XL Pipeline DemonstratorsOur "Great Waffler and Chief" Barack Obama has dithered too long again, this time in expanding domestic U.S. energy production. The XL pipeline expansion project has been effectively bypassed by refiners as doubt persisted it will ever be built after being bullied by Obama's hard-line EPA regulations to control all businesses in the United States by his Centralized Federal Government Bureaucracy's policies. The TransCanada Corporation has had two years of delays further diminishing their need for the XL Pipeline project altogether.
In spite of the inexperienced, sophomoric antics NYC XL Pipeline Demonstratorsby Obama, the railroads have dramatically increased crude oil shipments from Canada down to the Gulf Coast refineries. Enbridge, a pipeline competitor to the XL pipeline expanded existing pipes using previously approved rights-of-ways that side-stepped further federal permissions and permit approvals. More U.S. domestic pumping due to fracking shale fields has created such an over-abundance of light-grade oil that refiners will not need more of the more difficult to refine oil-sands heavy crude to meet plant production capacities.
The Obama Regulations are like a "Program for the Planned Obsolescence and Elimination of Government Interference" in interstate petroleum products--Finally, Obama is getting it right!
Apparently now, due to Obama running off at the mouth during his Presidential"Did you say 'Red Line' or WHAT action?" Heh, Heh, Heh! campaigning without a teleprompter fired up to spew out pre-written tested thoughts and actions, he discovered his OWN words do have meaning and can carry weight.More like a frightened little boy who discovered matches burn down houses, he rants about a "red line Syria was not to cross or else" and ignited an entire fire storm in the Middle east by playing with deadly matches - missiles and bombs.
BoBo, Playing with Matches Again? ...Naughty, Naughty!
Today, President Barack Obama was referred to as a King, and rightfully so considering his actions.He has been running around the United States Government as if it was his monarchy without any legislative body while treating Congress as if it exists only to rubber stamp royal executive order decrees.
Today, Obama abdicated his throne by throwing back into the lap of Congress his decision for a limited military strike, thereby tying one arm behind the backs of our soldiers to fully engage the enemy amounting to a slap oh the wrist, and seeking congressional authorization to proceed under the war powers act to approve unilateral military actions against Syria even though he has the power to independently act unilaterally with little notice.
Obama has thrown his own decision responsibilities onto the shoulders of congress in order to preserve his poll numbers without political damage, it is classic "leading from behind" tactics.Obama wants an attack on Syria “just strong enough to avoid getting mocked.” It does not advance his cause going to war alone without Obama covering his ass gaining the American people's overall support to fall back on if his "limited actions" fail. Hey! ...Can you "Blame Bush" now?
Failure Outcome Scenarios:
Israel is bombed in retaliation as U.S. ally
Iran lobs missiles into Turkey since U.S. uses NATO bases there
Egypt attacks Israel
Russian Syrian coastal naval base is hit - Obama secretly said no attacks
Russia attacks Saudia Arabia
al-Assad regime’s stockpile of chemical weapons are stolen
U.S. "Surgical" missile strikes hit innocent civilians, homes & schools
Destroyed hidden Chemical weapons arsenals set off huge explosions that immediately kill, contaminate & decimate population centers.
Chemical weapons gases waft and blow over adjacent countries
What Do You Call This? - "A Clean Surgical Strike"? This picture has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, purports to show a fireball from an explosion at a weapons depot set off by rocket attacks that struck government-held districts in the central Syrian city of Homs on Thursday, Aug. 1, 2013.
Obama's congressional action here on Syria is eerily similar during his term as an Illinois State Senator when he attended legislative sessions. When faced with difficult political issues he waffled on decisions, some people determined that Obama's "present" votes were a sign of political weakness or political finagling to con the system. Such votes can help them avoid the political fall-out of voting "no": Obama voted "present" 129 times as a state senator. Although abused, the true intent of a vote of "present" rather than "yes" or "no" votes was a way for lawmakers to voice legitimate opposition due to an issue, not simply just to duck a vote up or down.
Obama now has sentenced literally hundreds, if not thousands, of Syrian people to die as they will been cast out to occupy areas around chemical weapons stockpiles as human shields--like the other men, women and children that Obama was aghast about being killed by sarin nerve gas just weeks ago in Syria.Again, Obama has shown lack of any world experience, leadership skills, proven management techniques and, foremost, judgement. President Obama is present, he is doing on-the-job-training with real-time consequences.
President Obama has now earned an even more dubious title of "lower than a snake's belly" since people now equate him to a ranking status below President James Buchanan (1857-1861). I believe that the public in general today are tired of "Amateur Hour" in the White House and are looking for a more seasoned professional that can handle multi-tasking while leading the most powerful country in the world. It's time to start bringing the U.S. back up to a place of leadership again.
Brief Bio of President James Buchanan:
James Buchanan was the last president born in the 18th century and, at age 65, was the second-oldest man to be elected President at the time. He served from March 4, 1857, to March 4, 1861. Buchanan stated about the growing schism in the country: "The object of my administration will be to destroy sectional party, North or South, and to restore harmony to the Union under a national and conservative government." On Buchanan's final day as president, March 4, 1861, he remarked to the incoming Lincoln, "If you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland [sic., his house outside of Lancaster, Pennsylvania] you are a happy man."
The day before his own death, May 31, 1868, Buchanan predicted that "history will vindicate my memory".Nevertheless, historians criticized Buchanan for his unwillingness or inability to act in the face of secession and stood by witnessing the meltdown of the Union.
In the Historical rankings of United States Presidents of every president from 1789 to 2009 considering presidential achievements, leadership qualities, failures and faults, consistently place Buchanan among the least successful presidents had him ranking last, in 40th place. He did, however, rank as the first President over a century ago who was likely our first gay president, having remained unmarried during his lifetime and lived with a man who was arguably nick-named back in their day as our "first gay vice president", his room mate, Rufus King.
This time Obama and his thug organization have been taken to the mats by a Harvard College Professor with impeccable credentials. Thefactual claim is that he is being discredited under orchestrated attacks for criticizing President Obama appears to bAlinsky's strategy of deception is to go on attack like with this magzine cover headline.e some more "Chicago style politics" a la "The Rules For Radicals" manifesto by Saul Alinsky, the famous liberal left-wing anarchist who Obama studied as an activist while trained in Chicago in ACORN. Conservatives think of war as a metaphor when applied to politics. For radicals, the war is real. That is why when partisans of the left go into battle, they set out to destroy their opponents by stigmatizing them as “racists", “sexists,” “homophobes” and “Islamophobes.” It is also why they so often pretend to be what they are not (“liberals” or "progressives" for example) and rarely say what they mean. Deception for them is a military tactic in a war that is designed to eliminate the enemy.
This Newsweek article appeared late last year, August 27, 2012 under the din of the crescendo of electioneering politics which swept it under as scandal after scandal piled up on top of it to cover up Obama's false claims and erroneous assumptions as the "community-organizer-in-chief during his first term.
It will require a large cup of coffee, some patience analyzing well documented graphs and charts with source hyperlinks galore to take you to even more details. This is the stuff that Washington does not want the electorate to see or they will know that there is no Captain at the helm of our ship-- we have been cast adrift with a minor deck hand that could no more find the North Star from the Happy Star at Burger King to navigate us through the water passage in the Panama Canal.
This is "crunch time" for all Americans to really look at our Congressmen in the eye and say "NO" to Obamacare.I look forward to hearing from my readers who will be contacting their Republican and Democrat representatives as this bill comes up for a Final "YEA" or "NAY" vote in Congress.
Niall Ferguson Defends Newsweek Cover
Aug 21, 2012 12:13 PM EDT
First, duck the argument. Second, nitpick. Third, vilify - That’s what Niall Ferguson says liberal bloggers did after reading his Newsweek story on Obama’s record. Here, he offers a point-by-point defense of his argument.
The other day, a British friend asked me if there was anything about the United States I disliked. I was happily on vacation and couldn’t think of anything. But now I remember. I really can’t stand America’s liberal bloggers.
“We know no spectacle so ridiculous,” Lord Macaulay famously wrote, “as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.” But the spectacle of the American liberal blogosphere in one of its almost daily fits of righteous indignation is not so much ridiculous as faintly sinister. Why? Because what I have encountered since the publication of my Newsweek article criticizing President Obama looks suspiciously like an orchestrated attempt to discredit me.
Writer Bio: Niall Campbell Douglas Ferguson is a British
historian relating to the fields of and economic history.
His expertise in particular includes bond markets,
hyperinflation and the history of colonialism.
Niall Ferguson Newsweek Article: 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.
I was a good loser four years ago. “In the grand scheme of history,” I wrote the day after Barack Obama’s election as president, “four decades is not an especially long time. Yet in that brief period America has gone from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to the apotheosis of Barack Obama. You would not be human if you failed to acknowledge this as a cause for great rejoicing.”
Despite having been, full disclosure, an adviser to John McCain, I acknowledged his opponent’s remarkable qualities: his soaring oratory, his cool, hard-to-ruffle temperament, and his near faultless campaign organization.
Yet the question confronting the country nearly four years later is not who was the better candidate four years ago. It is whether the winner has delivered on his promises. And the sad truth is that he has not.
In his inaugural address, Obama promised “not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.” He promised to “build the roads and bridges, the electric grids, and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.” He promised to “restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.” And he promised to “transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.” Unfortunately the president’s scorecard on every single one of those bold pledges is pitiful.
In an unguarded moment earlier this year, the president commented that the private sector of the economy was “doing fine.” Certainly, the stock market is well up (by 74 percent) relative to the close on Inauguration Day 2009. But the total number of private-sector jobs is still 4.3 million below the January 2008 peak. Meanwhile, since 2008, a staggering 3.6 million Americans have been added to Social Security’s disability insurance program. This is one of many ways unemployment is being concealed.
In his fiscal year 2010 budget—the first he presented—the president envisaged growth of 3.2 percent in 2010, 4.0 percent in 2011, 4.6 percent in 2012. The actual numbers were 2.4 percent in 2010 and 1.8 percent in 2011; few forecasters now expect it to be much above 2.3 percent this year.
Unemployment was supposed to be 6 percent by now. It has averaged 8.2 percent this year so far. Meanwhile real median annual household income has dropped more than 5 percent since June 2009. Nearly 110 million individuals received a welfare benefit in 2011, mostly Medicaid or food stamps. [sic.] 317 million people in 2013 U.S. Pop.
Welcome to Obama’s America: nearly half the population is not represented on a taxable return—almost exactly the same proportion that lives in a household where at least one member receives some type of government benefit. We are becoming the 50–50 nation—half of us paying the taxes, the other half receiving the benefits.
Niall Ferguson discusses Obama's broken promises on ‘Face the Nation.’
Time: 0.57
And all this despite a far bigger hike in the federal debt than we were promised. According to the 2010 budget, the debt in public hands was supposed to fall in relation to GDP from 67 percent in 2010 to less than 66 percent this year. If only. By the end of this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), it will reach 70 percent of GDP. These figures significantly understate the debt problem, however. The ratio that matters is debt to revenue. That number has leapt upward from 165 percent in 2008 to 262 percent this year, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund. Among developed economies, only Ireland and Spain have seen a bigger deterioration.
Not only did the initial fiscal stimulus fade after the sugar rush of 2009, but the president has done absolutely nothing to close the long-term gap between spending and revenue.
His much-vaunted health-care reform will not prevent spending on health programs growing from more than 5 percent of GDP today to almost 10 percent in 2037. Add the projected increase in the costs of Social Security and you are looking at a total bill of 16 percent of GDP 25 years from now. That is only slightly less than the average cost of all federal programs and activities, apart from net interest payments, over the past 40 years. Under this president’s policies, the debt is on course to approach 200 percent of GDP in 2037—a mountain of debt that is bound to reduce growth even further.
Justine Rosenthal, executive editor of Newsweek and The Daily Beast, discusses the controversial cover story.
Time: 3:58
My critics have three things in common. First, they wholly fail to respond to the central arguments of the piece. Second, they claim to be engaged in “fact checking,” whereas in nearly all cases they are merely offering alternative (often silly or skewed) interpretations of the facts. Third, they adopt a tone of outrage that would be appropriate only if I had argued that, say, women’s bodies can somehow prevent pregnancies in case of “legitimate rape.”
Their approach is highly effective, and I must remember it if I ever decide to organize an intellectual witch hunt. What makes it so irksome is that it simultaneously dodges the central thesis of my piece and at the same time seeks to brand me as a liar. The icing on the cake has been the attempt by some bloggers to demand that I be sacked not just by Newsweek but also by Harvard University, where I am a tenured professor. It is especially piquant to read these demands from people who would presumably defend academic freedom in the last ditch—provided it is the freedom to publish opinions in line with their own ideology.
***
Let me begin by restating my argument. President Obama should be judged on his record in office. In my view, he has not only failed to live up to the high expectations of those who voted for him, but also to the pledges he made in his inaugural address. (In order to be fair, I deliberately did not judge his performance against his campaign pledges.) The economy has performed less well than the White House led us to expect, despite a bigger increase in national debt than it led us to expect (exhibit 1).
1. FY2010 Budget and Outcomes / Latest Projections
Note, however, that I cut the president some slack on the economy. He inherited a bigger mess than most people appreciated back in November 2008. And forces beyond his control (Europe) have clearly dampened the recovery. Here’s what I wrote:
It was pretty hard to foresee what was going to happen to the economy in the years after 2008. Yet surely we can legitimately blame the president for the political mistakes of the past four years. After all, it’s the president’s job to run the executive branch effectively—to lead the nation. And here is where his failure has been greatest.
Notice, then, that my central critique of the president is not that the economy has underperformed, but that he has not been an effective leader of the executive branch. I go on to detail his well-documented difficulties in managing his team of economic advisers and his disastrous decision to leave it to his own party in Congress to define the terms of his stimulus, financial reform, and health-care reform. I also argue that he has consistently failed to address the crucial issue of long-term fiscal balance, with the result that the nation is now hurtling toward a fiscal cliff of tax hikes and drastic spending cuts.
The second part of my argument is that these failures of domestic leadership have fed into a failure of foreign policy. As commander in chief, President Obama has earned a relatively strong public reputation mainly thanks to a campaign of assassination that liberal bloggers would have excoriated if it had been conducted by his predecessor. His withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan will, in my view, prove to have been premature. More importantly, he has been indecisive in his responses to the revolutionary wave that has swept the Middle East since the Iranian “green” revolution of 2009. And, finally, he has been inconsistent and ineffective in his handling of the major strategic challenge of our times, the rise of China. (By the way, I base these judgments on a great many off-the-record conversations with influential policy-makers here and abroad. When a very senior military man asks you: “Have we any global strategy beyond just trying to hang on?,” you have a right to wonder if the answer might be “No.”)
I concluded by arguing that, for all these reasons, voters would be better advised to vote for Mitt Romney, especially now that he has picked Paul Ryan as his running mate. (Repeat disclosure: I made it clear in the piece that I was a John McCain supporter four years ago and am a friend of Ryan’s.)
***
So much for my argument, which not one of my critics has addressed. Instead, they have unleashed a storm of nit-picking and vilification. Well, let’s start with the nits.
I have already dealt with Paul Krugman’s opening salvo on the effects of the Affordable Care Act on the deficit. The point (still not grasped by Andrew Sullivan, who thinks I was just talking about the gross costs) is that the net effect of ACA on the deficit is not positive if you look at the likely costs and the likely revenues from the tax hikes that will finance it. To get to the Congressional Budget Office’s conclusion that, over 10 years, the ACA will reduce the deficit, you need to believe that the act will half the rate of growth of Medicare costs. I am not inclined to be optimistic about that.
Incidentally, while we are on the subject of the CBO’s projections, since March 2010 it has already increased its estimate of the gross costs over 10 years from $944 billion to $1,856 billion, its estimate of total revenue from $631 billion to $1,221 billion, and its estimate of total Medicare cuts from $454 billion to $743 billion. This really is a fast-moving target.
But the clincher is the CBO’s latest long-run budget forecast, according to which total federal government expenditure on health care is projected to rise from 4.9 percent of GDP this year to between 13.8 and 15.1 percent in 75 years’ time (see exhibit 2). The two scenarios the CBO presents imply either a massive tax hike, taking federal revenues from 15.8 to 29.8 percent of GDP, or a massive rise in the debt, to above 250 percent of GDP.
Matthew O’Brien followed up Krugman with “A Full Fact-Check.” Actually, this isn’t actually a fact check because O’Brien doesn’t successfully identify a single error. He just offers his own opinions.
Let’s take all 11 of them one by one. (It’s boring, I know, but necessary.)
1. NF: The total number of private-sector jobs is still 4.3 million below the January 2008 peak.
MO’B: The private sector has actually added jobs since Obama was sworn in.
Both these statements are true. I picked the high point of January 2008 because it seems to me reasonable to ask how much of the ground lost in the crisis have we actually made up under Obama. The answer is not much. You may not like that, but it’s a fact (exhibit 3).
3. Total Private Employment From the Current Employment Statistics Survey (National)
2. NF: Meanwhile real median annual household income has dropped more than 5 percent since June 2009.
MO’B: I can't replicate this result. It's difficult, because Ferguson does not cite his source.
Well, either Newsweek starts publishing footnotes or Matthew O’Brien reads a little more widely than just official statistics, which generally lag months behind. The monthly data for Median Household Income Index (HII) is produced by Sentier (exhibit 4).
3. NF: Nearly half the population is not represented on a taxable return--—almost exactly the same proportion that lives in a household where at least one member receives some type of government benefit.
MO’B: It is true that 46 percent of households did not pay federal income tax in 2011.
In other words, my fact is true. Because I specifically said “taxable return.” You don't tend to record your sales tax payments on those.
4. NF: By the end of this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), [debt-to-GDP ratio] will reach 70 percent of GDP. These figures significantly understate the debt problem, however. The ratio that matters is debt to revenue. That number has leapt upward from 165 percent in 2008 to 262 percent this year, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund.
MO’B: This is incorrect. Ferguson had it right the first time—the number that matters is debt-to-GDP, not debt-to-revenue. The former reflects our capacity to pay; the latter our willingness to pay right now.
Again, O’Brien is offering here an opinion as a fact. He should read my book The Cash Nexus (2001) to understand why he doesn’t know what he is talking about. Governments don’t pay interest and redemption with GDP but with tax revenues. If it were easy to increase the tax share of GDP, we wouldn't be heading for a fiscal cliff. My numbers are correct and can be checked using the IMF’s World Economic Outlook online database.
5. NF: Not only did the initial fiscal stimulus fade after the sugar rush of 2009, but the president has done absolutely nothing to close the long-term gap between spending and revenue.
MO’B: Ferguson wasn't always a critic of the stimulus. Back in August 2009, he wrote that "the stimulus clearly made a significant contribution to stabilizing the U.S. economy."
This earlier statement does not contradict my article. As anyone who looks at the data knows, the stimulus had a positive but very short-run impact and failed to achieve self-sustaining growth in the way Keynesians hoped (exhibit 5).
6. NF: The most recent estimate for the difference between the net present value of federal government liabilities and the net present value of future federal revenues—what economist Larry Kotlikoff calls the true "fiscal gap"—-is $222 trillion.
MO’B: That's a lot of trillions! But if our fiscal gap is “really” this many trillions, why can we borrow for 30 years for a real rate of 0.64 percent? It's because this number is meaningless.
Well, O’Brien is welcome to share his opinion with Larry Kotlikoff, the world’s leading authority on generational accounting and long-term fiscal stability. What he can't claim is that my statement is factually inaccurate. As for the argument that current low borrowing costs mean we don’t need to worry about the debt—which is like saying that mortgage default rates in 2006 meant we didn't need to worry about subprime—that has been comprehensively demolished in a new paper by Carmen and Vincent Reinhart and Ken Rogoff.
7. NF: The country's largest banks are at least $50 billion short of meeting new capital requirements under the new ‘Basel III’ accords governing bank capital adequacy.
MO’B: This would be damning if we had already fully implemented the Basel III bank rules. We have not.
But I didn’t say that we had already implemented Basel III. So that’s another fact “checked” and found to be … correct.
8. NF: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 did nothing to address the core defects of the system: the long-run explosion of Medicare costs as the baby boomers retire, the “fee for service” model that drives health-care inflation, the link from employment to insurance that explains why so many Americans lack coverage, and the excessive costs of the liability insurance that our doctors need to protect them from our lawyers.
MO’B: There are reasons to think the ACA will fail to address the core defects of the health care system. But it's wrong to say it does nothing to address them. Here's a partial list of the things Obamacare does. It tackles the long-run explosion of Medicare costs. It tries to move away from the fee-for-service model that drives healthcare inflation. And it cuts the link between employment and insurance.
Now let’s check O’Brien’s facts. So the ACA “tackles the long-run explosion of Medicare costs.” Right. That’s why the net cost of Medicare is still projected by the CBO to treble from 3.2 percent of GDP to between 9 and 10 percent by 2087.
9. NF: Having set up a bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, headed by retired Wyoming Republican senator Alan Simpson and former Clinton chief of staff Erskine Bowles, Obama effectively sidelined its recommendations of approximately $3 trillion in cuts and $1 trillion in added revenues over the coming decade. As a result there was no "grand bargain" with the House Republicans—which means that, barring some miracle, the country will hit a fiscal cliff on Jan. 1 …
MO’B: Now, Obama did not push Congress to adopt Simpson-Bowles, but neither did Congress adopt it.
So that’s another fact “checked” and found to be correct. And if you want to gauge the president’s share of the responsibility for the failure of a fiscal grand bargain, read Matt Bai in The New York Times.
10. NF: The World Bank expects the U.S. to grow by just 2 percent in 2012. China will grow four times faster than that; India three times faster. By 2017 the International Monetary Fund predicts, the GDP of China will overtake that of the United States.
MO’B: China has 1.3 billion people. The United States has 300 million people. China's GDP will pass ours when they are only four times poorer than us. That might happen in 2017; it might happen later … It doesn't really matter if and when this happens. There's nothing Obama can do to prevent China from catching up—nor should Obama want to!
Well, there you have it. It “doesn’t really matter” that for the first time since the 1880s the United States is about to cease being the world’s largest economy. Fact checked, found to be correct, and countered with an utterly naive opinion.
11. NF: In his notorious “you didn't build that” speech, Obama listed what he considers the greatest achievements of big government: the Internet, the GI Bill, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hoover Dam, the Apollo moon landing, and even (bizarrely) the creation of the middle class. Sadly, he couldn't mention anything comparable that his administration has achieved.
MO’B: It's bizarre that Ferguson thinks government policies didn't help create America's middle class. America was the first country to make high school compulsory.
Fact checked and—oh no! I really did get that wrong. It was the government that created the middle class, as well as the Golden Gate Bridge! Remind me to tell Karl Marx about this. It will come as news to him that, contrary to his life’s work, the superstructure in fact created the base. (Come to think of it, this is going to come as shock to a lot of American liberals too. Imagine! The state actually created the bourgeoisie! Who knew?)
***
Now, we come to the third part of the strategy. First, duck the argument. Second, nitpick. Third, vilify.
First prize goes to Berkeley professor Brad DeLong, whose blog opened with the headline “Fire-His-Ass-Now.” “He lied,” rants DeLong. “Convene a committee at Harvard to examine whether he has the moral character to teach at a university.” My own counter-suggestion would be to convene a committee at Berkeley to examine whether or not Professor DeLong is spending too much of his time blogging when he really should be conducting serious research or teaching his students. For example, why hasn’t Professor DeLong published that economic history of the 20th century he’s been promising for the past six years? It can’t be writer’s block, that’s for sure.
Runner up is James Fallows of The Atlantic for his hilariously pompous post “As a Harvard Alum, I Apologize.” Well, as an Oxford alum, I laugh.
In third place comes Krugman with his charge of “unethical commentary … a plain misrepresentation of the facts” requiring “an abject correction.” The idea of getting a lesson from Paul Krugman about the ethics of commentary is almost as funny as Fallows’s apologizing on behalf of Harvard. Both these paragons of the commentariat, by the way, shamelessly accused me of racism three years ago when I drew an innocent parallel between President Obama and “Felix the Cat.” I don’t know of many more unethical tricks than to brand someone who criticizes the president a racist.
And, finally, a consolation prize for righteous indignation goes to Dylan Byers of Politico (“ridiculous, misleading, ethically questionable”).
I could, of course, go on. By tonight there will doubtless be more. The art of the modern witch hunt is to get as many like-minded bloggers as possible to repeat and preferably exaggerate the claims until finally it becomes received opinion that you are on the brink of being fired and indeed deported in chains.
I don’t usually waste time on this kind of thing. In the Internet age, you can spend one week writing a piece and the next three responding to criticism, most of it (as we have seen) worthless.
But there comes a point when you have to ask yourself: Has the American public sphere so degenerated that it is now impossible to make the case for a change of president without being set upon in cyberspace by a suspiciously well-organized gang of the current incumbent’s most ideologically committed supporters?
Now that really would be something to dislike about this country.
Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University. He is also a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His new book, The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, has just been published by Penguin Press.
The political debates on the "U.S. National Debt Crisis" are again fast approaching while going into the 2014 mid-term elections season with senate and house seats up for grabs.Again the ideological and political gap between the parties remains wide with the partisan bickering and name calling as neither side wishes to be called "the party of NO" when the budget cuts lop off or reduce spending programs - So now what are those politicians doing for those seats? Answers: Same-O & Nada!
Entering into my discussion, I introduce Father Charles S. Casassa SJ, (1910-1989) chancellor emeritus of Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles,Father Charles S. Casassa SJ CA. He had an Italian name, an Irish face, a courtly manner, a highly intelligent and open mind and a reputation far and wide for achievements--in education, human relations, ecumenism and civil rights--hisown love of learning inspired students with his passion for education and for the course materials.
My brother enrolled in Father Cassasa's Cosmology class in 1962 where he imparted many philosophical gems into his learned students' lexicon which are still remembered over fifty years later--quite an achievement by any scholarly standards. It was during a discourse about the "absolute truths", sometimes called "universal truths", of the cosmos, the universe, which are infinitely tenable to never change that Father Cassasa imparted wisdom about what is absolute truth--"Black is black, white is white and shit is shit." That empirical statement devoid of human judgement was based solely on unalterable, permanent facts.
Progressive politicians consistently reject our constitutional laws which are the "absolute truths", the "building blocks" of our republic's foundation. By infusing their soupe du jour in opinions, morals, codes or policies into those laws - it is how our Constitution is being eroded by Obama's Presidential Executive Orders or amended by the EPA or other Government Agency Regulators' directives based on Obama's progressive agenda suborning legislative expediency bypassing Congress rather than under written laws created by the Constitutional legislative body under the Congressional branch representing the electorate. The legislative, congressional, executive, and judicial constraints all serve as checks on the bureaucracy. Since Congress can use powerful constraints on the bureaucracy by exercising its budgetary oversight functions, Obama flagrantly avoids them as he sews his seeds of our destruction with government excesses.
The President is ruling without any Congressional balance of power constraints - it is like the 1978 movie "Animal House" on steroids.A sequence in Animal House was about a freshman pledge, Flounder, who let some upperclassmen in the fraternity use his brother’s brand-new Lincoln for a road trip. Naturally, the fraternity brothers trashed the car. As Flounder wept in regret, the suave, smooth-talking senior, Otter, put his arm around Flounder’s shoulder and explained the facts of life to him: “You fucked up [sic]; you trusted us.” --a hard lesson learned. And we've already turned over our keys to Obama too?
Source Bio: RealClearPolitics, the Chicago-based political news and polling data aggregator's audience is made up of national opinion leaders, high level business executives and DC decision makers.
RealClearPolicy invited Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff, an expert on the national debt, to weigh in on the conversation with Republican Senators Cox and Archer. The following is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
RealClearPolicy: In December, 2112 Republican Senators Cox and Archer argue that the U.S.’s underlying debt is much higher than the officially stated debt of $16 trillion. If you add up the unfunded obligations the government has -- to Social Security, Medicare, federal workers’ pensions, and so on --They argue that the real debt is about $87 trillion. Can that be right?
Kotlikoff: "That’s wrong! It’s $222 trillion."
"That’s what we economists call "the fiscal gap". I don’t know what those guys are looking at, but we economists do it a certain way. We’re not politicians. We’re just doing it the way our theory says to do it.What you have to do is look at the "present value of all the expenditures now through the end of time" - all projected expenditures, including servicing the official debt. And you subtract all the projected taxes. The present value of the difference is $222 trillion.
So the true size of our fiscal problem is $222 trillion, not $87 trillion. That’s comprehensive and incorporates the official debt. The official debt in the hands of the public is $11 trillion, so the true problem is 20 times bigger than the official debt."
RealClearPolicy: Why is it more useful to think about the fiscal gap than the official debt?
"The official debt is something that has to be repaid, and the government is Liar Liar Pants On Fire Metercommitted to principal and interest payments. But the government has other commitments, like Social Security payments, health care and Medicare payments, Medicaid payments, and defense expenditures. And it also has negative commitments, namely taxes. So you want to put everything on even footing. Most of the liabilities the government has incurred in the postwar period have been kept off the books because of the way we’ve labeled our receipts and payments.The government has gone out of its way to run up a Ponzi scheme and keep evidence of that off the books by using language to make it appear that we have a small debt."
The American-US Airways (LCC.N) merger would cap a wave of consolidation that has helped return the industry to modest profitability after the 2008-09 economic downturn. Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) acquired Northwest in 2008, United Continental (UAL.N) was formed in 2010 and Southwest (LUV.N) bought rival AirTran in 2011.
The dilemma in the merger is a double-edged sword:
For two different passenger groups, the delicate balance at stake is what the American Airlines - U.S. Air management decides to do about insuring a profitable future while growing their passenger traffic competitively.
A new mega-airline, with the American brand name, would have more flights on more routes and could charge higher ticket prices on at least some. This would appeal to business travelers who generally favor convenience and comfort over price.
If the airlines don't merge, they might offer lower prices, but could ultimately be forced to cut routes or go out of business as they try to compete with much larger United and Delta, themselves the products of mega-mergers over the last few years.
The Two-Step:
US Airways' CEO, Doug Parker, step one, jostled bankrupt American Airlines into a deal initially by making upfront promises to American's unions. Step two, the union deals were supposed to keep Team Obama onboard, a strategy that assured smooth sailing for Delta-Northwest and United-Continental mergers past the Justice Department allowing passage.
The Double-Cross:
Team Obama no longer is running for anything now that it's Obama's second term, "Legacy Time". On the contrary, Mr. Obama has made it clear, through language and body language, that the Washington bureaucracy's job now is to bring home "accomplishments", loosely defined - "anything you can scrounge up" is a better description. So, shooting down this airline merger in the name of the "Consumer" qualifies under Obama's "trash and burn" scorched earth bounty hunt.
Since he has done nothing really remarkable in his first term, Obama has to feverishly build his Presidential portfolio with some intellectual capital and tangible assets proving his historical achievements to fill his Presidential library. "Dreams of My Father" and "Audicity of Hope", his two sole biographical books that Obama and anarchist Bill Ayers ghost wrote, look mighty thin sitting on those empty shelves alone unless he adds the voluminous tomes on his multitudinous scandals.
Fast & Furious Cartel gun running
Benghazi Terrorist Attack & Gun Running to al-Qaeda mercenaries
AP News Wiretaps
IRS Tax-Exempt Status Denials for conservative groups
NSA Warrantless Wiretapping Surveillance
GSA Spending Wild on Conventions & Expenses
Solyndra Solar Panel Debacle
A123 Systems Battery Bankruptcy
The Excess Baggage - Unions
Looks like under Obama's scorched earth policies he has thrown the unions, like excess baggage, under the plane too. Obama’s Justice Department looked at the merger plan and focused on a perceived effort to "raise the cost of a fairly limited set of airline tickets", tickets sold in markets where US Airways operates one-stop flights that compete with non-stop flights. The Justice Department's theoretical reasoning has an obvious flaw. By definition traditionally, American's customers are willing to pay for nonstop service, otherwise they would take US Airways' cheaper fare. Therefore, an increase in the fares for the US Airways routes is neither oppressive nor excessive to be deleterious to competitive ticket pricing.
The Justice Department did not see, or chose not to see, that selling tickets more cheaply than competitors do means that many of US Airways 35,000 employees make less money than peers at Delta and United. According to the unions this merger would allow parity to meet wage and benefits packages with other competition.
The Obama Justice Departmentdoes not recognize how profit methods it defines as anticompetitivesuch as the unbundling of items to reduce overhead from the seat ticket prices are legitimate to meet lower competitive prices with profitable operating margins. Items offered in a passenger seat ticket price may be desirable flight time schedules and would include additional charges for carry-on bags, drinks and beverages, snack food items, overweight baggage limits, preferential seating assignments, pillow, blankets, and headphones.
Similarly, if some sports event ticket holder goes to a stadium he expects a seat and seat location, then he pays extra for bleacher cushions, binoculars, popcorn, drink and food; otherwise, he gets a skybox with all of the amenities. Where is the difference in pricing strategies Barack Obama and Eric Holder?
The mergers and acquisitions between the shareholders of American Airlines and US Airways were on mutual terms agreed between them.Since when does the United States government know how to run any private organizations efficiently and profitably? Eric Holder and Barack Obama have not demonstrated any abilities to personally manage governmental agencies or departments either - and these two privately owned companies are allowing them to interlope based upon political fear-mongering fairytales about stifling, unfair competition to the detriment of passenger choice and price.
So are official Federal Airline Transportation Flight Rules coming out next under the auspices of Obama's plan for income distribution as an unalienable right of self-entitlement guaranteed to all citizens? After all, in today's fast world jets are quicker than cars, trucks, vans, motorcycles, motor scooters, buses, taxis, trains, bicycles, skates and feet. So why doesn't everyone deserve an airline ticket pass to fly anytime too?
Isn't it time that two big airlines stand up to these bullies for ticketing passengers?
If Obamacare is such a great program - How does it fly for you?
Wednesday, September 4, 2013 at 11:56PM 
XL Pipeline DemonstratorsOur "Great Waffler and Chief" Barack Obama has dithered too long again, this time in expanding domestic U.S. energy production. The XL pipeline expansion project has been effectively bypassed by refiners as doubt persisted it will ever be built after being bullied by Obama's hard-line EPA regulations to control all businesses in the United States by his Centralized Federal Government Bureaucracy's policies. The TransCanada Corporation has had two years of delays further diminishing their need for the XL Pipeline project altogether.
NYC XL Pipeline Demonstratorsby Obama, the railroads have dramatically increased crude oil shipments from Canada down to the Gulf Coast refineries. Enbridge, a pipeline competitor to the XL pipeline expanded existing pipes using previously approved rights-of-ways that side-stepped further federal permissions and permit approvals. More U.S. domestic pumping due to fracking shale fields has created such an over-abundance of light-grade oil that refiners will not need more of the more difficult to refine oil-sands heavy crude to meet plant production capacities. The Obama Regulations are like a "Program for the Planned Obsolescence and Elimination of Government Interference" in interstate petroleum products--Finally, Obama is getting it right!
