Obama: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of Him? | Political Discussion Forums

Politics | Obama: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of Him?

From: calgal	5/30/2012 7:55:06 PM
	of 156163

The Control Freak President John Ransom Tweet So Obama, like every good control freak, has this plan apparently. Yeah. That’s the first thing that should make you wary. It’s plan that you are probably familiar with. Or to put it a better way, it’s another plan that will give you kind of sick, eerie feeling, like so many of his other plans that involve top-down government planning. Remember when he combated the growing instability in world oil supplies and prices by making the price of oil go up even faster- twice? Or that time when he ushered in a golden era for solar power by throwing money into manufacturing capacity in solar when there was no actual demand for solar products, thereby decimating the solar industry? Or that time that he harangued us about fiscal discipline while he was spending money left and right and couldn’t even pass a budget? He called it “eating our peas.” It’s like any one of those wonderful plans that worked out so well for all of us- and went exactly as planned for Obama, control freak. Ok, so the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is warning that cuts in government spending along with automatic tax increases from the expiration of the Bush tax cuts will spur a recession in the first half of next year unless Congress and the president act before the 1st of the year. Oh, their first mistake: They gave Obama a timetable. Control freaks have problems with timetables. Does the CBO know that the president really doesn’t like timetables? They should ask Congressional Republicans about the timetable that they had with the Keystone pipeline. Or maybe ask S&P about their timetable on the debt ceiling debate last summer before S&P downgraded U.S. debt. A control freak would rather do anything- even fail- than deal with a timetable. “The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) fired off a warning Tuesday to our nation and its leaders in Washington,” writes Fox News’ Gretchen Hamel. “The CBO told us that the United States of America is headed toward a fiscal cliff and that if we do indeed fall off, it will have profound effects on our country and world economy. The CBO projects that if Congress does not act to prevent coming tax increases and spending cuts, a recession is certain. The CBO estimates gross domestic product would decline by as much as 1.3 percent if lawmakers don’t act.” So here’s Obama’s plan to protect us all from an economy under assault by tax increases: more tax increases.

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To: calgal who wrote (133998)	5/30/2012 7:55:27 PM
From: calgal	of 156163

Tags: US \| Romney \| Whats \| Next Romney's Next Move? Undercut Obama, Raise Money Wednesday, 30 May 2012 05:53 PM Share: More . . . A A \| Email Us \| Print \| Forward Article 0 inShare What's next for Mitt Romney? The Republican presidential nomination finally in hand, he will spend the next three months trying to undercut President Barack Obama on the economy while portraying himself as Mr. Fix It for a nation with stubbornly and painfully high unemployment. Romney also faces key decisions between now and his acceptance of the party's nomination in late August in Florida: Where should he compete most aggressively? Who should be his running mate? At the same time, he must dive anew into fundraising and work to win over voters who are distracted by their own summer plans and day-to-day pocketbook worries — while withstanding Obama's attacks on his own claims as a jobs creator. Not that Romney is publicly sweating the hurdles that come with being the little-known challenger to a personally popular president. "People will get to know me better," Romney told Fox News in an interview that aired Wednesday, the day after he sealed the GOP nomination with his primary election victory in Texas. He says the general election campaign is only beginning even though his chief challenger dropped out more than six weeks ago. With a smile, he said of the voters, "My guess is they're going to get to know more about me than they'd like to by the time we're finished." As if on cue, Obama's campaign opened a fresh critique of the GOP nominee-in-waiting, assailing his economic record as governor of Massachusetts. It's the second phase of an effort by Obama to define Romney negatively in voters' eyes. The Democrat already has spent weeks hammering the Republican on his record at the private equity company he founded. Obama himself made a courtesy call to Romney to congratulate him on his nomination victory. An Obama aide said the president told Romney in a brief and cordial chat that he looked forward to debating America's future with him. Romney spent the day in California, plunging into a week filled with fundraisers and efforts to unite Republicans after a divisive primary season. Already he's proven adept at both, hauling in enough cash to cut into the advantage that Obama has while getting most of his former Republican rivals to close ranks around him. Those efforts — and the turning of his primary campaign into a general election operation — have been his prime focus. He's making only a handful of public appearances for now, but aides say they expect the campaign to ramp up to a full sprint by July 4. Romney has said he plans to take a week off around the holiday, suggesting that may be the time when he makes final deliberations on whom to choose as his vice presidential nominee. Little is known about just where in that process Romney may be, though there is no shortage of Republican rising stars informally auditioning for the role. While work on that front is certainly going on behind the scenes, Romney's aides are spending this week publicly pressing anew a criticism that the candidate himself has been making for months against Obama. They're highlighting the hundreds of millions of dollars in economic stimulus money that the administration provided to Solyndra, the solar-energy company that went bankrupt and whose executives had contributed to Obama's campaign. It is a sign of the overarching argument Romney will make against Obama in the coming weeks: that Obama's economic efforts have been politically motivated, have wasted taxpayer dollars and, ultimately, have failed. The renewed Solyndra criticism is also an attempt to answer Obama's recent criticism — in speeches and advertisements — of Romney's tenure at the helm of Bain Capital. Obama has argued that Romney's time as a private equity executive before entering politics — the basis for his campaign's claim that he's best suited to lead an economic recovery — was aimed at enriching shareholders, not serving the public. Romney largely survived that opening salvo, judging by early polls and interviews with both Republicans and Democrats. National surveys show Obama either statistically tied with Romney or only slightly ahead of him. And polls in the most hotly contested states show Romney competitive with Obama. "They haven't worked," GOP strategist Charlie Black, an informal Romney adviser, said of the Bain criticisms. "People are worried about the economy and jobs." A handful of swing-voting states will be the most hard fought as Obama and Romney aggressively build get-out-the-vote organizations and air a flood of advertisements in their efforts to reach the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House. Across the country, Romney's campaign is going through growing pains as it seeks to turn a stripped-down primary operation into a full-scale general election campaign. Aides say offices will open and more staff will join the team, but they also say they don't anticipate being able to match the staffing levels of Obama, who has had teams in place for months in states like Florida and Ohio. The Republican National Committee also is in the midst of boosting its staffing to help Romney. Already, Obama's and Romney's campaigns, as well as super PACs supporting each, have spent nearly $52 million in advertising on the general election campaign as of last week, according to ad-tracking reports provided to The Associated Press. Of that, Obama's campaign has spent $30 million-plus on TV ads already in some 11 states. He's been on the air most heavily in Florida, Iowa, Ohio and Virginia, an indication of where his team may think the race will be won or lost. A Democratic-leaning super political action committee also has been on the air to help him, though it's spent only $5 million. Romney himself has run ads in just four battlegrounds: Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia. But he's been significantly helped by pro-Romney outside groups, who have been on the air in several states — most heavily in Florida, Ohio and Virginia. Even so, Republican outfits, including Romney's campaign and supporting super PACS, have spent roughly half — or $16 million — of what Obama himself has spent. And in the coming weeks, Romney plans to focus heavily on fundraising so that he'll be able to make strategic decisions about where to devote most of it state by state. To that end, Romney is spending the week courting donors in California, starting Wednesday in Fresno, Bakersfield and in Hillsborough, a wealthy enclave just outside San Francisco. He planned major fundraising events Thursday, Friday and Saturday in southern California. On Tuesday, Romney was in Las Vegas wooing Sheldon Adelson, the primary financing source of a group that backed Newt Gingrich's failed primary campaign. And Romney also attended a fundraiser hosted by Donald Trump. Read more on Newsmax.com: Romney's Next Move? Undercut Obama, Raise Money Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

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To: calgal who wrote (133999)

5/30/2012 7:55:46 PM

From: calgal

1 Recommendation of 156163

rom: calgal

of 3625

GOP whistling past the end of America

By Ann Coulter

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | An election almost as important as the presidential election will be held next Tuesday, and conservatives aren't making a big deal of it, just as they didn't make a fuss over the 2008 Minnesota Senate election as Al Franken stole it from under their noses. (Gov. Tim Pawlenty: "Minnesota has a reputation for clean and fair and good elections. We've got 4,100 precincts run by volunteers. They do a good job, and we thank them.")

The public sector unions are trying to oust Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker from office for impinging on their princely, taxpayer-supported lifestyles. If Walker goes down, no governor will ever again suggest that snowplow operators work when it snows. No governor will dare try to deprive public school teachers of their Viagra. Forget about ever firing self-paced, self-evaluated, unnecessary government employees.

Always leading the nation, California has already been bankrupted by the public sector unions. That's the country's future if Walker doesn't win, and it's not going to matter who's in the Oval Office.

Democrats know what's at stake. They're treating this election like the Normandy invasion. Meanwhile, Republicans are sitting back, complacently citing polls that show Walker with a slight lead.

Polls don't register passion.

Public employee unions have vast organizing abilities, millions of dollars in union dues at their disposal, and millions of voters who are either union members themselves or relatives of union members. And it's their lifestyles being voted on.

The public sector unions will turn out 99.9 percent of their people. Even if they are only 15 percent of the electorate, that could be enough. Union members will have every distant relative, every neighbor, every person they can drag to the polls, voting to recall Walker next Tuesday.

Ordinary people answering polls may agree with Walker, but they'll have to decide: "Do I really want to get out of bed early and drive to the polls, just so they don't recall the governor?"

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News reports blare with the information that the Walker campaign has spent more money than the opposition. This is absurd. Every union member in the country is working to defeat Walker.

Union political operatives aren't volunteers: They're getting salaries from the unions. But those expenditures don't get counted as money spent on a campaign -- a little detail of campaign finance laws Republicans have been screaming about for 20 years.

One measure of the unions' disproportionate passion is how difficult it is to obtain non-union information about the Wisconsin fight. Try running a few Google searches on Scott Walker and the public sector unions, and you'll get 20 pages of union propaganda under names such as "Common Dreams," "All Voices," "United Wisconsin," "Veterans News Now," "Struggles for Justice," "One Wisconsin Now," "Defending Wisconsin" and "Republic Report."

From the hysteria, you wouldn't know Walker's reforms have nothing to do with government employees' salaries. He eliminated collective bargaining only for all other aspects of government employees' contracts. OK, you can have two guys on a snowplow, but you can't have a snowplow watcher.

One of the most egregious union scams Walker dispensed with was the requirement -- won in collective bargaining -- that all school districts purchase health insurance from the same provider. The monopolist insurer was WEA Trust, which happens to be affiliated with the teachers union.

Simply by eliminating this union boondoggle, Walker has already saved individual school districts millions of dollars per year, which could easily rise to hundreds of millions of dollars. (Most districts still get their health insurance from WEA Trust, but the mere threat of competition forced it to lower its price.)

Amazingly, Walker actually had to eliminate "overtime" for snowplow operators who work outside of their 7 a.m.-3:30 p.m. shifts. Isn't the whole idea of snowplowers to have them work when it snows and not during specific, pre-set hours of the day?

The teachers unions wail, "It's all about the kids!" -- and then we find out the Milwaukee teachers union sued the school district because their health insurance didn't cover Viagra. Yes, it's all about the kids.

Loads of Milwaukee bus drivers are using sick days and overtime to take home more than $100,000 a year.

Public sector employees seem to think they should be exempted from belt-tightening everyone else is subject to in the Obama economy. (Obama thinks so, too. Most of the stimulus money went to shore up public sector employees' salaries and perks.)

Half the country is unemployed, but these special people are indignant that Walker asked them to start contributing a tiny amount of their salaries to their own pensions -- 5.8 percent, up from zero percent -- and a little bit more for their own health insurance, from a measly 6.2 percent to 12.4 percent of their salaries.

Of course, it's extremely difficult to locate this information with the unions filling the Internet and the airwaves with their "Common Dreams" nonsense.

Fox News has barely mentioned this election, while on MSNBC they're doing non-stop campaigning on behalf of the unions. Apparently, James Madison will be rolling over in his grave if government unions aren't allowed to dictate how many employees are required to move a copy machine.

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To: calgal who wrote (134000)	5/30/2012 7:56:23 PM
From: calgal	of 156163

The first lady of the United States is on a whirlwind publicity tour for her hefty new food and gardening book ($30), which the White House hopes will bolster Team Obama's favorability ratings. I'd say it's a classic recipe for rank campaign hypocrisy and media double standards.While journalists savor chummy chitchats with Mrs. Obama about beets and Beyonce, FLOTUS is once again escaping hard questions about her cronyism, junk science and generous junkets at taxpayer expense. Mrs. Obama's 2012 campaign media blitz has already brought her to daytime airwaves ("The Ellen DeGeneres Show"), prime-time reality TV ("The Biggest Loser") and children's programming ("iCarly"). This week, she's hitting up "Good Morning America," "The View," Rachael Ray's cooking show, "LIVE! with Kelly (Ripa)" and Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Out: Let's Move! In: Let's Move ... in front of the TV cameras! My prediction? As soon as the fawning media frenzy dies down and Mrs. Obama's book rises to the top of The New York Times best-seller list, POTUS will go back to claiming that FLOTUS is a "private citizen" who should be left alone. The Obamas' Chicago strategists have long enjoyed invoking selective immunity for the first lady without challenge. Lapdog reporters have assisted in creating an impenetrable bubble of political protection around the profligate, policy-meddling first lady. We've seen it before. When conservatives challenged Mrs. O's caustic 2008 campaign trail statements disparaging America and fear-mongering for votes, her hubby invoked the "civilian" shield. He threatened Republicans to "lay off his wife," arguing that political spouses should not be subject to public scrutiny because they didn't choose public life. When Mrs. O's lavish vacation in Spain -- accompanied by an entourage of 70 Secret Service agents and 250 Spanish law enforcement officers -- provoked a massive public backlash in 2010, then-White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs argued that the first lady was a "private citizen" who should be off-limits to tough questions about her behavior. Horse-hockey. Obama's outspoken bitter half conscientiously and deliberately inserted herself into the public square long before the family moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue -- whether it was organizing a Woods Fund panel with her husband and Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, taking a publicly subsidized government job with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, or parlaying her relationship with political mentor Valerie Jarrett into a cushy public job at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where she oversaw a patient-dumping scheme that benefited her political cronies.

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To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (133901)	5/30/2012 8:01:45 PM
From: CF Rebel	3 Recommendations of 156163

Pay freezes for teachers and not for CEO's? Is that what you are saying? The subject which you were spewing about in your last two posts was teachers, not CEOs. I’m not going to fall for comparing apples to oranges - private salaries vs. public employee salaries - the differences ought to be obvious to all but the oblivious. But now that you want to change the subject to CEOs, let me humor you. As a public shareholder and capitalist (in the purest sense - not in the sense of the perversion of “capitalism” that we have today and which ignorant liberals think is capitalism), I have been disgusted with what was has happened in many corporate boardrooms over the past two decades. As a taxpayer I have been disgusted with politicians and public employees and lobbyists of all sorts taking advantage of the rest of us with their endless feedback loop of payoffs for election funding. As a moral human being I am disgusted with Marxists and their union brethren for all the obvious reasons. All of the aforementioned perpetrators are birds of a feather; they all use the system to implement laws and rules to aggregate power. They’re all, in essence, legalized gangs. First, with regard to CEOs, upper executives and boards of directors, let me speak as a shareholder. I have no problem with good compensation for good performance. However, over the past quarter century, most companies in which I have held shares have compensated the management beyond what the performance would suggest they were worth on a historical and absolute basis. This has been done using the same strategies that politicians, public employees and unions use - they throw up as many obstructions as possible to fend off challenges to anything they want to do in their own personal interests, mainly regarding compensation. Over time, they put in place with “shareholder approval,” proxy rules which have made it a hugely onerous task to rein in out-of-control compensation, propose shareholder resolutions or just contact other shareholders. Because most shares are owned by insiders and institutions it has been next to impossible for shareholders to have a real say in how their corporations are run. The incestuous relationships between boards of directors and executives, both intra-corporate and inter-corporate has made accountability next to impossible. It really is a good-ol’-boys club. Many people are mystified at how the growing gap between corporate executives and the middle class has occurred. The transfer of wealth to corporate executives and other inside shareholders has come mainly at the expense of individual and institutional shareholders, the very people who do most of the transferring of their wealth into the general economy. With the transfer, legal theft, of common shareholders' wealth to executives and insiders, shareholders have had less to transfer back into the economy. This has been done mainly through company share awards, stock options and bonuses with stock options being the most egregious. Stock options, originally, were an invention of small, fast-growing companies that were cash-strapped. To keep talent on-board without paying an amount that could threaten the financial viability of the company, stock options were a way of rewarding, in the future, the hard work of vital employees. But, sometime in the past couple of decades, even large companies with no financial need to do so, started awarding stock options in huge amounts, even for poor executive performance. The laughable excuse for such awards is always, “to align executives’ interests with shareholders.” When an executive doesn’t put his own skin in the game, his interests aren't aligned with mine, he's just playing with the house's money. If he was buying his company’s shares in the open market with his own money, then I’d be convinced his interests were the same as mine. I won’t go into the abuses within the options racket. There used to be a time when corporate executives would buy their company’s shares in the open market when they were bullish on their companies. They were usually well-compensated with salaries and bonuses and their stock purchases were icing on the cake. Now, stock options fall into their laps and shareholders see their own share values diluted. As a practical matter, there is nothing small shareholders can do to stem the dilution. I have seen many small companies’ quarterly earnings go from profit to loss on excessive compensation, some with very dubious managements. As you can see, I have some real problems with corporate gangsters. Not all companies are like this but many are. Many of these managements would fit right in running unions because it isn’t about where these managements operate, it’s about gaming the system in which they operate, aggregating power and blocking any challenges to accountability. Consider companies with near-term problems or questionable markets such as Solyndra or General Electric. Their CEOs run to the last refuge of corporate scoundrels - government. They pour precious money into political coffers to buy corrupt legislation and other favors. Whether in government or in private institutions, these kinds of operators are what is bringing this country down. The tea party activists who have protested liberal politicians’ “solutions” for problems in this country are well aware of the above. Free markets operated by free people, absent corrupt politicians’ interference and even in the presence of the problems I cite above (which are solvable), are infinitely more desirable than any liberal’s impossible utopian scheme. There is a cancer in government and those who believe that cancer can solve everyone’s problems are ignorant hosts to the disease and soon dead. Any more questions, Kenneth? Just because I despise filthy Marxists doesn't mean I can't see problems on my side. Are you that honest about your side? CF Rebel

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From: calgal	5/30/2012 8:20:10 PM
	of 156163

Cruz Narrowed Gap with Dewhurst in Final Days Enthusiasm is on Cruz's side. 8:51 AM, May 30, 2012 • By MICHAEL WARREN Single Page Print Larger Text Smaller Text Alerts In yesterday’s U.S. Senate Republican primary in Texas, lieutenant governor David Dewhurst won 45 percent of the vote to Ted Cruz’s 34 percent and Tom Leppert’s 13 percent. Dewhurst fell just a few points shy of the 50 percent, resulting in a runoff with Cruz. Yet Dewhurt's 11 percentage point victory would suggest he has the advantage of winning that runoff for the GOP nomination on July 31. David Dewhurst, Ted Cruz But the numbers might be telling a different story. Slightly fewer than half of those who voted in the primary voted early, some over two weeks before the election. Of those early voters, Dewhurst did much better than he did with voters overall, beating Cruz by 18 points (48 percent to 30 percent), or roughly 120,000 votes. But on election day, Cruz closed that gap considerably. Dewhurst won about 41 percent of the vote to Cruz’s 38 percent—a margin of 4 points and only 24,000 votes. That narrower gap on election day, after voters had more of a chance to get to know the candidates, suggests that the momentum had shifted toward Cruz. With an influx of funds to keep TV and radio ads on the air and an aggressive push to get out the vote in July, Cruz could have a shot at overcoming Dewhurst and winning the nomination.

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To: calgal who wrote (134004)

5/30/2012 8:25:11 PM

From: calgal

of 156163

GOP whistling past the end of America

By Ann Coulter

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