News, Research & Insights for American Homeowners, Patriots & Constitutional Conservatives
Cameo!
The early hours today look dull — “Meet the Press,” which leads with Gingrich, is probably your best bet — but things will pick up this afternoon when The One sits down with Matt Lauer during NBC’s endless Super Bowl pre-game show for a little class warfare before kickoff. No word yet on the exact [...]
Paralysis.
“A United Nations Security Council effort to end the violence in Syria collapsed in acrimony with a double veto by Russia and China on Saturday, hours after the Syrian military attacked the city of Homs in what opposition leaders described as the deadliest government assault in the nearly 11-month uprising. “The veto and the mounting [...]
Bad policy.
For the last three years, domestic politics in the US has centered around the concept and application of mandates in health care. Barack Obama made that the key to his health-care reform; the Tea Party got fueled in large part over its inclusion. Obama argued at the time and to this day that his mandate [...]
Genuflect, genuflect, genuflect ... not that it will do you much good.
Michael Ramirez’ work at Investors Business Daily is always brilliant, but yesterday’s editorial cartoon may be one of his best ever. The two-time Pulitzer Prize winner takes on the Church of Government, as my friend John Hinderaker calls it at Power Line, and skewers Barack Obama’s pretensions of being a faith leader while shredding the [...]
Whoa.
Some have suggested that Republicans could nominate a syphilitic camel in 2012 and still beat Barack Obama. (Hey, I’m willing to hear the camel out; what’s his position on taxes?) That sounded like hyperbole until Scott Rasmussen released this video today, discussing the internals of his head-to-head matchups in weekly tracking polls. Mitt Romney now [...]
Wait -- what?
When the administration announced earlier this month that it would stick to its decision to require religiously-affiliated employers to provide their employees with insurance that covers contraception, the national Catholic reaction was, to put it mildly, less than supportive. All across the country, Catholic bishops wrote and read letters to their flocks that read, “We [...]
Power grab.
Welcome news on the merits, but I doubt Obama cares much. If he wins, then the Cordray and NLRB appointments are vindicated constitutionally, which will give him political cover to be even bolder with his executive power grabs. If he loses, then instead of whining endlessly on the campaign trail this year about the conservative [...]
Trends.
Today’s unemployment news gave the Obama administration a bit of good news for the upcoming election — and really just a bit — but Gallup had already provided a big dash of cold water yesterday. In their look at partisan trends on a state-by-state basis, there has been a dramatic shift in favor of the [...]
He'll always have Corzine.
No surprise to you and me, but apparently this comes as quite a shock to the Huffington Post. Paul Blumenthal reports that Democrats sputter that Wall Street never had it so good, but perhaps the investors in the world of finance might know a bad stock when they see it. Obama has been outraised in [...]
Boost.
The US economy had a good month for job creation in December, according to the new report this morning from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We added 243,000 net jobs and the unemployment rate fell two-tenths of a percent to 8.3%: Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 243,000 in January, and the unemployment rate decreased [...]
Elections.
This makes twice in 24 hours that the SecDef has telegraphed a hugely consequential military decision to the enemy. Either (a) he’s a moron, (b) he’s lying for strategic advantage, or (c) he has something else in mind. I don’t think he’s a moron and I can’t fathom what the strategic advantage to this might [...]
But don't take our word for it ...
Three years ago today, while Barack Obama demanded almost $800 billion in stimulus funds, he told NBC that the money would generate millions of net new jobs and a new period of growth in short order. “If I don’t have this done in three years,” Obama told NBC, “then there’s going to be a one-term [...]
Fantasy.
Today, Politico’s Jim VandeHei reports that economic indicators should have Barack Obama worried about his re-election prospects, not more sanguine. VandeHei relies heavily on this week’s economic and deficit projections from the CBO, but perhaps not heavily enough: A new CBO report grabbed lots of headlines for projecting the deficit will top $1 trillion this [...]
Terrific.
Alternate headline: “Mitt Romney is concerned about the very poor.” You make the call. Is this (a) a pander aimed at doing damage control for this morning’s gaffe heard ’round the political world, (b) an early sign of Romney’s inevitable shift towards the center in the general election, or (c) a way to inoculate himself [...]
"Mr. West is ... not representative of the African-American community or of the Republican Party."
Via Mediaite, does Moran mean West isn’t representative of blacks generally or that he wasn’t representative of them specifically when he said Obama, Pelosi, and Reid should “get the hell out of the United States of America”? He’s on the right network and the right show for cheap racial demagoguery aimed at a minority conservative, [...]
Plus, the myth of Internet echo chambers.
Earlier this week, the Washington Post ran an article with the curious headline, “Obama: The most polarizing President. Ever.” While there is no doubt that Obama has been a polarizing figure, the certainty of that statement caught my eye. As it turns out, the article itself doesn’t make that claim — it only says that [...]
So are his state approval ratings.
For a year, Republicans have worried about having to face a billion-dollar Re-Elect Obama machine in the fall. Most have just assumed that whoever wins the GOP nomination will have to contend with being outfunded and outgunned, even apart from the usual Democratic advantages of the news media and entertainment industry. National Journal punctures this [...]
Nominee?
Full transcript here. Some positive buzz for this on Twitter tonight, probably inevitably given that he’s in “nominee” mode and attacking Obama instead of Gingrich. But watch to the end and you’ll find the standard “believe in America” boilerplate, which I find impossible to listen to ever since Mark Steyn’s pitch-perfect parody. How did it [...]
Uh oh.
Everything I said when I posted the teaser last month still holds. I’m not seeing Woody Harrelson as slick Beltway insider Steve Schmidt and I’m not seeing The One at all — literally. Wasn’t this book mainly about his big victory? Evidently there’s more drama in Sarah Palin complaining about her wardrobe than in the [...]
Caption contest!
If this is any indication of the skill level David Axelrod will bring to the fall campaign …. Republicans have less to worry about than they think. Barack Obama’s campaign mastermind tweeted out this photo of the President and his dog Bo as a thinly-veiled attack on Mitt Romney and a very old story about [...]
A good start on a larger problem.
Earlier this month, HHS issued a finding that reaffirmed its position that all employers had to comply with a new mandate to provide contraception support in health-care plans — even religious organizations whose doctrines oppose pre- and post-conception intervention. Needless to say, the decision — which gives churches and other explicitly religious organizations only a [...]
"We don’t need to have a second Obama person at the debate."
Yeah, he will, but he’s obliged to say stuff like this on the trail now. Media-bashing has become his calling card. A Newt rally without it would be like a Stones concert without “Satisfaction.” Do the lunar base/flat tax medley if you want, but at some point you’ve got to make the people happy and [...]
Testimonials.
Via RCP. Alternate headline: “George Soros cuts the greatest Gingrich attack ad of all time.” Newt, in fact, mentioned Soros’s comments here three times in his interview with ABC this morning; no doubt the footage below is coming soon to a Winning Our Future spot near you. Is Soros on the level, though, or is [...]
What's $1.2 billion between friends?
It sounds as if investigators looking for over a billion dollars in customer money in the wake of the collapse of MF Global have begun to despair of finding any. Today, the Wall Street Journal reports that the probe thus far strongly suggests that the money got “vaporized” in a labyrinth of shady trading and [...]
Re-elect red flag?
Mitt Romney edges Barack Obama among registered voters in swing states, according to a new Gallup/USA Today poll. By “edge,” I mean barely edges — by a single point. Even with that, though, Romney fares far better than his competitors in the same polling: Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney essentially ties Barack Obama in the nation’s key battlegrounds, a [...]
Grown-up tax ideas.
What are we, six years old? Taxes should pay for the costs of government. That’s what we have taxes for. The proper purpose of taxes is not to establish a condition of “fairness.” It’s to pay for government: a legislature, executive, military, police, firefighting, courts, schools. But for 100 years now, the percentage-based income tax [...]
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