of the mullah’s “unjust” repression — on the order of describing a maiming as a regrettable “assault,” though enough for the Obamedia to give him cover."

Gates Says U.S. Lacks a Policy to Thwart Iran   "Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear capability, according to government officials familiar with the document."

Dick Morris: The left turns on Obama

The Hill:   "The pathetic performance of President Obama in the debt debate is showing the left how incompetent and weak a leader it selected. Many are wishing they had Hillary Clinton in the White House instead! Once the man has to move beyond a set teleprompter speech, he is lost. During the BP disaster, he showed what a poor administrator he is. And now he has belied any pretensions to legislative skill. He is the un-Lyndon Johnson."

The stock market drop

Stocks Drop 1% Amid Global Jitters; Vix Soars  "Stocks tumbled in abother choppy session Friday, erasing their earlier rally as investors were quick to take profits following a stronger-than-expected government jobs report and amid ongoing jitters in the euro zone."....

"Come on! Tell me who these new hires are," said Todd Schoenberger, managing director at LandColt Trading. "A number (which still isn't anywhere near normal for a recovery period) surprised like this after the data we received, not to mention the significant layoff announcements we've been hearing about lately, just doesn't seem to add up."

From Heritage: “The White House Does Not Create Jobs”   Read this solid, in-depth article listing the specific hurdles this president is putting before the economy. 

 "The government cannot create private-sector jobs, but it can strongly affect the conditions for job-creating economic growth. But instead, the Obama Administration has helped create the conditions to stifle job growth. This morning, the unemployment rate was 9.1 percent. The positive news was that the unemployment rate went down from 9.2%."

....

"So what are just some of the job-killing conditions that are making the markets and employers nervous?"  Read more:

....

"But it is also crystal clear looking at Administration policy—coupled with unemployment as well as increased debts and deficits—that it also does not produce the conditions to create jobs."

Emphasis added.

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

Making the Case Against Gold ; Look past the hype -- gold isn't invincible:    "The implication is the swelling demand that has made gold such a red-hot commodity could just as quickly turn around and send gold prices south again — if all these buyers have a sudden change of heart."  For you who like to sell low and buy high, check out this chart for GLD.

The Case for and Against Gold  "It's also true that you may pay a markup for buying gold; the cost of buying a security should be factored in any investment decision. However, there are plenty of popular vehicles that, in my view, charge reasonable prices for exposure to gold: GLD, for instance, costs 40 basis points annually.

"Another complaint is that some ways of buying gold come with extra risks. I agree that investors should take those risks into consideration. Gold-mining shares, for one, are definitely more volatile and can be correlated with the stock market especially in sharp declines—so buyer beware."

Obama Glamour Can’t Fix Charisma Deficit (Updated)

Bloomberg.com

...."The alluring icon of hope and change has become just another pol, derided by his supporters as well as his opponents. As one headline succinctly put it: “Obama succumbs to the ways of Washington.”

"Most striking was how irrelevant the president seemed to the entire debate. Obama didn’t present his own alternative to the various congressional plans or make a case for a particular policy. When he tried to address the public, he came off as condescending, self-interested and detached. His pulpit proved anything but bully.

Victor Davis Hanson: Doing Without Sermons From Master Of Invective*    "After the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, President Obama made yet another call for a new civility, urging us all to tone down our partisan rhetoric. But slash-and-burn talk is unfortunately the mother's milk of politics — and no one knows that better than Chicago politician and apparently amnesiac Barack Obama, who as a state legislator, U.S. senator and president has always excelled in the use of uncivil rhetoric and personal invective."

* Dictionary.com  noun;

1. vehement or violent denunciation, censure, or reproach.

2. a railing accusation; vituperation.

3. an insulting or abusive word or expression.

adjective

4. vituperative; denunciatory; censoriously abusive.

What Is Obama Doing About the Economy? His Spokesman Fumbles for an Answer

"Q  Other than calling on Congress to pass things that you’ve been calling on Congress to pass for months -- what is he doing to help the economy?"

The top five Obama regulations that American businesses hate most  "From more than 100 different new regulations either proposed or finalized by the Obama administration, these are the five business groups hate the most, based on the number of separate organizations that wrote Issa to recommend he look into them:"....Read about them here, plus this one:

Home Depot Founder: Obama’s Regulations Are Killing Businesses  

His speeches are wonderful. His output is absolutely, incredibly bad. As he speaks about cutting out regulations, they are now producing thousands of pages of new ones. With just Obamacare by itself, you have a 2,000 page bill that’s probably going end up being 150,000 pages of regulations.

John Kerry: Media Has "Responsibility" To "Not Give Equal Time" To Tea Party

Bully Pulpit

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

..."The media has got to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual." "

More examples of Democrats doing what Democrats do here:

Nancy Pelosi: Republicans Don't Care About Deficit, Want To Destroy Government

Sen. Boxer: Republicans Want ‘Attack On Working Men and Women’

Liberals Feed Lies to Students

Gohmert Slams Debt Deal: Hard to See Any Cuts "When you pull the bill and you actually see that gee, for 2013 you have $526 billion for security category and $501 billion for non-security and 10 years later those have been increased $200 billion it’s hard for me to see how that’s a cut.”

The above was discussed Thursday by Rush Limbaugh

"So somewhere on college campi all across the fruited plain students are being told that as part of this debt deal, Republicans have cut funding for education. So that's why the guy who we just spoke to on the phone, his liberal buddy, said, "Yeah, yeah, the Republicans cut $2 billion from student aid!" (sigh)

"This is how they work. Where is the morality in this? You see, I don't think that it can be said that one side in this debate we're having in this country is no more moral than the other. It is clear that our ideological opponents epitomize immorality. I mean these people lie. That barely scratches the surface in describing what they're capable of and what they do."....

"The amount of money spent on Pell grants in this stupid debt deal goes from $3 billion to almost $13 billion, and the Republicans are getting demonized for cutting when spending has actually increased by almost a factor of four! Where's the morality in that?"  Emphasis added.

Looney Left dep't: Dutch men attempt to file police complaint over Bin Laden’s death

www.artfire.com

BNO NEWS  "Two Dutch men on Tuesday morning attempted to file a police complaint against the United States for carrying out a secret mission inside Pakistan that led to the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, local media reported.

"The Brabants Dagblad newspaper reported that the two men, 30-year-old Ruud Snoeren and 29-year-old Terry Flohr, went to a police station in the southern city of Tilburg in an attempt to file a police complaint."

Democrat contempt for the TEA Party

From “Astro Turf” to “Terrorists”?  "As reported by POLITICO on Monday, Vice-President Joe Biden behind closed doors described tea party Republicans as having acted like “terrorists.” Biden later told CBS News, “I did not use the terrorism word.”

"In any case, the Obama administration has held the tea party movement in utter contempt since its inception, as shown by this timeline of White House statements dating from mid-April 2009:"...

As viewed by cartoonists on the left:

usnews.com/opinion/photos/tea-party-cartoons

Victor Davis Hanson: Snapshot of a Sick Society

Victor Davis Hanson    "You see, it is characteristic of a morally bankrupt society to be absorbed with the evil living without much remembrance of the more noble dead. The former gang member and his family by all means must not be embarrassed; the dead woman is reduced to being “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” "

Obama urban legends, truth or fiction?

The TW did a search of the two main sites for chasing down rumors about President Obama. Here is the most recent information available that we have to trust to be unbiased:

Snopes.com has 269 that they research, 100 on two pages and 69 on the third.

Truth or Fiction.com  covers 175.

By the way, this is what both sites have covering the president's Social Security number:

Truthorfiction has photocopies of documents; 

Snopes has this, this,and this .

We get many juicy bits of info in our email that we just know will bring down this administration so we forward it on. Much turns out to be so idiotic that it damages our own reputation.

There are many solid reasons we can cite that Barack Obama should not have been elected president; let's be sure when we cite them that they cannot be laughed at as ignorant gossip.

The Tunnel Dweller

Happy Birthday, President Obama

http://www.comicallyincorrect.com/comicallyincorrect_002.htm