Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken

[Soul Crusher]

I'm not disagreeing with that, but you're saying that one is evil and one is MORE evil.

Shouldn't you be talking about doing what's NOT EVIL at all?

My beef with the Bush tax cuts is that is took many middle and low people off the tax rolls altogether to where many people pay nothing at all. 

[Soul Crusher]

Blaming Republicans, Obama tries to rally Hispanic support [LA RAZA]
washingtontimes.com ^ | July 25, 2011 | Kara Rowland



In what amounted to a pep talk aimed at disenchanted Hispanic voters, President Obama on Monday blamed Republicans for his unsuccessful efforts to overhaul the nation’s immigration system, telling Hispanic activists that “the Democrats and your president are with you.”

“Feel free to keep the heat on me and the heat on Democrats,” Mr. Obama said in an address to the National Council of La Raza’s annual conference in Washington. But “the Democrats and your president are with you. … Don’t get confused about that. Remember who it is that we need to move in order to actually change the laws.”

The speech was Mr. Obama’s latest effort to court the crucial voting bloc ahead of next year’s election. Last month he paid a brief visit to Puerto Rico — the first trip to the country by a sitting president in decades — and hosted the first-ever White House Hispanic Policy Conference.


(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...


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Funny - when obama had both houses in the congress, I dont remember him pushing amnesty.  now he blames the GOP? 


LMFAO.   How can anyone possibly do anything but laugh at this clown?   

[Soul Crusher]

Report: 1 in 8 employer insurance plans getting the axe since Obamacare
Daily Caller ^ | 7/25/11 | C.J. Ciaramella



One in eight small businesses have had or expect to have their health insurance plans terminated since the passage of President Obama’s health care reform.

This figure comes from a National Federation of Independent Business report which surveyed small businesses one year after the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The report, released today, found prevailing negative attitudes about the law’s impact among small business owners.

Among the most striking of NFIB’s findings was the number of employer health insurance plans that have been or will be eliminated since PPACA’s passage — 12 percent, or one in eight. Eliminating employer health care plans “is the first major consequence of PPACA that small-business owners likely feel,” the report said.

However, those plans are being replaced by new products. The number of small employers offering or not-offering employee health insurance is likely to change little over the next 12 months, according to the report.

Still, the NFIB said the amount of change in plans was out of the ordinary.

“We are not aware of any data suggesting we’ve had turnover anywhere near this level in the past,” said William J. Dennis, a senior research fellow at the National Federation for Independent Business.

The NFIB study also found 20 percent of small employers expect to significantly change their benefit packages the next time they renew their health insurance plans. Almost all of them expected to see diminished benefits, increased employee costs, or both.

However, the American Public Health Association disputed the study’s results. APHA Executive Director Georges Benjamin said the study was mostly opinion and it was far too early to be criticizing the law, especially since most of it hasn’t even been rolled out yet.

“Most of the major parts haven’t gone into effect and shouldn’t be causing these market changes,” he said. “We’ve seen a lot of people blaming the law for things they ought not be blaming it for.”

Benjamin also said there was hidden costs and savings not factored into many studies of health care costs.

“We’re hoping that when people do these studies they’ll include the costs of absenteeism due to sickness and reductions in worker’s compensation,” Benjamin said. “There are a lot of little pieces that they need to put into their equation.”

The NFIB poll also surveyed small businesses about their attitudes toward the PPACA.

The vast majority of small employers with some knowledge of the PPACA didn’t think it would reduce the rate of health care costs or administrative burdens. They did think it would increase taxes and add to the federal deficit.

Although those surveyed agreed that PPACA will result in more people having health insurance coverage, they didn’t think it will increase the general health of the American public.

NFIB is an advocacy group for small and independent businesses. The poll was conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research.

For the purpose of the survey, a small employer was defined as a business employing 50 or fewer employees.

[Option D]

The Daily Caller is a news website based in Washington, D.C., United States with a focus on politics, original reporting, breaking news, and YouTube videos, founded by journalist and political pundit Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel, former adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney. The Daily Caller launched on January 11, 2010. While the site claims to be neutral in regards to ideology, many observers have noted the Daily Caller's right-wing leanings, with some calling it "the conservative answer to the Huffington Post."[1]

[Soul Crusher]

The Daily Caller is a news website based in Washington, D.C., United States with a focus on politics, original reporting, breaking news, and YouTube videos, founded by journalist and political pundit Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel, former adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney. The Daily Caller launched on January 11, 2010. While the site claims to be neutral in regards to ideology, many observers have noted the Daily Caller's right-wing leanings, with some calling it "the conservative answer to the Huffington Post."[1]

What does that have to do with the report itself showing what a piece of fucking shit ObamaCare is?   

[Option D]

What does that have to do with the report itself showing what a piece of fucking shit ObamaCare is?   

POT AND KETTLE.. You do the same exact thing.. someone posts something and you say "blah blah media matters blah blah huffington post"

[Soul Crusher]

The NFIB study also found 20 percent of small employers expect to significantly change their benefit packages the next time they renew their health insurance plans. Almost all of them expected to see diminished benefits, increased employee costs, or both.


________________________ ________________________

So much for Obama's lies about getting a raise.  more bogus shit from the Bubonic Plague Obama.

You should be ashamed of yourself for still supporting this fraud.   

[Soul Crusher]

Unbelievable: Obama White House Stubbornly Refusing to Release Any Written Debt Plan (Update: Video Added)
The Obama White House is so irresponsible, and so fearful of locking itself into anything at all, that it’s refusing to even put a debt plan on paper. Rory Cooper tweeted this from today’s WH press briefing:

Chuck Todd: “Release your plan” Jay Carney: “We’ve shown a lot of leg” Todd: “Why not just release it?” Carney: “You need it written down?”

Yes, Jay, the American people elected your boss in the hope that he might occasionally do his job. Show his work. Demonstrate a little competence once in a while. Is that too much to ask?

Apparently it is. As we blogged yesterday, Obama’s bizarre reticence to lead is as much a headache for his own party as it is for the GOP. Maybe more, since Reid et al just can’t come out and blast him the way they would a Republican president. So Congress sidelined him over the weekend, but as long as he’s the president he can’t really be sidelined: He has to sign something.

And agitate against whatever is heading for his desk before he signs it, of course.

Update: Here’s video of Carney getting grilled over his boss’ lack of a plan. The reporters’ collective groan reacting to Carney is priceless.


Update: So the WH won’t come up with a plan, but is threatening to veto the latest from Boehner. Obama owns this crisis from stem to stern.

[Soul Crusher]

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Obama to Announce New Fuel Standards (54.5 miles per gallon by 2025)
National Journal ^ | 07/27/2011 | Amy Harder
Posted on July 27, 2011 4:24:55 PM EDT by SeekAndFind

In what will represent the administration’s biggest move on energy policy this year, President Obama on Friday will announce that his administration has struck a deal with the nation’s biggest automakers to ramp up vehicle fuel-economy standards to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, industry and congressional sources said. The higher standards could slash U.S. fossil-fuel emissions and oil consumption and drive major changes in U.S. auto manufacturing.

National Journal reported earlier Wednesday that industry and congressional sources said the administration was likely to make the announcement, and White House press secretary Jay Carney confirmed in his afternoon briefing that Obama would hold an event at the Washington Convention Center on Friday.

Environmentalists pushed the administration to raise the current vehicle standard of 35.5 miles per gallon to 62 mpg by 2025. Automakers, who said such a stringent standard would cripple them financially and essentially mandate production of only electric and hybrid vehicles, pushed for a standard in the range of 45 mpg.

Sources familiar with the talks say that the two sides have settled in principle on 54.5 mpg by 2025, a hike of 65 percent from today’s standards. One major reason automakers agreed to such a significant hike is because the White House said it would permit a reconsideration of the standards at a midpoint date.

(Excerpt) Read more at nationaljournal.com ...







Great - can't wait to see what go cart we will be forced in to. 

[Fury]

I believe Toyota told him to go pound sand.

[Soul Crusher]

Freaking awesome debate with Langone on CNBC

http://www.cnbc.com/id/43924372

[Soul Crusher]

What debt crisis means for Obama
By: Keith Koffler
July 29, 2011 04:32 AM EDT

Washington’s professional prognosticators, perennially gauging who is up and who is down, are trying to determine whether President Barack Obama or congressional Republicans will be blamed if they can’t raise the debt limit and the nation begins to default on its obligations.

Obama’s advisers are trying to present him as a reasonable man, offering a “balanced” approach to the problem, who has been stymied by unappeasable right-wing ideologues.

But it really doesn’t matter how this battle seesaws. Because the damage being done to Obama is more corrosive than whether he is assigned full or partial blame for this reckless scramble toward the edge of economic calamity.

What the debt ceiling imbroglio confirms for many Americans is that they are living in a world turned chaotic, a perilous place where things they thought they knew turn out to wrong and security they thought was their right is revealed as a mirage.

Not all the serious problems swirling about us are Obama’s fault, though some are. Others he has merely shown himself ill-equipped or incompetent to slay. But whether he is guilty or guilty by association, the Obama era is a time of instability and danger. And that’s bad politics for a president.

The debt ceiling scare is but the latest episode in this nightmare.

Americans now live in a world where unemployment is chronic; the economic recovery has stalled; the deficit is out of control; entitlement programs they counted on must be cut; home values are declining; banking giants have failed; the health system is about to be transformed; the country’s AAA rating is in jeopardy, and the threat of terrorism is ever-present.

The view internationally is not a bit more comforting.

Violent, drug-fueled anarchy rages across the border in Mexico; European allies stumble toward bankruptcy; Iran develops nuclear weapons largely unhindered; Kim Jong-Il attacks South Korea with impunity; the Arab world is in a state of upheaval; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict prevails intractably, while Israel’s enemies arm themselves with missiles and seek nuclear weapons; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization can’t even eradicate a nuisance like Muammar Qadhafi; China threatens to surpass us economically and challenge us militarily, and it’s not even clear after Obama’s “Afghan surge” if we’re winning against the Taliban.

The roster of crucial, even existential domestic and international concerns is unthinkably long and varied.

And the effect on the nation’s morale is clear. Ronald Reagan was reelected on the pitch that it was “morning in America.” Obama begins his reelection campaign as the country stares into a moonless night.

A poll released this week by the Pew Research Center shows this and suggests the debt ceiling crisis has made it worse.

Only 17 percent of Americans surveyed say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the country, down six points from June. It’s the lowest since the end of 2008, and the third lowest level recorded since Pew first asked the question 14 years ago.

Obama’s weekly job approval rating last week was just 43 percent, according to Gallup, tied for the lowest level of his presidency. Polls now show Obama running even with the Republican favorite, Mitt Romney, a man who exudes competence — if little else.

Obama’s propagandists tell us that the economy would have been worse without his interventions, that he’s tried to cut the deficit and he’s doing all he can to put people back to work — and besides, it’s all President George W. Bush’s fault.

But, perhaps because he’s never worked much in the private sector himself, Obama doesn’t seem to realize that Americans demand results, not excuses.

Obama trumpets his sanctions against Iran even as the mullahs continue unabated toward nuclear power status. He failed to weigh in promptly and decisively on the side of Iranian protestors.

The president’s response to the Arab Spring has been tentative and inconsistent. It seemed he had his finger to the wind as Hosni Mubarak teetered in Egypt. He insisted Qadhafi must go – and then didn’t succeed in removing him – while failing to require the exit of Syria’s Bashir Assad.

Obama’s advisers are now defending some hair-brained scheme to somehow mitigate the drug war in Mexico by introducing more guns into the conflict.

Obama made Arab-Israeli peace his priority, even appointing George Mitchell as special ambassador in charge of making it happen. Mitchell resigned in May, without a result.

Obama’s political advisers are keenly focused now on fundraising and trying to position their boss as a reasonable moderate, while keeping his liberal base in line.

They may succeed in these endeavors. But it won’t matter. Because steadying Obama politically won’t help when the world seems to have spun off its axis.

Keith Koffler, who covered the White House as a reporter for CongressDaily and Roll Call, is editor of the blog White House Dossier.


Www.politico.com

[Soul Crusher]

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Obama Kills Another 500,000 Non-Union Jobs
Townhall.com ^ | July 30, 2011 | John Ransom
Posted on July 30, 2011 7:41:34 AM EDT by Kaslin

Obama just destroyed another 500,000 jobs for Americans- at least ones who aren’t unionized. .

Flanked by flunkies from the government-dependent auto makers, the world’s largest shareholder in the American auto industry, Brarack Obama, imposed increased fuel standards on companies making cars in the United States. By 2025 auto makers will have to meet fuel efficiency standards that brings “new cars to 54.5 miles a gallon by 2025, roughly double the current level, in a bid to reduce U.S. oil consumption,” says the Wall Street Journal.

According to the Journal effort by the administration to raise the current fuel standard just to “the 35.5 mpg target by 2016 will cost the industry more than $50 billion.” The administration didn’t provide the Journal with costs for the 2025 standard but expect it to cost a ton, jobs-wise and financially.

$50 billion is about 100,000 American jobs- that’s non-union jobs.

That, in short is where all the jobs have gone under the Obama administration.

Makes one wonder if the only reason why the president doesn’t ban cars altogether is because of the union jobs.

Non-union jobs just aren’t that big of a deal.

As the foreign auto makers point out the rules are written to favor the Detroit, union-controlled, domestic auto makers.

“Not all auto makers support Mr. Obama's plan,” says the Journal.

“German auto makers Daimler AG and Volkswagen AG both declined to send representatives to Mr. Obama's announcement. Representatives for both companies, whose sales in the U.S. are dominated by passenger cars, said the deal would put their companies at a disadvantage, by setting relatively modest requirements for large pickups like the kind that Detroit auto makers like GM, Ford and Chrysler have long produced.”

Coincidentally, the United Auto Workers have targeted German automaker Volkswagen AG’s Tennessee plant as “a focal point in union efforts to gain a foothold among foreign auto makers' U.S. manufacturing operations,’ reports the Journal in a separate story.

On Thursday I wrote about how the SEIU is facing racketing charges related to possibly using federal regulatory pressure against private companies in order to facilitate union organizing in non-union shops.

While thus far there have been no allegations regarding the UAW, there certainly is the consequent regulatory pressure.

As The Journal notes: “The union has run into particularly stiff opposition at foreign-owned plants in Tennessee and other Southern states, where cultural sentiment against unions runs deep and right-to-work laws allow workers to opt out of unions where they exist. Nissan workers in Tennessee rejected UAW representation by 2-1 ratios in 2001 and 1989.”

Ah, but it’s nothing a little regulatory pressure can’t get around.

[Soul Crusher]

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Obama 50th Birthday Party Still A Go
ABC News ^ | July 29, 2011 | Mary Bruce
Posted on July 30, 2011 1:27:52 PM EDT by Clairity

The White House remains confident that a deal to raise the debt ceiling will be reached by next Tuesday, so much so, that the president is still scheduled to spend next Wednesday in Chicago, celebrating his 50th birthday at two DNC events.

(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.abcnews.com ...





Disgusting. 

[Soul Crusher]

EmailComments (6)PrintFacebookDiggDelicio us
By Chad Lawhorn
July 31, 2011
ADVERTISEMENT

Call it a stimulus hangover.

In 2010, Lawrence’s real estate market started to show signs of life as tax credits for first-time homebuyers — part of the federal stimulus package — did boost sales.

But now as numbers for the first half of 2011 are released, it is clear that Lawrence’s real estate market is no longer stimulated.

“The stimulus created an artificial boost for awhile,” said Gary Nuzum, senior vice president of McGrew Real Estate. “We knew it would help us last year, but we also knew it was stealing buyers from us in future years. And it has. It is killing us right now. I never thought it would hurt us this much but it has.”

Home sales and construction

Homes sales for the first six months of 2011 are down nearly 25 percent compared with the first six months of 2010, according to numbers released by the Lawrence Board of Realtors.

Board president Bob Kocour, an agent with Stephens Real Estate, said the numbers look a little better when compared with 2009, when the tax credits were not in place. But still, this year’s totals are about 5 percent below totals from 2009, which most real estate professionals said was a historically bad year.

“I think we’re down about 50 percent from our peak,” Nuzum said of the number of homes being sold in the market. “Something has to happen in the economy to get people feeling comfortable with being homeowners again.”

The slowdown in home sales has had the predictable impact on home construction numbers. The city issued 59 single-family and duplex permits for the first half of 2011. That’s down from 75 permits in the same time period a year ago.

“That number is pretty discouraging,” said Bobbie Flory, president of the Lawrence Home Builders Association. “I can tell you that this downturn has lasted longer and has been deeper than most people in our industry anticipated.”

Kocour said July numbers do seem to be better than anticipated, and he said the market still has some good things going for it — namely interest rates. But Kocour said real estate agents are nervously watching the debt debate in Washington, D.C. There has been speculation that interest rates will rise either because the debt ceiling is not raised in a timely manner or because credit rating agencies downgrade U.S. debt.

“But hopefully by Tuesday, they’ll have something in place,” Kocour said. “They better, anyway.”

Economy’s effects

Local industry leaders are in agreement about what is needed to provide the market a sustainable boost: jobs.

“There are a lot of people still on the sidelines out there, and it is certainly because of the economy,” Kocour said. “Businesses that normally hire people aren’t doing that, and they aren’t moving people around right now either.”

Kocour said the trend in Lawrence does seem to be that work situations are causing more people to leave Lawrence than to move to the community.

On the building front, Flory said that national economists keep telling builders that there is good reason to believe the market will bounce back. In the meantime, the number of builders constructing homes in the city have dwindled to a “handful,” she said.

“Nationally, we are told that there is all this pent-up demand that is going to burst at any minute,” Flory said. “The reality is that there are still children growing older and leaving home who need a place to live. A lot of people are putting a lot into the pent-up demand theory.”

Here’s a look at some numbers from the first half of 2011:

Realtors have sold 551 homes, down from 742 a year ago. The category that is particularly taking a beating is sales of newly constructed homes. They are off almost 60 percent. A total of 34 newly constructed homes have been sold in the first half of 2011
The average selling price of homes in Lawrence is up 2.4 percent from a year ago. The average now stands at $182,058. The median price is $161,000. Real estate professionals said the higher prices are because there are far fewer homes being sold to first-time homebuyers, which tend to be lesser priced homes. Nuzum said many of the homes on the market are priced above $200,000. He estimated those homes are selling for at least 5 percent less than they were a year ago.
There are lots of houses on the market. In June, there were 1,030 homes on the market. That’s up from 891 a year ago.
Homes are taking longer to sell. The average days a home sits on the market is now 100. That’s up from 81 last year.
The number of apartments being built in the city is on the rise. The city has issued permits for 126 apartment units. That’s up from 83 during the same time period of 2010.
Commercial projects

There have been several large commercial projects started in Lawrence during the first half of the year. Here’s a list of the 10 largest projects thus far:

Bowersock north bank power plant: $11.3 million.
Comfort Inn & Suites, 150 N. Iowa: $3.3 million.
Wastewater treatment plant improvements, 1408 E. Eighth St.: $3.1 million.
Crossgate Casitas apartments, 2451 Crossgate Drive: $2.1 million.
Hy-Vee renovation, 3405 Clinton Parkway: $2 million.
Northwind Apartments, 200 N. Mich.: $1.3 million.
Single-family dwelling, 1716 Lake Alvamar Drive: $1.1 million.
PKV Dental Offices, 530 Folks Road: $1 million.
LMH information technology/business health remodel, 325 Maine: $867,834.
Plastikon Industries remodel, 3780 Greenway Circle: $800,000.
In total, the city has issued permits for $49.8 million worth of projects. That’s up from $47.6 million during the same period last year. That puts the city on pace for about $100 million worth of projects in 2011. Here’s a look at how that $100 million pace compares with the amount of projects started in past years:

2001: $152.2 million
2002: $141.5 million
2003: $150.5 million
2004: $117.7 million
2005: $131.2 million
2006: $171.4 million
2007: $104.4 million
2008: $146.4 million
2009: $75.3 million
2010: $101.8 million



http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2011/jul/31/boost-2010-stimulus-now-killing-housing-market






Fail x 1000

[Soul Crusher]

The Obama administration's proposed CAFE rules declare a war on cars

Shikha Dalmia | July 26, 2011


The thinking behind the Obama administration’s proposed new fuel efficiency standards seems to be: What won’t kill the auto industry will make it stronger. But these standards are the regulatory equivalent of a bunker buster that will, in fact, decimate the industry.

In an effort to bring its global warming initiative back from the dead, the administration has announced that it wants automakers to raise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, of their fleets from the 34.2 miles per gallon that it mandated in 2009 (which the companies are still scrambling to meet) to 56.2 mpg by 2025. Not a single car—big or small, hybrid or non-hybrid—currently delivers this kind of mileage (with the exception of electrics). But CAFE backers are pooh-poohing industry claims that these standards are unattainable. “Virtually every major improvement in U.S. fuel economy and emissions over the last quarter of a century started as a stringent government standard that automakers ... initially insisted was impossible to meet,” harrumphed a recent Detroit Free Press editorial. “Then the same companies turned their engineers loose and met or exceeded the threshold.”

Did they?

Not really. Rather, they unleashed armies of lobbyists on Washington to poke holes in the CAFE regime. For example, companies that don’t meet CAFE standards face fines. But the fines are so low that many luxury brands prefer to pay up rather than comply. Likewise, companies get CAFE credits, the auto equivalent of indulgences, for flex-fuel vehicles built with gasoline as well as ethanol tanks. Fitting them with both doesn’t add much to manufacturing cost, which is why carmakers happily churn them out even though everyone knows that few drivers ever use ethanol.

But to the extent that carmakers have complied with CAFE, it is less through radical innovation and more by simply slashing vehicle weight. In the 15 years after CAFE standards were first introduced in 1974, vehicle weight diminished by 23 percent. But every 100-pound weight reduction results in a 4.7 to 5.6 percent increase in the fatality rate. A 2002 National Academy of Sciences study concluded that CAFE's downsizing effect contributed to between 1,300 and 2,600 deaths in a single representative year, and to 10 times that many serious injuries.

Even ignoring this loss of life, the era of improving fuel economy by slashing vehicle weight is drawing to a close. Indeed, Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research, notes that it is technologically impossible to squeeze anything beyond 45 mpg in fuel economy from current vehicles. That’s why Europe’s fuel economy has plateaued at that level, despite $8 per gallon gas. The 56-mpg-mandate will require a total, top-to-bottom overhaul of cars. Every part of a vehicle from its transmission to its engine would have to be replaced. “Even a vehicle’s screws and fasteners would have to be secured with epoxy glue,” McAlinden maintains.

Unless automakers once again manage to write massive loopholes into the proposed CAFE regime, the upshot will be similar to the fiasco created by the light bulb mandate that Congress recently tried unsuccessfully to repeal. The mandate required light bulbs to consume 25-30 percent less energy by 2012. But this effectively outlawed cheap incandescent bulbs while artificially boosting more expensive and annoying fluorescents, triggering a consumer revolt.

Likewise, the Obama CAFE standards will drive out pickups and other large vehicles, American automakers’ biggest profit makers, and usher in hybrids—their biggest money losers. That’s because pickups that are CAFE-compliant will be have to be constructed from aluminum or some equally light material, something that will bump their cost upwards of $80,000 per vehicle while rendering them useless for towing.

Meanwhile, even the Environmental Protection Agency admits that the market share made up by hybrids and electric plug-ins will have to touch 49 percent if the industry is to come anywhere near compliance. Given that these vehicles now occupy only 3 percent of the market despite hefty subsidies, it is a foregone conclusion that expanding their presence will mean massively expanding subsidies to them.

Taxpayers are going to be on the hook for more than just hybrids, however. Indeed, average vehicle prices will shoot through the roof, pricing many car buyers out of the market, shrinking the industry and jeopardizing millions of jobs. But if Washington could not resist showering taxpayer dollars on General Motors and Chrysler to prevent job losses now, it is unimaginable that it will sit back when the entire industry confronts a carmageddon. Indeed, the $100 billion that taxpayers have spent on the current bailout will look like chump change compared to what’s to come. This is making even the UAW nervous, causing it to join ranks with automakers to oppose the standards.

The administration’s proposal in one fell swoop manages to screw over taxpayers, drivers, car buyers and autoworkers. The least it can do is give lawmakers a chance to thoroughly weigh the tradeoffs on the country’s behalf. But the president is trying to impose the new standards through regulatory fiat without Congressional approval. No administration—blue or red—has ever done this before. This is tantamount to declaring war on autos without a formal declaration from Congress.

Someone needs to rein this president in.

Shikha Dalmia is a senior analyst at Reason Foundation and a columnist at The Daily, where this column originally appeared.

Editor's Note: When this column was written, the UAW was against the CAFE standards. Now its president, Bob King, is for them.


http://reason.com/archives/2011/07/26/the-coming-autopocalypse

[Soul Crusher]

Just read Biden is slated to collect 66k from the secret service for the cottage where they stay to protect him.  Its in the Washington Times. 

Unreal.   Truly unreal.

[Soul Crusher]

www.americanthinker.com





There comes a time and a point in history which indelibly define a President.  Oftentimes the event may not be of major import in the greater scheme of things but the management of it is of such prominence that the success or failure in the handling of the issue is permanently attached to the individual.  Such a moment has happened to Barack Obama.  His incompetence, inability to lead, prevarications, petulance and immaturity in the debt ceiling crisis have indelibly created an image of abject failure in the minds of a critical mass of people in the United States and around the globe.  He will never be able to overcome the portrait that has been etched in too many minds.

Barack Obama's only interest in the debt ceiling debate was to raise the borrowing limit sufficiently to get by the next election, and as a cudgel to denigrate the Republicans.  His concern was not for the American people and the impact of overwhelming national debt, nor an impending and inevitable credit downgrade.  Rather, he was determined that raising the debt ceiling would not become an issue during the presidential campaign.  Thus, spending cuts created out of whole cloth, combined with tax increases aimed at stoking the embers of class envy, were bandied about by his party in order to justify an increase in the debt ceiling of $2.4 Trillion.

The destruction wrought by the nearly $5.5 Trillion (more than a third of the total debt of a nation 222 years old) he will have added to the nation's balance sheet by the end of his term was immaterial, thus no detailed plan was forthcoming from the White House, and no lie or accusation aimed at the opposition was too absurd to tell.  The only matter of importance was his re-election; the long-term health of the country be damned.

With this lasted chapter of Obama cynicism he has gone a bridge too far; and that bridge has collapsed behind him.
Little does Barack Obama understand that he has forever branded himself as an incompetent and failure.  His narcissism and lifelong history of receiving public adulation will not allow him to comprehend the damage.  He does not understand that now few will listen to his speeches, no matter how well delivered; that few will believe what he is saying, as he has lied and obfuscated the facts so often.  Many world leaders have already arrived at the conclusion that Barack Obama is a leader that cannot be trusted, the citizens of the United States are beginning to  understand that he is a man without a core set of principles thus incapable of guiding the ship of state.

The media, increasingly realizing their culpability in the nation's current state of affairs, has begun to ask more penetrating questions and grudgingly question Obama's fitness for office.  Columnists once infatuated with his ability to deliver a speech and skin color have finally begun to admit their error.  The Left has become more open in their criticism, as they now understand that the hero upon whom they vested so much hope is a hollow shell.

The Obama Presidency is over.  He has abdicated all responsibility to the Congress, in particular the House of Representatives, which has little choice but to assume a role they are not structured to do: lead the country as best they can until November 2012.  The American people, suffering under the burden of high joblessness, eroding housing values, inflation and dramatically declining economic growth with no prospect of any immediate relief, are increasingly resigned to the fact that they must focus on surviving as best they can until the election.

Within the term of a president there comes a time and an issue or crisis that define his presidency.  Barack Obama has had his and failed.  The debt ceiling will be raised because the nation's obligations demand it.   This was never an issue of whether to raise the ceiling, but rather how and what brakes will be applied to the incessant growth of unsustainable spending, in order to sustain the nation's AAA rating and insure a future for succeeding generations.

Barack Obama, because at his core he is self-absorbed, dishonest and without coherence in his personal beliefs, was incapable of understanding the importance of this moment to lead in the debate over raising the debt limit and its impact on a nation facing financial and societal bankruptcy.   The die is now cast.  He has made permanent in the minds of a majority of American people the image of a man incapable of being President.  There is nothing he can do in the remaining 16 months before the election, particularly as the United States is clearly headed into another severe economic downturn, to change that perception.

[Soul Crusher]

GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, The Head Of Obama’s Jobs Council, Is Moving Jobs To China At Blistering Pace
The Economic Collapse ^ | 07/31/2011 | Michael Snyder




Jeffrey Immelt, the head of Barack Obama's highly touted "Jobs Council", is moving even more GE infrastructure to China. GE makes more medical-imaging machines than anyone else in the world, and now GE has announced that it "is moving the headquarters of its 115-year-old X-ray business to Beijing". Apparently, this is all part of a "plan to invest about $2 billion across China" over the next few years. But moving core pieces of its business overseas is nothing new for GE. Under Immelt, GE has shipped tens of thousands of good jobs out of the United States. Perhaps GE should change its slogan to "Imagination At Work (In China)". If the very people that have been entrusted with solving the unemployment crisis are shipping jobs out of the country, what hope is there that things are going to turn around any time soon?

Earlier this month, Immelt made the following statement to a jobs summit at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce....

"There's no excuse today for lack of leadership. The truth is we all need to be part of the solution."

Apparently Immelt's idea of being part of the solution is to ship as many jobs overseas as he possibly can.

A recent article on the Huffington Post documented how GE has been sending tens of thousands of good jobs out of the country....

As the administration struggles to prod businesses to create jobs at home, GE has been busy sending them abroad. Since Immelt took over in 2001, GE has shed 34,000 jobs in the U.S., according to its most recent annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. But it's added 25,000 jobs overseas.

At the end of 2009, GE employed 36,000 more people abroad than it did in the U.S. In 2000, it was nearly the opposite.

GE is supposed to be creating the "jobs of tomorrow", but it seems that most of the "jobs of tomorrow" will not be located inside the United States.

The last GE factory in the U.S. that made light bulbs closed last September. The transition to the new CFL light bulbs was supposed to create a whole bunch of those "green jobs" that Barack Obama keeps talking about, but as an article in the Washington Post noted, that simply is not happening....

Rather than setting off a boom in the U.S. manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas, mostly in China.

But GE is far from alone in shipping jobs and economic infrastructure out of the United States. For example, big automakers such as Ford are being very aggressive in China. Ford is currently "building three factories in Chongqing as part of $1.6 billion investment that also includes another plant in Nanchang".

Today, China accounts for approximately one out of every four vehicles sold worldwide. The big automakers consider the future to be in China.

Just a few decades ago, China was an economic joke and the U.S. economy was absolutely unparalleled.

But disastrous trade policies have opened up the door for a mammoth transfer of jobs, factories and wealth from the United States to China.

China has become an absolute powerhouse and America is rapidly declining.

Beautiful new infrastructure is going up all over China even as U.S. infrastructure rots and decays right in front of our eyes.

You can see some amazing pictures of the stunning economic development that has been going on in China here, here, here and here.

America is being deindustrialized at lightning speed and very few of our politicians seem to care.

Back in 1979, there were 19.5 million manufacturing jobs in the United States.

Today, there are 11.6 million.

That represents a decline of 40 percent during a time period when our overall population experienced tremendous growth.

We used to have the greatest manufacturing cities on the entire globe. The rest of the world was in awe of us.

Today, most of those formerly great manufacturing cities are decaying, rotting hellholes.

The following is what one reporter from the UK saw during his visit to Detroit....

As you pass the city limits a blanket of gloom, neglect and cheapness descends. The buildings are shabbier, the paint is faded. The businesses, where they exist, are thrift shops and pawn shops or wretched groceries where the goods are old and tired. Finding somewhere to have breakfast, normally easy in any American city, involves a long hunt. ‘God bless Detroit’, says one billboard, just beside another offering the alternative solution: liquor.

You can see some really shocking images of the decline of Detroit right here.

Our politicians insisted that globalism would not result in a "giant sucking sound" as millions of jobs left America.

But that is exactly what has happened.

Sadly, most American families still don't understand what has happened. Most of them are still waiting for things to get back to "normal".

Millions of unemployed Americans are dealing with incredible amounts of stress right now as they wait for jobs to start opening up again. But the jobs that have been shipped overseas are not coming back. In a globalized economy, it doesn't make sense to hire American workers when you can legally pay workers slave labor wages on the other side of the globe.

Millions of good middle class jobs have been replaced by low paying service jobs. Today there are huge numbers of Americans that are cutting hair or flipping burgers because that is all they can get right now.

Many others are only able to survive because of the safety net. One reader named David recently left a comment in which he shared his story. David did everything that the system asked him to do, but the promised rewards never materialized. Now David is broke, unemployed and he feels deeply frustrated....

A year ago I had a job, we were struggling, but bills were getting paid, and somehow we were getting by. Then I made the mistake of getting sick, one day before my company insurance kicked in. An auto-immune illness almost killed me, if it weren’t for the amazing efforts of my physicians and an emergency spleenectomy, I would not be here.

My wife would have been a single mother,raising two young sons, one of which is autistic. Instead, I pulled through. The disease damaged my liver, leaving me with a chronic condition, and even after a year, it is hard to get up and go some days. My “employer” dumped me as soon as I left the hospital, and I haven’t worked since. It isn’t for lack of looking. There just isn’t anything.

Oh, I get my government cheese money. Here I am college educated, unable to find something that can pay the bills better than the money that we get from the government. It sickens me to be this dependent on the system like this. But the system de-incentivizes work, and makes living on the dole make a perverse economic sense.

I used to have dreams, but I have given up on them. My wife and I have no savings, we have no life raft and if it weren’t for the generosity of her parents and mine, things would have ground to a halt a long time ago.

I believed every thing adults told me. Work hard, I did. Get an education, I did. Find a nice girl and settle down, I did. Two cars, a dog, a cat and couple of kids, a nice townhouse…the american dream. Yep.

I love my country. My heart is broken, broken because I have been betrayed. I did what you asked, I played by the rules. I did what you said to do; I submitted, I conformed, I stopped dreaming. Now what?

I am willing to pay for my faults and transgressions; my failures are my own, I get that. My children should not have to suffer for my failures, they did not do anything wrong. My youngest boy is autistic, we hope he will be able to integrate into society, but the fact is we may have to take care of him for the rest of his life. How do I do this with nothing, and no opportunity in the foreseeable future?

Depression, stress…yep, I’ve got all that. I used to be hopeful and optimistic about the future. Now all I am is afraid.

As the United States continues to bleed good jobs, stories like the one you just read are going to become much more common.

So what are our politicians doing about all of this?

They tell us that we need even more "free trade"!

Barack Obama says that we need more free trade.

The Republicans say that we need more free trade.

In Washington D.C. our politicians do not agree on much, but one thing they do agree on is that we need to keep shipping jobs out of the country.

Until the American people wake up and start demanding an end to the globalization of the U.S. economy, the job losses are just going to continue to get worse.

The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000. If this trend continues, millions more Americans will soon be surviving on food stamps or living in tent cities.

The American people are deeply concerned about the economy, but they still have not connected the dots on these issues. The mainstream media and most of our politicians keep telling them that the globalization of the economy is a wonderful thing.

It is so sad that people just do not understand what is going on right in front of their eyes.

Whether you are a conservative or a liberal or a libertarian, you should be against the deindustrialization of America.

Allowing our industrial base to be raped is not a good thing.

Allowing big corporations and foreign governments to pay slave labor wages to workers on the other side of the globe making things that will be sold inside the United States is not a good thing.

Allowing the destruction of our industrial capacity to threaten our national security is not a good thing.

Allowing millions of precious jobs to leave the country is not a good thing.

The biggest corporations are making some extra profits by exploiting cheap labor on the other side of the globe. Corporate executives love to shower themselves with larger and larger bonuses.

But our current trade policies are not working for American workers.

We need "fair trade", not "free trade".

The United States is being taken advantage of, and the Democrats and the Republicans are both laying down like doormats and letting it happen.

If you want to know where all the good jobs went, it is not a big mystery.

They have been shipped out of the country and they are not coming back.

Unless fundamental changes are made, things are going to get worse and worse and worse for American workers.

So what is going to happen next?

It is up to you America.

[whork25]

The big corp CEO's and politicians have sold us out...traitors

[240 is Back]

I don't have a problem with any US president charging rent to the secret service.

I'm sure Bush 1 and 2 and Clinton provide housing to their security details as well - and it comes at a cost of a place they could be renting to someone else. 

So yeah, there are what, 4 former US presidents still living? If you're going to complain about $20 grand in rent for 4 men who led the free world, well...

[Soul Crusher]

I don't have a problem with any US president charging rent to the secret service.

I'm sure Bush 1 and 2 and Clinton provide housing to their security details as well - and it comes at a cost of a place they could be renting to someone else. 

So yeah, there are what, 4 former US presidents still living? If you're going to complain about $20 grand in rent for 4 men who led the free world, well...

    

It never stops with you doesnt it? 

You just cant help yourself any more. 

[Option D]

   

It never stops with you doesnt it? 

You just cant help yourself any more. 

Lol.. Pot Kettle

[Soul Crusher]

Eric Holder's Newest Witch Hunt
WWW.Townhall.com ^ | July 311, 2011 | Bob Beauprez


________________________ ________________________ ________


The Department of Justice is executing a "Witch Hunt" against banks. Through the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, Attorney General Eric Holder is forcing banks to "relax their mortgage underwriting standards and approve loans for minorities with poor credit as part of a new crackdown on alleged discrimination," according to a published report by Investor's Business Daily after reviewing court documents.

The DOJ has already extorted $20 million for weak and poor credit loans from banks that "settled out of court rather than battle the federal government and risk being branded racist." The DOJ admits another 60 banks are already under "investigation." Holder's demanding the banks sign "non-disclosure" settlement agreements barring them from talking while allowing the DOJ to operate behind a curtain of secrecy.

The settlements already extracted from banks force them to make "prime-rate mortgages to low income blacks and Hispanics" with credit problems, even if they are living on welfare. According to IBD, the DOJ has ordered banks to advertise that minorities cannot be turned down for a loan "because they receive public aid, such as unemployment benefits, welfare payments or food stamps." No job; no problem!


In other words, the DOJ is forcing banks to make loans to people that they know don't qualify for them and likely won't be able to afford to repay them, which is precisely the kind of failed public policy that precipitated the financial collapse and recession in 2008.


The DOJ ordered Midwest BankCentre to provide "special financing" in the predominantly black areas of St. Louis for fixed prime rate conventional home loan financing for borrowers "who would ordinarily not qualify for such rates for reasons including the lack of required credit quality, income or down payment."


Eric Holder and the head of his Civil Rights Division, Tom Perez were both protégés of Janet Reno who launched a similar attack on banks in the early years of the Clinton Administration. That led to an expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act, CRA, and an explosion of forced lending to low-income, poor credit risk borrowers and the sub-prime mortgage industry that collapsed in 2008. Under the weight of massive guarantees of poor quality and defaulted mortgages, the federal government was forced to seize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. To date about $150 billion has been required to bailout the two agencies to keep them solvent.

Like Reno, Holder and Perez are pushing their own social agenda, and ramifications to the financial sector and total economy are meaningless to them. They willingly pervert the law and leverage the full weight of the Justice Department to intimidate banks to accomplish their objectives.

Credit analysis and repayment ability of the borrower matter none to Holder and Perez. To them, if a minority is turned down for a loan, it must surely be evidence of racial discrimination. Perez has gone so far as to compare bankers to the Ku Klux Klan. The only difference between bankers and the KKK, he says, is that bankers discriminate "with a smile" and "fine print," but they are "every bit as destructive as the cross burned in a neighborhood."

Holder and Perez appointed another Janet Reno alumnus, Eric Halperin, as Special Counsel for Fair Lending. Previously, Halperin was a lobbyist for the leftist Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) where he pressed congress and the various agencies for continued relaxing of lending standards. Just how objective do you suppose this "special lending cop" is in applying the law?

CRL's website reveals their leftist perspective and agenda; "lenders have strong incentives to engage in unfair, deceptive practices and to aggressively market loans designed to fail." That's pure hooey, of course. Banks make a profit if loans are paid back. They sustain losses when loans fail. But, this phony theory of "disparate impact" or "red-lining" has been used by the left for decades to convince politicians and bureaucrats to force unsound, unsafe lending practices, the consequences of which have been manifested in the current economic mess.

The forced settlements have gone well beyond lending. The concessions that DOJ has imposed have even required banks to fund inner-city "community organizers." According to IBD, "lenders are being forced to bankroll Acorn clones that often exist just to shake them down for risky loans."

As DOJ strong arms banks to relax lending standards to satisfy the Obama Administration's racialist social agenda, other federal agencies are telling banks to do just the opposite. "Banks are damned if they do, damned if they don't," according to Ernest Istook, a Heritage Foundation fellow and former Member of Congress who is critical of DOJ for forcing "affirmative action lending."


The current economic crisis has stressed even the strongest of banks. Bank safety and soundness examiners from the Federal Reserve, the OCC, FDIC, OTS, and NCUA have put the fear of God into banks all across the nation demanding tightened credit standards. They have forced banks to increase capital, add to reserves for losses, mark down asset value of existing credit assets, and questioned virtually every loan the banks make. The CEO of one historically successful community bank told me a regulator demanded, "You will not make another commercial real estate loan." How that bank was supposed to meet the needs of the small businesses in the community while not making loans on commercial real estate was of no concern to the regulator.

The newspapers are full of reports that the government has seized and closed banks, removed management and boards of directors, placed banks on written agreements so tightly drafted that the government has essentially assumed management of the bank while the shareholders, directors and management are still stuck with full risk and liability.

Banks are selling, consolidating, and closing all across America, and going with them is the access to capital and importantly the personal relationship that historically has been vitally important to the success of our entrepreneurial free-market economy. Over 1400 bank offices have closed in the last two years, and many more are expected in 2011. In the wake are exasperated small businessmen wondering what to do next.

If you're confused by the mixed signals and heavy-handedness of government, how would you like to be a banker? Little wonder that banks are afraid to lend and many are almost in lock down. Politicians can talk all they want about getting capital and the economy moving again, but the uncertainty and mixed signals coming from Washington are big reasons why both lenders and borrowers are hiding out in their bunkers.

Thomas Lifson, writing in American Thinker about the DOJ's witch hunt, notes that bankers tend to be "a cowardly lot when confronted by the power of the State." Who can blame them when the government has the power to lock their doors and seize their assets?

Lipson goes on, "Nobody in a highly regulated business wants the government publicly charging racism. A comparatively small group within the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department has assumed the role of national bank regulators with the intent of favoring groups they support. It's a corruption of the legitimate role of government." Corruption may be an overly polite description.

Added to the bi-polar treatment from the DOJ and other regulators is the fact the very government that controls their every move is now a larger source of consumer credit that all of the private sector banks combined. Recently released Federal Reserve Bank data documents a remarkably rapid and substantial shift to the government as the new credit goliath.


As recently as 2006, the private banking sector provided $2 in outstanding home mortgages and consumer credit for every $1 of government financed loans. The data from the Fed, however indicates that government loans and guarantees now total $6.32 trillion, up from just $4.40 trillion at the end of 2006. For the same period, the private sector market share shrunk to $6.58 trillion from $8.48 trillion.

Curiously, the Fed doesn't count the half-trillion dollars worth of guaranteed student loans as part of the government's total. Historically, local banks originated and financed the Federal Family Education Loan program and the government insured the loans against any loss. But, in 2009 as part of the ObamaCare legislation, the private sector was completely eliminated and beginning in 2010 the government took total control of the entire program. When student loans are added, the government surpasses the entire private sector totals. Even without student loans, with the current trend the government is poised to eclipse the private lenders likely within the current quarter.

The almost overnight collapse of the market for mortgage backed securities as a result of the sub-prime lending debacle – largely precipitated by misguided federal policy forced on lenders – evaporated the private mortgage market, and left Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – that had been seized by the government – as the only game in town for home mortgages.

In the blink of an eye, the federal government went from the small player facilitator to the dominant force in the financial industry dwarfing the combined efforts of the entire private sector competitors. Additionally, the Top Dog in the credit market place is also the all-powerful regulator over the little dogs in the private sector wielding absolute and largely unaccountable authority over their every move. Through the Federal Reserve, that same government controls the price, the access, the circulation, and amount of the currency on which the rest of the market must be dependent. With a national debt of $14.5 trillion and growing, the largest supplier of loans in the world also has the world's greatest demand for credit sucking up massive amounts of available investment capital to finance the growing national debt before the rest of the market gets a chance.

In reality, the federal government during the last two years has essentially seized the banking industry. What the government doesn't do directly, it controls by regulation, intimidation, and by sheer force and power. Obama got in the car business, the health care business, the energy business, and he's got the government holding most of the cards in banking, too. That's the change; the hope is that he gets fired by the voters in 2012.

True-believing progressives like to flaunt their "transformed" definition of a Free-Market Economy: "The freedom of the government to compete with the private sector." They find a little humor in it, but it's far from funny. What has happened in barely two years has seriously altered the rules of the road, the natural order of things, even what it means to be American. Time will tell if these are permanent changes or just a significant deviation in our long-term course. The outcome rests with us: "We the people."



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



WTF! !  ! ! !

[Soul Crusher]

Lol.. Pot Kettle

I'm not the one defending this horrid, failed, disastrous, decadent, subversive, destructive, and wretched Admn.