Our embassy in Cairo was attacked today by a crowd of enraged Muslims.  They tore down our flag and tried to storm our embassy.  Later, our consulate in Libya was set on fire by another angry mob.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/09/11/cairo-us-embassy-protesters-prophet-mohammad/70000126/1#.UE-AdkbCz8A

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/9/52597/World/International/Mob-sets-fire-to-US-consulate-in-Benghazi-witness.aspx

The President of the United States, our so-called Commander-in-Chief, said nothing.  Instead, according to the following CNN report, our first response was to order our U.S. Embassy in Cairo to apologize, to the angry Muslims:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/11/world/meast/egpyt-us-embassy-protests/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

The U.S. Embassy said that it “condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.”

“Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy,” the statement said. “We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”

This makes Jimmy Carter look like a strong military leader.  At least Carter didn’t apologize to Iran.  If this does not cost President Obama the election, then there is very little hope for us as a country.  No other nation on this earth would tolerate such an attack.  When that angry mob attacked our Embassy, they were attacking U.S. soil.  The United States should be demanding an apology, not giving one.  The fact that this occurred on the anniversary of September 11, makes this even more unacceptable.

TDM

The Chicago school teachers went on strike today.  According to National Review, the average Chicago teacher’s salary is $76,000 per year and they turned down a 16% increase.   This is not playing well in Peoria or anywhere else.   Perhaps the Chicago teachers think they should get combat pay in exchange for working in a failed school district.   Ultimately this has the potential to really hurt Obama because it will bring media focus on the Chicago Public School system.  It is an ugly picture.

Barack Obama was appointed Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC)in 1995.  CAC collected over $49.2 million in special funding to implement reform in Chicago schools.  One of the three co-authors of the grant request was William Ayers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Annenberg_Challenge

What a coincidence.  An organization that just happens to be the brain child of Williams Ayers miraculously chooses Barack Obama to be Chairman of the Board.  By pure happenstance CAC then channeled money to the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, starring:  William Ayers.  The following article from the Wall Street Journal describes how the Chicago School Reform Collaborative functioned:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212856075765367.html

Instead of measuring performance with outdated tools, like achievement tests, this program taught activism.  Teachers would be “community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression.  To make this work, money wasn’t given directly to schools; it was given to community organizations like the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN).  We are seeing the results of this failed experiment in the streets of Chicago today.

Chicago Public Schools currently rank 665th out of 772 school districts in Illinois.  That is actually an improvement.  It appears that when Arne Dunne, current Secretary of State, was CEO of the Chicago Public Schools he tried to change things.  He pushed a return to relying on testing and basing teacher pay on actual results.  He then closed failed neighborhood schools and turned them over to charter schools.  (It actually looks a lot like “no child left behind” but no Democratic would ever admit that.)  The teachers union responded with outrage.

So, under the brilliant leadership of William Ayers, with funding from Barack Obama, the Chicago Public School system became a hot bed of teachers who were more focused on: “provoking resistance to American racism and Oppression than actually teaching basic skills.   It is these teachers who are now protesting in the streets of Chicago against the reforms championed by Obama’s own Secretary of Education.  You can’t make things like this up.

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/9/10/chicago_teachers_strike_could_portend_referendum

I wonder if anyone in the main stream media will even attempt to connect the dots.  Probably not!  And we were worried about what he has done to the economy!

TDM

Maureen Dowd is not exactly a conservative.  Actually, she is pretty much the voice of the liberal left and has a well-deserved reputation for slamming conservatives.  That makes the following editorial even more devastating:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/opinion/sunday/dowd-playing-now-hail-to-us-chiefs.html?_r=1&hpw

This provides first hand proof that Obama’s re-election campaign is in shambles.  Please note that Ms. Dowd still hates Republicans, particularly conservative Republicans.  She isn’t exactly singing Mitt Romney’s praises.  But she finally gets Obama.  What has been obvious to us from the start is suddenly obvious even to her.  Obama himself is the problem.  He is an extreme narcissist, incapable of evaluating his own performance.  She didn’t mind him blaming Bush, she enjoyed that.  She also didn’t mind him blaming Republicans, she agrees with him on that too.  But Obama blames everyone and Maureen Dowd finally figured out that he blames her too.  That, she cannot tolerate.

In 1965, Lyndon Johnson said that if he had lost Cronkite, he has lost the country.  He was right about Cronkite, but probably wrong about the American people.  If Obama has lost Maureen Dowd, he has lost a significant portion of his base, the highly educated liberal woman.

Listen carefully.  That sound you hear is that of Democratic strategists all over the country throwing up.  With friends like this, enemies are an improvement.

TDM

I went to the California Capital Air Show with a friend today.  It is always a fun event and it was particularly exciting to see airplanes like a Spitfire, a P51 and a P38 flying around.  In addition, the Air Force Thunderbirds always put on a good show.

But something was definitely missing.  There was no Diet Coke.   All the vendors had the same lousy assortment of  beverages.  There were several varieties of Snapple and some other stuff that looked rather unappealing, at least to me.  I could not find a single vendor serving Diet Coke, or even Diet Pepsi, which though not Diet Coke, will do in an emergency.  

I would have written this off as some kind of bizarre pro-Obama conspiracy, trying to force us to drink healthier stuff, but then I remembered that Snapple supported Rush Limbaugh, so there went that conspiracy.  I finally decided this was probably just another case of micro-management and incompetence. 

This reminded me of Falstaff beer.   When I was stationed at Pleiku, AB, Vietnam, there was always a vast over-supply of Falstaff beer.  Perhaps it was just me, but it seemed like half of the beer on base was Falstaff.  Yet I really didn’t know anyone who liked the stuff.  So every month, it was the same.  All the other beer would be consumed. (I mean come on, there weren’t a lot of fun activies at Pleiku AB in 1969.)  Then, toward the end of the month, we would have to settle for Falstaff.  Even the Falstaff cans seems to be inferior and I personally suspected rust. 

I always suspected someone in the supply chain got a little something extra for ordering all the Falstaff.  One thing is sure, it wasn’t the enlisted men on base who made that brilliant decision.  Then in dawned on me.  Snapple.  California Capital Air Show.  Falstaff, Pleiku AB.   It was Deja Vu all over again.

There were still a lot of nice planes.  

TDM

Barack Obama has spent the last four years blaming George Bush for the failed U.S. economy.  He is running for re-election with the argument that Bush mucked things up so badly that Obama needs more time to repair the damage.  So I thought it might be interesting to point out the specific things Bush did to destroy our economy.  Please understand that this is more than a little tongue in cheek.

DEREGULATION OF THE BANKING INDUSTRY

The principle event that triggered the financial crisis was over leveraging of financial institutions.  Democrats blame Bush for failing to properly regulate the banks and preventing this from happening.  Bush was brilliant in engineering this even before he took office.  In 1999, before he was elected President, George W. Bush tricked Bill Clinton into signing the Graham-Leach-Billey act into law.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/11/glass-steagall-act-the-se_n_201557.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act

(Note:  The merger of Travelers and Citibank actually started in 1998, but was subsequently made legal by the passage of Graham-Leach-Billey in 1999.)

That law, the brain child of Robert Rubin, repealed Glass-Steagall, the law that prevented banks from getting into the insurance business.  (It was a Republican congress that passed this law, but Clinton signed it.)   As soon as the law was signed, Citi-Bank completed the merger with Travelers Insurance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup

Then Robert Rubin resigned his position as the greatest Treasury Secretary in history and joined Citigroup.  He was paid millions for his sage advice.  It is a disgrace that Bush would sabotage the Clinton administration with this irresponsible legislation.

FAILURE TO REGULATE FANNY MAE AND FREDDIE MAC

George W. Bush was even more irresponsible with regard to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/30/business/fannie-mae-eases-credit-to-aid-mortgage-lending.html?scp=1&sq=september%2030,%201999&st=cse

Because of the negligence of George Bush, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac exploded in size during the period from 1992 through 1998.  I know that Bush wasn’t even involved in national politics at the time, but that is no excuse.  Then in 1999, Bush tricked Andrew Cuomo and Bill Clinton into launching the sub-prime mortgage explosion.  The decision to require Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to start giving loans irresponsibly, regardless of ability to pay, led to the enormous housing bubble that was destined to collapse.  In addition, a high percentage of people who lost their homes were minorities who were coerced into taking on mortgages they couldn’t possibly afford.

The fact that Bush did this even before he was elected President is particularly disturbing.

Then, hypocritically, George Bush demanded that congress give him the authority to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  As everyone knows, Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd were already responsible for this oversight and Bush just created an unnecessary distraction.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/01/24/8234040/index.htm

BUSH CUT TAXES

Just because he inherited a declining economy, headed toward recession, Bush irresponsibly pushed through tax cuts that reduced taxes only on the rich.

http://taxfoundation.org/article/summary-latest-federal-individual-income-tax-data-0

If you look only at the raw data in table 2, you might draw the conclusion that top wage earners actually paid a higher percentage of total tax after the Bush tax cuts and that lower wage earners paid no tax at all.  That may be technically true, but it was only because top wage earners were making more money from a booming economy.

Although the Bush tax cuts resulted in the fastest recovery from a recession in the history of the United States that was probably a coincidence.  In addition, unemployment was only down to 5.7% by 2003, obviously the classic definition of a jobless recovery.

http://www.ombwatch.org/node/1541

I know some people will argue that there was sustained job growth throughout the Bush Presidency, but that ignores the dramatic change in employment once people realized that Barack Obama had been elected President.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-05-31/federal-workforce-decline-growth/55318944/1

By pursuing policies that deliberately promoted job growth during his administration, President Bush left a problem that was very difficult for President Obama to handle.

BUSH CAUSED THE DEFICIT BY LAUNCHING THE WAR IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN

Some economists argue that the country was headed toward deficit spending in 2001, regardless of who was President, because of the rapid decline in the Social Security surplus.

Granted that this surplus reached its peak in 1998 and congress did spend the money to make the budget look balanced.  Also granted, that baby boomers started leaving the work force in 2000, starting a steep decline in Social Security tax revenue.  While some people argue that some of the defense spending under Bush was necessary to make up for eight years of underfunding under Clinton, and Bush actually spent far less than for any previous war, it is clear that the War in Iraq that caused the huge budget deficit.  The following chart would appear, to some, to show that defense spending under Bush was consistent with historical patterns, but that is also just a distraction.

BUSH PUSHED THROUGH THE TARP PROGRAM

Bush irresponsibly gained bi-partisan support for the TARP program, which was responsible for restoring faith in our financial system.  He then intervened to provide a bridge loan to GM, preventing them from going bankrupt.  By taking decisive action, before Barack Obama was even elected, Bush prevented Obama from receiving full credit for the only two actions taken by him that had any positive impact on the economy.

The record is crystal clear:  George W. Bush is solely responsible for the financial mess that Obama inherited, and it is absolutely vital that we learn from this lesson.  Never again should we allow such an evil man to influence policy in such a devastating manner even before he assumed office.  Never again should we allow a President to make sound financial decisions to save an economy on the brink and rob the next President from his day in the sun.

TDM

Note:  The biggest mistake being made by Republicans in this election is to allow Democrats to blame George Bush for the failed economy.  This is the second time Republicans failed to back President Bush, even though the FACTS are all on his side.

Republicans also failed to back Bush with regard to the WMD in Iraq.   There is zero evidence that Bush ever made a single statement about the WMD in Iraq that was not backed by the intelligence and that was not supported by representatives of the Clinton administration.  Republicans let Democrats lie about that, just like they are now letting them lie about the Bush economic record.  What is obviously true is obviously true and Republicans need to realize that the truth is a powerful weapon in this election.

The DNC has moved President Obama’s acceptance speech indoors.  Organizers are blaming bad weather.  Some in the media have been skeptical that the real reason was fear of having a lot of obviously empty seats.  After the Clint Eastwood skit, the Obama campaign hyperventilates at the thought of an empty chair.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2198695/Democrats-forced-Obamas-big-speech-74-000-seater-outdoor-stadium-20-000-seater-indoor-arena.html

My concern is what the DNC is going to do for those 54,000 people who sacrificed so much just to get a brief glimpse of the Annointed One?  Are they now left to huddle outside in the cold and the rain?  Surely the DNC, which cares so much for all the little people, has done something.   At a minimum, there must be an alternative venue available where they can at least watch this on closed circuit television.

I think we should all join in a campaign to help find the missing 54,000 and offer assistance.  They thought they had opportunity to listen to President Obama, in person, give one of the most important speeches in American history.  The disappointment must be staggering.

One final thought.   The DNC decided to leave God out of their platform.  I know they don’t believe in God any more, but perhaps they should consider what God would do, if He did exist.  He might just take Hurricane Isaac and miraculously make it turn mysteriously to the west to drench New Orleans.  Hmmm.  Lots of Democrats in New Orleans.  A lot of liberal Democrats were royally pissed because Isaac didn’t wreak havoc on the RNC in Tampa.  Then, to reinforce the point, He might send a thunderstorm to Charlotte, NC where President Obama is scheduled to speak in an outdoor stadium.  I mean if you were President Obama or part of his campaign staff and you knew how many lies you had told lately, would you really risk lightning?  Just saying!

TDM

The President of Chick-fil-A came out against gay marriage.  The ever tolerant liberal left went crazy.  They tried to organize a nationwide boycott, but that backfired.  Instead, people all across the country swamped Chick-fil-A stores to show their support.  But the liberal left does not care what people think.  They are intolerant of anyone who disagrees with them.

The truth is that voters have never supported gay marriage any time they were allowed to vote.  We have gay marriage in several states solely because of activist judges and out-of-control Democratic legislatures.  Even in California, the land of fruits and nuts, gay marriage went down to a huge defeat.  Democrats didn’t even bother trying again at the polls, they just appealed to an openly gay judge who decided that when California voters voted to change the California constitution it was unconstitutional.  If you understand that you are probably a Kool-Aid drinking liberal, and you won’t read this anyway.

So, the liberal left, having failed with the American people, moved on to more fertile soil.  They are now in a massive campaign to remove Chick-fil-A restaurants from all colleges and universities.  Since a vast majority of professors are liberals, it is easy to get support.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8427-2005Mar28.html

Reports are that at least 33 restaurants have already been removed and more are under siege.  Liberals are celebrating the culture of tolerance by demonstrating intolerance.  No wonder our college graduates have trouble finding work.

http://www.foxcharlotte.com/news/top-stories/Colleges-Asked-To-Remove-Chick-fil-A-From-Campus-166212966.html

It also astonishes me that the liberal left is so tolerant of Islam, which is far from tolerant of them.  Remember when there was this great plan to build a mosque near ground zero.  This was more than a little offensive to those family members with vivid memories of Muslim men screaming, “Allahu Akbar!” as they flew commercial airliners into the World Trade Center.  But, the liberal left felt a more important issue was present here.  They felt that tolerance required us to accept the mosque because that is what tolerance means. 

I have yet to see a single liberal stand up for Chick-fil-A, so I had to ask myself, “What if Chick-fil-A was owned by Muslims and it served Halal chicken?”  (Halal is a means of butchering the animal that is in line with the Muslim Faith similar to Kosher for Jews.)  The main stream media would be outraged, and there would be public demonstrations demanding that the Chick-fil-A restaurants be restored.  It is easy to understand why.  Muslims are so much more tolerate of gay marriage.  Right after the couple is stoned to death, they are gently placed side by side in their joint graves. 

Please consider forwarding this to anyone you think might be able to help those Chick-fil-A owners who are on or near college campuses.  Someone’s values will prevail.  You decide.

TDM

I had a dream that Mitt Romney was put in charge of the schedule for the Democratic National Convention. 

He would start the DNC off with a keynote address by the top Hispanic in the Democratic Party, Julian Castro, Mayor of San Antonio.  Even the main stream media might figure out how this compares with the token brown faces showcased by the RNC, limited by lack of diversity in the Republican Party to two female minority Governors, a black female Secretary of State and a Hispanic U.S. Senator. 

Then for Wednesday night, he would schedule Elizabeth Warren, to be followed by Bill Clinton.  Elizabeth Warren has told so many bald-faced lies that even the liberal left wing media noticed.  She claimed to be a Cherokee Indian, without realizing that you should actually have some Indian blood to claim this distinction.  She ultimately claimed to be 1/64^th Cherokee, only to have the blogosphere prove that this 1/64^th was white too.  She is arguably the only major politician with more holes in her birth story than Obama.  This is the perfect opening act for the biggest liar of them all, William Jefferson Clinton. 

There are numerous reports that Clinton already despises Obama.  He skewered Obama in the “I Killed Bin Laden” commercial by pointing out that Obama risked embarrassment if those Navy Seals had been killed or captured.  To pour salt in the wound, in addition to scheduling Clinton to follow Elizabeth Warren, He would talk the NFL into rescheduling the opening night of the NFL to Wednesday.  That way Clinton can compete with the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants for an audience.

Then on Thursday, he would schedule John Kerry and Joe Biden to be the opening acts for Obama.  Perhaps John Kerry could discuss Mitt Romney’s tax returns and explain how important it is for rich people to pay taxes.  Joe Biden just needs to be himself.  By the time Obama takes the podium those people still awake will have difficulty containing the giggles. 

To set the stage for the DNC and send a clear message to the American people, he would encourage the Occupy people to make up for the missed opportunities at the RNC and make a big splash in Charlotte.  He would encourage 20,000 Muslim Americans to show up in Charlotte to demonstrate their appreciation for everything Obama has done for Muslims all over the world.  Then he would line up every radical left wing Democratic politician in the country and give them valuable air time so they can explain to everyone what’s really at stake in this election.   Finally, to make sure Obama has the right kind of audience, he would send operatives all over the South to pick up strangers in bars willing to travel to Charlotte and fill up the audience for Obama in exchange for free beer and a free bus ride.

Of course this was only a dream.  Democrats were not about to let Romney organize their convention.  But, under the brilliant leadership of Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the Obama campaign, the DNC has already done all of this and more.  Perhaps they will pull this off and the DNC will once again send a thrill up the leg of people like Chris Matthews.  But more likely, the people who are naïve, incompetent and inept will run a national convention that looks naïve, incompetent and inept.  That is just the way things work.

TDM

When Paul Ryan gave his electrifying speech, CNN could hardly wait to proclaim that the speech was filled with errors and distortions.  Factchecking is the latest tactic of the Obama Re-election Committee, thinly disguised as the main stream media, to save Obama from himself.  Factchecking would be great, if it was limited to checking actual facts.   But for CNN, factchecking has deterioriated to comparing any Republican  comments against Democratic talking points.  A classic example of this was when Ryan said that Obama spoke at a GM plant and promised the workers that under his leadership, the plant would stay open for another 100 years.  Ryan was telling the truth.  Obama did say that and the plant did close.  But CNN was offended, because Ryan said this in a way that was deliberately intended to make Obama look bad.  Imagine that!  A politician deliberately making his opponent look bad.

Let’s apply the CNN standard to sports.  A major league pitcher strikes out a batter on a called third strike.  The video replay shows that the ball did cross the plate just above the knees.  But the CNN reporter is outraged for several reasons.  First, the pitcher was deliberately deceptive by throwing a fast ball when the batter had been expecting a curve.  In addition the pitcher threw it low and outside, which greatly reduced the chances of the batter hitting a home run.  Then to complete the deception, the pitcher irresponsibly put extra effort into the throw making it go even faster than expected.

This is so unfair.  Granted, the pitch was technically a strike, but that didn’t make it fair.  Didn’t the pitcher realize that the batter was a good guy and he really wanted to hit the ball.

TDM

I expected Paul Ryan to do well, but this well?  Wow!  The last time I saw anything close to this was when Ronald Reagan gave a televised speech just before the 1964 Presidential election.  Democrats expected some “B” level actor.  Instead they were introduced to the “Great Communicator.  Commentators tonight expected Ryan to give a good speech, but they never dreamed that he could be so effective at connecting with an audience.  He had that rare ability to connect with the television audience just as well as he did with all those die hard Republicans in the Tampa Convention Center.  We just saw the public unveiling of a new force of nature.  I recommend Democratic leaders all over the country put in an order for a mountain of Maalox.  They are going to need it.

Democrats will respond, as they always respond, with personal attacks and class warfare rhetoric.  They will try to destroy Ryans credibility by challenging some of his facts.  Then they will try to portray him as an evil villian determined to give huge tax cuts to big corporations while leaving Granny to die all alone without her Medicare.  But this time they have a couple of huge problems.  One is that even if you disagree with Paul Ryan he oozes credibility.  No one, who watched him discuss his grandmother with Alzheimers is going to believe that this man wants to cut off health care for granny.  Then, in a moment of high theater, he made a compelling argument that it was Obama who is threatening granny’s Medicare.  It was stunningly effective.  Ryan took the traditional Democratic Mediscare play book and used it against them.  It was a remarkable achievement.

This is going to be a speech that will be remembered for a long time.  The biggest problem for Republicans is that Mitt Romney has a very tough act to follow.  But Mitt Romney is not John McCain.  He probably won’t be nearly as effective as Ryan, but he will be effective enough.  Ultimately, Paul Ryan did a magnificent job of teeing it up for Romney. 

Ari Fleischer made a very astute observation.  He said the real issue is whether Republicans and  Democrats show up the way they did in 2008, the way they did in 2004 or the way they showed up in 2012.  He pointed out that unless Democrats show up in unprecedented numbers, as they did in 2008, that Obama is in serious trouble.  None of the liberal pundits, including Carville, challenged him on that.  That is because they know he is right.  But what Fleischer didn’t say is that a split between 2004 and 2008 is close to the best case scenario for Obama, and under that scenario Obama loses.  No one in either party seriously believes Democrats will repeat the 2008 turnout.  If Republican and Democrat turnout is similar to what is was in 2004, Romney will win in a landslide.  If it is similar to what it was in 2010, it may be a total wipeout.  The least likely scenario is a repeat of 2008.  Only a deaf, dumb and blind liberal optimist without access to polling data would predict that scenario. 

One final thought.  Joe Biden is scheduled to speak next week.  Imagine you are a liberal Democrat with faint residual dreams of Obama squeaking out a victory in November.  Now imagine that you just got done watching Paul Ryan explode off the screen.  Now close your eyes and imagine Joe Biden trying to match this performance.  Suddenly you get this cold clammy feeling and you feel faint.  You wonder if there is enough alcohol in the house.  Then you think about the upcoming debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan, on national television.  A mountain of Maalox may not be enough.

TDM