What is Fair?

Obama's false sense of fairness

By SEN. JOHN BARRASSO | 8/27/12

President Barack Obama regularly promises in campaign speeches that his policies will give every American a “fair shot.” As with his previous campaign promises, the president knows people interpret “fair” to match their own meaning.

The choice Americans face in this important election, however, does not rest on what they think “fair” means. They must know what the President means when he uses the term.

For more than three and a half years, the president has governed by his politically motivated idea of fairness. His record demonstrates that “fair” for him doesn’t mean equal opportunity for all Americans – it means equal outcome regardless of efforts.

We now know that the president thinks it’s fair to redefine the work requirements for the welfare program to include bed rest and helping neighbors run errands.

He thinks it’s fair to tell defense contractors they cannot warn employees about future layoffs before the election — because he doesn’t want workers to know that he supports looming defense cuts.

He thinks it’s fair to take more than $700 billion from seniors on Medicare to spend on a whole new program for someone else, “Obamacare.”

He thinks it’s fair to tell American seniors that he has strengthened Medicare, though he has no workable plan to prevent it from going bankrupt.

He thinks it’s fair that his health care law will force many college students to lose access to low-cost health plans they were previously able to get through their schools.

On policy after policy, Obama’s partisan definition of fairness does not match the American people’s.

A rising tide lifts all boats, as the maxim says. The president, however, seems to think it’s better to put holes in all the boats — as long as they’re equal in the end. He admires only the success that can be redistributed from Washington. He thinks we can achieve fairness only when Washington calls the shots.

Instead of equal opportunity for everyone, we are left under this president with more debt, fewer jobs and less innovation. His bad policies have not helped Americans succeed and improve their quality of life.

Read the full story at Politico.

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Are You Racist?

How's That GM Bailout Working?

GM Goes From Bad to Worse Despite Obama Bailout

By Michael Barone - August 23, 2012

Readers with long memories may recall that Charles E. Wilson, president of General Motors and nominee for secretary of defense, got into trouble when he told a Senate committee, "What is good for the country is good for General Motors, and what's good for General Motors is good for the country."

That was in 1953, and Wilson was trying to make the point that General Motors was such a big company -- it sold about half the cars in the U.S. back then -- that its interests were inevitably aligned with those of the country as a whole.

Things are different now. General Motors' market share in the U.S. is below 20 percent. It has gone through bankruptcy and exists now thanks to a federal bailout. But Barack Obama seems to think that it's as closely aligned with the national interest as Wilson did.

"When the American auto industry was on the brink of collapse," Obama told a campaign event audience in Colorado earlier this month, "I said, let's bet on America's workers. And we got management and workers to come together, making cars better than ever, and now GM is No. 1 again and the American auto industry has come roaring back."

His conclusion: "So now I want to say that what we did with the auto industry, we can do in manufacturing across America. Let's make sure advanced, high-tech manufacturing jobs take root here, not in China. Let's have them here in Colorado. And that means supporting investment here."

Was he calling for a federal bailout of other American manufacturing companies? And what does he mean by "supporting investment"? White House reporters have not asked these obvious questions, for the good reason that the president, who has been attending fundraisers on an average of one every 60 hours, has not held a press conference in something like two months.

Obama talks about the auto bailout frequently, since it's one of the few things in his record that gets positive responses in the polls. But he's probably wise to avoid probing questions, since the GM bailout is not at all the success he claims.

GM has been selling cars in the U.S. at deep discount and, while it's making money in China -- and is outsourcing operations there and elsewhere -- it's bleeding losses in Europe. It's spending billions to ditch its Opel brand there in favor of Chevrolet, including $559 million to put the Chevy logo on Manchester United soccer team uniforms -- and just fired the marketing exec who cut that deal.

It botched the launch of its new Chevrolet Malibu by starting with the green-friendly Eco version, which pleased its government shareholders, but which got lousy reviews. And it's selling only about 10,000 electric-powered Chevy Volts a year, a puny contribution toward Obama's goal of 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.

"GM is going from bad to worse," reads the headline on Automotive News Editor in Chief Keith Crain's analysis. That's certainly true of its stock price.

The government still owns 500 million shares of GM, 26 percent of the total. It needs to sell them for $53 a share to recover its $49.5 billion bailout. But the stock price is around $20 a share, and the Treasury now estimates that the government will lose more than $25 billion if and when it sells.

That's in addition to the revenue lost when the Obama administration permitted GM to continue to deduct previous losses from current profits, even though such deductions are ordinarily wiped out in bankruptcy proceedings.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that GM is bleeding money because of decisions made by a management eager to please its political masters -- and by the terms of the bankruptcy arranged by Obama car czars Ron Bloom and Steven Rattner.

Rattner himself admitted late last year, in a speech to the Detroit Economic Club: "We should have asked the UAW (the United Auto Workers union) to do a bit more. We did not ask any UAW member to take a cut in their pay." Non-union employees of GM spinoff Delphi lost their pensions. UAW members didn't.

The UAW got their political payoff. And GM, according to Forbes writer Louis Woodhill, is headed to bankruptcy again.

Is this really what Obama wants to do for all manufacturing across America? Let's hope not. 

Copyright 2012, Creators Syndicate Inc.

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Independent Economists Support Romney Plan

(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Over 400 independent economists signed a statement at the website Economists for Romney in support of what they call the Republican presidential candidate's "bold economic plan for America." 

Five Nobel laureates (Gary Becker, Robert Lucas, Robert Mundell, Edward Prescott, and Myron Scholes) signed the statement which, in part, reads, “We enthusiastically endorse Governor Mitt Romney’s economic plan to create jobs and restore economic growth while returning America to its tradition of economic freedom.”

The economists also denounced Obama's economic ideas, claiming they led to an "an anemic economic recovery and high unemployment." They further assert, "his future plans are to double down on the failed policies, which will only prolong slow growth and high unemployment."

The economists write that Romney's plan is based on sound principles: 
"...more contained and less intrusive federal government, a greater reliance on the private sector, a broad expansion of opportunity without government favors for special interests, and respect for the rule of law including the decision-making authority of states and localities."

These economists note that Romney would:

▪ Reduce marginal tax rates on business and wage incomes and broaden the tax base to increase investment, jobs, and living standards.

▪ End the exploding federal debt by controlling the growth of spending so federal spending does not exceed 20 percent of the economy.

▪ Restructure regulation to end “too big to fail,” improve credit availability to entrepreneurs and small businesses, and increase regulatory accountability, and ensure that all regulations pass rigorous benefit-cost tests.

▪ Improve our Social Security and Medicare programs by reducing their growth to sustainable levels, ensuring their viability over the long term, and protecting those in or near retirement.

▪ Reform our healthcare system to harness market forces and thereby reduce costs and increase quality, empowering patients and doctors, rather than the federal bureaucracy.

▪ Promote energy policies that increase domestic production, enlarge the use of all western hemisphere resources, encourage the use of new technologies, end wasteful subsidies, and rely more on market forces and less on government planners.

In "stark contrast," Obama, according to the economists, "has failed to advance policies that promote economic and job growth, focusing instead on increasing the size and scope of the federal government, which increases the debt, requires large tax increases, and burdens business with many new financial and health care regulations..."

"In sum, Governor Romney’s economic plan is far superior for creating economic growth and jobs than the actions and interventions President Obama has taken or plans to take in the future," the economists write. "This November, voters will make a fundamental choice between differing visions of America’s economic future."

READ FULL SOURCE ARTICLE

Substance and Style

(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

From National Review Online:

For his running mate, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney wisely selected the distinguished House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.). In essence, this is the first major decision of a Romney administration. It is a superb one.

Ryan refreshingly combines a command of the substance of public policy with the style needed to communicate free-market solutions in an appealing fashion. Unlike the last Republican vice-presidential nominee, Ryan will have no problem speaking persuasively and specifically about the federal Leviathan’s every activity and expenditure.

Agree or disagree with him, no one can accuse Ryan of lobbing platitudes around Washington. Instead, he has authored the last two budgets adopted by the House of Representatives. Harry Reid and his Democratic majority must justify the fact that the Senate killed both of these budgets, unanimously defeated President Obama’s last two spending plans, and illegally has refused to pass any such blueprint of its own since April 29, 2009. Ryan’s Path to Prosperity would put Washington on a diet — if not the crackers-and-tap-water menu it deserves, at least not Team Obama’s free-of-charge, come-one-come-all, 24-hour gourmet smorgasbord.

Ryan is ideally suited to battle the Left on Medicare, a battle they surely will try to turn into Gettysburg 2012. They will accuse Romney and Ryan of wanting to gut Medicare, unplug sick seniors from their intravenous drips, and force them to dehydrate in the sun-drenched parking lots of eldercare centers across America. In the most vile, despicable, and revolting political ad since Lyndon Johnson notoriously intimated that Barry Goldwater would kill a flower-picking little girl in a thermonuclear exchange, liberals showed a Ryan-like congressman hurling an old lady from her wheelchair into a ravine, surely to her death. Democrats likely are crafting commercials that will make the throw-Granny-off-a-cliff spot look like Ryan’s family album.

To that, Ryan will respond: First, no one over age 55 will be affected by any proposed changes to Medicare. Second, just as every member of Congress does now, those under 55 will have the option — if they wish — to purchase health plans that reflect their tastes and preferences, rather than a single plan dictated by our masters in Washington. Third, based on their economic needs, the federal government will provide financial assistance to help them buy such coverage. The rich will get less help; the poor will get more. Fourth, any senior who finds this unattractive is welcome to remain in Medicare as we know it.

Absent such reforms, Ryan will explain, it won’t be Granny going over the cliff. It will be the entire Medicare system — with the rest of the federal budget and much of the American economy tumbling soon thereafter.

Ryan also will be able to expose Obama and the entire Democratic Left for their monumental, breathtaking hypocrisy on Medicare. Any Republican who suggests saving $100,000 in Medicare expenses by replacing Kleenex with generic tissue would be accused of launching a pneumonia pandemic against seniors.

Meanwhile, to finance Obamacare, Democrats swiped $500 billion (with a b) from the Medicare Trust Fund and plopped it into Obamacare’s coffers. Thishalf-trillion-dollar robbery from Medicare occurred with no one on the Left calling 911 to report this crime. Indeed, they cheered it on.

Even more fraudulently, Team Obama simultaneously dedicates these (un)Affordable Care Act funds to underwrite future Medicare benefits.

“So,” Rep. John Shimkus (R., Ill.) asked Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a March 3, 2011, House hearing , “are you using it [the $500 billion] to save Medicare, or are you using it to fund health-care reform? Which one?”

Secretary Sebelius admitted: “Both.”

“So,” Shimkus responded, “you’re double-counting.”

Ryan is perfectly prepared to educate Americans on the Democrats’ cynical thievery and, finally, put them on defense on Medicare.

Atop his substance, Ryan also brings style to the ticket. Ryan is Congress’s handsomest member, and his youthful energy and general exuberance are infectious. His smiling optimism will make it very hard for Democrats to portray him as a nasty, cold, heartless Granny killer. While Senator Rob Portman (R., Ohio) looks like someone with an Excel spreadsheet where his heart is, Ryan indubitably has ventricles and an aorta in his chest. Try as they will, Democrats will struggle to twist Ryan into the vicious caricature into which they often transform Republicans.

Ryan also can talk tough without being mean. His speech this morning in Norfolk, Va., before the USS Wisconsin deftly offered solid hits on Obama’s record without the snarls that might rattle independents or fragile centrists.

Ryan smoothly refuted Obama’s notorious slap at job creators. As Ryan put it today: “If you have a small business — you did build that.”

He nicely threw Obama’s entire class-warfare theme back into the president’s face. As Ryan said: “We Americans look at one another’s success with pride, not resentment, because we know, as more Americans work hard, take risks, and succeed, more people will prosper, our communities will benefit, and individual lives will be improved and uplifted.”

Ryan concisely critiqued Obama’s entire approach as president and contrasted it with his and Romney’s plans. As Ryan stated: “We won’t duck the tough issues . . . we will lead! We won’t blame others . . . we will take responsibility! We won’t replace our founding principles . . . we will reapply them!”

In naming a running mate with intellect, gravitas, seriousness of purpose, courage, charm, and communications skills, Romney’s recruitment of Ryan recalls another Republican “R” — Reagan.

— New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a Fox News Contributor, a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service, and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University. 

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Milquetoast Mitt

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Mark Steyn

There are no precedents in history for a great power spending itself to death on the scale America is doing. Obama has added $5 trillion to the national debt, and has nothing to show for it. Do you know how difficult that is to do? Personal debt per citizen is currently about 50 grand, but at least you got a La-Z-Boy recliner and a gas-fired barbecue out of it. Obama has spent America’s future, and left no more trace than if he and his high-school “choom gang” had wheeled a barrow of 5 trillion in large notes behind the gym and used them for rolling paper. Right now, combined total debt in the United States is just shy of $700,000 per family. Add in the so-called “unfunded liabilities” that a normal American business would have to include in its SEC filings but that U.S.-government accounting conveniently absolves itself from, and you’re talking about a debt burden per family of about a million bucks. In other words, look around you: the paved roads, the landscaped shopping mall, the Starbucks and the juice bar and the mountain-bike store . . . There’s nothing holding the joint up.

Read the rest here.

The Ryan Pick

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Smart Democrats Should Be Worried

By John Fund at National Review Online

Liberal pundits are already fanning out in force to attack and discredit Paul Ryan. Michael Tomasky, who recently wrote a Newsweek cover story calling Mitt Romney a “wimp,” has now decided that Romney’s bold move is “a terrible choice” because Ryan has proven himself to be an extremist on budget issues.

No doubt there are many Democrats rubbing their hands in glee in contemplation of reviving some version of the ad that featured an actor playing Paul Ryan pushing a grandmother in a wheelchair off a cliff. But the smarter ones are worried.

First, if Ryan is an extremist and his proposals are so unpopular, how has he won election seven times in a Democratic district? His lowest share of the vote was 57 percent — in his first race. He routinely wins over two-thirds of the vote. When Obama swept the nation in 2008, he carried Ryan’s district by four points. But at the same time, Ryan won reelection with 65 percent of the vote, meaning that a fifth of Obama voters also voted for him.

Ryan has pointed out to me that no Republican has carried his district for president since Ronald Reagan in 1984. “I have held hundreds of town-hall meetings in my district explaining why we have to take bold reform steps, and I’ve found treating people like adults works,” he told me. “All those ads pushing elderly woman off the cliffs don’t work anymore if you lay out the problem.”

Second, Democrats know that Ryan has Reaganesque qualities that make him appealing to independent, middle-class voters. Take the cover story on Ryan that the Isthmus, a radically left-wing Madison, Wis. newspaper, ran on him in 2009. “Ryan, with his sunny disposition and choirboy looks, projects compassion and forcefully proclaims dedication to his district,” the story reported. “And he’s proved he is not unyieldingly pro-corporate, as when he recently joined in condemnation of AIG ‘retention’ bonuses.”

Third, Ryan’s ideas aren’t that novel or scary. The idea of “premium support” for Medicare, which would change the program’s one-size-fits-all policy to a private-insurance model with public options, was endorsed by a bipartisan commission appointed by Bill Clinton back in the 1990s. Late last year, Ryan announced a new version of his proposal with a new partner signing on: Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who first achieved political prominence as an advocate for seniors.

Four, Ryan puts Wisconsin and its ten electoral votes in play. Polls have shown that President Obama holds a five to seven point lead in Wisconsin — significant, but much less than Obama’s 14-point margin in 2008. With Ryan on the ticket, polls show the race is dead even.

Five, if Republicans were looking for a superior candidate, they’ve found it in Ryan. His maiden speech as the GOP vice-presidential candidate was perfectly pitched:

We won’t duck the tough issues . . . we will lead!
 We won’t blame others…we will take responsibility!
 We won’t replace our founding principles . . . we will reapply them!

Echoes of Ronald Reagan at his best.

Ryan was judged to have already had the better of President Obama in televised exchanges on Obamacare. His debate with Joe Biden this October might well be remembered as cruel and unusual punishment for dim vice presidents. Recall that Sarah Palin fought a much more engaged Joe Biden to a draw in their 2008 vice-presidential debate.

Six, as Democratic consultant Joe Trippi acknowledged today on Fox News, Ryan will bring in a flood of donations from overjoyed conservatives and tea-party members. Romney had a problem with energizing the GOP base. That problem is now solved, and that will make it easier to pump up conservative turnout.

Democrats will no doubt try to make Paul Ryan into a younger version of the devil they’ve tried to paint Mitt Romney as. But they should worry about fighting a campaign on fundamental issues in a weak economy. That’s precisely how Jimmy Carter, the last Democratic president to run for reelection during hard times, wound up losing so badly that it not only cost Democrats control of the U.S. Senate but damaging the liberal brand for years afterwards.

It's Mine - Well Maybe Not

Anybody remember this from 2009?

How about now?

President Obama urged Colorado voters to support him today by citing, among others, the very reason that he remains a vulnerable incumbent.

“[W]e’ve come too far to turn back now,” Obama said in Pueblo, Colo.  “We’ve got too much more work to do.  We’ve got too many good jobs we’ve got to create.  We’ve got too many teachers we still need to hire.  We’ve got too many schools we need to rebuild.” He also emphasized his belief in the renewable energy industry in Colorado, the need to support college students, and to disengage the military from foreign conflicts.

If Obama had fewer jobs still in need of creating, he might not have to fight so hard to keep his own. The national unemployment rate rose to 8.3 percent last month  — the second time it has increased this year — as it remained above 8 percent nationally for the 42nd straight month.

Obama criticized the Romney campaign and Republicans for blaming him for the weak economy. “They say the economy is bad and it’s Obama’s fault — every ad is the same argument,” he said. “They don’t have a plan to create more jobs.  They don’t have a plan to revive the middle class.  I’ve got that plan.”

Written by Joel Gehrke, Commentary Writer for The Washington Examiner

The Truth About Taxes

(Photo credit: 401(K) 2012)

No, Romney Won't Raise Your Taxes $2,000

By PETER FERRARA on 8.8.12 @ 6:10AM

Mitt Romney's tax plan is a winner, and, lacking a serious rebuttal, President Obama settles for fabricating charges.

In a campaign stop at Rollins College in Florida last week, Barack Obama suggested that the middle class should resent Mitt Romney's tax proposals:

"I want everybody to understand here -- he's not asking you to pay an extra $2,000 [in taxes] to reduce our deficit; he's not asking you to pay an additional $2,000 to help care for our seniors; he's not asking you to pay an additional $2,000 in order to rebuild America or to fight a war," the president said. "He's asking you to pay more so that people like him can pay less."

But here is the actual truth: Mitt Romney is not asking the middle class or anyone else to pay more taxes. Mitt Romney is proposing to cut tax rates for everyone, across the board. That would finally liberate the economy for a long overdue recovery. Increased revenues from that booming economic growth, combined with savings from cutting Obama's runaway spending and closing loopholes that mostly benefit the highest income taxpayers, would enable a U-turn, from the four straight highest deficits in world history to a balanced budget in 5 years. The roadmap for doing that is Paul Ryan's 2013 budget, which has already been adopted by the Republican controlled House. (The Democrat majority Senate, by contrast, has never shown up for work.) This is classic tax reform, cutting rates and closing loopholes.

Obama's Tax Plan: Higher Taxes, No Jobs

The only candidate in this race proposing to increase taxes is Barack Obama. He has already enacted increases in the top rates of virtually every major federal tax, which will go into effect January 1. That is when the tax increases of Obamacare will hit, and when the Bush tax cuts will expire. (Remedial education for Obama supporters: "Bush tax cuts expire" means tax increases).

As a result, the top two income tax rates are already scheduled in current law to increase by nearly 20 percent; the capital gains tax rate is slated to soar by nearly 60 percent; the tax rate on dividends will explode to nearly three times its current level; the Medicare payroll tax rate will rocket up by 62 percent for disfavored taxpayers (the nation's job creators, investors, and successful small business entrepreneurs); and the death tax will rise further from the grave with a 57 percent increase in the top rate.

This is all on top of the corporate income tax rate, which under President Obama is already the highest in the industrialized world at 35 percent -- or nearly 40 percent counting state corporate rates on average. Even Communist China has a lower corporate income tax of 25 percent. The average in the social welfare states of the EU is less than that. Germany has an 18 percent federal corporate rate. Canada, which has been booming under a conservative government, is now at 15 percent.

American businesses are uncompetitive in the global economy under these tax policies. But with President Obama there is no relief in sight. Instead he is continually barnstorming the country calling for still more tax increases. Under his so-called Buffett rule, the capital gains tax rate would increase by 100 percent, to the fourth highest in the industrialized world.

Then in 2014, the Obamacare mandate tax will go into effect, requiring every employer and every worker in the country to buy the expensive health insurance plan that the federal government decides you must have. That is another tax increase on the middle class, which -- in addition to all the other tax increases in Obamacare they will have to pay -- trashes Obama's central campaign promise in 2008 not to raise taxes on working people.

Obama promised in 2008 that he would only increase tax rates on the wealthy -- the nation's job creators, investors, and small business owners -- to the levels that existed under President Clinton. But this talking point, which he and his brain dead supporters are still repeating, is now long outdated. In total, these tax increases will raise top rates well beyond the Clinton rates, and in an even worse context. Other countries have learned the lessons of Reaganomics and slashed rates on capital in particular since then, and so they are already outcompeting America today. Thus, the combined effect of all those tax rate increases on "the rich" would be a renewed recession, double-digit unemployment, and a federal deficit that tops $2 trillion.

Read the rest of this story here.

No Use In Pretending

An infamous write-in ballot from the 2008 Minnesota Senate Recount, where a voter had filled in the bubble for Al Franken, but had also written in "Lizard People." This ballot was originally counted for Franken, but was challenged by Norm Coleman. The State Canvassing Board upheld the challenge, taking the vote away from Franken. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

York: When 1,099 felons vote in race won by 312 ballots

In the eyes of the Obama administration, most Democratic lawmakers, and left-leaning editorial pages across the country, voter fraud is a problem that doesn't exist. Allegations of fraud, they say, are little more than pretexts conjured up by Republicans to justify voter ID laws designed to suppress Democratic turnout.

That argument becomes much harder to make after reading a discussion of the 2008 Minnesota Senate race in "Who's Counting?", a new book by conservative journalist John Fund and former Bush Justice Department official Hans von Spakovsky. Although the authors cover the whole range of voter fraud issues, their chapter on Minnesota is enough to convince any skeptic that there are times when voter fraud not only exists but can be critical to the outcome of a critical race.

In the '08 campaign, Republican Sen. Norm Coleman was running for re-election against Democrat Al Franken. It was impossibly close; on the morning after the election, after 2.9 million people had voted, Coleman led Franken by 725 votes.

Franken and his Democratic allies dispatched an army of lawyers to challenge the results. After the first canvass, Coleman's lead was down to 206 votes. That was followed by months of wrangling and litigation. In the end, Franken was declared the winner by 312 votes. He was sworn into office in July 2009, eight months after the election.

During the controversy a conservative group called Minnesota Majority began to look into claims of voter fraud. Comparing criminal records with voting rolls, the group identified 1,099 felons -- all ineligible to vote -- who had voted in the Franken-Coleman race.

Minnesota Majority took the information to prosecutors across the state, many of whom showed no interest in pursuing it. But Minnesota law requires authorities to investigate such leads. And so far, Fund and von Spakovsky report, 177 people have been convicted -- not just accused, but convicted -- of voting fraudulently in the Senate race. Another 66 are awaiting trial. "The numbers aren't greater," the authors say, "because the standard for convicting someone of voter fraud in Minnesota is that they must have been both ineligible, and 'knowingly' voted unlawfully." The accused can get off by claiming not to have known they did anything wrong.

Still, that's a total of 243 people either convicted of voter fraud or awaiting trial in an election that was decided by 312 votes. With 1,099 examples identified by Minnesota Majority, and with evidence suggesting that felons, when they do vote, strongly favor Democrats, it doesn't require a leap to suggest there might one day be proof that Al Franken was elected on the strength of voter fraud.

And that's just the question of voting by felons. Minnesota Majority also found all sorts of other irregularities that cast further doubt on the Senate results.

The election was particularly important because Franken's victory gave Senate Democrats a 60th vote in favor of President Obama's national health care proposal -- the deciding vote to overcome a Republican filibuster. If Coleman had kept his seat, there would have been no 60th vote, and no Obamacare.

Voter fraud matters when contests are close. When an election is decided by a huge margin, no one can plausibly claim fraud made the difference. But the Minnesota race was excruciatingly close. And then, in the Obamacare debate, Democrats could not afford to lose even a single vote. So if there were any case that demonstrates that voter fraud both exists and has real consequences, it is Minnesota 2008.

Yet Democrats across the country continue to downplay the importance of the issue. Last year, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, denounced "the gauzy accusation that voter fraud is somehow a problem, when over and over again it has been proven that you're more likely to get hit by lightning than you are to [be] a victim of voter fraud."

Wasserman Shultz and her fellow Democrats are doing everything they can to stop reasonable anti-fraud measures, like removing ineligible voters from the rolls and voter ID. Through it all, they maintain they are simply defending our most fundamental right, the right to vote.

But voter fraud involves that right, too. "When voters are disenfranchised by the counting of improperly cast ballots or outright fraud, their civil rights are violated just as surely as if they were prevented from voting," write Fund and von Spakovsky. "The integrity of the ballot box is just as important to the credibility of elections as access to it."

Byron York, The Examiner's chief political correspondent, can be contacted at byork@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blogposts appear on washingtonexaminer.com.

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The Silent Treatment

(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

WH Press Corps Goes Seven Weeks Without a Question

by KEITH KOFFLER on AUGUST 6, 2012, 9:28 AM

President Obama has not taken a serious question from the White House press corps in nearly seven weeks, a remarkable string that points to a campaign-style White House operation that is seeking to insulate the candidate from tough cross examination.

The last substantive question Obama took from a White House reporter was during a June 20 press conference following the G20 Summit in Los Cabos, Mexico. Obama allowed only six questions during the event, which was nearly guaranteed to keep him out of political hot water as the focus was on foreign policy.

Since then, Obama has held no press conferences, given no interviews to White House reporters, and taken no questions at the White House events he has held where reporters have been present.

After a July 26 Cabinet meeting, Obama actually laughed off the prospect of taking a serious question about gun laws.

From the White House transcript:

Q    Mr. President, can you tell us, if what the Colorado shooter did was entirely legal, how do you do more on this subject without any new laws?

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  I’m sure we’ll have more opportunity to talk about this.

Q    This afternoon is fine.  I’m available.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thanks.  I’ll ask Jay for your number.  (Laughter.)

During his recent trip to Europe and Israel, Mitt Romney’s failure to take many questions from the frustrated reporters traveling with him sparked an uproar in Washington, even though Romney did in fact hold a press availability during the trip.

Obama’s silencing of the White House press corps has drawn no similar protest.

To the contrary, Daily Caller White House reporter Neil Munro was derided by his colleagues when he interrupted Obama’s remarks in the Rose Garden June 15 to try to ask about immigration. Munro said he thought Obama had finished.

It turns out that was one of the last questions any White House reporter has asked the president.

Obama has done some interviews with local TV reporters during the interim. But, though they occasionally yield some news, these sessions tend to be easy home runs for the president. Obama is facing reporters less versed in national issues and politics than the White House press corps. And they are more likely to be intimidated by the trappings of the White House, where they suddenly find themselves sitting down with the president of the United States.

Obama and Michelle also swatted away mainly softballs during a July 12 interview with “CBS The Morning” anchor Charlie Rose.

Obama did get one feeble question from what appeared to be a White House reporter during his June 29 tour of the fire damage in Colorado Springs. Obama was quizzed, “What do you think when you see just this stuff right here?”

From White House Dossier

Beat Those Commie Bastards!

Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan aboard an American boat in California, 1964. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Christopher Paslay

"Beat those commie bastards."

These were the inspirational words of Herb Brooks, coach of the United States 1980 gold medal men's ice hockey team, as he prepared his troop of young athletes to go into battle against the Soviet Union.

Beat those commie bastards. 

Can you imagine an American coach saying such a thing at the 2012 London Olympics?  Can you imagine USA men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski -- Coach K. -- kneeling down in a huddle at mid-court during a pivotal game against China and telling Labron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, and the rest of his players, Beat those commie bastards?

Not very likely.  If Coach K. uttered such a phrase (which would be out of character), you can bet it would draw quizzical looks from his players.  What's a commie bastard?  The phrase might even offend some of his assistant coaches, who've grown up in a politically correct environment rooted in cultural pluralism (socialism).

America is a very different place from what it was in 1980, when a group of no-name college players captivated the hearts and minds of the nation and beat the USSR in one of the most important sporting events of the 20^th century.  Back in the early1980s, it was okay to feel good about your country.  It was okay to cheer and wave the flag and publicly speak out against the evil of communism.  The Cold War and the threat of impending nuclear annihilation had a way of bringing Americans together -- Republicans and Democrats, Southerners and Northerners, New Englanders and Californians.  (In 1984, Ronald Reagan won an amazing 49 states.)

Watching replays of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" is like an exercise in time travel; viewers are teleported back to an America that actually resembled the glorious place the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the United States Constitution.  The 1980s was a time when America had a national identity, and when being an American meant embracing this identity.  It was a time when Bruce Springsteen's song "Born in the USA" was on everyone's lips (although the lyrics are ironically anti-American), when The Cosby Show was #1 on television.  It was the last great period of assimilation before the divisive roots of cultural pluralism (again, socialism) began to firmly take hold. 

To be an American meant to embrace freedom and rail against the threat of communism, because communism always ends the same way: total economic collapse followed by people standing in bread lines under crushing government oppression (aka the former Soviet Union).  It meant supporting free enterprise -- standing up for personal responsibility and individual achievement.  It meant knowing that man is just a peon in the grand design of the universe, that there exists a higher power with infinitely more wisdom, and that it doesn't matter what you call this higher power (Jesus, Allah, Mother Nature, etc.) so long as you have enough respect for this mysterious life force that you don't presume to be bigger than it. 

Being an American meant leading the world in space exploration (not hitchhiking with the Russians in order to explore the solar system).  Being an American meant leading the world in education, medicine, and technology; it meant having a strong military to defend the world against tyrannical dictators; it meant standing strong with Israel and defending her right to exist; it meant fostering an entrepreneurial spirit and having the guts to engage in competition and take risks; it meant taking pride in having a job and making an honest living; it meant feeling embarrassed about being on food stamps and welfare and about having your first baby out of wedlock at age 15.            

Being American meant speaking English; America's language debate ended 200 years ago, when Ben Franklin's idea to make French the official language crashed and burned.  Being an American meant getting married (to the opposite sex) and raising a responsible, law-abiding family.  Being an American meant being a true American citizen, not an unlawful alien who's been given amnesty by an elitist president pandering for votes.

Being an American meant saying, with pride, Beat those commie bastards, for America once was the antithesis of big government and suffocating communist ideologies.

Not anymore.  Being an American has a whole new meaning.  It means apologizing to other countries and people, apologizing for being successful and being bullied into feeling guilty about achievement.  Sorry I worked hard my whole life and built a successful business and make so much money.  Being an American means accepting the notion that our great country is "broken," that it is oppressive and unfair and needs to be fundamentally transformed.  Being an American means dissent, resistance, and civil disobedience.  It means airing grievances by defecating on cop cars.

Being an American means loathing white, married, heterosexual, Judeo-Christian, English-speaking, family-oriented people, who are legal residents of the United States, because they are "privileged" and the root of all evil.  Being an American means teaching our children that corporations and Wall Street are also the root of all evil.  Being an American means that standing up for being an American is impolite, imperialistic, and a wrongful display of supremacy -- much like a white person standing up for being white.

This summer, there will be no call for our athletes to "beat those commie bastards."

Listen closely: I think I hear Herb Brooks rolling over in his grave.  

Christopher Paslay is a frequent contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer and the author of The Village Proposal.  His blog, "Chalk and Talk," is at http://chalkandtalk.wordpress.com.