Americans prefer Romney over Obama on the economy by more than 2:1!
That’s after a couple of weeks of Democrat harping on Romney’s bank accounts, tax returns, and his wife’s horse.
Americans would seem to be in a serious mood about economic matters.
But why, oh why, could that be?
Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:
It occurs to me that President Obama’s “You Didn’t Build That Yourself” theme may not be original to him.
The St. Paul City Council already had one like it, only theirs is longer: “If you have a successful business, you didn’t build that; at least not here because we won’t let you.”
Not sure which version I like better.
Joe Doakes
Como Park
It’s like asking “who do you like less: Rick Astley or Vanilla Ice?”
Why choose?
Let me see if I’ve got this right this year:
In 1992 and 1996, a record of military service (like George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole had) was absolutely not important…
…but in 2000, it – or the version of it in which being a “military journalist” under the watchful eye of a senior NCO who didn’t let the future Democrat candidate within miles of any known action was bigger and better than being an Air National Guard F-102 pilot. a job with a frighteninly-high “peacetime” casualty rate.
In 2004 it was especially confusing – since having been a Navy “Swift Boat” commander was reputed to give absolute moral authority, while crewmen in those same boats who dissented from their former junior officer’s view of things were said to be blackguards.
It was back to normal in 2008, when a Community Organizer was deemed the real hero, and America’s chattering classes reduced themselves to tittering about the dental state of a man who’d spent years in a POW camp, to say nothing of the circumstances of his getting shot down in the first place.
And this year? Supporters of Obama are trying to paint the community organizer – who was one of about 98% of the adults in his generation who never served in the military – as somehow more noble as the community organizer (for the Mormon Church) who was among the 70-odd percent of people of his generation who got one form of deferment or another – missionary and educational – until he was finished with school, in 1975. Two years after the draft ended.
Which is it?
Obama’s administration, picking winners and losers yet again, destroys even more (outré, déclassé) entrepreneurship.
Although to be fair, this time he didn’t need John Roberts to do it.
The demand for my first episode of “FACQ” was so immense, I thought I’d do a follow-up.
Q: “So what do you think about Mitt’s “Swiss Bank Account”?
A: “Fascinating. Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
Q: “Mitt made his money by short-selling America!”
A: “Speaking of short-selling – how does the value of your house compare to four years ago?”
Q: “Is it moral that Mitt short-sold America?”
A: “He didn’t – that’s a narrative repeated by people who don’t understand the term, intended for and repeated by others who also don’t have a clue. Short-selling is a way of creating wealth out of the process of creative destruction. It in turn creates more capital to create more jobs. Speaking of jobs – are you better off than you were four year ago?
Q: “People don’t like Mitt Romney”
A: “You know what people like less? Being out of work. Did you see last Friday’s jobs report? Most of us are doing much worse than we were four years ago!”
Q: “Hahahaha! Obamacare is constitutional!”
A: “We’re working on it. Now – are you better off than you were four years ago?”
Q: “Mitt’s wife rides a horse!”
A: “I bet the horse is the only one who’s better off than he was four years ago. Speaking of which – are you better off than you were four years ago?”
More as conditions warrant.
They said that if we voted for John McCain, we’d get secretive, imperial government that’d rule by decree and conceal its activities from the peasants.
And they were right! DEA Freedom of Information Act rejections have doubled since 2008:
Despite President Obama’s 2009 executive order requiring agencies to err on the side of disclosure when processing Freedom of Information Act requests, the Drug Enforcement Agency exempted a record number of FOIA requests in 2011 in nearly every category.
But it didn’t set records just in 2011: According to a comparison of publicly available data from FOIA.gov, the DEA rejected more FOIA requests in 2009, 2010, and 2011 than it did during the last year of George W. Bush’s administration.
It gets complicated. I urge you to read the whole thing.
Perhaps you’ve heard about Barack Obama’s new bridal registry, wherein couples can opt to have wedding guests give to Barack Obama in lieu of (or in addition to) wedding gifts.
It’s a brilliant idea, of course – bolster anemic small-donor giving by instituting a voluntary tax on life’s little joys, just one little bit of asceticism for the greater good.
But why stop with weddings?
With that in mind – my top ten other ideas to help “gift” America and the world with four more years of Barack Obama:
6. You kids’ birthday money – If Obama wins, every day will be a birthday party!
5. Bar/Bat Mitzvahs – With news that the Jewish vote is eroding, it’s way past time to get the younger generation on board! Today you are a Democrat! Mazel Tov!
4. Grandma’s Nursing Home Budget – You can clean out that spare bedroom, for the good of the country, right?
3. Your Internet Access bill – good Democrats should be getting their news from NBC anyway, right?
2. Your pledge to MPR – Let’s face it, if Obama loses, the Republicans are going to send tanks to the studios anyway. Just like they did during the Bush Administration.
1. Your “Friday Night On The Town” money – Why should newlyweds carry all the burden? Instead of wasting money trying to get some desirable of your preferred gender to go home with you, donate the money to Obama! Republicans will just outlaw sex if they win, anyway, right?
The SCOTUS kicked the can for the Obamacare ruling down the road to next week.
Predictions?
Yesterday, the President invoked “executive privilege” in order to cover up his administration’s involvement in a plan to slander America’s law-abiding gun owners, which went awry and ended in the death of a Federal agent.
IBD’s editorial board has had enough
President Obama’s contempt for the rule of law hit a new low when, on the eve of a vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, he granted his AG’s 11th-hour request to hide sought-after documents on Operation Fast and Furious under the cover of executive privilege.
“I write now to inform you that the president has asserted executive privilege over the relevant post-Feb. 4, 2011, documents,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole says in a letter that GOP Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa received just before Wednesday’s hearing and vote, a letter that apparently was not mentioned in a last-minute meeting between Issa and Holder Tuesday night.
Or maybe it wasn’t the 11th hour at all, but just a long-planned final gambit in the cover-up of who made the decisions in a federally sponsored effort to provide Mexican drug cartels with sophisticated American firearms and who is ultimately responsible for the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry with these weapons?
Remember – Fast and Furious didn’t attack terrorism. It didn’t even attack the narcotraficantes that have made Northern Mexico more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan, even Chicago.
It was a government financed effort to smear America’s firearms industry and law-abiding gun owners, in pursuit of Obama’s goal to try to reverse the slide in this nation’s gun control laws.
No more.
Executive privilege, as Issa noted in his opening remarks, can only be asserted when it involves direct presidential decision-making and communications. It cannot be invoked, legally, to prevent others in the chain of command from explaining their actions or responding to requests for information on their decisions in which the president is not involved.
And the Administration has been lying to Congress, and the people (over half of whom the program attempted to slander) the entire time:
Back in February 2011, Assistant Attorney General Ron Welch, in response to the investigations by Rep. Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley of the Fast and Furious gun-“walking” program run out of ATF’s Phoenix office, wrote a letter stating that the “allegation that ATF ‘sanctioned’ or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons … is false.”
Later, Deputy Attorney General Cole, in another letter to Congress, wrote: “Facts have come to light during the course of this investigation that indicate the Feb. 4 letter contains inaccuracies.” In other words, the Department of Justice lied to Congress. The cover-up continues with the invocation of executive privilege.
IBD’s editorial writers have reached their conclusion:
Fast and Furious has become worse than Watergate. No one died at Watergate. Just what is in those documents that Obama and Holder so desperately want to hide? Brian Terry’s family and the American people deserve answers.
Well, this was supposed to be the most transparent administration in history.
Rhetorical question: can you imagine what would have happened had George W. Bush spent federal money to smear, say, ACORN or Common Cause or the Violence Policy Center?
Berg’s Seventh Law – “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds” – is going to be one of the dominant themes of the both the Presidential and the Minnesota Legislative campaigns.
We’ve been subjected to a solid year of caterwauling about the Flying Koch Brothers – who donate a fraction of what George Soros has pumped into liberal politics over the years – and “ALEC“, which “donates” ideas and the model legislation, which is pretty much what the Teachers Union does (except the Teachers donate lots of money too). And above all, we’ve been subjected to years of liberal do-gooder fronts like “Common Cause” telling us that money in politics is baaaaaad.
Why?
To draw attention away from the extent to which the Democrats are controlled – not “supported”, “controlled” – by plutocrats.
Here in Minnesota, the DFL has basically handed its entire message operation over to “Alliance for a Better Minnesota“, the PR arm of a network of fundraising groups, unions and, especially, wealthy liberals. They’ve even put Ken Martin, former administrator of part of that network, in charge of the DFL – which is, really, a measure of how much the DFL has become the instrument of the will of a small pack of liberal moneybags.
More on that later.
With Obama’s support among the middle class, small business and blue-collar whites in free fall, and enthusiasm among Latinos, women with kids and the unemployed young stagnant, Obama really has only one important constituency locked up: the extremely wealthy, and Hollywood. And since the regular “big-money” donors – people who donate between $500 and $2,500 to the campaign – are bailing on Obama…
…well, you see the conundrum, here, right? Where’s Obama going to go for money other than the people who still support him completely, and lavishly?
And with that said, who is he going to listen to when it comes time to try to enact policy?
Obama has seen enough Architectural Digest-type interiors in Park Avenue triplexes and Beverly Hills mansions, and on the block in San Francisco’s Pacific Heights, where every house is owned by a billionaire, to develop an expertise in Louis XV walnut commodes and Brunschwig & Fils fabrics.
He’s also had plenty of chances to absorb the advice of the kind of rich liberals who like to give money to Democratic presidents. And the evidence that he has taken some of that advice is his initiatives on three controversial issues, each of which involves serious political risk.
Barone spells out how plutocrat money drove Obama’s positions on gay marriage, government-paid contraception and abortion (and the jamming the bill for both down on churches that oppose them on religious grounds), and…
The third issue is the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport oil produced from tar sands in Canada to United States refineries and create thousands of jobs in the process.
Earlier this year, Susie Buell Tompkins, John Kerry’s fourth-biggest money-raiser in 2004, picketed outside an Obama fundraiser at San Francisco’s W Hotel to protest the pipeline. She wanted Obama’s State Department to block it because she thinks tar sands production hurts the environment and the planet.
Our neighbors the Canadians, who are not unconcerned about the environment themselves, disagree. The pipeline’s promoters say it would produce 20,000 American jobs and would tend to lower U.S. gas prices.
Obama came out on Tompkins’ side and blocked the pipeline.
And enacting non-fiscal, mostly-social policy pushed by plutocrats is great politics, because plutocrats represent real people -right?
If the same-sex marriage reversal seems somewhat risky politically and the contraception mandate considerably riskier, the Keystone pipeline decision seems downright foolish politically. Voters tend to favor it by two-to-one margins — and if they’re not aware of it, the Republicans (and maybe the pro-pipeline unions) will make sure they are.
The priorities of the well-connected, donation-happy and frighteningly well-off will continue to drive Obama’s policy.
And when your liberal friends – and the DFL’s trained chimps like “Common Cause’s” Mike Dean – plump about the evils of money in politics, ask them to clarify who’s money they’re talking about.
Ebony & Irony
The media begins to chum the political waters for race-baiting.
There was little doubt that race was one of the larger underlying narratives of the 2008 presidential campaign. The election of the country’s first African-American president, by the largest popular vote margin in twenty years, was widely hailed by Barack Obama’s supporters as a sign that racial relations had truly improved.
And now, what of the electorate that gave Obama 69 million votes, 365 electoral votes, and an 8% margin of victory? According to the polling analyst du jour, America has not only returned to being a land of racist voters but, in fact, always was:
Though many people believe that our first African-American president won the election thanks in part to increased turnout by African-American voters, Stephens-Davidowitz’s research shows that those votes only added about 1 percentage point to Obama’s totals. “In the general election, this effect was comparatively minor,” he concludes. But in areas with high racial search rates, the fact that Obama is African American worked against him, sometimes significantly.
“The results imply that, relative to the most racially tolerant areas in the United States, prejudice cost Obama between 3.1 percentage points and 5.0 percentage points of the national popular vote,” Stephens-Davidowitz points out in his study. “This implies racial animus gave Obama’s opponent roughly the equivalent of a home-state advantage country-wide.”
Apparently Obama was supposed to have won by 11% or even 15%. Or maybe simply by acclamation.
Where is this thesis of latent racism coming from? Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a doctoral candidate in economics at Harvard University, who gleaned his insight from that fount of all wisdom – the Internet.
Stephens-Davidowitz coupled internet search histories with racially charged words with searches for “Obama”, compared them to results for the 2004 election, and faster than you can google “the Bradley effect,” surmmerized that Americans are actually super secret racists. And if you believe the liberal-leaning polling outfit, Public Policy Polling, you may need to add roughly one-quarter of African-American voters to the ranks of the racists since they’ve soured on Obama in North Carolina. Perhaps Stephens-Davidowitz is saving that study for after he get his doctorate in an unrelated major.
There are a few issues within Stephens-Davidowitz’s thesis that most people wouldn’t contest. Racists still do exist in some places in America and the electorate’s view on the condition of race relations has plummeted since Barack Obama’s election:
A new Newsweek poll puts this remarkable shift in stark relief for the first time. Back in 2008, 52 percent of Americans told Pew Research Center that they expected race relations to get better as a result of Obama’s election; only 9 percent anticipated a decline. But today that 43-point gap has vanished. According to the Newsweek survey, only 32 percent of Americans now think that race relations have improved since the president’s inauguration; roughly the same number (30 percent) believe they have gotten worse. Factor in those who say nothing has changed and the result is staggering: nearly 60 percent of Americans are now convinced that race relations have either deteriorated or stagnated under Obama.
Whites are especially critical of Obama’s approach: a majority (51 percent) actually believe he’s been unhelpful in bridging the country’s racial divide. Even blacks have concluded, by a 20-point margin, that race relations have not improved on Obama’s watch.
A myriad of reasons explain such stark polling data, but it doesn’t help that the media consistently attempts to propagate stories that seek to find racists around every corner. Especially in political coverage which implies that to oppose President Obama is to oppose him based on the color of his skin. It’s false and deeply insulting.
It’s also an attempt to prepare the battlefield post November. As Stephens-Davidowitz concludes:
The state with the highest racially charged search rate was West Virginia, where 41 percent of voters chose Keith Judd, a white man who is also a convicted felon currently in prison in Texas, over Obama just this May. Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, Alabama, and New Jersey rounded out the top 10 most-racist areas, according to the search queries used.
…
What does this mean for this year’s contest? “Losing even two percentage points lowers the probability of a candidate’s winning the popular vote by a third,” Stephens-Davidowitz explains. “Prejudice could cost Mr. Obama crucial states like Ohio, Florida and even Pennsylvania.”
The narrative is set. If Barack Obama loses re-election, the nation of progressive, racially-harmonious voters will have suddenly become extras in a remake of “Deliverance.” But is this exactly a wise political strategy? It’s bad enough when one party blames their defeat on the electorate being stupid enough to fall for the rhetoric of the opposition, but what is there to be gained from inferring that voters are racists?
Do Republicans need to counter that if you vote for Barack Obama, you’re secretly a religious bigot who hates Mormons? Sheesh.
For the benefit of conservatives in the audience, I thought I’d give quick primer on how to answer questions you may commonly get from Democrats and “Indepdendents” as we ramp up for the Presidential campaign.
Q: “What do you think about Obama’s record in pursuing the War on Terror?”
A: It’s fine. Are you better off than you were four years ago?
Q: “What about the “War on Women?” Any comment?
A: There is none. Are women better off economically now than they were four years ago?
Q: “What about George Zimmerman? Doesn’t he speak to a larger racial issue in this country?”
A: It’s in the hands of the Florida courts, and none of us are parties to the case. Are Afro-Americans better off than they were four years ago?
Q: “How about the corrupting influence of money on politics?”
A: Don’t know. Are you better off than you were four years ago?
Q: “Wouldn’t a new stimulus help us build more infrastructure?”
A: No. Are you better off than you were four years ago?
Q: “So don’t you think conservatives are un-thrilled about Mitt Romney?”
A: Don’t care. Are you better off than you were four years ago?
Q: “What about Medicare? Won’t the Paul Ryan plan kill it?”
A: What’s more important – that seniors are cared for, or that a specific program survives? Anyway – don’t care. Are you better off than you were four years ago?
Q: “Didja see where Mitt Romney was allegedly a bully in high school?”
A: Are bullies doing better than they were four years ago?
Q: “Doesn’t Bain Capital destroy jobs?”
A: No more than does George Soros. Now – are you better off than you were four years ago?
Q: “Would you like eggroll or wontons with that?”
A: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?
Any questions?
March, 2012: “You do NOT play politics with civil rights!” – DFLers getting the victorian vapours over the Minnesota Marriage Amendment
May 2012: “Mr. President, please stop making it so hard for us to play politics with civil rights!” – Senate Democrats responding to Obama’s Gay Marriage proclamations.
Barack Obama is “The First Gay President”.
On the one hand, it’s only Andrew Sullivan. I am only dimly aware that Sullivan was still blogging.
On the other hand? Well, Jazz Shaw puts it well:
I’m not such a political neophyte as to suggest that this is unique in politics, but the bold faced, brazen machinations and ham handed plotting which have characterized this “evolution” in the President’s position on the subject at hand are rather breathtaking. And I’m not saying that people don’t actually “evolve” in their positions, beliefs or ideology. I know that my own attitudes and beliefs in my twenties were a far cry – in some instances at least – from where I stand in my fifties. Very few of us spring out of the halls of high school fully formed with all of the opinions we’ll hold until the grave.
But these evolutions generally take place over a long period of time, as exposure to new people and different ideas are examined and experimented with. Some are kept, others are rejected. Barack Obama, on the other hand, has gone in the course of less than a decade from full throated support of gay marriage to full opposition on religious grounds, back to full support. Are we really supposed to be buying this?
Ask Tina Brown.
I’m sure she thinks so.
I didn’t think Andrew Sullivan could do more to undercut the intellectual legitimacy of the left than his “Trigger” obsession – his demented notion that Trig Palin was Sarah’s baby.
Happy to say I was wrong.
The left and media are crowing – quietly, if one can indeed crow quietly – about the “Drop” in the unemployment number, from 8.2 to 8.1% in April.
They are being a lot more subdued about the much more important number; only 63.6% of the labor force from age 16 to retirement is participating in the labor market.
So when you take 8.1% out of that number, it means only 58.45% of the American work force is actually working right now.
Here are some fun facts about the employment figures:
So many people have left the labor force, it’s literally gone off the top of the St. Louis Federal Reserve’s chart:
Looks like they need a new chart.
So what happens to an economy when less than 3/5 of the labor force is actually working for an extended period?
Mitt Romney has been making great hay in recent weeks comparing Obama to Jimmy Carter.
In some ways, Carter had it much tougher than Obama did last year, and his big moment of command decision was a much bigger risk.
Mitt was referring to Obama’s (correct) decision to pull the trigger on the Bin Laden raid, of course. On the one hand, it would have been a tough decision for any President – sending American troops into harm’s way deep inside a “neutral”, “friendly” country on the basis of intelligence tips.
But Obama had at his disposal a military with ten years’ experience fighting a hard war overseas – and at the point of that spear was a special forces community (including many units from all four services, including the SEALs) that has had a decade of very hard experience doing every kind of mission that can be imagined, and some that can’t be. From tracking fugitives to winning tribal political fights to rescuing hostages, the US military, especially our various special operations forces, have done it all. And they’ve all done it together – the Navy’s SEALs operate with the Army’s special ops helicopters and the Air Force’s special ops aircraft seamlessly, without the inter service rivalry that so paralyzed earlier US efforts. And they flew from a base they knew well, in a part of the world in which they now have a total of a decade (maybe two) of experience, using equipment that’s been tried and refined in ten years of continuous conflict.
So while it was a tough decision, “are they capable of pulling it off?” was not one of the variables.
When Jimmy Carter pondered “Operation Eagle Claw” – an incredibly ambitious plan to rescue the American hostages in Iran – he had a few dodgier variables to deal with:
So Jimmy Carter pulled the trigger on a raid with many, many more variables than the Bin Laden raid, all of them bad.
And it showed. Eagle Claw was a resounding failure, one that took down whatever part of his presidency that the economic stagflation might have left standing.
So a rare bout of kudos to Jimmy Carter. He held, and played, a much weaker hand than Barack Obama did.
“Remember when we put that webcam in the office of that loafing professor, and posted the video of him tweeting for eight solid hours? Even during his bathroom break?”
Scarlett laughed, twirling her hair in her finger as I fed her a grape from the basket. “What a dweeb. He tore up that picture of the basket full of puppies I left on his desk!”. She wrinkled her nose exaggerated-but-real distaste.
We were on a beach blanket by one of the ponds in Central Park, on a gorgeous day in 2005. Kite flyers and jump-ropers and dog-walkers meandered around – but I don’t remember hearing or noticing them, or any of the other thrum of the big city. It was just Scarlett and me.
“I do!. How could I forget?” I had to hurry before she put a strawberry in my mouth.
We lay there on the blanket for what seemed like hours, staring into each others’ eyes.
“You like me, don’t you?” she finally said. “Even though our politics are completely the opposite?”
“Of course”, I answered. “There are some things more important than politics. I mean what if…”
She interrupted me with a long, warm counter-kiss. We didn’t say much more before adjourning back to the hotel.
——–
She looked at me, her cheek reflecting a little of the moonlight coming through the window. She pulled the covers up over her shoulders. “That’s what I like about you”.
“Well, I mean…”
“No, not that, she chuckled as I finished off a now-lukewarm glass of room service champagne. “No, I mean, you treat me so…nice. Like a regular person!”
“Why would I not?” I responded, sitting up on one elbow.
“Well, I know I didn’t always think of conservatives as people”, she said, sounding mildly abashed.
“It’s OK. We all grow”
She smiled, and wrapped her arms around me again. “I like that…”
———-
AUTHOR’S NOTE: “Scarlett” was a “Compression” of several different girlfriends, situations and scenarios, real and imagined.
I mean, everyone seems to be doing it these days.
The polls are all over the place – but at the moment, Barack Obama’s re-election bid is not looking nearly as solid as it needs to six months before election day:
The RealClearPolitics poll average puts President Barack Obama at 47 percent and Romney at 44.2 percent – statistically insignificant lead of 2.2 percent.
And that’s after six months of not only the media, but other Republicans, attacking the presumptive nominee without pause.
Drill down into the numbers of the latest CBS poll and there are ominous signs for Obama. Only 33 percent of Americans believe the economy is moving in the right direction. A mere 16 percent feel they are getting ahead financially. Some 38 percent think their situation will get worse if Obama is re-elected, 26 percent think it will get better.
And I suspect if you ask Americans if they’re better off than they were four years ago, the only ones that’d answer “yes” are the insane, Democrat operatives, and…
…well, that’s about it.
Just saying – if you’re pitching a story to the mainstream media about race or gender issues, now would be a good time to make your move; it’ll be a seller’s market.
Joe from Red Squirrel Report has the story that, fictional though it is…:
MTV President Van Toffler announced today that Secretary General Hillary Clinton will host Music Television’s Spring Break coverage in Daytona Beach next year.
…does seem to ably capture The One’s administration’s self-adoring, entitled id pretty well nonetheless.
Remember thirty years ago, when Ronald Reagan stood up for our British allies when their sovereign territory was seized (as part of the Argentinian military dictatorship’s diversion from the woeful economy) by force? How Reagan backed the Brits and Prime Minister Thatcher’s stance that getting foreign policy wishes granted by force was wrong and must not be rewarded by acquiescence?
Barack Obama sure doesn’t:
Only a month after lavishly praising U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, President Barack Obama ditched him at a press conference in Colombia.
Obama’s turnabout came April 15 when he was asked about Argentina’s demand for control of the Falkland Islands, which are home to roughly 3,000 British citizens. The islands are located in the South Atlantic some 300 miles from Argentina.
“Our position on this is that we are going to remain neutral… this is not something that we typically intervene in,” Obama replied to the question.
It’s not an idle question. The Argentines, addled with a left-leaning government that’s losing control of their economy, needs to whip up some nationalist fervor in lieu of bread and circuses. The Falklands – Malvinas, to them – make a handy bit of jingo to toss about.
Oh, yeah – remember back in 2000-2008, when Presidents bobbling geography was a threat to democracy?
Obama also mislabeled the islands as “The Maldives,” partly because Argentina’s government says the Falkland Islands should be called the “Malvinas” islands.
In fact, the Maldive Islands are in the Indian ocean, not in the South Atlantic. They are some 8,200 miles from the Falklands.
He’s a former law professor, doncha know.
Obama’s neutral stance contrasts with his fulsome praise for Cameron and the U.K. during Cameron’s state visit March 14.
“For decades, our troops have stood together on the battlefield… So, David, thank you, as always, for being such an outstanding ally, partner and friend,” Obama declared.
“As I said this morning, because of our efforts, our alliance is as strong as it has ever been,” he added.
The islands have been populated by British citizens since 1833. In April 1982, an Argentinian invasion force occupied the islands, but was ejected by a British fleet that sailed 7,800 miles from the U.K.
The Falklands are now increasingly valuable because the surrounding seabed is expected to contain oil and natural-gas reserves.
In March, Argentinian foreign minister Hector Timerman slammed the U.K.’s plans for oil exploration. Without approval from Argentina, any drilling would be illegal and would prompt civil and criminal charges, he declared.
“The South Atlantic’s oil and gas are property of the Argentine people,” he claimed.
However, Obama’s familiarity with the three-decade-old dispute is unclear.
Neither Cameron nor Obama acknowledged discussing the Argentinian claim during the March state visit.
Also, Obama said the United States “typically” does not intervene in the territorial dispute.
However, the U.S. provided critical aid to the 1982 British naval campaign that defeated the Argentinian invasion force. The aid, approved by President Ronald Reagan, included spy-satellite data and advanced heat-seeking missiles that were used to shoot down Argentina’s anti-ship bombers.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/16/obama-throws-u-k-s-cameron-under-the-bus-over-falklands/#ixzz1sEGp5VtH
…for the prosecutor in Florida to charge George Zimmerman with Second Degree Murder.
Corey also had a message for those who have been rushing to judgment on the case.
“You cannot know what it’s like to launch this type of investigation and come to this conclusion,” State Attorney Angela Corey said during the press conference.
“We don’t prosecute by public pressure or petition. We prosecute cases on the relevant facts of each case and on the laws of the state of Florida.”
The worst thing about how the left has treated this case – as a stage prop for Obama’s re-election campaign – is that it causes doubts in the justice system, among both those who are inclined to support it or not.
Naturally, the Obama administration and the media who push his narrative had every reason to portray the local prosecutors and police as racist peckerwoods who didn’t care that a black kid was dead. And the claque that has been benefitting from that perception for decades now – Al Sharpton and the various race-war pimps – benefit handsomely from that perception.,
Which is, of course, not to say that the local cops and prosecutors did do a good job – in fact, we don’t know. But prosecutor Corey is right – these ambiguous shooting cases frequently do take a long time to work out. A great example – of both the time it takes to work out an ambiguous shooting and of a justice system horribly skewed by official tush-covering – is the Treptow case, from five years ago in Coon Rapids.
So there is much we don’t know about this case.
But one thing that any rational person – and by “rational person” I mean “one who rationally assesses the facts as they know them = does know is that this case is no indictment of “Stand Your Ground”.
Let’s compare and contrast the genesis (so far) of this case, and war-game out its resolution under Florida law (with its Stand Your Ground provisions) and Minnesota law (which still has a vague, ambiguous “duty to retreat”).
Assumptions: We’ll assume that the episode went like this: Martin was walking (we won’t ascribe motives to him yet). Zimmerman, being a diligent (maybe over-diligent) neighborhood watch guy, followed Martin in his car, then got out and confronted Martin. The encounter went south – accounts vary – and either Zimmerman ended up attacking Martin, or Martin attacked Zimmerman (you can believe whichever you want, because only the jury’s perception really matters at this point). At some point, and with whatever motive, Zimmerman shoots Martin, who dies. The police arrive. Zimmerman claims self-defense.
Under Current Minnesota Law, if the case were being tried under Minnesota law, the prosecution would have to prove to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman, while not planning to kill Martin, did in fact intentionally kill Martin without justification. Zimmerman and his attorneys, claiming self-defense, would have to prove to the jury that…:
If Zimmerman failed to convince the jury that he’d met all four of those criteria, then his self-defense claim fails.
Under Current Florida Law – But the case is being tried in Florida. Florida has a “Stand your Ground” law. That means that the prosecutor must prove to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that:
If the prosecution proves all the elements of second-degree murder, and disproves any of the three pillars of his self-defense claim, the jury will likely find ZImmerman guilty. If the jury accepts all three of the pillars of Zimmerman’s claim (or reasonable doubts exist about them), then they will (assuming a rational jury) find him innocent.
The only difference is on whom the burden of proving the legitimacy of the self-defense claim rests. That is all.
Sharpton and the race-war pimps will keep trying to fan this into a racial incident – because it benefits them to do so. White liberals will try – and fail – to turn this into an indictment of “Stand your Ground” laws.
And before too long, the Obama administration will need to find itself another stage prop; the mainstream media, his Praetorian Guard, will dutifully move on, and the case, provided you trust the local justice system, will reach the resolution it would have reached without all the national attention.
Last week’s BLS numbers were worse, naturally, than the media let on.
Unemployment was “down” to 8.2% – after moving at 8.3 for a few months. But remember, that percentage is against the “Labor Force Participation Rate”.
And that rate stands at 63.8%.
So you lop 8.2% off of that figure, and you get a grand dotal of 58.57% of the workforce actually working.
By way of comparison – in October of 2009, when the official unemployment rate was 10%, the participation rate was an even 65%, and 58.5% of the workforce was working. The actual employment rate bottomed out at 58.2%, back in December of 2009. That means that in terms of Americans working, we’re about a third of a percent better than the lowest point in the recession.
When Barack Obama was inaugurated, 60.58% of the workforce was working. That is over two points higher than it was last month.
The administration and media will try to spin these numbers as “recovery, with work to do”.
The truth is, in terms of Americans working, there is no recovery at all.
For nostalgia buffs? The low point in the Bush Administration was 61% – half a point higher than the best Obama rate. The high point was 63.5.
Remember back in 2008, when liberals would stare all starry-eyed into space with that look teenagers used to get when Leif Garrett or Nick Carter appeared in Tiger Beat: “Oooh, Barack Obama was a constitutional lawyer! That’s an ideal background for a President!”
At best, it’s irrelevant; a President needs to know about as much about Constitutional Law as a good cop does. He’s got people for the complicated stuff.
At worst? It’s one of the worst possible backgrounds for a President; the last think you want to do is turn lawyers loose around the law with nearly unlimited power.
Thom Lambert – a lawyer and former law student of President Obama – knows better:
Imagine if you picked up your morning paper to read that one of your astronomy professors had publicly questioned whether the earth, in fact, revolves around the sun. Or suppose that one of your economics professors was quoted as saying that consumers would purchase more gasoline if the price would simply rise. Or maybe your high school math teacher was publicly insisting that 2 + 2 = 5. You’d be a little embarrassed, right? You’d worry that your colleagues and friends might begin to question your astronomical, economic, or mathematical literacy.
(That’s one of the things I always wondered about people who went to law schools or “elite” universities; the idea that the institution one attends defines one’s personality, or indeed personhood. To the extent it does, it’s in the sense of say “Hey, look at me, I went to Cornell, Go Tigers” – or, for that matter, “I’m qualified for a job because I went to an Ivy League school” – at in appropriate times).
(But I digress).
Now you know how I felt this morning when I read in the Wall Street Journal that my own constitutional law professor had stated that it would be “an unprecedented, extraordinary step” for the Supreme Court to “overturn[] a law [i.e., the Affordable Care Act] that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” Putting aside the “strong majority” nonsense (the deeply unpopular Affordable Care Act got through the Senate with the minimum number of votes needed to survive a filibuster and passed 219-212 in the House), saying that it would be “unprecedented” and “extraordinary” for the Supreme Court to strike down a law that violates the Constitution is like saying that Kansas City is the capital of Kansas.
The Democrats, presiding as they have over four years of rot and decay, have switched to the “say what you’d like the truth to be and hope people buy it” school of public relations. History shows it’s not a bad choice, albeit it’s still wrong…
Thus, a Wall Street Journal editorial queried this about the President who “famously taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago”: “[D]id he somehow not teach the historic case of Marbury v. Madison?”
I actually know the answer to that question. It’s no (well, technically yes…he didn’t). President Obama taught “Con Law III” at Chicago. Judicial review, federalism, the separation of powers — the old “structural Constitution” stuff — is covered in “Con Law I” (or at least it was when I was a student). Con Law III covers the Fourteenth Amendment. (Oddly enough, Prof. Obama didn’t seem too concerned about “an unelected group of people” overturning a “duly constituted and passed law” when we were discussing all those famous Fourteenth Amendment cases – Roe v. Wade, Griswold v. Connecticut, Romer v. Evans, etc.) Of course, even a Con Law professor focusing on the Bill of Rights should know that the principle of judicial review has been alive and well since 1803, so I still feel like my educational credentials have been tarnished a bit by the President’s “unprecedented, extraordinary” remarks.
Read the whole thing.
And then get a friend to come out to the polls to vote The Light Worker out of office this fall.
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