Words Matter–Obama’s Promises Versus Reality

Watch this video and then tell me again why anyone can seriously consider sending this guy back for a second term.

 

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Number Six- That Would Be the Sin of Envy

Bill Whittle’s latest Firewall Video deals with number six on the list of seven deadly sins, envy, and how the left uses it to promote class warfare. I had a few things to say about envy myself a few years back, as well as envy’s kissing-cousin, greed. You can read that here but meanwhile, here’s Bill:

 

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In Honor of Empty Chair Day, Ladies and Gentlemen, I Give You………..

 

The BarackaLounger:

If you aren’t going to accomplish anything you might as well do it in comfort.

(Update: added “O” logo)

A Difference in Outlook–Romney versus Obama

Theodore Dalrymple nails it":

“….one is focused on creating tomorrow’s prosperity while the other is focused on redistributing today’s.”

Guess which one is which.

Media Madness, and the Reckoning – Clarice Feldman at American Thinker

Clarice Feldman has a great round up over at American Thinker about reactions to the shameful, but not unexpected, performance of the MSM during last week’s Republican National Convention.  It isn’t just the outright falsehoods they peddle but the numerous sins of omission they commit when telling the whole story doesn’t advance The Narrative.

A prime example is the failure to cover speeches by minority speakers such as Mia Love, Republican candidate for Congress from Utah, Former Democratic representative Artur Davis, who actually seconded the motion to nominate Barack Obama at the 2008 DNC convention, Ted Cruz, Hispanic candidate for one of Texas’ Senate seats or Jane  Edmonds, the liberal democrat former Massachusetts Secretary for Workforce Development under Mitt Romney when he was Governor of Massachusetts. These inspiring people and others put the lie to the Left’s portrayal of Republicans in general and Mitt Romney in particular as racist, misogynistic bigots, so they were essentially air-brushed out of the convention.  

Go and read Clarice’s post and when you’re done, here are just a few of the speeches the MSM doesn’t want you to see:

Mia Love

Artur Davis

(related: Artur Davis: I know my speech was a success because MSNBC blacked it out.)

Jane Edmonds

The U.S. Tax System: Who Really Pays

Our math-challenged president needs to read and internalize this article by WSJ Senior Economics Writer Stephen Moore. It is a point-by-point debunking of some of the most common claims from the left about the fairness of taxes and who is paying what. It's too long to excerpt here, so just go and read the whole thing.

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Whole Foods CEO John Mackey on the Moral Case for Capitalism

In this Reason TV video Whole Foods CEO John Mackey says we need to change the narrative on capitalism and make the moral case for why it is the best system for bettering humanity. He says the narrative has been hijacked by intellectuals who depict capitalism as being solely focused on profits and self-interest while ignoring the value it creates for not only businesses but everyone that touches that business from suppliers to employees to customers.

Let’s not forget Milton Friedman as well.

“You Didn’t Build That” The Flip Side of the Coin

Writing over at PJ Media, Ukraine native Oleg Atbashian explains the flip side of the coin on which President Obama's famous "you didn't build that" speech was engraved. In short, by the same logic that all get credit for the achievements of a few, then all can be punished for the failures of a few also.

If the businessman “didn’t build that,” who did? Apparently, all of us did. And if the credit is equally shared, so must be the reward. Jackpot winners all, no more worries about paying the mortgage or filling the gas tank. This thrilled Obama’s voters during the 2008 election, as his speeches removed moral barriers protecting other people’s property, establishing a new morality of forced redistribution of wealth — previously known as looting.

But here’s the catch: everything in this world has a price. If all of us can be credited for someone else’s achievement, by the same logic, all of us can be punished for someone else’s failure. Just as all individual credit goes to the society as a whole, so does all the blame. And if the entire group, class, nation, or race can gain moral authority because some of its members did something right, the same standard grants the moral authority to blame any other group, class, nation, or race because some of its members did something wrong. In the history of collectivism this concept translated into wars, slavery, pogroms, terrorism, ethnic cleansing, expropriation of wealth, deportation, internment, resettlement, and genocide.

The two notions, collective achievement and collective punishment, are as inseparable as two sides of a coin.

But there’s more: if nothing is to your credit, then nothing is your fault. What is the cost of that bargain? In a seemingly fair trade-off, we lose our right to individual achievements but gain the right to blame others for our failures. Collectivism provides us with a sufficiently analgesic illusion of fairness. If you turn out to be a loser, it’s not because you are unqualified: on a whim, with objective standards removed, you can now self-righteously put the blame on those close to you, or on the unfair system, or even on the big wide (and deeply flawed) world.

Read the whole thing. .

Somebody Else Did That For You, Barack

Barack Obama can't comprehend the idea of earned success, because all of his successes from admission to Columbia University and Harvard Law, election as Editor of the the Harvard Law Review, Illinois State and US Senate, US President and Nobel Peace Prize winner were completely unearned. Somebody Else made that happen. Bill Whittle explains:

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Megan McArdle is Back

Same Megan, new venue. She's been on leave-of-absence for the last few months (writing a book?). I've been reading her since she was blogging from a trailer in the bottom of Ground Zero and she's always worth the time to read. Here's her take on the upcoming Supreme Court decision on Obamacare.

Economic Illiteracy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Barack Obama on the Romney campaign pointing out that there is a difference betweeen "outsourcing" and "offshoring": “Yesterday, his advisers tried to clear this up by telling us that there was a difference between ‘outsourcing’ and ‘offshoring.’ Seriously. You can’t make that up.”

Actually, you wouldn't need to "make this up," because there is a difference. This is not by any means the sole example of Barack Obama's economic illiteracy but he manages to make himself sound even smaller and more petty than usual. Kevin Williamson at National Review explains: 

“Outsourcing” happens when a firm contracts out its non-core functions to other vendors, e.g., a hotel decides to hire a cleaning service rather than keep maids on the hotel payroll. To take an extreme but illustrative case, consider that the firms that provide car-driving services do not manufacture their own automobiles or stitch their drivers’ uniforms, even though doing so would “create jobs.” They outsource those tasks to GM or Ford and to whomever makes their uniforms. Likewise, their communication systems are outsourced to Apple or Motorola or RIM.

But at least they should “buy American,” right? GM is an “American” company building “American” cars, but it too outsources many of its needs, sometimes to other U.S.-based companies, sometimes to companies overseas. Moving facilities overseas is what “offshoring” means; it is not synonymous with “outsourcing.” GM has decided that it can build cars without manufacturing brake pads or tires, much less manufacturing steel or rubber, and its production partners include facilities, workers, and investors from around the world. (This is, it should go without saying, a good thing. People who talk mistily about the virtues of “global cooperation” rarely recognize it when they see it.)

The belief that seems to be popular on the left is that the point of offshoring is to take advantage of cheap labor but in Williamson's article he points out that the offshored functions tend to go to high wage countries like Germany and Japan, not Haiti and Rwanda. Williamson:  "That is because low wages are not the goal of offshoring. High productivity is the goal of offshoring. There is a reason that BMW does not move all of its manufacturing operations to India, and patriotism is not it."

Read the whole thing. 

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Daniel Henninger: A middle class is the result of growth, not its cause.

That is an important point made by Daniel Henninger in yesterday's Wonderland column in the Wall Street Journal in which he asserts that the coming election boils down to one issue: economic growth. Voters need to choose between two economic growth models, Barack Obama's class based growth model or one that actually works; a low-tax, regulatory certainty and no more than absolutely necessary. In other words, as close to a free market as possible.

Go read the whole thing.

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Fast & Furious: Botched Investigation, Or Something More Sinister?

If you don't know what Operation Fast & Furious or have only recently heard about it, it is probably because you rely on the mainstream media for your news and they have been very studiously ignoring it for over a year. Why would they do that? It isn't because it isn't news. It's because it's news that reflects very badly on their man, Barack Obama and his Attorney General, Eric Holder.

Bill Whittle's latest Afterburner will bring you up to speed on what it's all about:

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An Open Letter to "Mr." Obama

The incomparable Vodkapundit has written a letter to our Dear Leader, offering some good advice about what he should do if SCOTUS strikes down the healthcare law:

Mr. Obama, if the Supreme Court does strike down this law, you should get down on both knees and thank them.

And then you ought to stay there a while and beg us all for forgiveness.
 

We’re waiting.

Do go and read the whole thing.

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The US Budget Explained

I ran into this over at Samizdata while on my Daily Blog Patrol this morning. I believe it is quite self-explanatory so I will make no further comment.

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