Professor Obama At Sea on America’s Business — “Business”.

And why not…..He never was in business……He never graduated out of the classroom but to become an attorney for ACORN and a Saul Alinsky community organizer in Chicago.  His father figure by Obama’s own claim was Jeremiah “Goddamn America!” Wright, pastor of Obama’s Chicago “church”.

The following is an article by Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal:

“Calvin Coolidge once said, “The chief business of the American people is business.” The Democrats just lost America because they forgot that.

On second thought, you can’t forget what you never knew. The Democrats running things the past two years proved they have no clue about the business of business. In their world, the real world of the private economy is an abstraction, a political figment.

Exhibit A: Along the road to ObamaCare, the party’s planners inserted into the bill the now- famous 1099 provision, requiring businesses to do an IRS report for any transaction over $600 annually. No member of Congress, White House staffer or party flunky thought to say, “Oh, wow, this 1099 requirement will crush people running their own businesses. Are we sure we want to do this?” Yes, and that 1099 fiasco is a metaphor now for the modern Democratic Party.

Exhibit B: The Obama ban on offshore oil drilling. It floated out of the White House, Energy Department and EPA without anyone thinking: “Whoa, this is going to kill hundreds of working-class guys and their families.”

In recent days, both President Obama and Speaker-to-go Nancy Pelosi have said that the message of the voters in the election was that they wanted jobs. To be sure.

President Coolidge was more eloquent on this truth. The American people “are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world. The great majority of people will always find these are moving impulses of our life.”

But much of what this Democratic Congress did, or tried to do, was like throwing Molotov cocktails at business. It began in early 2009 with the cap-and-trade climate bill. The country was going to have to chow down its provisions no matter how many jobs got lost in Ohio, West Virginia, Michigan and other coal-using states. The bill portended so much damage to businesses in these states that some of the Senate’s most liberal members had to beg off supporting it.

At his news conference last week, Mr. Obama still wouldn’t rule out the EPA’s impending “carbon finding” to regulate emissions, another Freddy Krueger nightmare for the average business.

The air is filling now with suggestions of what the Democrats and Mr. Obama need to do. Always mentioned is that the president needs to repair his bad relations with “business.” But this is noted as just one item on the post-election to-do list: adjust the message, go to church more, reconnect with business, put up the storm windows.

The party’s decoupling from vast swaths of America at work didn’t start with Barack Obama. Al Gore and John Kerry ran hard against the depredations of the insurance, pharmaceutical and oil industries. The post-modern Democrats, starting at the top, convey the impression that the average company consists entirely of three guys in spats, silk vests and top hats, like the little character on the Monopoly cards, who deserve to be indicted or monitored.

And so any argument that the top marginal tax rate hits sole proprietorships and the like blows right by them. The “rich” gotta pay. They do pay, stop hiring and then they send money to American Crossroads to unelect Democrats.

Years ago the Democrats’ anti-business populism didn’t matter much because most people doing politics, including the populists, took for granted that politics included staying connected to local businesses. No more. Most Democrats are driving right past the Mom-and-Pop economy to public union headquarters. The party’s candidates are like brides of Dracula, locked forever in an embrace with infusions of public union political money (more than $170 million in this election).

As to the future, look at a map done by the National Conference of State Legislatures showing state-level party control now. The southeastern states, one of the most economically vibrant regions of the country, is wholly red. North Carolina has its first Republican senate since 1870. What’s still blue on this map suggests the Democratic Party is collapsing into mostly urban, public sector redoubts—Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston, Chicago.

One might argue that what the post-November 2010 Democrats need is their own tea party reform movement. Problem is, they just had their version—the Soros-MoveOn-Daily Kos activists who threw over the Clintons and put the party firmly in the hands of the progressive House chairmen who stopped thinking about the private sector 35 years ago.

Many activist Democrats don’t want their party to do business with business until the terms of engagement change. They think once the ObamaCare entitlement flows through the veins of the private sector, its workers also will be the party’s brides. What’s left of the private “impulses of our life” to create industries will be sopped up with permanent public subsidies to alternative-energy entrepreneurs. With luck, this new “low-growth” economy will produce enough tax revenue to keep the party’s watermills going for another generation.

There is an alternative view: The party’s antibusiness compulsions have turned it to rust.”

Comment:  I was and undergraduate at the University of Minnesota from 1952-56.   I remember Coolidge’s quote as “America’s business is business”……because in three of my classes, two in American History and one in political science,  this quote was used to ridicule the shallowness of the former president (1923-1929).   He should have been more magnanimous and noble in his goals than speak like a shopkeeper, these socialists insisted.   All three had their classes laughing with them in their ridicule.   I didn’t laugh, but I didn’t see the value of the Coolidge statement either.

Throughout my lengthy college experience, I was taught that socialism was the economic system of the world within a generation.  Government management of business was inevitable.  That included state ownership of most of the major national industries.   I don’t remember a single professor ever forcasting what changes might occur in American governance and culture in such an occurrence.

I worked for ‘government’ as a teacher or as a director of a small semi-government agency till 1987.  I had never been far away from the university campus until then.   I, like president Obama,  never put much together regarding Coolidge’s statement, “America’s business is business”, except I never forgot his quote……..and in 1988,  I developed a business of my own…starting up an artistic based home and business landscaping company called, Masterpiece Landscaping, Ltd.

And then I discovered the life and death aspects of owning a business and being directly responsible toclients, to ones fellow workers and colleagues and suppliers. 

I learned  how noble conducting a business was…..requiring enormous responsibilities….hiring people who were raising families…..working out problems for a common goal to help those families to succeed and overcome  the ever present  uncertaintise (even before Barack Hussein Obama),  the absolute essential   to make some profit for survival, performing tasks honorably and the pride which accompanies honor, recovery from losses and the inevitable scattering of dishonest clients,  and frankly the faint but recognizable pride that you are truly participating in “America’s business…..business” almost as a noble duty.   Even when financial disaster is always lurking around the corner.

It is  an honor to sell the American citizen a good product…..especially when your colleagues enjoy using their imagination and energies as much as you do to accomplish it.

It is almost like being in a foxhole together without actual bullets flying by.

I should never have known this noble experience had I remained attached to academia and government ‘guarantees’.

The Trouble with GW’s Influence……

…….it won’t go away! 

He’s Back….is the title to the following article at PowerLine by Paul Mirengoff.  I must admit I had a good chuckle over it.  How about you?

PowerLine:

“Question: What do the following three current news stories have in common?

1. White House Gives In On Bush Tax Cuts

2. Coalition Government Formed In Iraq

3. Afghanistan war deadline grows hazy: Senior officials say White House backing off plan to begin leaving next year

Answer: They speak to the partial vindication, or at least the staying power, of policies at the core George W. Bush’s presidency.

There are nuances associated with each headline. First, if in fact the White House has given in on the Bush tax cuts as applied to the wealthy, it has done so only temporarily. Second, the formation of the coalition government in Iraq is not the same thing as its successful functioning, and its successful functioning will not always yield outcomes to our liking. Finally, Bush commenced our action in Afghanistan, but did not escalate it to the current level — that was President Obama’s decision. But so was the decision to begin leaving in July 2011, which Obama is now backing away from. And that’s a decision Bush almost certainly would not have made.

In any event, all in all it’s a good headline day for the Bush administration. And a good week too, when we add Obama’s trip to india, which seemed to mark a partial restoration of Bush’s policy of closely aligning the U.S. with India.

The timing of all of this must be gratifying to Bush, as well. It coincides with his reappearance on the public stage as he promotes his book about a presidency that suddenly seems even more relevant than before.”

Comment:  Don’t look now, but there might be a number 4 soon to be added to this PowerLine listing…..i.e. Guantanamo, and maybe it is a two-in-one shot;  that it still is open and  that it will be the site for the military justice system’s  trials for the 3 conspirators of the 9-11 attacks which Attorney General , on his own, was so anxious for the civil court in New York to handle the affair.  Mr. Holder announced the other day that he was still trying to figure out what to do, but that his figuring out what to do would happen soon.

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Daily Kos Lists Undeclared Winners of Mid-term Elections

Election 2010: The Undeclared Races

by Steve Singiser

Thu Nov 11, 2010 at 04:46:04 PM PST

Here are some quick updates from a host of House races around the country that either have not been called by the Associated Press, or likely to head to recounts:

• CA-11: Second-term Democratic Rep. Jerry McNerney has declared victory over Republican David Harmer. The margins have fluctuated, but McNerney has moved into a 1500-2500 vote lead in recent tallies. Harmer is waiting until all the returns are in to concede, but an analysis by McNerney’s campaign points out that only about 12,000 votes remain to be counted, and that Harmer is not likely to make up close to enough votes to make up the difference. 
• CA-20: Democrat Jim Costa has also declared victory, and an analysis of the balloting seems to indicate that his lead will almost certainly stand. The returns in the 20th district were a tale of three counties, with Vidak having an enormous lead in Kings County, which was more than offset by Costa’s more modest edge in Fresno and Kern Counties. The bad news for Vidak? According to the California Sec. of State, Kings County has finished their count. Meanwhile, Kern and Fresno County are still counting ballots. The expectation, therefore, is that Costa’s 1300-vote lead will expand in the coming days. 
• IL-08: Gearing up for what might be an acrimonious overtime, the Illinois GOP is sending in the lawyers to challenge absentee ballots as the clock ticks down on their tabulation in this suburban Chicago district. Even with their efforts, the math for Democratic incumbent Melissa Bean looks pretty daunting. More absentee ballots remain in Lake and McHenry Counties (which GOP opponent Joe Walsh carried) than remain in Cook County (where Bean ran strongest). With just 1500 total votes remaining to be tallied, Bean will have to win those ballots by a better than 60-40 margin to make up her 347-vote deficit. 
• KY-06: A recanvass of this contested House race is set for Friday. Democrat Ben Chandler holds a lead of 643 votes. The recanvass, for all intents and purposes, is a rechecking of the math. If the recanvass confirms the outcome, Republican Andy Barr will have to act fast–recount requests must be in by the close of business on Friday. 
• NY-01: Suffolk County officials are auditing their voting machines, after an accounting error dramatically altered the results in this contested Long Island district. Once leading comfortably, Democratic incumbent Tim Bishop now trails GOP challenger Randy Altschuler by a few hundred votes. Given the bizarre flip of this race, Bishop’s campaign has called for a full recount. Nearly 10,000 absentee ballots still hang in the balance, making it clear that the outcome of this race is still far from certain. 
• NY-25: Freshman Democrat Dan Maffei trails by just over 600 votes as the counties of the 25th district enter into a weeklong period where they will tally their absentee ballots. Maffei’s camp is urging patience, pointing out that Republican Ann Marie Buerkle is likely to stretch her lead, because his stronghold (Onondaga County) is the last one to count its absentee ballots. Even in spite of that, the math is going to be tough. Maffei carried the populous Onondaga County by eight points, but there are only roughly 6000 absentee votes in the county. Unless he hugely overperforms in the absentees, the math gets really tough for Maffei. 
• NC-02: Technically, the AP has called this race, in favor of Republican challenger Renee Ellmers. But an alteration to the vote totals late last week moved the race within the one-percent threshold for an automatic recount, which Democratic incumbent Bob Etheridge seems inclined to avail himself of. Given that the result falls just inside that threshold (Ellmers leads by 1600 votes), the recount is not liable to change the results. 
• TX-27: Longtime Democratic incumbent Solomon Ortiz is asking for a manual recount of his race against Republican Blake Farenthold. Farenthold has a small lead of under 800 votes over Ortiz, who has served in the House since 1982. South Texas was a disaster area for Democrats, who also lost a number of state legislative seats in the area (including one held by the Congressman’s son, Solomon Ortiz Jr.).

The above is a listing of undeclared winners of Midterm elections published in the Daily Kos, a radical liberal blog site.

Comment:  It is a rare occasion that Republicans win recount races even though they were in the lead before recounts.  In Minnesota most counties are run by Democrats employed by the State.   That includes those employees who oversee write in ballots and overlook those felons who vote illegally.  Most poll observors are also Democrats.   Belatedly found “untallied” votes are found  by Democrats in Democrat counties.   In the Franken counting  in some areas Democrats voted in greater numbers than those registered.

State employees sometimes decide which ballots are disqualified.

Mike Steele to Be Replaced as Republican Party Chairman?

Yes, I’ll bet so.   From the tiny office room I have in suburban Minneapolis home, pontificating about what I see in this small, but fascinating  world, I believe he is a gonner.  

He became deeply scarred in some of his strange ways in raising and spending money at National Republican Headquarters.   I lost confidence in him when in debate, he did not know why Justice in its  American features, is BLIND. 

Good God, this is one of the basic tenets of the entire American experiment……Justice, in the ideal MUST be blind in order to pass judgment with the least chance of prejudice in  decisions based on law, not man’s whims.    Regardless of how beautiful or ugly, how tall or small, rich or poor…..no matter what ones background, Justice must be  based on none of these conditions  in reaching  fairest decision.

Mr. Steele, an articulate man, and intelligent man, a winsome man, doesn’t seem to know much about the  great strengths of classic conservatism.   If this is true, how can he lead a movement which is stirring its  revival?

I also think that Karl Rove is an exceedingly sharp conservative student of the American scene.  We are so lucky to have him as one of us……and lead the movement. 

I wish Mike Steele well.  He seems to be wonderfully easy to like.  Surely he will have an appropriate slot to help lead this conservative movement in the Republican Party.

The Feminizing of America; The Cancer In The Culture

When folks follow  trends and rumor without much critical thought, a population can go astray without anyone noticing a difference…….until some day there is trouble.  

For fifty years now, the American female has been thrust into our  nation’s power structure, elevated whether anyone likes it or not, because dogma has demanded the move.  It was a religious revolt from the Left grasping for a new electorate as a baseline constituency. 

Motherhood was denigrated.  Dresses burned.  Court cases won.  Women were freed to play whereever they wanted to play.  The Age of Aquarius had arrived and for decades the Courts, Media, Schools, Entertainments, and Politicians obliged the butch at NOW to lead the protected sex into the vulgarities of modern American life.  They started winning elections .

This Left entered American culture amid riots, bombings, spit and hate and created the New American Woman…..the gal who could out work, out spit, out lay, out score, out clout, out class, out shoot any man that ever lived,  and the country hasn’t been the same since.

Unisex had arrived and had arrived favoring the weaker sex, the female.  The New American Woman has been forced to make her mark everywhere.  So she took hostility training. 

If Americans today were free from the PoliticallyCorrect censors  to study her deeds and personality, the changes  the Left’s Unisex policies have had  on the culture in her name, shame would be only one of the many  endless disastrous  results  crippling the country. 

The following example is how the feminist left is training the young American male.

Read the following story, which I found at PowerLine today.  Throughout America the feminizing disease has entered the social mind, crippling the culture as in the setting described here:

from Paul Mirengoff at Powerline:

“When Barry Rubin took over coaching duties for his son’s soccer team for one game, he introduced a novel idea — play to win. The team hadn’t won all season because the regular coach apparently treats all of his players as if they were equally talented for all purposes. Rubin freed his team from this fiction, and led it to victory.

Oddly, this seemed to make the team members happy. Even the boy who was criticized by his mother for being too happy with the win was still smiling after the chewing out.

Winning seems to have that effect. It should probably be outlawed. Short of that, conspiring to avoid victory and guilt-tripping the victors seem like the best options.

Still, I believe that Rubin lives not far from me in the Washington DC area. The adults around here seem to play to win. So why send the signal to their children that there’s something wrong with this general approach?”

Further comment:  Today’s American cultural habits are governed by its academic Left.  Its ethos is a feminine one based on dreams and feelings, not reality and survival.   Many believe that the feminizing of any  great civilization  is the last chapter of its biography.   No one in the general population is educated or trained and therefore willing to defend it.

Masculine responsibility for the civilization’s   survival is replaced by  womanish  dreams maneuvering  for trouble to be wished away.    Such peoples no longer know how to defend themselves.   They instead argue themselves to impotence.

A Lefty at New Republic Claims Voters Will Become Disillusioned with Republicans

Voters are about to be dissillusioned  with GOP, Lefty Ed Kilgore claims in his New Republic article.  Of course, he may be right.   It is a bit early to tell, don’t you think.  We don’t know what Mr. Obama has in mind, yet, do we?

Americans don’t like to pay much attention to politics.  Nearly half stay away from voting on anything national and fewer show up for polticial business closer to home.  That is inevitable when government hasn’t been too disruptive in family affairs.

Ed Kilgore blames GW and his buddies for the economic crisis…..yet those who delve into the issue know that most of the economic disaster had to do with Barney Frank and Chistopher Dodd led Democrat Party scandal in the housing industry over the past quarter century and the resulting collapse of reliable credit in borrowing in just about any field of business.

It is important to know ones opponents’ thoughts, or at least their claims. 

Referring to the Republican wins a week ago, Kilgore offers:

“…… going forward, now that they control the House and aspire to gain control of the Senate and the executive branch in the next election, Republicans will be forced to work for an actual agenda. And as Paul Waldman nicely explains in The American Prospect, this can produce a great pivot in the political climate of the country, very fast:

As a long history of public-opinion research has made clear — and as events continue to remind us — Americans are “symbolic conservatives” but “operational liberals.” In other words, they like the idea of limited government, but they also like just about everything government does. Good things happen to the party that can successfully pander to both impulses, which is why we saw so many ads from Republicans…condemning Democrats for passing a big-government health-care plan because it would … curtail the growth of Medicare.Perhaps they’re just being cautious as they get used to their new majority, but in the last week, Republicans have steadfastly refused to say what their professed desire to limit government would actually entail. Press them hard on what they want to cut, and they’ll answer “earmarks,” which would be fine were it not for the fact that a) earmarks do not appropriate new money; they merely direct money that has already been appropriated, and b) the value of all earmarks amounts to less than 1 percent of the federal budget….

If there’s one thing Republicans have been clear about, it’s their desire to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Even here, though, they don’t want to get too specific. As you’ve no doubt heard many times, a bare majority of the public opposes “health-care reform” (or “Obamacare”), while substantial majorities favor almost all the major provisions of the law. Once again, Republicans can win the vague, general argument but not the specific one. Faced with the impossibility of repealing the entire act (which Obama would veto), Republicans have said they’ll try to dismantle it piece by piece. Try that, however, and they’re suddenly attacking not “health-care reform” but those particular things people like.

That isn’t to say Republicans will inevitably be punished for attempting to repeal the ACA. Pushing repeal will only be dangerous for them if Democrats make it so. Republicans will suffer if they’re attacked aggressively for wanting to reopen the Medicare prescription-drug “doughnut hole,” for wanting to kick young people off their parents’ insurance, or for wanting to give the insurance companies the ability to deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. Those are all provisions of the ACA that have already gone into effect. The Democrats are hardly guaranteed to win the battle of ACA, but they have a shot if they make the right arguments…..”

Comment:  Notice the new language….”Affordable Care Act”…..referring to “Obamacare takeover of the American health industry”.    Mr.  Kilgore claims that I’ver heard that a bare majority oppose Obamacare’s takeover.   It has been running consistently about 54-42 for repeal, and the shock of inflated costs hasn’t even kicked in yet to prove Obamalies about its actual costs.  He continues assuring us readers that “substantial majorities favor almost all the major provisions of the law”  in typical Marxist style of public information of hit and run claims…..Make the charge and run for cover instead of providing evidence.   

The Republicans are in a precarious position politically, however, a better one what if they had won the Senate.  If they had won Congress, the leftwing press, universities, and all of the other usual Marxist suspects would blame the potential grid lock of the next two years on Republicans….they will anyway, but the attack is much weaker.

Usually Americans are obtuse about the nation’s troubles…..my view, of course.  When Howard Stern visited Harlem before the 2008 national elections, he easily talked  street interviewees  to accept the idea that Sarah Palin was running as Obama’s vice presidential candidate.   The video is still available on youtube, I imagine.  

It will be difficult for Republicans to make significant gains in lowering the power and cost of the federal government.   If Obama is agreeable, as Billy Clinton was in 1994, Obama could easily be reelectable……a major problem for American democracy’s future.

Democrats have accepted Obama Marxism, because they believe in its religious, social, economic and political tenets.  Mr. Kilgore is right in reporting Americans of all backgrounds enjoy government handouts at the expense of others.   But NOT CONSERVATIVES!

Karl Rove on Obama’s Hearing Aid

Karl Rove is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal and the article below is today’s entry in which he questions the president’s ability to listen.   The president indeed is deaf, whether stone or not remains to be seen.   We shall see during the next Congress beginning in January whether the maladay is permanent.

I am glad Mr. Rove is on my side.  His was to GW as Rahm Emanuel was to BH.   The difference tells it all.  Both are bright, but the comparison seems to dead end there.

“The rock star Sara Bareilles sang at President Barack Obama’s Las Vegas rally for Sen. Harry Reid in October. Her biggest hit, “King of Anything,” includes the lyrics, “You’ve got the talking down/Just not the listening.” That pretty well sums up Mr. Obama’s reaction to last week’s midterm.

The president rejects the idea that voters don’t like his policies on jobs and the economy. At his White House news conference last Wednesday, Mr. Obama observed, “If right now we had 5% unemployment instead of 9.6% . . . people would have more confidence in those policy choices.”

Well, yes. But isn’t unemployment much closer to 10% than 5% because the stimulus package didn’t work as the president promised it would when he signed it? Mr. Obama’s narrative that the economy’s condition has nothing to do with his policies is nonsense.

When asked at the same news conference if he felt there was “a majority of Americans who think your policies are taking us in reverse,” Mr. Obama waved off the criticism, saying that the “American people understand that we’re still digging our way out of a pretty big mess.”

Wrong again. Mr. Obama doesn’t seem to understand that the midterm “shellacking” his party took was an explicit rejection of his policies, especially by independent voters.

This is borne out by a post-election poll released Tuesday by Democrat James Carville’s Democracy Corps and Republican Ed Gillespie’s Resurgent Republic. The survey found that 56% of independent voters voted for GOP candidates while just 38% voted Democratic, a 36-point swing from the 2006 midterm and a 26-point swing from the last presidential election.

Independents now look much more like Republicans than like Democrats—79% believe the country is on the wrong track and they’re more than twice as likely to blame President Obama and the Democrats than to blame President Bush and Republicans.

Independents share the GOP view that the government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals. They trust the GOP more than Democrats on jobs and employment (50%-27%), the economy (48-25), government spending (50-23), the federal budget deficit (53-17), and taxes (54-23). A majority (51%) support extending all the Bush-era tax cuts even after hearing Mr. Obama’s best arguments against extending them for people making over $250,000.

Instead of acknowledging the need for policy correction, Mr. Obama offers the now familiar excuse that it’s all a communication problem. As he told the National Journal’s Ron Fournier in October, his policy successes were “a lot for me to be able to communicate effectively to the public in any coherent way.”

But the problem is not with the capacity of voters to grasp the brilliance of Mr. Obama’s policies. Rather, the idea that government can spend our way to prosperity doesn’t make sense to voters. The more they heard Mr. Obama talk about this approach, the more they rebelled.

Something similar happened with health care. The president dismisses the notion that last week’s results were a rejection of ObamaCare, saying at his White House news conference that it would be “misreading the election” to argue “the American people want to see us for the next two years relitigate arguments that we had over the last two years.”

But that’s exactly what voters want. The Democracy Corps/Resurgent Republic poll found that 51% of all midterm voters and 57% of independents believe ObamaCare should be “repealed and replaced.”

In the wake of last week’s epic rebuke, Mr. Obama has two historical models to follow. He can react as President Bill Clinton did after Democrats’ 1994 defeat and move to the center, which resulted in two of Mr. Clinton’s greatest achievements: a balanced budget and welfare reform. Or he can emulate Harry Truman in 1947-48, sticking hard to a liberal agenda and fighting the congressional GOP for obstructing it.

It will be difficult for Mr. Obama to channel Mr. Clinton, who was a Third Way Democrat and politically nimble. In addition, after the 1994 midterms, Mr. Clinton was freed of the baggage of HillaryCare, which failed to become law. Mr. Obama is stuck with his deeply unpopular health-care reform.

But it may be even more difficult for him to pull off a Truman. It’s hard to run against a “do nothing” Congress when your own party controls the Senate and the GOP’s agenda is more popular than yours.

Mr. Obama is in a pickle without an obvious path to winning back independents. After turning on him so decisively, they may well tell him, in the words of Ms. Bareilles: “You sound so innocent, all full of good intent/Swear you know best/But you expect me to jump up on board with you/Ride off into your delusional sunset . . . Who cares if you disagree, you are not me/Who made you king of anything?”