Niall Ferguson: Obama’s Gotta Go

Why does Paul Ryan scare the president so much? Because Obama has broken his promises, and it’s clear that the GOP ticket’s path to prosperity is our only hope.

"Mitt Romney is not the best candidate for the presidency I can imagine. But he was clearly the best of the Republican contenders for the nomination. He brings to the presidency precisely the kind of experience—both in the business world and in executive office—that Barack Obama manifestly lacked four years ago. (If only Obama had worked at Bain Capital for a few years, instead of as a community organizer in Chicago, he might understand exactly why the private sector is not “doing fine” right now.)

 "And by picking Ryan as his running mate, Romney has given the first real sign that—unlike Obama—he is a courageous leader who will not duck the challenges America faces.

"The voters now face a stark choice. They can let Barack Obama’s rambling, solipsistic narrative continue until they find themselves living in some American version of Europe, with low growth, high unemployment, even higher debt—and real geopolitical decline.

"Or they can opt for real change: the kind of change that will end four years of economic underperformance, stop the terrifying accumulation of debt, and reestablish a secure fiscal foundation for American national security."

...."I was a good loser four years ago. But this year, fired up by the rise of Ryan, I want badly to win."

Time Mag’s Halperin: The Media Does What Obama Campaign Wants

Fox Nation "On the Today Show this morning, Mark Halperin said the media basically does what the Obama campaign wants them to do:

" "The Obama folks clearly know they've found some traction on this tax return issue with Romney," said NBC's Lester Holt. "And then of course late in the week comes this challenge--'give us a little more and we won't complain anymore.' Has this issue come to the point it's jumped the shark?"

" "I think the press still likes this story a lot, the media is very susceptible to doing what the Obama campaign wants, which is to focus on this," said Halperin."

The Late Great Joe Biden

American Thinker  "And, for now, both sides will champion their viewpoint -- even though conservatives may be seeing their take-back-the-White-House chances wither if the big switch does indeed take place.
"Many signs are actually pointing to a Joe Biden dumping.  But, let's be clear -- Biden will never be dropped because of any "supposed" gaffe he's made.  I mean, have you ever heard the Obama Administration ever declare it made a mistake about anything?  No.  Biden will be removed "compassionately" from the ticket due to "health considerations." "

Rudy Giuliani: If Biden Were a Republican Making These Gaffes 'He'd Be Plastered All Over the Media'

"The fact is what Giuliani said was undeniable. As such, exactly how do today's so-called journalists square this from a professional standpoint? Or does that even matter anymore?

Militant Islam and it's ramifications: New Black Panther audio: 'If they are white, kill ‘em all'

Examiner.com  "The New Black Panther Party opened its radio program earlier this week with audio calling for the murder of all white people in South Africa,The Blaze reported Thursday."

"The shocking audio featured the late Khalid Muhammad, a former spokesman for Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.
" "We give them 24 hours in South Africa to get out of town by sundown. I say, if they don’t get out of town, we kill the men, we kill the women, we kill the children, we kill the babies, we kill the blind, we kill the cripple, we kill the crazy, we kill the fa**ots, we kill the lesbians, I say god d****t we kill them all," he said.
" "If they are white, kill ‘em all," he added."

Along those same lines: ARAB SPRING RUN AMOK: 'BROTHERHOOD' STARTS CRUCIFIXIONS/   Opponents of Egypt's Muslim president executed 'naked on trees'  

Doug Ross Journal

“Crucifixion is a hadd punishment, stipulated in the Quran, Sura 5:33, and therefore an obligatory part of Shariah,” Lopez said. “It’s been a traditional punishment within Islam since the beginning, even though it’s not exclusively Islamic. The Romans used it too. “So, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood haven’t the option to not include crucifixion within their legal code. It’s obligatory to comply with Shariah. And yes, it’s for shock value also to be sure,” Lopez said.Lopez includes a warning for Egypt’s Christians and compares the coming treatment of the Christians to the Jews in Germany.“The Copts must get out of Egypt as soon as possible – for the many millions who will not be able to get out, I expect things will continue to deteriorate – just as they did for Germany’s and Europe’s Jews from the 1930s onward,” Lopez said.“The warnings were there long before the ghettos and round-ups and one-way train trips to the concentration camps began in the 1940s,” she said.

Nothing says "Arab Spring" like a crucifixion or two, eh, Hillary?
"...Ibrahim said extra brutality is reserved for Christians, but the crucifixions are because of Islamic doctrine, and are required by the Quran. The time and other details about the crucifixions were not readily available."

More here.   And here.  And here.

The Man with No Plan; And no plans to get any plan.

Mark Steyn  "For the record, Obama has already made $716 billion in Medicare cuts to pay for Obamacare. That’s three-quarters of a trillion. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, was in Ottawa last week asking Her Majesty’s Canadian Government to chip in for the euro-zone bailout. The euro zone includes some of the richest nations in history, but it’s still not enough. And the entire euro-zone bailout is $450 billion — or a little over half the cost of the first Obama stimulus. Under Obama’s no-plan plan, there’s not enough money on the planet.

Underneath the poseur narcissism, the half-wit demagoguery, and the 13-figure innumeracy is bleak reality: a flatline economy, underwater property, declining social mobility, half the population getting a check each month from the government and with minimum-wage service jobs as the only alternative to long-term dependency.

Don’t Ignore Afghan Soldiers’ Progress

Max Boot  "The entire Afghan National Security Forces are roughly 350,000 strong. So only 0.009% have attacked coalition counterparts this year. The rest of the ANSF, especially the army, is growing in strength and competence. They are, in fact, suffering higher casualties than coalition forces as they fight the Taliban. As General Jim Mattis, head of Central Command, told Congress: “No force is perfect. I would just remind everyone that even Jesus of Nazareth had one out of 12 go to mud on him.” He noted: “We should not allow a few criminals, malcontents, to define the Afghan security forces…. This is a force that’s come a long ways.”

Infiltration or Bad Blood Behind Afghan Attacks?  "The U.S. military trainers handed the new recruit, Mohammad Ismail, his AK-47 to defend his remote Afghan village. He turned around and immediately used it, spraying the Americans with bullets and killing two...." 

LOU COSTELLO-BIDEN AND BUD ABBOT-OBAMA, OR: OBAMA AND BIDEN IN 2013

The Astute Bloggers

Abbott and Costello explain Obama’s Accounting System.

COSTELLO:  I want to talk about the unemployment rate in America. 

ABBOTT:  Good Subject. Terrible Times. It’s 9%.  

COSTELLO:  That many people are out of work? 

 ABBOTT:  No, that’s 16%. COSTELLO:  You just said 9%. 

ABBOTT:  9% Unemployed. 

COSTELLO:  Right 9% out of work.ABBOTT:  No, that’s 16%.   Read more...

Iowa deli co-owner caters for Obama visit, but his T-shirt tells another story

WaPo "And so the co-owner of the Village Corner Deli here agreed to cater Obama’s visit Wednesday — but not before donning a T-shirt blaring the message: “Government didn’t build my business. I did.” "
....
" “No one from the government was there when we were sweating it, when we were building this business,” Murty said. Before him was a bank of chafing dishes filled with smoked beef brisket, pulled pork, vegetable parmesan bake and cheesy hash brown casserole provided to the White House press corps covering the president’s three-day swing across Iowa this week."

Southern Poverty Law Center Website Put Family Research Council On “Hate Map”…

Weasel Zippers posts this CNS article with this question: Anyone else remember the media crucifying Palin over her crosshairs map after the Giffords shooting?

"The man who shot a security guard at the Family Research Council (FRC) on Wednesday was “given a license” to do so because of groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) that have labeled the FRC a “hate group,” said FRC President Tony Perkins. The conservative Christian group is posted on a “Hate Map” on the SPLC’s Web site."

Liberal Legal Center Equated Family Research Council To Nazis And The KKK Prior To Attack By Gunman…

How's that racial healing working out for America?

Big Journalism; MSNBC's Toure: Romney Engaged in 'Niggerization' of Obama  "MSNBC’s Touré, a supposed racial expert who can spot racism in most inanimate objects, most Yiddish phrases, and all English words, has now declared that Mitt Romney is engaged in the “niggerization” of Barack Obama. What exactly did Romney do to earn this reprehensible slur? He said that Obama, whose campaign has already called Romney a racist, a sexist, a felon, and a murderer, should “take [his] campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago.”"

Alan Caruba; Has Obama Been Good for Black Americans?  "In a similar fashion, I have had discussions with blacks who regard any criticism of Obama as racism and who ignore his record in office."
...."I believe Obama has made it nearly impossible for a black American to be elected President for a generation or two. I believe he will be rejected by the voters in November and I believe he will, as he has done throughout his presidency, blame others for it."

Former VA Governor Implies Biden Not Allowed to Use Race Card   "Former Virginia Governor Doug Wilder better take the boulder-size beam out of his own eye before going after Joe Biden's racial gaffes. I'm no fan of Biden but Wilder seems to have conveniently forgotten how he got maximum mileage out of playing the race card in the last presidential election."

Richard Butrick; Our Transformational President   "Now what has he become? A race hustler. A fear monger. A class divider. A character assassin. In short, a rabble-rouser appealing to the basest instincts of distrust and suspicion and fanning the flames of resentment, anger and retribution. It is all spelled out in Victor Hanson's article, 'White' on the Brain."

Artur Davis; Team Obama implies that to defeat Obama is to suspend progress on race.   "...the reasonable question of what drew Obama to a church with a history of incendiary rhetoric was cleverly converted to a teaching moment about an older generation’s fixation with race. When questions about the link between Obama and his old neighbor and fundraiser William Ayers started to burn, the line of inquiry was brushed off as an indirect method of raising fears about black radicalism, and it soon faded."

MSNBC’s Toure: Romney Is Engaging in ‘Niggerization’ of Obama  "Update: Toure isn’t just a racialist nutball. It turns out, he’s a Truther nutball too. No wonder MSNBC hired him."
More on this at JAWA

What to do with Biden?

White House says Obama will stick with Biden as running mate
"Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign lashed out at Biden and President Obama this week after the vice president in an address in Virginia said the Republican’s approach to the financial industry would “put y’all back in chains.” Biden made the remarks in front of a racially mixed audience.
"Obama’s campaign has repeatedly said Biden was simply talking about financial regulation."

America's first black governor tells Joe Biden: 'Slavery is nothing to joke about.’
"He continued: 'The important thing I got out of this was Biden separated himself from what he accused the people of doing. As a matter of fact, what he said is they are going to do something to y’all, not to me. Not us. So he was still involved with that separate American."

Gaffe Alert Level Three: Joe Biden Press Shop Literally Trying to Edit Media Reports
"The controversy surrounding Vice President Joe Biden’s offensive claim that Republicans want to enslave black Americans has become such a concern to the Obama White House that the veep’s staff have resorted to trying to directly censor the news coverage about him. 

"In what is widely believed to be an unprecedented move, the Biden press shop has severely restricted access to vice president and begun telling journalists what they should write about his activities as they write them up."

Virginia Business Owner Says No To Official Visit From Joe Biden

"Why? Because of Obama’s “you didn’t build that” remark.  Apparently, Chris McMurray of the “Crumb And Get It” bakery is a man of principle…"

"...the secret service walked in and told Chris McMurray ”Thanks for standing up and saying ‘no’ — then they bought a whole bunch of cookies and cupcakes.  "Could be that they were just hoping to avoid the logistical hassle of having to secure the bakery and surrounding area before Biden arrived and thought that Biden’s advance team might skip the stop altogether once the first business owner turned him down. (Didn’t work out that way.) Would a small group of Secret Service agents really risk the White House’s wrath by saying something politically unhelpful like this? "

Boy Scouts and the ACLU: A War of Worldviews

Byron Barlowe at Probe Ministries;    Traditional Mainstay As Good Cultural Influence vs. Liberal Legal Activists with Social Engineering Agenda

"When the BSA lays out its broad yet very absolute requirements, the most prominent and controversial are a “duty to God” and a Scout’s pledge to be reverent.This in no way dictates which or even what kind of deity one’s faith is ascribed to, but it sharply clashes with the ACLU’s ideals of secularism and humanism. "....

"If you’re committed to seeing the next generation of boys walk into adulthood not only as capable young men but with their faith intact, Scouting is one of the best venues out there. Hopefully, the ACLU won’t be able to quash that."

BOY SCOUTS DEFEAT ACLU; Court dismisses suit to bar use of military fort
"The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit dismissed a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union to stop the Defense Department from allowing the Boy Scouts of America to hold its National Jamboree every four years at Fort A.P. Hill in Fredericksburg, Va."

ACLU, New York Mayor Defend Chick-fil-A Against Threats to Block Expansion