President Obama’s healthcare law has come at a high cost.
Whether it is taxing wheelchairs and pacemakers or cutting Medicare, free healthcare has come at a very high price.

Learn more about Mitt Romney’s position on:

• Health Care
• Medicare

I’m not eloquent enough to express my thoughts well nor have my experiences paralleled those of Ms. Davis. But we do share one thing in common, disappointment and disgust for the actions of Touré and others who cheapen real discrimination and dilute real hatred by labeling everyone with opposing views as bigots and racists. I wish it was an isolated instance and you could just dismiss Touré and his charges, but this is the new normal where every dissenting voice is shouted down by the “tolerant left” as hate. We finally have an election where the differences between the candidates have never been more clear and the conversation could be profound. But instead of having honest debates about the direction of America, tax policy, the deficit, immigration, the government’s role in health care, life and yes… the definition of marriage – we live in a time where some of the left choose to napalm any messenger with a contrary voice.

Fortunately for our nation, the tipping point may be near. If the reaction to Biden’s chains comment, the aftermath of Touré, and the Chick-Fil-A experiment are any indication… criticizing opposing voices as racists, bigots and homophobes may be acquiring Godwin’s Law status, and the majority of Americans might be tuning them out. I certainly hope so. It would be nice to have a campaign about our fundamental disagreements and not the color of our skin.

We’re going around the country, talking about, ‘How do we put people back to work? How do we improve our schools? How do we make sure that we’re producing American energy? How do we lower our debt in a responsible way?’ And I don’t think you or anybody who’s been watching the campaign would say that in any way we have tried to divide the country. We’ve always tried to bring the country together.

Video at Politico

REALLY?

While the complicit Left-Wing Propaganda Media want to cry foul on this ad, the Romney ad is true. The Obama Administration gutted the work requirements under welfare on July 12, 2012, unless of course you think household chores, massages and smoking cessation count as work.

Are enough people so dependent on the government that they have to re-elect Dear Leader to keep their government-provided allowance for doing chores? We’ll know in 84 days.

Here is the complete and accurate sentence for President Obama and any other revisionists out there.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I’m not sure if President Obama was sending a message to his base by leaving this passage out or if he was continuing to prod Conservative Christians. Maybe he thinks he is God, so those when he speaks those three words don’t apply. It was clearly an intentional edit of the original language, speaking more about the man himself than three choice words.

New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly climbed to a nine-month high last week, yet another setback to the frail economic recovery.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 500,000 in the week ended August 14, the highest since mid-November, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

It takes time for the economy to improve.  The fallacy of the Barack Obama’s argument is that he can improve it by increasing spending, paying off unions and creating new entitlement programs.  Someone who promised unemployment wouldn’t go above 8% has no business claiming credit when the unemployment rate is nearly 10%, the real unemployment rate is between 17 and 22%, and the jobless claims continue to pour in.  Oh, and more Americans are filing for bankruptcy since bankruptcy laws changed in 2005.

So what did we get for all of Obama and the Democrat Controlled Congress’ Spending?  An environment less friendly to growth and less friendly jobs. Quite simply, they are making it worse.

They’ve spent nearly $8 trillion since 2007, including nearly $2 trillion on economic stimulus programs and an equal amount for the Troubled Asset Relief Program and similar bailouts. They’ve effectively nationalized Fortune 500 corporations, taken over the health care sector, and set the regulatory stage for more bailouts and takeovers, but the needle is still stuck. Worse, recovery isn’t likely for many months ahead because those same politicians are planning more of the same failing policies.

Consider that entrepreneurial small businesses are the job-creation machine of a free-enterprise economy. But these firms are about to get smacked with significant tax rate increases that will keep most of them struggling just to survive. President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will let the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 expire as scheduled Jan. 1, 2011. The current 33 percent tax rate on individuals will go to 36 percent, and the current 35 percent rate will increase to 39.5 percent. Those are individual rates, but the majority of small-business profits are taxed as income to individuals.

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Also, an explosion of new anti-business regulations to further hobble the economy is coming soon, thanks to Obama-Reid-Pelosi policies. As ATR’s Grover Norquist told The Examiner, “You don’t know what the law will be next month, or if you will even be allowed to own your business. The only thing you can be sure of is they will raise your taxes. You would be a fool now to go out and hire somebody new.”

Not only has Obama, Pelosi & Co. not lived up to their promises of recovery, but they have created an environment that is far worse for the American worker and the business who might have otherwise hired him.  In good conscious they cannot claim they have improved on anything, its only gotten worse.  Maybe more Americans will wake up and realize that our flirtations with socialism, government interference, and an entitlement program for every outstretched hand has got to stop.

By the way, the unemployment rate when Bush left office was 7.1%.  If Barack Obama wants to compare jobless numbers then and now, I think Bush has him beat.

An interesting ad popped up in the Fayetteville Observer offering “$1000 for any and all letters written by President Barack Obama to the survivors of Heroes killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.”  Regardless of your political affiliation or opinion of the President, I have to imagine that any such letter would be cherished by the family of a fallen soldier who gave their life in service to our country.  I can’t fathom families wanting to part with the letters for $1000 or any sum.  But maybe that’s not the point.  President George W. Bush quietly wrote personal letters to the family of every fallen solider while in office.  Is President Obama doing the same?  Is the purpose of the ad to call attention to letters that the advertiser knows do not exist?

Gary, the gentleman who sponsored the ad, was kind enough to respond to my e-mail and entertain a phone call.  My suspicions regarding the ad were completely wrong.  Gary was very cordial when he told me he was not political and the ad didn’t have political purposes.  He is an autograph collector seeking President Obama’s real signature.  According to Gary, even letters predating Obama’s presidency were signed with an auto-pen, while his letters to families of fallen soldiers are signed personally.  While auto-pen signatures are effectively worthless, the original signature from the President of the United States certainly is not.  And while Gary didn’t sponsor a similar ad during the last administration, he is interested in similar personally signed letters from the Bush administration and collects autographs from all Presidents.

So why the Fayetteville Observer?  Fayetteville is the home to Fort Bragg and the much relied on 82nd Airborne, many of whom have given their lives in service to our country.

I’m not sure how I feel about the ad, but if the family of a fallen soldier wants to sell the letter for a grand, who am I to judge?  While the advertisement seems a bit raw and unsettling in this time of war, I’ve watched enough Pawn Stars to know that this kind of thing can have value.  Is it too soon to sell such a thing, and does it cheapen in anyway the sacrifice that was paid?  Would you feel the same about a letter written to the family of a Vietnam hero?  What about a hero from the Civil War?

h/t: WRDU’s The Morning Rush

In what has become a familiar refrain, the Obama Administration is attacking the Mr. Adams as a GOP activist, dismissing his claims and the obvious visual evidence of voter intimidation that was aired on national news.  The Obama Administration is also apparently ignoring the concerns of Bartle Bull, a Democrat and renowned civil rights attorney who worked as the New York campaign manager for both Robert Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, and received a medal from Senator Ted Kennedy for his work on civil rights.  Mr. Bull was at the polling place in question when the intimidation took place and witnessed first hand the New Black Panthers trying to intimidate voters, saying to him “now you will see what it means to be ruled by the black man cracker” as the man brandished a night stick and stood in front of the polling place.

For yesterday’s segment of Megyn Kelly interviewing J. Christian Adams, click here.  Her segments from today are below (broken into two pieces 1 and 2).

This is a flagrant display of voter intimidation being ignored by the United States Department of Justice.  What does that say about the current administration?  What does that say about the challenges we face in the 2010 and 2012 elections?  Why do President Obama and Eric Holder not support American Citizens and their right to vote?  I guess you have to be black or and illegal alien for Obama and Holder to care.

Where is the Recovery?

We were promised the unemployment rate wouldn’t go above 8%.  We were promised national debt would go down.  We were promised the $8,000 tax credit would save the housing market.  We were promised a lot. Candidate Obama had people believing they wouldn’t have to worry about making their mortgage payments or putting gas in their cars.  They were wrong.

Obama lied.  The trillions of dollars our government has spent on the back of future generations clearly hasn’t helped our economy, and contrary to what Obama said yesterday, many economists never thought it would.  The American public has been bamboozled.  The spending wasn’t designed to help our economy in the first place, it was designed to help Obama and the Progressive Democrat Machine concentrate and retain power.  The “Recovery Act” wasn’t about creating private sector jobs, it was about payoffs to liberal supporters and making people more reliant on the government dole.  The same goes for Health Care, and the vast majority of other spending measures this White House has proposed.  Why do you think Obama is pushing Amnesty instead of Border Security?  He wants to create yet another base of support to concentrate Progressive Power, and another block of voters reliant on government aid.

Google Cloward Piven and think about the results from Obama’s so-called recovery, stimulus and social welfare plans.  Our nation is broke.  Our spending is out of control.  Our deficit is increasing exponentially, and the clowns in Washington continue to spend money we don’t have.  There is only one conclusion – and its not pretty.

U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman today granted a preliminary injunction, halting the moratorium. Government lawyers told Feldman that ban was based on findings in a U.S. report following the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig off the Louisiana coast in April.

“The court is unable to divine or fathom a relationship between the findings and the immense scope of the moratorium,” Feldman said in his 22-page decision. “The blanket moratorium, with no parameters, seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger.”

For the President and the environmental lobby so desperate to end all drilling, this may be a defeat.  But for the people of coastal Louisiana, to the American economy and everyone who puts gas in their cars, this is a massive win.  Accidents will happen.  We must learn from them.  We must act to prevent them.  But we cannot destroy an economy or entire region because mistakes were made.

The Rolling Stone article also presents a fairly clear indictment of the challenges with the Afghanistan war, not because our troops are incapable, but because their hands are tied.  Maybe due to politics at home, or maybe because of the constraints of the General’s counterinsurgency policy in the field, but the frustration over the war is felt on the ground more so than it is at home.  And while McChrystal may be partly responsible for that frustration as his policies are put in place, at least he listens to the troops under his command and is receptive to their complaints.  While public comments regarding your commanding officer is not the typical picture of leadership, everything else about McChrystal is.  When McChrystal received an e-mail from a sergeant critical of his rules of engagement and asking McChrystal to join him on battlefield, the General responded within hours and showed up within days, not for a photo op but to go on foot patrol.  To the men in his charge, he is accessible, accountable and willing to put himself in their shoes.

He speaks his mind with a candor rare for a high-ranking official. He asks for opinions, and seems genuinely interested in the response. He gets briefings on his iPod and listens to books on tape. He carries a custom-made set of nunchucks in his convoy engraved with his name and four stars, and his itinerary often bears a fresh quote from Bruce Lee. (“There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”) He went out on dozens of nighttime raids during his time in Iraq, unprecedented for a top commander, and turned up on missions unannounced, with almost no entourage. “The fucking lads love Stan McChrystal,” says a British officer who serves in Kabul. “You’d be out in Somewhere, Iraq, and someone would take a knee beside you, and a corporal would be like ‘Who the fuck is that?’ And it’s fucking Stan McChrystal.”

It doesn’t hurt that McChrystal was also extremely successful as head of the Joint Special Operations Command, the elite forces that carry out the government’s darkest ops. During the Iraq surge, his team killed and captured thousands of insurgents, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. “JSOC was a killing machine,” says Maj. Gen. Mayville, his chief of operations. McChrystal was also open to new ways of killing. He systematically mapped out terrorist networks, targeting specific insurgents and hunting them down – often with the help of cyberfreaks traditionally shunned by the military. “The Boss would find the 24-year-old kid with a nose ring, with some fucking brilliant degree from MIT, sitting in the corner with 16 computer monitors humming,” says a Special Forces commando who worked with McChrystal in Iraq and now serves on his staff in Kabul. “He’d say, ‘Hey – you fucking muscleheads couldn’t find lunch without help. You got to work together with these guys.’?”

McChrystal is exactly the kind of leader our troops need.  But he screwed up.  Liberals would have cheered a general criticizing his CIC when Bush was in the White House, but now its Obama’s term and they are calling for McChrystal’s head.  They might be right.  There is little doubt that what he said was true, or even that it needed to be said.  But a soldier’s job is to carry out the orders of his commanding officer, any questions or criticism should be private.  If he cannot do that, he should probably resign.  Instead, General McChrystal is giving something to Obama that the President and the leftists want – enough political cover to change directions once again, along with an ass for Obama to kick.  However, the President should tread lightly.  The White House may question General McChrystal’s maturity or judgment, but he is more of a man and more of a leader than Barack Obama will ever be.  And if the General and his staff are willing to speak so candidly while under his command, what more will they say when the uniform finally comes off?

Obama may want to rewrite the history of his response and claim he was on the scene before everyone else was paying attention, but that is patently untrue. When the spill happened, President Obama didn’t go to the gulf, he went to the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC for vacation.  He’s been on another vacation since that time, done a few fundraisers in San Fransisco for Barbara Boxer, played seven or so rounds of golf, hosted a couple White House parties, and dined with Mexican President Calderon who attacked the people of Arizona. It seems like President Obama has been doing everything but working on the oil spill off Louisiana’s coast. Maybe the first “ass” that needs to be kicked is his own.

Such language demeans the office of the President of the United States. I can hear the media complaining about “Cowboy Bush’s” language which sounded refined in comparison. But complaining about his choice of phrasing misses the point. Every time the White House takes political hits, they assume their message just isn’t getting out, so they send Barry in front of the camera to plead his case once more. The problem isn’t that volume of the message. The problem isn’t that he’s not being heard. The problem is the message itself. We don’t want to see finger pointing. We don’t want to hear about lawsuits. We don’t want to listen to the blame game or talking points. We want results. The public is angry. The media should be investigating… and the President… he should lead.

I’m tired of hearing that he is clinching his jaw, pounding his fist, or looking for someone’s “ass to kick.” I don’t need to hear that they are putting their boot on the neck of BP or that fines will be levied indefinitely. What I need, what America needs, is leadership. We need someone who can manage the situation. We need someone who can get results. We need someone who sought to put the proper tools in the field when the oil started to flow, not weeks later. We needed someone to cut the red tape so that Louisiana could have protected their coast line ahead of the oil reaching shore, instead of desperately trying to clean it up now.

President Obama has failed. He promised to be a leader. He promised to get results. Yet it was all “just words”. In the confines of academia or the community organized protest, words may be enough. But real challenges require more.

There is a multitude of lessons to be learned here. I pray for the sake of our nation that President Obama learns them quick. Words, diplomacy and bowing to foreign leaders doesn’t stop people from getting on planes with bombs in their underwear and they certainly don’t stop oil from leaking 5000 feet below. There is no script for catastrophic challenges. There is no teleprompter for life. You must have the mental fortitude to make tough choices and the courage to carry them out. You must anticipate hurdles 10 moves ahead, acting proactively to change the course. Otherwise you are just standing in the way.

Think about the last 48 days. How many times has the message changed? How many times have the solutions changed? How many times have they fallen off course. This isn’t the sign of a proactive manager. This isn’t the sign of of a commander taking the lead. This is a guy who has never faced a challenge, never managed a staff, never run a business or rallied his troops. This is a man overwhelmed by the challenges of his office and unprepared to do his job.

In 2008 Joe Biden said “The Presidency is not something that lends itself to on the job training.” For once in his life, Joe Biden was right.

Could our President be more out of touch? We don’t need him to venting or “yelling at people”, we need leadership. We need the President to take this seriously and do whatever it takes to get the job done. And we needed that in earnest 45 days ago, not half-hearted efforts now. Ask anyone who has handled a crisis for any organization, its not anger that accomplishes the goal, its management of the situation, putting the right people in the right places and implementing a solution. I couldn’t care less how “angry” the President is. I care how competent he is… and in this crisis he has proven to be anything but competent.

This is what happens when you elect someone with NO LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE to the most important leadership role in the world.

Stop blaming others. Stop playing politics. Stop feigning anger. Get results. Plugged the damned hole, COMPLETELY… and get every hand on deck to protect wildlife and the Louisiana coast. The Government FAILED to enact existing plans when the spill first happened. The Government FAILED to respond promptly and appropriately as the oil spread. The Government FAILED to cut the red tape and prevent the oil from reaching the coastline and decimated wildlife. The Government has completely and utterly failed.

The Federal Government inserts itself into many areas of our lives where it doesn’t belong, but this is one area where the Government is responsible. The spill was in Federal Waters operating via Federal Approval. It had recently been inspected by Federal Investigators and granted waivers by Federal Officials.

There was time to create artificial barriers, surround the oil and prevent much of it from reaching the coast line, but the Government failed to do its job. As a matter of fact, the Federal Government and bureaucratic red tape has prevented local and state officials from taking action on their own, and tens of thousands of animals will be lost.

Anger won’t fix it, but leadership could have. Leadership could certainly keep it from getting much worse.

This doesn’t need any commentary, it speaks for itself. Just imagine what the media would be doing if this was President Bush.

Apparently for Team Obama, evil dictators deserve more respect than one of our nation’s governors.  While Obama was openly willing to meet with despots like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he refuses to meet with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer.

What is he afraid of?  On what plane of existence is it ok to meet with leaders of terrorist regimes and not ok to sit down with the dully-elected legitimate governor of one of our 50 states?  Obama and his band of progressive thugs have spoken ad nauseam about the Arizona law, yet he is unwilling to speak leader to leader, with the most influential person in the debate.

I’m certain between golf games, lavish White House parties and fundraisers President Obama could find the time to meet with Governor Brewer.  But he won’t.  And that refusal speaks louder than any action or any words he has spoken on the issue.  This man campaigned as a strong leader unafraid to talk with anyone.  That campaign rhetoric couldn’t be further from the truth.  Barack Obama shields himself from those he disagrees with, refuses to have any intellectual debate, hiding behind his empty rhetoric and teleprompters.  Governor Brewer is a courageous leader willing to stand up for her citizens.  Barack Obama is anything but.

It shouldn’t happen in the United States of America. I can’t imagine it ever happening before. But under Barack Obama it does.

We don’t have much of a special relationship with Great Britan anymore. We snub Benjamin Netanyahu, making him leave out the back door and don’t even allow him to see the Rose Garden, much less speak from it. But when the President of a corrupt nation who encourages his citizens to invade our borders shows up in DC, we throw him lavish parties, and give him high profile podiums from which to attack our great nation.

With a President who promised to “fundamentally transform” our country, whose wife exclaimed she had never been proud of America before, I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise. But it is. As an American, it feels like I’ve been punched in the gut by the lack of respect we received from our President and his continued encouragement of law breaking illegal aliens. I can only imagine how bad it makes the fine folks along the border.

We are taught in grade school that the Executive Branch enforces the laws of the United States of America. Instead of enforcing FEDERAL LAW that REQUIRES IMMIGRANTS TO BE IN THIS COUNTRY LEGALLY and be able to SHOW THEIR DOCUMENTATION ON REQUEST, the President of the United States of America and his administration continue to suggest Arizona’s law that does the same thing is racist.  Do we need to re-write our textbooks?

If you are caught breaking another law in Arizona they can question your legal status.  If you are suspected of being illegal in Mexico, even if you are not committing any other crime, they can deport you without due process.  Heck, even if you are in the country legally, if they suspect you might upset the “equilibrium” of the nation, show “contempt” for their sovereignty, or can’t provide your own health care, they can kick you out.  President Obama could have asked Mexican President Felipe Calderon about that.  He could have stuck up for our country.  But he didn’t.

I don’t know what’s more disgraceful, that Calderon criticized our laws, or that the Obama Administration stood by and did nothing.  When scoring political points in more important than the safety of your nation, you are failing as a President and as an American.

President Obama, where is your pride in our country?  Where is your leadership?

Arizona, the American people are sticking up for you, even if our President isn’t.

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And when Calderon finished ripping Arizona, what do you think the Democrats in Congress did?  They gave him a standing ovation of course.  Sick opportunist cowards.