Obama Shows Indifference by Spending Your Taxes Big Time

James S. Robbins of the Washington Times notes:

“The Obama family has been working hard to show their indifference to the plight of middle America. Whether it’s the president’s golfing fetish, private air transportation for family dog Bo to a Maine vacation, or Michelle Obama’s taxpayer subsidized trip to the Spanish Riviera, the gulf between the White House leisure class and the American middle class has grown to unprecedented proportions.”

Peggy Noonan Notices Change in America! Obama Opts for Marxism and Is in a Hurry

“The biggest political change in my lifetime is that Americans no longer assume that their children will have it better than they did. This is a huge break with the past, with assumptions and traditions that shaped us.

The country I was born into was a country that had existed steadily, for almost two centuries, as a nation in which everyone thought—wherever they were from, whatever their circumstances—that their children would have better lives than they did. That was what kept people pulling their boots on in the morning after the first weary pause: My kids will have it better. They’ll be richer or more educated, they’ll have a better job or a better house, they’ll take a step up in terms of rank, class or status. America always claimed to be, and meant to be, a nation that made little of class. But America is human. “The richest family in town,” they said, admiringly. Read Booth Tarkington on turn-of-the-last-century Indiana. It’s all about trying to rise.

Parents now fear something has stopped. They think they lived through the great abundance, a time of historic growth in wealth and material enjoyment. They got it, and they enjoyed it, and their kids did, too: a lot of toys in that age, a lot of Xboxes and iPhones. (Who is the most self-punishing person in America right now? The person who didn’t do well during the abundance.) But they look around, follow the political stories and debates, and deep down they think their children will live in a more limited country, that jobs won’t be made at a great enough pace, that taxes—too many people in the cart, not enough pulling it—will dishearten them, that the effects of 30 years of a low, sad culture will leave the whole country messed up. And then there is the world: nuts with nukes, etc.

Optimists think that if we manage to turn a few things around, their kids may have it . . . almost as good. The country they inherit may be . . . almost as good. And it’s kind of a shock to think like this; pessimism isn’t in our DNA. But it isn’t pessimism, really, it’s a kind of tough knowingness, combined, in most cases, with a daily, personal commitment to keep plugging.

But do our political leaders have any sense of what people are feeling deep down? They don’t act as if they do. I think their detachment from how normal people think is more dangerous and disturbing than it has been in the past. I started noticing in the 1980s the growing gulf between the country’s thought leaders, as they’re called—the political and media class, the universities—and those living what for lack of a better word we’ll call normal lives on the ground in America. The two groups were agitated by different things, concerned about different things, had different focuses, different world views.

But I’ve never seen the gap wider than it is now. I think it is a chasm. In Washington they don’t seem to be looking around and thinking, Hmmm, this nation is in trouble, it needs help. They’re thinking something else. I’m not sure they understand the American Dream itself needs a boost, needs encouragement and protection. They don’t seem to know or have a sense of the mood of the country.

And so they make their moves, manipulate this issue and that, and keep things at a high boil. And this at a time when people are already in about as much hot water as they can take.

To take just one example from the past 10 days, the federal government continues its standoff with the state of Arizona over how to handle illegal immigration. The point of view of our thought leaders is, in general, that borders that are essentially open are good, or not so bad. The point of view of those on the ground who are anxious about our nation’s future, however, is different, more like: “We live in a welfare state and we’ve just expanded health care. Unemployment’s up. Could we sort of calm down, stop illegal immigration, and absorb what we’ve got?” No is, in essence, the answer.

 An irony here is that if we stopped the illegal flow and removed the sense of emergency it generates, comprehensive reform would, in time, follow. Because we’re not going to send the estimated 10 million to 15 million illegals already here back. We’re not going to put sobbing children on a million buses. That would not be in our nature. (Do our leaders even know what’s in our nature?) As years passed, those here would be absorbed, and everyone in the country would come to see the benefit of integrating them fully into the tax system. So it’s ironic that our leaders don’t do what in the end would get them what they say they want, which is comprehensive reform.

When the adults of a great nation feel long-term pessimism, it only makes matters worse when those in authority take actions that reveal their detachment from the concerns—even from the essential nature—of their fellow citizens. And it makes those citizens feel powerless.

Inner pessimism and powerlessness: That is a dangerous combination.”

Comment:  I am deeply interested in personal revelations such as those of Peggy Noonan’s in her article at the Wall Street Journal, AMERICA IS AT RISK OF BOILING OVER.

My upset with Ms. Noonan is where has she been in her writings for the past many years?  She apparently hasn’t met  Dennis Prager, who has described today’s America as one in a civil war against the invasions from the Left into every American institution.

In her subtitle, Ms. Noonan allowed this to be written:  “Out of touch leaders don’t see the need to cool things off.”

Where does Ms. Noonan live and breath?   We have a two party system of government in which for the past 40 years one party has plotted and acted to expand its antiAmericanism Marxism demand for government forced equality…..government forced equality of man and woman behavior…..government forced equality of everyone being a Marxist and therefor antireligion……government forced equality of  black and white cultures,  to be equally poor and ignorant and become government forced to accept  Marxist “learnings” from school and university taught, led, or spied on by the “graduates” from the  Black ‘Studies’ Departments and the Women’s ‘Studies’ Departments, and from the Gay and Lesbian ‘Studies’ Departments. 

What do Americans  think is taught in these thousands and thousands of Departments of  this, that, and the other victimhood gatherings by the American Left for special learnings to hate and get even against all of the perceived perpetrators of their grievances and feelings of victimness!  Why should anyone learn a skill or even work when they can rely on handouts by calling racist, sexist, or homophobe, and take in a lot more money doing it?

And what about the Lefty activist courts which abort democracy, marriage, and birthright as well as free speech in most communities?   Where should conservatives be cooling off here?

To make it simple, America is in trouble because Marxism is here to stay and flourish.    We are in a battle of  the Marxist  feminizing the culture, selling its wares to replace the husband and father as the security giver of the family.   The human female was not born to be a problem solver and is not interested in liberty.  

She demands security and peace…..to hell with liberty.  She wants protection.   She’d prefer to suckle husband and sons with order and quiet at home…safe home.  

Today she votes female for  more and more of her kind live alone.   Marriages come and go.  And they lose meaning, don’t they.   In England a gal recently married her dolphin pet. 

Two generations ago  folks were married and voted together in the interests of the family, which usually meant supporting the husband’s  (father’s) line of work. 

Three generations ago and more, most Americans  were farmers.   Everyone in the family had required tasks for survival.   They didn’t go to Black, Gay,  or Women’s Studies classes to learn to hate others.

Today’s Party in command, the Democrat,  has controlled the Congress most of the past 50 years and now controls the presidency and most of the nation’s courts.   What  do those tread upon have to cool, when the party dictating has the power to dictate and grab what they want?   What does Ms. Noonan  suggest the downtrodden conservatives in government trade, when the ‘White” man in the White House isn’t interested in giving up he can  grab?  He is on a mission….and Peggy faults both constituencies, even though it’s the president’s  Marxist mission which is tearing us apart!

When do you think assertiveness training for “ poor, pathetically underempowered girls and women” became a popular tax payer supported university indoctrination?  I remember decent, honest , hard working secretaries at the University of Minnesota campus where my offices were throughout the 1970s were paid to go to sessions to make them mean and in-your-face “men”  as the lesbian feminists of the day preferred them to be. 

Today, no one can be called “secretary” any more except  Hillary as “Secretary of State”.

American is in a state of free fall.  Women and womenish men or on a spending spree.  Why is there a need for restraint when you can steal other people’s money, claiming you are entitled to it.   Three cheers for Obama’s Marxism!   That is the American in which we live today.  And it is getting stronger every day….

…..Unless……..?

Journolist Guy from Time Magazine, Joe Klein, Reviewed

At Contentions, I found this excellent article written by Peter Wehner examining the mouthings (writings) of a nasty and slippery Lefty.   Dennis Prager contends “The Left” cannot stand to tell truth for it knows the public in a democratic society will be repelled by even a  thought of goverrnment-run citizen life.  

 The lefty mullahs and profits  must be flexible about and within every topic of the human experience to become skilled oiling  the facts, realities, truths and virtues in democratic life to force -fit  them all into a Marxist engine  of love and peace. 

Joe Klein is a star of  “Journolisto” recently exposed as an arsonist destroying   ideas and their paths to truth…..an evil anti-democrat Marxist devoted to smearing his opponent no matter what the cost.   

Like president Obama, Mr. Klein, who is employed at Time, and often writes, pays little attention to forthrightness and honesty.  Check out this article as example:

“Correcting the errors in logic and fact by Joe Klein is more than a full-time job, and I usually have better things to do. But once in a while, he writes a piece that deserves to be examined and dismantled. The posting Klein did on Time magazine’s blog Swampland earlier this week, “Obama on Iraq,” qualifies as one of those instances. Let’s have a look.

1. On Monday Klein wrote this:

It is the way of the world that Barack Obama ‘ s announcement today of the end of the combat phase in Iraq … will not be remembered as vividly as George Bush’s juvenile march across the deck of an aircraft carrier, costumed as a combat aviator in a golden sunset, to announce — six years and tens of thousands of lives prematurely — the “end of combat operations.”

Now let’s see what Klein said about Bush’s landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln on CBS’s Face the Nation, on May 4, 2003:

Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. That was the first thing that came to mind for me. And it just shows you how high a mountain these Democrats are going to have to climb. You compare that image, which everybody across the world saw, with this debate last night where you have nine people on a stage and it doesn’t air until 11:30 at night, up against Saturday Night Live, and you see what a major, major struggle the Democrats are going to have to try and beat a popular incumbent president.

Bush’s moment went from being Hollywood cool then to a puerile act now. Such bipolar shifts of opinion in a high-ranking public official would be alarming and dangerous; in a columnist and blogger, they are comical and discrediting.

2. Klein asserts this:

Certainly, even if something resembling democracy prevails, the U.S. invasion and occupation — the carnage and tragedy it wrought — will not be remembered fondly by Iraqis anytime soon. We will own the destruction in perpetuity; if the Iraqis manage to cobble themselves a decent society, they will see it, correctly, as an achievement of their own. [emphasis added]

Here, Klein moves from the merely ludicrous to the offensive. What Klein is arguing is that even if things turn out well in Iraq, America deserves none of the credit. We were responsible only for carnage and tragedy, not liberation. The heroic sacrifices of America’s military men and women are dismissed as inconsequential. Those who have died have done so in vain, according to Klein’s line of reasoning; if the Iraqis manage to cobble for themselves a decent society, he insists, it will be an achievement of their own making alone.

This claim is flatly untrue. Without the intervention of the United States, Saddam Hussein would not have been deposed. And without the sacrifice of treasure and blood made by America, Iraq would have been convulsed by civil war and possibly genocide. It is certainly true that if Iraq continues on its path to self-government, its people will deserve a large share of the credit. But so will America — and so will those who wore America’s uniform into combat. For Klein to dismiss what our country and its warriors have done to advance liberty and humane ends is disturbing and revelatory.

3. Klein writes this:

As for myself, I deeply regret that once, on television in the days before the war, I reluctantly but foolishly said that going ahead with the invasion might be the right thing to do. I was far more skeptical, and equivocal, in print–I never wrote in favor of the war and repeatedly raised the problems that would accompany it–but skepticism and equivocation were an insufficient reaction, too.

Well, this admission marks progress of a sort, I suppose.

For the longest time, Klein denied ever having supported the war. He even complained about being criticized by liberals for his support of the Iraq war. “The fact that I’ve been opposed to the Iraq war ever since this 2002 article in Slate just makes it all the more aggravating,” Klein said.

But what proved to be even more aggravating to Joe is when people like Arianna Huffington and me pointed out that Klein supported the war immediately before it began, thus contradicting his revisionist claim.

For the record: On Feb. 22, 2003, Klein told the late Tim Russert that the war was a “really tough decision” but that he, Klein, thought it was probably “the right decision at this point.” Klein then offered several reasons for his judgment: Saddam’s defiance of 17 UN resolutions over a dozen years; Klein’s firm conviction that Saddam was hiding WMD; and the need to send the message that if we didn’t enforce the latest UN resolution, it “empowers every would-be Saddam out there and every would-be terrorist out there.”

It’s worth pointing out that to make a false claim and revise it in light of emerging evidence is something of a pattern with Joe. After all, he repeatedly and forcefully denied being the author of the novel Primary Colors until he was forced to admit that he, in fact, had written it. It takes him a while to grudgingly bow before incontrovertible evidence. But he does get there. Eventually. When he has no other choice.

4.  According to Klein:

In retrospect, the issue then was as clear cut as it is now. It demanded a clarity that I failed to summon. The essential principle is immutable: We should never go to war unless we have been attacked or are under direct, immediate threat of attack. Never. And never again.

Presumably, then, Klein believes that Great Britain declaring war on Germany two days after Hitler’s invasion of Poland (Great Britain and Poland were allies and shared a security pact) was a violation of an “essential” and “immutable” principle. So was the first Gulf War, when the United States repelled Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. So was Tony Blair’s intervention in Kosovo and Sierra Leone (the latter widely viewed as successful in helping save that West African country from barbarism and dictatorship). So, arguably, was the American Civil War; after all, Lincoln could have avoided war, had he given in on the matters of secession and slavery.

According to Klein, no war is justified unless a nation has been attacked or is under the direct, immediate threat of attack — which means interventions for the sake of aiding allies, meeting treaty obligations, averting massive humanitarian disasters, or advancing national interests and national security are always and forever off the table.

Klein’s arguments are those of a simpleton. He has drawn up a doctrine that isn’t based on careful reasoning, subtle analysis, or a sophisticated understanding of history; it is, in fact, a childish overreaction to the events of the moment. What Klein states with emphatic certainty one day is something he will probably jettison the next.

Iraq is a subject on which Joe Klein has been — let’s be gentle here — highly erratic. He both opposed and supported the war before it began. After the war started, he spoke hopefully about the movement toward democracy there. (“This is not a moment for caveats,” he wrote in 2005, after the Iraqi elections. “It is a moment for solemn appreciation of the Iraqi achievement — however it may turn out — and for hope.”) Now he refers to it as a “neo-colonialist obscenity.” President Bush’s “Freedom Agenda” went from being something that “seem[s] to be paying off” and that might even secure Bush the Nobel Peace Prize to a “delusional farce.” Klein ridiculed the idea of the surge, referring to it as “Bush’s futile pipe dream,” before conceding that the surge was wise, necessary, and successful.

This is all of a piece with Klein. And there is a kind of poignancy that surrounds his descent. Once upon a time, Joe was a fairly decent political reporter — but somewhere along the line, he went badly off track. He has become startlingly embittered, consumed by his hatreds, regarding as malevolent enemies all people who hold views different from his. In the past, his writings could be insightful, somewhat balanced, and at times elegant. These days, he’s not good for much more than a rant — and even his rants have become predictable, pedestrian, banal. Witless, even.

This cannot be what Henry Luce envisioned for his magazine.”

Comment:  Henry Luce founded Time Magazine in the early 1920s when he was in his early 20s.   For decades it was THE news magazine for honest news with a slightly right wing o[opinion when I was awakening as a student in my school and college years. 

If there were a Chameleon Party in the U.S., both Mr. Obama and this Mr. Joe Klein would be principal theorists and salesmen.

“Obamacare” — The Biggest Tax Increase In U.S. History!

The following article was published at theNatinal Center for Policy Analysis:

“President Obama has repeatedly asserted that the new health care reform’s individual mandate requiring everyone to have qualified health insurance coverage or pay a penalty is not a tax.  And yet the Department of Justice (DOJ) now claims the mandate is a tax, but not because the legislation refers to the mandate as a tax — it doesn’t.   Rather, the DOJ lawyers want the Supreme Court to confer its blessings on ObamaCare when the issue comes before the Court, and the lawyers are increasingly concerned that the 20-plus state challenge claiming the mandate is unconstitutional may hold up, says Merrill Matthews, a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation. 

The Democratic defense has morphed from the: “Of course we have the constitutional power to impose an individual mandate” defense to, “The Commerce Clause gives us the power to mandate coverage” defense, and now to their, “It’s a tax” defense.  

Many conservatives rejoiced at the flip-flop, proclaiming they have caught the president and his administration in one more broken promise: not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 a year.  If the mandate really is a tax, it could be the largest in history — and it affects everyone, says Matthews: 

• A Kaiser Family Foundation survey of employers last year found that average premiums for an employer-provided family policy, which is more likely to be the type of comprehensive coverage required by ObamaCare, was $13,375, about 25 percent of the median household income of $52,000.
• That $13,375 family policy costs the same for both lower- and higher-income workers; so if the mandate is a tax, it’s equivalent to a 50 percent income tax on a family making $25,000 a year but a 10 percent income tax on a family making $130,000 a year. Talk about regressive taxes! 

Of course, the Obama administration will argue that it is addressing the regressivity problem by providing a sliding scale subsidy, up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level (about $88,000 for a family of four in 2010), to insulate lower- and middle-income families.   But subsidies don’t negate the fact that ObamaCare imposes the tax on every individual in the country.  It simply means that someone else — i.e., either employers or other taxpayers — will be paying the tax for millions of Americans, says Matthews.” 

Source:  Merrill Matthews, “The Biggest Tax Increase in U.S. History?” Forbes, July 26, 2010.

Target Apologizes

Target has officially apologized.  They crossed the line, they dared to support a gubernatorial candidate who would be openly pro-business, and for this they must be punished.  After all, they should have realized that the real issue is not jobs, but rather making gays feel good.   After all, the path toward legalizing gay marriage is already being forged, and it runs through the courts, not the legislature.  Nevertheless, in an effort to quell the growing  protests and boycott over the indiscretion of giving money to Tom Emmer’s campaign, Target issued a company intranet apology.  Further,  Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel said he would set up a decision making process for future political donations.  Perfect.  Maybe that will insure that this travesty of a major company openly disagreeing with the left never happens again.  Perhaps this ‘process’ will include a committee of advisors from various human rights groups, to avoid such affronts in the future.  In case that isn’t enough, we can rest assured that as unemployment increases, there will at least be plenty of people who have lots of free time to conduct protests.  You can read the Star Tribune’s article on the story here:

http://www.startribune.com/politics/100051999.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUnciaec8O7EyUsl