Bureau of Womanhood Conformity

The Susan B. Anthony List (www.SBA-List.org) created this short (<2 mins) YouTube video called "Womanhood." It's an Orwellian portrait of Team Obama's real war on women, including a haunting depiction of the "Bureau of Womanhood Conformity."

It's powerful stuff. Please check it out here:

http://youtu.be/CbeZFDyHC30 .

The Real Debt Story

You think that annual deficits of between $1.3 and $1.5 trillion are horrendous? Try an annual deficit of $5 trillion.

That's what a major story in USA Today suggests. The only reason the deficit is as "low" as $1.3 trillion is because of the bizarro accounting tricks used by Washington.

Here's part of the USA Today story:

"The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.

"The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government's books.

"Key findings:

".Social Security had the biggest financial slide. The government would need $22.2 trillion today, set aside and earning interest, to cover benefits promised to current workers and retirees beyond what taxes will cover. That's $9.5 trillion more than was needed in 2004.

".Deficits from 2004 to 2011 would be six times the official total of $5.6 trillion reported.

".Federal debt and retiree commitments equal $561,254 per household. By contrast, an average household owes a combined $116,057 for mortgages, car loans and other debts.

""By law, the federal government can't tell the truth," says accountant Sheila Weinberg of the Chicago-based Institute for Truth in Accounting."

In other words, the debt crisis in this country is worse---much worse---than any of us have been led to believe. And the Obama-Reid-Pelosi spending blowout has tipped us into the red zone so far that many of us wonder if we can ever recover.

One thing is certain: if we don't cut spending, rein in government, and reform the biggest budget monsters of the entitlement programs, America will cease to exist in any recognizably free form.

Conservative Nation

Because the leftist media hold a near-monopoly on news coverage and opinion, we get a warped view of where the rest of the country stands and what most Americans believe.

The most recent polling shows that 42 percent of Americans describe themselves as "conservative," while just 21 percent call themselves "liberal."

Then there's this interesting finding on abortion views from a Gallup poll released today:

A record-low 41 percent now identify themselves as "pro-choice," down from 47 percent last July and 1 point down from the previous record low of 42 percent, set in May 2009. As recently as 2006, 51 percent of Americans described themselves as "pro-choice."

Meanwhile, 50 percent of Americans now consider themselves "pro-life," one point below Gallup's record high on the issue. (See the full poll here:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/154838/Pro-Choice-Americans-Record-Low.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_content=morelink&utm_term=All%20Gallup%20Headlines%20-%20Politics )

America remains a center-right nation. Actually, it appears that it's growing more "right" than "center."

And yet, Obama, his henchmen on Capitol Hill, and his wingmen in the leftist media keep trying to convince us of the superiority and wisdom of their extremist, destructive views while force-feeding their policies down our throats. As the polling shows, we aren't fooled, we aren't stupid, and we aren't on the Far Left with them.

Optimistic about America? Oh hell, yeah!

What EXACTLY Obama is "Creating"

In all of the hoopla around Newark mayor Cory Booker's comments about Team Obama's attacks on Romney via attacks on Bain Capital and private equite ("nauseating," he called them) and his subsequent backtrack after the White House came down on him like a brick house----something bigger and more profound was overlooked.

In an interview with MSNBC, Obama's top political strategist, David Axelrod, criticized Booker: "In this particular instance, he was just wrong." Not a surprise, given that Axelrod was probably the one who came down on Booker like a brick house. But then he said this: "There were specific instances here that speak to an economic theory that isn't the right theory for the country."

There it is. This is precisely how the Extreme Left---Obama, Axelrod, everyone else in this nightmarish administration---views the free market. Economic liberty is merely a "theory." And one that hasn't worked. As Obama himself has said, "It hasn't worked. It's never worked."

To the Extreme Left, economic freedom is a discredited theory that needs to be disgarded and replaced with their vision of government-enforced redistributionism.

Later in the day yesterday, Obama gave a press conference, and said this: "This is part of the debate that we're going to be having in this election campaign about how do we create an economy where everybody, from top to bottom, folks on Wall Street and folks on Main street have a shot at success."

This is all redistrubutionist rhetoric he's used before. But pay closer attention to his phrase: "how do we CREATE an economy...." That is the key to everything he has done. He doesn't believe in the free market, or in individuals pursuing their economic interests and their dreams. He believes in a redistributive socialist state enforced through government coercion. THAT is the kind of economy he is trying to CREATE. Pay close attention to what he says because he's telling you what he's doing and where he's taking the country, if only your ears and eyes are open enough to hear and see it.

That's the kind of economy he's CREATING. And of course, he is the one in charge, controlling it all. Not you. Not small business owners. Not market forces. Him.

The Catholic Church Strikes Back

Team Obama has always acted like the Chicago mafia operation that it is: they intimidate, arm-twist, threaten, and punish just like an organized crime syndicate. When it comes to rolling like gangsters, the Clintons were pikers compared to Team Obama.

A few months ago, they bullied the Catholic Church and other religious organizations by mandating that they provide insurance coverage for birth control, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs---in violation of their most deeply held beliefs and of religious freedom guaranteed by the Constitution.

Team Obama told them to take a flying leap. Which is what most people, groups, and institutions do when faced with the wrath of Gangland Obama.

This time, however, they may have met their match. Like the 28 states that sued the administration over the constitutionality of ObamaCare, various Catholic organizations are now doing the same thing over the mandate.

According to CNSNews.com, "The Archdiocese of New York, headed by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., headed by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the University of Notre Dame, and 40 other Catholic dioceses and organizations around the country announced on Monday that they are suing the Obama administration for violating their freedom of religion, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

"The dioceses and organizations, in different combinations, are filing 12 different lawsuits filed in federal courts around the country.

"The Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. has established a special website--preservereligiousfreedom.org--to explain its lawsuit and present news and developments concerning it.

""This lawsuit is about an unprecedented attack by the federal government on one of America's most cherished freedoms: the freedom to practice one's religion without government interference," the archdiocese says on the website. "It is not about whether people have access to certain services; it is about whether the government may force religious institutions and individuals to facilitate and fund services which violate their religious beliefs.""

I suspect Team Obama didn't anticipate this. I think they expected the Church to just roll over and take government coercion, the way they expected everyone in America to lie back and take ObamaCare.

To this tyrannical steamroll, some of the most powerful leaders of the Catholic Church are saying, "You know what, Mr. President? No, we can't, and no, we won't." This time, the Chicago mafia may have picked on the wrong opponent. The Church is strong, powerful, wealthy, and influential with a lot of voters. And now, it's defending not just itself but the Constitution. Catholic or not, we should all be cheering on the Church. And you know what, Mr. President? Yes, we can.

Facebook Capitalist Fiesta!

Despite President Obama's best efforts to kill capitalism, it's alive and well---at least today with the widely hyped Facebook IPO.

Facebook is a rather lyrical story of economic liberty: a college kid at Harvard with extra time on his hands creates a basic social networking program so other college kids can talk to each other and share stuff online. As the program grows exponentially, the college kid refines it, graduates, and turns it into a real business. Soon, there are hundreds of thousands of users of his program; then there are millions; now there is close to one billion worldwide.

If you build it, they will come. The college kid built it, and boy, did they come. And today, the investors come. So does the real money. Billions of dollars' worth.

All investments carry inherent risk, and nobody really knows how the Facebook IPO is going to shake out, or what the future holds for the product and the company. But it's all part of the creative destruction and production of capitalism: ideas come, risks get taken, things get created, investments transpire, failures occur, so does wild success. It's all part of the wonderfully messy choreography of the free market.

The IPO is expected to raise Facebook about $16 billion in proceeds and value it at more than $100 billion. If it goes as anticipated, over 1000 people will become millionaires today, and a few new billionaires, including that college kid, Mark Zuckerberg, will be created too.

Regardless of what you think of Facebook or if you're buying some of its shares today or not or whether you even know what Facebook is, you should celebrate what it represents: American ingenuity, creativity, and innovation.

And oh yeah: capitalism. Viva economic liberty!

Another Set of Golden Pipes Silenced

Today we learned the sad news of the death of Donna Summer at the age of 63 after a long battle with cancer. She was known as the Queen of Disco, an artist who, along with the Bee Gees, led the vanguard of disco music and style in the mid to late 1970s. She had one hit after another, from "Heaven Knows," MacArthur Park," and "Bad Girls," to "On the Radio," "Hot Stuff," and my personal favorite, "Last Dance." All of those tunes---and so many other Donna Summer classics---are on my iPod.

If Donna Summer helped to define my youth with her huge vocal range and danceable beats, Whitney Houston helped to define my teenage years in much the same way. When artists whose work influences and entertains you and defines entire eras of your life pass away, it tends to inspire some self-reflection.

I never met them, but Donna Summer and Whitney Houston contributed in a significant way to the soundtrack of my life. And they will, still.

Rest in peace to the two women who had been blessed with extraordinary talent and shared it with us for too short a time.

"Barack Obama"--Yes, He Went There

Yesterday on "The View," President Obama was asked how close he thought the presidential election results would be in November. "When your name is Barack Obama, it's always tight," he said.

Joy Behar helpfully added, "Barack Hussein Obama."

And there it is: the "bigot" card---played despicably by Obama and even more hamhandedly by Behar.

Once again, Obama floors us with his extreme audacity---and not of "hope," either. He has repeatedly shown a propensity to blame others for his own failures (this is a direct result of having never been an executive responsible for any kind of business, state, or other operation.) He's always been ready, willing, and able to hide behind others and deflect responsibility (on to Bush, the Japanese tsunami, ATMs). Back in 2008, he embraced his multicultural ethnicity and "funny name." He held it out as a challenge to the American people: are you "tolerant" and "open-minded" enough to elect a man named Barack Hussein Obama? They answered with a resounding "yes"---and 53% of the vote.

The difference between then and now is simple: this time, he's got a record. A really atrocious one. He can't run on that, so he needs to talk about other things, say a made-up GOP "war on women," contraception, gay marriage, student loans. And his "funny name." After winning the vote in 2008 by a very healthy margin and given the reins of power for three and half years, voters are judging him on his performance. We are, after all, still a merit-based society (at least for the most part.)
In order to get those voters not to focus on his imploding presidency, he's holding out a false and disgusting charge of racism for those who oppose him, and he's trying desperately to reach back to his "glory" days of 2008 when lines like that used to work.

By the way, when he blames his name for a "tight" race, he fails to note that his 2 losing Democrat predecessors had much tighter races than he did in 2008. (Hello, Al Gore!)

Things are going south for him not because of his ethnicity or skin color or name, but because of an economy that he has taken from bad to really bad, record-breaking deficits and debt, highly unpopular socialized medicine, and broken promises all over the place.

Insinuating that he's sucking salt now because of "bigotry" is beneath his office, hugely insulting to the American people, a desperate deflection move, and a classic "loser's limp." It's also 100% pure Obama.

Divisions "R" Us!

Remember when Barack Obama strode to the national podium for the first time in 2004 and proclaimed that there wasn't a "red America" or a "blue America" but simply a United States of America?

Yeah, neither do I.

It's tough to remember that particular piece of rhetorical BS after three and a half years of the most divisive presidency in recent history. Maybe the most divisive ever.

In this short amount of time, Obama has managed to divide us by:

CLASS (all of his destructive blather about "income inequality;" demonizing wealth and success; waging class warfare; scowling at the "1%" and demanding that they fork over "their fair share");

RACE (presiding over a highly politicized DOJ that picks and chooses which cases to prosecute and which to drop largely based on race; sliming the Cambridge police department for "acting stupidly;" claiming that "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon");

GENDER (making up an alleged GOP "war on women," waging it, and then lying about it);

AGE (falsely claiming that Republicans want to throw Granny off a cliff by reforming Medicare, when Obama's own ObamaCare law strips $500 billion from Medicare; claiming the GOP wants student loan rates to double, when in fact, the Democrats in 2007 set the rates to increase now and the GOP is trying to keep the rates from rising);

And SEXUAL ORIENTATION (witness Newsweek's cover proclaiming Obama "The First Gay President," while gay marriage has been voted down in all 32 states in which it's been put to a vote).

Team Obama's strategy is as simple as it is heinous: divide the American people in order to make it easier to push through a fundamentally anti-American redistributionist agenda. They can't do that if the people are united and happy. Got to keep them divided, pitted against each other, envious, bitter, and miserable.
E Pluribus Unim. "Out of Many, One." That's been the American way---until Team Obama got a hold of the country. Now it's "Out of Many, Many More." And contrary to Obama's 2004 proclamation that we were the "United" States of America, he has turned us into the "Disunited" States. Just as he needs us to be.

Desperate for the Benjamins

Remember when it was said that President Obama's re-election effort would be the first "billion dollar" campaign? Because he raised an astounding $750 million in 2008 (from sources big and small and highly suspect), a lot of observers figured he'd be able to not only match that number this time but surpass it. The "billion dollar" man would be, they said, unbeatable.

It hasn't quite worked out that way. Don't get me wrong: Obama is raising a heck of a lot of money, and he spends much of his time now doing exactly that. He has now held more fundraisers than his five predecessors...combined. He'll hold two more tonight in New York City.

Obama sees his poll numbers, showing him in a weak position for an incumbent president. In most polls, he's either tied with or trailing Mitt Romney. So he's running around like the proverbial chicken without a head raising money so he can bombard the airwaves with lies about Romney and his own record to try to turn this thing around.

This is why he suddenly announced his support for legal gay marriage last week. His "decision" came just two days after top gay donors threatened to withhold support and dough from his campaign. So, despite most critical swing-states having already passed bans on same-sex marriage, Obama comes out for it. It was all about the money.

Team Obama also just released an ad attacking Mitt Romney and his leadership at Bain Capital, and by extension, attacking private equity. Then they turned around this morning and pleaded with private equity to please understand that they weren't attacking the industry as a whole.

They are so desperate for cash that they will say and do anything and beg and borrow and pander and whine in order to score some Benjamins. While it's true that every presidential candidate must raise a ton of money to compete nationally, Obama's fundraising is frantic and panicked, particularly for an incumbent. His chief strategist, David Axelrod, has indicated deep worry about their weak grassroots and mid-level fundraising. Hence the frantic activity and the panic.

Most politicians despise having to raise money. Obama seems to relish it, because every moment he's holding a fundraiser is one less moment he's facing the wrath of voters having to live in the Obama Economy.