No Apologies Anywhere

As Mitt Romney travels abroad, it's important to point out his standard line about President Obama apologizing too much for the United States is one gigantic load of bullshit.

The Washington Post has an article detailing where this lie (see: Breaking the 8th Commandment)  originated. More importantly,.the Fact Checker illustrates, in a very complete way,  how this is lie is a four Pinocchio whopper. Example:

The Heritage Foundation list is also a stretch. Again, nothing akin to the word "apology" is ever used by Obama. In most of these cases, Obama is trying to make a clear distinction with his predecessor, much as Ronald Reagan did with Jimmy Carter, or George W. Bush with Clinton. Guantanamo or the war on terrorism figures in four of the so-called apologies -- and it is noteworthy during the 2000 campaign that Obama's GOP opponent, Sen. John McCain, also had said he would close the facility. Obama's comments express a disagreement over policy, not a distaste for the nation.

If one actually pays attention to what the president said as opposed to listening to the greatest propaganda experts since Goebbels, there is nothing close to an apology in any of his speeches.

Of course, he is Barack X, so there's no way that he can possibly be tougher than a Republican so...

Yeah, seriously, WTF??!??

A Severe Disconnect From Reality

This video below demonstrates how truly disconnected the right is from reality.

 

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He's the "Obamamateur, Campaigner in Chief who hates America!"

They simply can't take yes for an answer so they have to invent a fictional person in place of the real one. Correct me if I'm wrong on this one but doesn't that break the 8th Commandment?

No President Since...

The drone from the "liberal" media of late regarding the re-election chances of President Obama usually revolves around the same line: No president since FDR has been re-elected with an unemployment rate over 8 percent. In looking at this fact alone, liberals should be nervous, right? 

Not really.

First, we need to look at who has lost re-election since FDR. We have Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George HW Bush. I think we can all agree that all three of these men had problems beyond jobs. 

Second, people like President Obama personally even if they plan on not voting for him. Right now he's running a few points ahead of Mitt Romney (48-46 or something around there). Yet some of those 46 percent approve of him personally as he consistently polls in the mid 50s in polls on him as a person.  Some polls have even had him as high as 75 percent!  Doggone it, people like him:) And that's despite the right's continued pummeling of him as a person which, honestly, gives me a great deal of hope about America. 

More important than both of these (and VASTLY under reported by the media) is the rate of unemployment in the swing states. You see, folks, it really doesn't matter that unemployment is at 11 percent in Rhode Island or nearly 11 percent in California. Those states are going to go for the president. Heck, they may not even approve of the job he is doing but they are still going to vote for him over Mitt Romney because they know that the latter is going to make things worse. To put it simply, the Democrats have done their job in those states. 

Take a look at the unemployment rates by state.  And now look at the swing states. Iowa has a 5.1 percent unemployment rate. That's well below the national average and jobs may not be on the minds of folks in that state. I know this because most of my in-laws are from there. Any president would kill for this rate in joblessness so look for the president to focus on other issues here. New Hampshire is right around here as well (5 percent) as is Virginia at 5.6 percent. Wisconsin and New Mexico are at 6.7 and 6.8 percent respectively. Again, well below the national average. Even Ohio and Pennsylvania are at 7.3 and 7.4 percent Most political wonks agree that if unemployment dips to around 7.5 percent, the election is over. Colorado is the final state that is below the national average at 8.1 percent. 

So, if you add all these states to the president's base of a solid 196, you get 281 electoral votes and enough to win. That's assuming, of course, that because the unemployment rate is so low, that these states will think the president is doing a good job on the economy. If you look at Andy's map over at Electoral-Vote.com, this jibes with what I am saying here with the exception of Iowa. The conservative, evangelical base has grown very strong there over the years so I wouldn't be surprised if Romney won that state. But that only takes away 6 votes which leaves the president with 275.

We are left with Nevada, Florida, North Carolina and Michigan. North Carolina is barely Republican and will probably go to Romney after the whole gay marriage flap.Andy's map shows us that the rest of those will go to the president's column with Nevada being likely Democratic with Florida and Michigan at barely Democratic. Nevada and Florida have such heavy Latino populations that Romney is going to have real problems in both of these states. Michigan is likely a go for the president for obvious reasons which brings us to 326-212. 

At this point, this is my prediction for the election. Obviously, a lot could change between now and then but I honestly don't think that the unemployment rate is going to matter because the battle is really down to 12 states or less. South Carolina could have an employment rate of 0 percent and they would never vote for the president. 

Conservatives keep pushing the economy as the main issue but are they paying attention to the unemployment rate in the swing states? Certainly, the media is not. 

What's More Popular Than Congress?

The approval rating of Congress stands is around 10%. Here is a list of 10 things more popular than Congress. 

1.President Obama (46%)
2. The Internal Revenue Service (40%)
3.  The airline industry (29%)
4. Lawyers (29%)
5. Richard Nixon at his lowest (24%)
6. The banking industry (23%)
7. The oil and gas industry (20%) 
8. BP during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill (16%) 
9. Paris Hilton (15%) 
10. America becoming a Communist nation (11%)

The last one really cracks me up!

Say Thanks

Remember a couple of months back when President Obama was secretly plotting to drive up gas prices in order to usher in an area of green and clean energy for all his Solyndra like buddies? (This, along with the same plot to walk guns into Mexico which would, in turn, lead to him being able to take guns away here at home.What a crafty Kenyan!)

Yeah, well, things didn't quite happen that way. 

In case you never heard about it, in April the Obama administration asked Congress to spend $52 million to regulate this speculation. According to the Washington Post, this included the following steps:

• Increase by a factor of six Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) surveillance and enforcement staff “to better deter oil market manipulation."

 • Boost 10-fold, to $10 million, the civil and criminal penalties against “firms that engage in market manipulation."

 • Give the CFTC authority to increase the trader margins — the amount of their own capital that traders must set aside for each bet. The administration officials said such authority “could help limit disruptions in energy markets,” according to the Post.

So what’s happened since April? Oil ended the month at $106, and as of June 22, it had lost 21 percent of its value — sitting at $84. I guess I under-estimated the impact of the CME’s boost in margin requirements for oil speculators. 

As I stated back when this flap started, the problem was never the president. The problem was the speculators. Why?

When regulators raise those requirements, oil speculation becomes less attractive to traders, and they place bets elsewhere. And when margin requirements drop, the traders pile into their oil speculations — confident that they can borrow enough to limit their downside while boosting their upside opportunity.

 In February 2011, when commodities exchanges raised the amount of their own capital that speculators must set aside in order to trade — according to Bloomberg, the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) increased its margin requirements 20 percent to $6,075 per contract, and the International Exchange (ICE) increased its margin requirement 7 percent to $5,200 – the price of oil fell 10 percent within a few months.

And a year later, the commodities exchanges cut the amount of capital that speculators need to set aside before trading — the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) cut by 9 percent to $6,885 the amount that Nymex crude speculators have to post to trade the so-called front-month contract, according to MarketWatch – leading prices to soar to $109 that month.

A fine example of how the government can sometimes improve market outcomes and increase market efficiency. These speculators weren't actually trading in oil and were distorting the market. 

So, the next time you fill up at the pump. thank the president for implementing this plan. After all, he is saving you hundreds of dollars a year!

:---)

Capitalism is too important to be left to ... capitalists.

It turns out that capitalism is a marvelous creation for efficiently producing and distributing goods and services. It is the genius that unleashes creativity through human energy and effort. It satisfies the human need to build something, for people to say "this is what I accomplished."

Yep.

But there is also a dark side of capitalism. When its excesses have been left unchecked, as they have been at times in our history and were again preceding the Great Recession, government leadership has emerged to save capitalism from itself. It took the analyses of historians to appreciate what Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt accomplished. At the time of their courageous leadership, they were hated by business leaders. It is a classic case of the dogs of capitalism biting the hand that preserved their existence. 


Hmm...that sounds familiar:)

Unfortunately, the previously mentioned dark side of capitalism is the outcome of a system without constraints, the necessary regulations that serve to check the negative consequences. The harm to society has been legendary. Examples are child labor, acid rain, rivers catching fire, destruction of our atmosphere's life-protecting ozone, lead poisoning, black lung disease, mountaintop removal, the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, toxic waste dumps, selling lethal tainted meat and produce, the destruction of urban rail transit systems, and lung cancer induced by cigarettes. This last example calls to memory the tobacco CEOs arrogantly telling Congress that "no, we don't believe cigarettes are addictive or cancer causing."

Yep.

You see, capitalism is too important to be left to the whims of capitalists. When Barack Obama took the oath of president, his inbox came straight from hell. Over the objections of a GOP that wanted government to imitate the disastrous inaction of Herbert Hoover, Obama and the Federal Reserve unfroze the panicked financial system and averted a collapse into another economic depression. The lessons of the 1930s were not forgotten. 

These lessons again teach that the temptation to put a businessman in the White House should be rejected. It would be courting disaster.

No shit. And it's nice to hear that what I have been saying all along comes from a retired engineer and business executive.

Where It's At

Well, the GOP primaries are slogging merrily along and Rick Santorum simply will not go away. That's because, as much of the base and the country knows, Mitt Romney isn't really a conservative. He is just awkwardly playing one on TV.

Now, most of you know that I like Mitt Romney personally and wish that he would just come out and be the pragmatic dude that I know he can be. But there's this little thing called the Republican nomination that he has to get first. And, since the GOP keeps moving further and further right every day, he has to play make believe and pretend that Barack X is building an army of robots programmed to take away guns and bibles.

But he just doesn't look like he's into it...talking about cheezy grits and y'alls and such...so, Rick Santorum just won three states in a row (Kansas, Alabama, Mississippi) and Mitt's inevitable nomination doesn't look so inevitable.

I think he's still going to win but I guess I'm wondering how far he is going to go in trying to get the nomination. What crazy crapola is going to come out of his mouth to prove to the base that he's a "severe conservative?"Likely it will be worse than his "the president is destroying free enterprise" comment but, hey, that's they ugly face of American populism that he has to placate.

Personally, I'd rather people go after Mitt on his foreign policy plans. What exactly are they? And how will they be more effective than President Obama's policies, nearly all of which have been successful?

The Usual Suspects

I've pretty much had it with people blaming the president for high gas prices. First of all, he can't really control what happens in the Middle East, a major factor in the price hike. Second, drilling more oil here simply means that more oil will get sold to China and India, not us. US imports of oil have declined from 11 billion barrels a day  in 2009 to 8 billion barrels a day at the end of 2011. Simply put, we aren't using as much. Remember that we are a net fuel exporter now for the first time in decades and that simple fact still hasn't changed the price of a gallon of gas.

Add in the fact that the number of rigs in U.S. oil fields has more than quad­rupled in the past three years to 1,272, according to the Baker Hughes rig count. Including those in natural gas fields, the United States now has more rigs at work than the entire rest of the world and guess what? Prices are still high.

Why?

As Dennis Kelleher points out below, a big reason is the speculators...as always....

 

That graphic says it all...In 2002, 89 percent of crude oil training was commercial with 11 percent non-commercial. Now crude oil trading is 63 percent non-commercial and 37 percent commercial. What was the price of a barrel of oil in 2002?

$31.

Now?

$106.

Obviously, there are other factors to consider but this is the one that isn't talked about much because these are the same fucking people that got us into trouble in the collapse of 2008.

Uh...Huh?

Some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them? Into what exactly? Someone who can think for themselves? Good grief...

Barack Obama's Army Of Gun Grabbing Robots

Remember when all those people ran out to buy guns and ammo when President Obama got elected because they were afraid he would take away their guns?

Yeah, that never happened.

But at least the guns and ammo places weren't hurt too much by the recession. I wonder if they will thank the president....

Moreover, my own home state legislature just voted to give the use of deadly force anywhere the thumbs up. This is one of many examples in which the president has largely left the issue of gun rights up to the states. The results of this hands off policy has seen a great loosening of gun laws that honestly haven't been seen in decades. So you think they would be happy, right?

Nope. 

They say that President Obama is a Muslim, but if he isn’t, he’s a secularist who is waging war on religion. On some days he’s a Nazi, but on most others he’s merely a socialist. His especially creative opponents see him as having a “Kenyan anti-colonial worldview,” while the less adventurous say that he’s an elitist who spent too much time in Cambridge, Hyde Park and other excessively academic precincts. 

Yeah...which is it again? I can't keep track.

Whatever our president is, he is never allowed to be a garden-variety American who plays basketball and golf, has a remarkably old-fashioned family life and, in the manner we regularly recommend to our kids, got ahead by getting a good education. 

Isn't he a model that we should point to and say to our kids, "Hey, be like this guy?" After all, he fulfills the checklist of the base in terms of family values and working hard to get himself ahead. In so many ways, he is illustrative of the opportunity that comes with this great country. And yet, they shit all over him.

It’s simply astonishing that a man in his fourth year as our president continues to be the object of the most extraordinary paranoid fantasies. A significant part of his opposition still cannot accept that Obama is a rather moderate politician quite conventional in his tastes and his interests. And now that the economy is improving, short-circuiting easy criticisms, Obama’s adversaries are reheating all the old tropes and cliches and slanders. 

That's my favorite bit of the whole piece. It's so fucking accurate. And so fucking sad. It's likely that the rest of this election year is going to see them descend into deeper and heretofore unfathomable paranoia.

But there is something especially rancid about the never-ending efforts to turn Obama into a stranger, an alien, a Manchurian Candidate with a diabolical hidden agenda. Are we trying to undo all the good it did us with the rest of the world when we elected an African American with a middle name popular among Muslims?

Yes. Yes, they are. Why? Because THEY LOST THE ARGUMENT AND ARE CHILDISH.

It makes me wonder what will happen if the president wins a second term. I honestly wouldn't be surprised they started saying that the president is building an army of killer robots that are going to take away their guns.

Bril!

The Obama campaign has seized upon a brilliant way to address the fictional character created by the right known as Barack X. Check out THE TRUTH TEAM.

This site is divided into three sections. The first is AttackWatch which takes all the comments that reside under the "Managing Fantasies" heading and addresses them head on. For example, the Republican Jewish Committee has made the false claim that the president is cutting funding to Israel. Click here and you will see what is actually happening in reality.

The second section, Keeping GOP Honest, looks at their policy points and breaks them down. For example, Mitt Romney has repeatedly said that he would've let GM and the auto industry to fail. Here is some information that illustrates the folly of that idea.

The third section should be dedicated to our very own last in line. Keeping His Word has a complete list of his accomplishments. Click on any of the six sections and see the benefits of his policies.

All in all, a very smart move considering what we all know is coming: more fictional history of the man named (dum dum DAH) Barack X!

If only John Kerry had been smart enough to do this in 2004 then he wouldn't now still be known as a French war criminal.

The Turning of the Fatherland

Man oh man, people are pissed about Fox News these days. Perhaps Roger Ailes and Co have discovered how far that bearing wall on the right goes before ratings start to suffer.

Adding insult to injury is the latest poll from FOX News. Check out how the president does against any of the contenders in the Dixie States of Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida. And a 50 percent approval rating?

No wonder two thirds of the base want someone else to jump in the race.

A Matter of Historical Context

A recent post in comments gave me an epiphany.

If you actually bothered to read the Constitution, Federalist Papers, Anti-Federalist Papers, etc., you will find that none of the Founding Fathers supported anything even approaching the power of the Federal government from the New Deal onward. Claiming that just because they disagreed about how much power the Federal government should have relative to the States and the People, no more means that Hamilton and the other Federalists would've supported Obama's vision of Federal power than that the Anti-Federalists (and most of your commenters) wanted no government at all. That's just more of your dishonest, dick-headed, asinine Calvinball "logic". Hamilton wanted a national bank? Well then obviously he would've supported nationalized/socialized healthcare and all the other apparatus of a semi-socialist state. Riiight. If he or any others did, it should be quite easy for you find where they actually said something like that, right? Right?

Let's take a closer look at the part of the statement I bolded (Obama's vision of Federal Power) because that raises the question: what would the Founding Fathers have thought of Obama's vision of Federal Power? The answer is quite simple and it reveals, quite starkly, why sentences that begin with "The Founding Fathers would have never..." are completely full of shit and (surprise, surprise) have no place in reality.

The Founding Fathers wouldn't given an ounce of thought to Obama's vision of Federal Power because our current president, in their time, would have been three fifths of a person. Granted, this designation was largely used for political purposes but the general view of black people at the time was that they were "less than." Some of the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, owned slaves and very likely wouldn't have even been able to get past the fact that a black man was president.

This is why discussion of what the Founding Fathers would have thought about government today are generally ridiculous. Their views on government were a product of their time and their circumstances with England. Certainly, the Constitution and the decisions made by each of them while they were leading this country are excellent foundations from which to work. But they are not intended to be so limiting that they ignore reality...reality in 2012. Health care is a great example of this. How the system currently works is not at all in the best interests or general welfare of the people. It's become a for-profit industry with out of control costs that it would seem completely alien to Josiah Bartlett, Matthew Thornton, Benjamin Rush or Elbridge Gerry. It's nearly impossible to say what they would think of Medicare and it's likely that they wouldn't have the first clue because our historical place would be completely foreign to them.

Yet, we can look to some examples of their time and compare it to our time and see if there is a precedent or similarities. We can also see how difficult it is for words to match actions at times. With health care, one need only look at An Act for the relief of sick and disabled seamen (passed in 1798 and signed by John Adams) which ordered private seamen to pay 20 cents out of their wages to pay for medical care of sick and disabled seamen. Does this translate into a nation wide system of Medicare? I don't think it's possible to answer this because the Founding Fathers would have no adequate frame of reference. They only knew what was crucial to their young country at the time and that was clearly socialized medicine. This also shows how concepts of limited government work in theory but not necessarily in action. Being products of the Age of Enlightenment, they would likely have the humility to admit that they couldn't make an judgement due to ignorance. Heck, the term "economics" wasn't even in regular use during their time! And health insurance?

Of course, if they were all around today, their thirst for knowledge and wisdom (something on which we call all agree) would propel them to eliminate that ignorance and the likely result would be continued debate with the fathers split into various factions...just as they were at the outset of our country's journey. Some would argue that the states should decide. Others would argue over the necessity of insurance and explore free market options of direct consumer to seller relationships. Some would look at the improvement of general welfare because of our social programs (from the New Deal onwards) and find it hard to argue with success.

In the final analysis, we only know what they thought of federal power during their time in history and, as I've demonstrated three times now (the first national bank, the whiskey rebellion, and mandated health care for seamen), even the people that wrote the Constitution didn't rigidly follow it. That includes ALL of their context and virtually NONE OF OURS.

A Peak Inside The Bubble

Bill Maher finally sat down and analyzed the whole Saul Alinsky obsession that the right has with the left and it was fucking brilliant. Among the points answered...

Saul Alinksy liked black people (Uh oh...:(...). He started to organize the Civil Rights movement in the 1930s which, as Newt will tell you, became a huge burden on white people. Alinksy also taught poor people to ban together, improve their lives and fight against slum lords. Oh no he di-ent! That's class warfare!!! Next thing you know we'll all be worshiping Vladimir Lenin!!!!

There's also the most concise explanation to date regarding the difference between Bush critics and Obama critics.

But the best part? Now I know who Barack X is...YES!!!!!

 

Really?

Like A Puck...

Being a Minnesotan, loving hockey is simply expected. So, it's with a heavy heart that I must report that the apocalyptic cult formerly known as the conservative movement in this country has slithered into the National Hockey League like a puck shooting across the ice.

Tim Thomas, the goalie for the Boston Bruins, recently refused a trip to the White House to be congratulated for the Stanley Cup victory last season. He said, in a statement, "I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People. This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government. Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL."

Well, he's lucky that he still has that right to refuse because before you know it, men with guns will be coming to his house to force him to meet President Blackie McHitler. Sheesh... I guess you just have to roll your eyes and mourn the loss of yet another soul to the fantasy world of The Tea Party.

Oh, and according the Bruins media guide this year, the person Thomas would most likely want to have dinner with?

Glenn Beck.

SOTU Post Mortem

As he always does, President Obama gave a great speech last night to Congress. A few things struck me as interesting.

He seemed to back away from partisan attacks (odd, in an election year) using the word "American" over 80 times while making sure to say that we share certain values. That's very optimistic and, from him, I'd expect nothing less. I guess I don't really share his sunny outlook but I do appreciate his populist tone.

What I saw on display last night was the very obvious and monumentally titanic reluctance to accept that the federal government plays a key role in our society and in the world at large. The president presented a balanced and pragmatic approach to government and the private sector. Yet, anytime the government doing something was mentioned, the Republicans sat on their hands. Honestly, they looked like stubborn little children because, sadly, "key role" has somehow magically transformed itself into socialism. This was very apparent in Governor Daniels response and the commentary by folks like Ari Fleischer after the speech.

As Speaker Boehner put it, pre-speech, "The president and the GOP are from different planets." Yes, this is true. The latter resides on one that is a largely created work of fiction that does not exist in reality.

It's obvious to me that the GOP in Congress are going to do everything in their power to deny him any sort of successes this year. Fair enough, I suppose, given that this is an election year. Yet, it's also fair of him to make Congress (and that's D's and R's alike) his opponent. With approval ratings 30 points lower than his, they offer a stark contrast which he illustrated several times last night by saying, "Put it on my desk and I'll sign it." They won't, of course, and that clearly shows which of the two parties actually want to do something. I think we may see some surprises this year in the voting booth come November. Key question to consider: just how little do the American people want Congress to do? We're going to find out.

Although not directly mentioned in his speech, I was also please to hear about another SEAL team success in Somalia. I was wondering why the president told SecDef Panetta, as he was walking in, "Good job, today!" Now we know. This president has been highly skilled in the area of his many duties that fall under the mantle of "Commander in Chief."

The president set an upbeat tone for his reelection campaign and, to a much larger degree, America as a whole last night in the State of the Union. In looking at it in comparison to what Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have been saying about America, one has to wonder if Speaker Boehner's comment could actually be broadened to two different universes.