It's Been a Hell of a Last Ten Days

Wednesday, 15 August 2012:  Floyd Corkins walks into the headquarters of the Family Research Council in Washington.  Corkins, who had been working at the DC Center for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community, is carrying a semiautomatic pistol, fifty rounds of ammunition and fifteen Chick-Fil-A sandwiches.  Without warning, he shoots a security guard in the arm as he tries to enter the premises and is then wrestled to the ground, shouting, “I don’t like your politics.”  While the guard, Leonardo Johnson, is hailed as a hero for preventing a massacre, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which labeled the Family Research Council a “hate group” in 2010 for its opposition to gay marriage and abortion, vigorously denies that its rhetoric encouraged Corkins to take such violent action.

Tuesday, 14 August 2012:  Speaking at a rally in Danville, Virginia, that included hundreds of African-Americans, Vice-President Joe Biden remarks that Mitt Romney wants to get rid of new Wall Street regulations Priest-King signed into law after the 2008 financial collapse. "Unchain Wall Street," Biden says mockingly, then follows up with, "They're going to put y'all back in chains," in a faux Southern accent.  The facts that Danville was the last capital of the Confederacy and that he just made a blatantly offensive reference to slavery seem lost on him.

Tuesday, 07 August 2012:  Priorities USA, a pro-Obama PAC, releases an attack ad featuring Joe Soptic, a worker laid-off at GST Steel, one of the companies that Bain Capital bought and reorganized.  In the ad, Soptic blames the death of his wife, who had been diagnosed with cancer, on the loss of his job and his health benefits and on Mitt Romney for closing the plant, essentially saying, “Mitt Romney killed my wife.”

The Obama campaign and the Left in general are coming unglued.  The closer they get to losing their grip on power, the more desperate, the more frantic their tactics become.  My wife and I went to Manassas last Saturday the 11th to see Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, whom Romney had introduced as his Vice-Presidential running mate only hours before at an event in Norfolk.  The crowd was electrified and Paul Ryan is absolutely fantastic, and I think the reality that Priest-King and his allies are being forced to confront the issues and actually have a debate is driving them insane.  Take the Joe Soptic ad.  First of all, companies fail all the time, people lose their jobs all the time, but the Left thinks that is simply unfair.  Companies should never fail and people should never lose their jobs, unless they’re Republicans, in which case, shut ‘em all down and let ‘em starve.  Mitt Romney left Bain Capital in 1999, two years before Bain bought GST Steel and reorganized it under bankruptcy, and it’s interesting to note that a) GST Steel’s bankruptcy was brought on by lavish union benefits that the company couldn’t sustain, the cost of which were passed on to the U.S. taxpayers;  b) Mr. Soptic refused a buyout from Bain Capital in 2001, then declined health coverage for his wife when he took a job as a school custodian after GST Steel closed; and c) Renae Soptic wasn’t diagnosed with cancer until 2006, when she was hospitalized for pneumonia and unfortunately passed away two weeks later.  So to tie it all together, Mr. Soptic blames Mitt Romney for his wife’s death when Romney didn’t run Bain Capital, for a cancer she didn’t have until five years later, and when he had at least two opportunities to help her.  With all due respect to the late Mrs. Soptic, her husband is a dumbass and the ad is a despicable piece of garbage.

Then we have Joe Biden.  Simply put, the man is a dolt.  What kind of knucklehead says something like, "They're going to put y'all back in chains," to a heavily black audience, in a fake Southern drawl?  What kind of jackass says something like that?  Nobody says that. If I said something like that, or Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity, or any conservative you care to name, I’d be hanged and burned in effigy, peasants chasing me with pitchforks, and I’d have it coming.  Joe Biden says crude and stupid things because he’s a crude and stupid man.  He's a laughingstock, he's an embarrassment to his office and the sooner we get rid of that foolish old idiot, the better off we’ll be.

In Matthew 24:10, Jesus is sitting on the Mount of Olives with His disciples talking about the latter days and tells us, “And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and hate one another.”  The Left takes offense at everything but especially at conservatives’ opposition to homosexual marriage, so it was just a matter of time before some Left-wing, gay-loving Christian-hater grabbed a gun.  It’s only logical: The Left demonizes conservative Christians relentlessly, pouring gasoline on the fire such that people on the ragged edge of sanity choose violence.  Praise God that Leonardo Johnson stood firm and prevented a bloodbath, but this incident is one more piece of evidence for my thesis – Priest-King is clawing at the air and on 06 November, will have a sudden stop.

http://faustasblog.com/2012/08/the-anti-romney-cancer-ad-steelworker-turned-down-coverage-and-a-buyout/

They Hate You

Friday, 08 June 2012, The White House

Priest-King: “The private sector is doing fine. Where we’re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local governments.”

Sunday, 13 July 2012, Roanoke, Virginia

Priest-King: “If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen…Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

Wednesday, 21 September 2011, Andover, Massachusetts

Elizabeth Warren: “I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.’ No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own – nobody…Now look, you built a factory and turned it into something terrific, or a great idea – God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Thursday, 18 September 2008, ABC’s Good Morning America

The Boob: “It’s time to be patriotic. Time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut.  And the way to do that is – they’re still going to be paying less taxes than they did under Reagan.”

Where do you start? With so much inane blather to choose from, how do you begin to address it? Like the unfortunate worker at a waste management plant sorting through the garbage for recyclables, we have to rummage through a pile of smelly refuse to find something we can use.

The overarching theme running through these foolish remarks – maybe we’ll start at the top and work our way down – is a seething resentment at the concept of individualism. Personal drive and commitment, motivation, sacrifice, risk-taking and keeping the rewards of those risks are bitterly despised but only for some people and not for all, since Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Ted Turner, Michael Bloomberg, the Clintons and the Kennedys and the Obamas can make and keep as much of their fortunes as they like with perfect impunity because they’re liberal.  A conservative entrepreneur who wants to keep what he’s earned, who distrusts government bureaucrats and politicians to make good decisions with his tax dollars, who believes government should be restricted to its core functions and live within its means will face the brunt of liberal fury.  “How dare you think you succeeded on your own? How dare you deny that government is the engine of your prosperity? How dare you deprive your neighbors, who are just as smart and who work just as hard as you, of their just portion of your profits, you greedy, selfish right-wing bastard?” Or sentiments to that effect. There is a righteous indignation in Priest-King’s voice and Elizabeth Warren’s, though not so much in Joe Biden’s – I compare him to a North Korean propaganda poster, something too ridiculous to be taken seriously.  They fume at the notion that their model of prosperity (success is only possible as part of a group, regulated and controlled by a liberal-dominated government that manages everything, favors some people over others and that bestows some rights and withholds others) is not universally shared. They viciously attack individualism, they see it as a threat and a betrayal and try to crush it, try to stamp out the drive to excel because if some people cannot or choose not to achieve excellence, then no-one can.

A patriotic duty to pay higher taxes to a government $15 trillion in debt that is hopelessly inept at managing money is a patently stupid assertion, as is to assert that people get rich because of public roads.  Consider that according to the Small Business Administration, 565,000 new businesses are started in the United States every month and 90% of those businesses will fail within the first year.  Consider also that the top ten percent of wage earners paid 71% of all Federal income taxes in 2009, compared to the bottom fifty percent of wage earners who paid only 2%, such that if someone starts a business and succeeds against the odds, they will pay a heavy price for their success, their hard work and intelligence will be scorned and insulted by their elected leaders who will then demand even higher taxes from them, to be distributed as the politicians see fit.  Given such a hostile environment, it’s a wonder that anyone would open a business these days and clearly such hostility from the Left is hurting our economy.

“…paying less taxes than they did under Reagan.” When Ronald Reagan signed the 1986 Tax Reform Act, the top individual rate was lowered from 50% to 28%.  The rate has since risen to 35% and Priest-King wants to raise it to 39%, and double the capital gains tax rate from 15% to 30%.  Besides the punitive effects of raising taxes in a sluggish economy, Biden’s statement underscores for the umpteenth time that we have a total nincompoop for a Vice President.  Thirty-nine is more than 28 and thirty is more than fifteen and to state otherwise is to display an intellectual vacancy that insults us and his office. The people of Delaware owe the rest of us an apology.

Similarly, to deny the reality of class warfare and then wage it furiously is just dishonest.  Elizabeth Warren’s audience may have been brainwashed with Leftist dogma such that they didn’t notice or care what she said, but some of us listen carefully and can reason for ourselves.  How much is “a big hunk” and who gets to decide what we keep and what we must give up?  No, Cherokee squaw speak heap-big nonsense.

The Internet was developed for national security purposes and was the result of a wide-ranging effort that included not only government agencies like NASA and the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) but MIT, UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, the University of Utah and other university researchers.  It was not created by the Federal government solely and Priest-King knows that, but his instinct to take credit for the Federal government for everything blurs his judgment and drives him forward, and for us, it gives us insight into what he really thinks.  This man (and dopes like Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden) wants government to dominate our lives and that is absolutely antithetical to the Constitution and the intent of the men who wrote it.  He holds you in contempt, my friends, and frankly, I return the favor. His concern is not with the millions he’s thrown out of work but with the governments we support with his heavy taxes.  My fellow citizens, it’s time to rekindle hope and change and that means throwing this bum out in November, and all his sorry crew.

The Statesman

He was punked by Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas.

The Chinese refused to support tougher sanctions against Iran and Syria and refused to allow greater Internet access and freedom of expression for their citizens.  They also undertook aggressive action to control the oil-rich Spratly Islands while we failed to support Japan and the Philippines, two key allies in his new Pacific strategy.

The Russians also refused to support stricter sanctions against Iran and Syria and insisted on the removal of missile defense radars in Poland and the Czech Republic, to which he readily agreed, exposing our NATO allies to political criticism and the very Russian missiles the radars were intended to deter.  He followed that up by confiding to then-President Medvedev (publicly, as it turned out) that he would be “more flexible” concerning nuclear arms cuts after the November election, confirming that he assumes an attitude of submissive inferiority to the Russians.

His overture to Iran “without preconditions” was a failure.  Iran not only refused to stop its nuclear program but increased the number of gas centrifuges required to enrich uranium to weapons grade.  Now Iran threatens to close the Strait of Hormuz in the face of international sanctions and he says nothing.

He refused to support the pro-democracy demonstrators in Teheran in 2009 when strong U.S. involvement could have led to the regime change he says he wants.  He was confused by the Arab spring of 2011, paralyzed with indecision by the choice in front of him: Do I support the demonstrators who are chanting for democracy but who are led by jihadists or do I stand with the Arab strongmen who jail and torture their political opponents?  Unable to answer his own question, he did and said nothing until France took the lead in bombing Libya and he suddenly found his courage, then lost it again when faced with Bashar Assad.

His answer to the financial crisis that threatens to bankrupt Europe is to raise taxes and spending in America.

He leaked national security information to the press (the double agent in Yemen, the Flame virus that has infected and disabled much of Iran’s information systems, the extent of the Predator strike program) in an attempt to raise his foreign policy prestige in an election year.

His answer to the bloodbath in Mexico was to allow Mexican drug traffickers to buy more American guns.

After his inauguration, he cancelled a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, presented him and his family with cheap gifts and removed a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office.  He also criticized British colonial policy in Kenya (his grandfather was arrested during the Mau Mau uprising in 1953) and endorsed negotiations over the Falkland Islands which the British consider sovereign territory and over which they fought Argentina in 1982.  He then invited British Prime Minister David Cameron to a State Dinner at the White House when it was politically expedient.

He took eight months to approve a troop surge in Afghanistan, “the war we have to win” in his parlance, then sent fewer than were requested, then announced that we would retreat.

At a time when China and Russia are pursuing aggressive policies, when a war between Israel and Iran seems imminent and when we are still faced with global Islamic terror, he cuts the Defense Department by $500 billion.

He promised to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay and signed an Executive Order to that effect, then reneged.

His foreign policy is marked not by the bumbling naiveté of Jimmy Carter but by the tense frustration of an Ivy League professor whose meticulous theories begin to fail when put into practice, then consistently fail, then fail utterly; like an aficionado of chess who has studied the game for decades, studied and memorized the strategies of the great masters of the past and is sure he can beat any player in the world, but when playing the game for real, finds himself trapped and stares at the board unblinkingly, frozen by the certainty of defeat.  All his supposed brilliance and eloquence, all his gifts for diplomacy and nuance, his magnetic personality, have slammed into reality and fallen lifeless to the ground, and we are left to wonder, “Is this the best you got?”  America, the world’s lone superpower and the undisputed leader of the Free World for seventy years, is itself leaderless, a papier mache figure set in the White House for display, inanimate, idle, obsolete.  But can we do better than a well-dressed mannequin?  Can we regain the respect of our allies and enemies alike?  Can we demonstrate the firm resolve and powerful action that is our hallmark?  Yes, of course we can, if we simply put our minds to it.  Barack Obama has failed: It is time for him to step aside and let a steadier hand take the wheel.

Equality of Results

A trend has developed in recent years to award every participant in junior sports a trophy or ribbon regardless of their actual performance, the logic being that children’s self-esteem is fragile and must be protected from the ignominy of failure.  If little Johnny reports for every practice and every game with his uniform clean and pressed yet consistently strikes out, muffs ground balls and falls asleep in the outfield, he nonetheless receives a small trophy at the end of the season (to no small delight of his parents) because it is Johnny’s intentions that matter, not his performance, and because the adults want to shield him from the stigma of losing.  This practice, however well-intentioned, nonetheless defies reality and beyond that, creates a sense of entitlement in the little tykes that they will carry forward into later life.  They will expect to be rewarded no matter what they do and to receive the benefits of success without the sacrifice required to succeed, and when they are eventually disabused of such an expectation, they will be angry, bitter and resentful.  They may even turn violent, not at the deception to which they were victim but at the person, agency or government that refuses to play along because the addict doesn’t resent the drug that is ruining his life but the police who stop him from obtaining it.

This scenario is playing out in Greece, in Wisconsin and in the Occupy movement worldwide with thousands of angry, bitter and resentful people who have been promised lavish government benefits rioting in the streets, raging against the notion that the money has run out.  The governments of France and Greece have recently been turned out by these people, punished for daring to control the entitlements they crave and replaced by old-fashioned socialists who love spending money they do not have on programs they cannot afford.  This is the sad consequence of the Left’s overarching goal, equality of results for every human being and it is of course completely avoidable.

If little Johnny only gave it some thought (and the adults who inculcate his expectations), failure and success are inescapable realities of life.  Johnny’s favorite player, however talented and famous he may be, still commits errors in the field, gets caught stealing, strikes out with men on base and will never hit safely in even half his turns at-bat.  Johnny’s favorite team does not win every championship or even every game and Johnny would scoff at the suggestion they should be rewarded for losing.  Generals who lose battles receive no medals and defeated armies are not treated to ticker-tape parades.  Human beings naturally admire and reward success in whatever enterprise interests them, yet liberalism finds such instinct snobbish and elitist, stewing indignantly at the idea that the benefits of success should be reserved for those who actually earn them, as if winning itself were abhorrent.  Plaudits and perks should be distributed equally, liberals demand, because winners aren’t better than losers.  Of course, they demonstrably are, but liberals seek to right what they see is an outrageous wrong throughout human society.  To them, everyone must have the same amount and quality of education (busing, the subsidization of poorer districts by wealthier ones, grade inflation), the same model of automobile (Chevy Volts for everyone!), cell phone, iPad, washing machine and the same type of home to put it all in, the same quality of health care and retirement fund and the same income level and if the elitist “winners” balk at sharing their wealth to make all this happen, then the liberals just take it from them.  This is the approach that Europe has taken and it has led them to the edge of economic disaster, and as Europe strains against bankruptcy on a continental scale, Priest-King watches from across the Atlantic and blithely insists that it cannot happen here, though he undertook the same approach (and achieved the same results). 

Life isn’t fair but it is also predictable.  If a person undertakes a huge risk and succeeds, then that person reaps huge rewards.  If a person abhors risk, then that person reaps much smaller rewards.  Priest-King’s constituents squatting in Wall Street and elsewhere want to invert that function and reap huge rewards while accepting no risk, for instance, demanding that banks simply forgive their student loans after their college education is complete, thereby attaining the same station as someone who paid as they went.  This is the essence of Priest-King’s philosophy, that others should be forced to pay for his dreams and should be punished for outdistancing him, as if he were cheated, an odd position for someone who enjoyed the benefits of an Ivy League education and preferential treatment, and it is ridiculous.  America is great because everyone has the opportunity to go as far as their ability will take them, and trying to replace equal opportunity with equal results is doomed to fail.

Malum In Se

Sunday, 06 May: Joe Biden announces his support for gay marriage on Meet the Press.

Monday, 07 May: Education Secretary Arne Duncan announces his support for gay marriage.  White House Press Secretary Jay Carney states that Priest-King's position is still "evolving."

Tuesday, 08 May: North Carolina voters strongly approve a state ban on gay marriage.  This is an embarrassment for Priest-King given the Democrat National Convention will be held in Charlotte this year, so the White House calls ABC News and asks Robin Roberts to fly down to DC to interview Priest-King on Wednesday morning.

Wednesday, 09 May: Priest-King announces his support for gay marriage on national TV.  Doing so energizes the gay lobby and helps keep the defeat in North Carolina out of the news, as does a 11-page report in The Washington Post about Mitt Romney's alleged hazing of a possibly gay classmate in 1965.  The objections to this report, raised by the family of the now-deceased classmate, are given scant notice.

Thursday, 10 May: Priest-King attends a $40,000-a-plate fundraiser at George Clooney's house in Los Angeles where his support for gay marriage goes over very well with the liberal Hollywood elite.  Priest-King raises $5.6 million but the White House announces that $15 million was raised because that would make it the largest amount ever raised at a single event, even though that figure includes receipts going back weeks or even months.  Priest-King's message is that support for gay marriage is extremely popular and the bully Mitt Romney is out of touch with mainstream America.

It's all about the money, folks.  For anyone who believes the White House or George Stephanopoulos or Karl Rove that this was all an unplanned reaction to Joe Biden's remarks on Meet the Press, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell them.  Priest-King is a politician for whom image is everything (the speech in Berlin and his acceptance speech in Denver) and who cannot function without a teleprompter (his candid answer to Joe the Plumber got him in serious trouble, as did his live-mic comment to Russian President Medvedev regarding "flexibility" on NATO missile defenses after the general election).  Although he had publicly supported gay marriage as early as 1996, he had backtracked from that position in 2004 for political expediency's sake when he ran for the U.S. Senate in Illinois.  Gay marriage is a hot-button topic and nowhere near widely-accepted - the defeat in North Carolina was the 32d the gay lobby has suffered nationwide - so Priest-King used the gaffe-prone Vice President as his surrogate hoping to tip the scales in his favor without having to commit publicly himself.  If North Carolina rejected the measure, Priest-King would get something for nothing; if North Carolina approved the measure as they did, Obama could roll his eyes and claim that Biden was just being Biden and then weigh in himself: Having lost in the Tarheel State, there would be no point in delaying a public announcement any further.  Ordering a hit piece on Romney and collecting $5.6 million/$15 million from his Hollywood friends then turns a stinging defeat into a win and preserves his self-image as a modern, sensitive leader not only in tune with popular opinion but leading it.

Money is the lifeblood of politics as it is with so many things and Barack Obama has to have it.  He cannot raise the millions he needs by emphasizing the economy because that's a loser, what with unemployment above 8% for his entire Administration, growth crawling along at 1.7%, gasoline at $4 per gallon, a stimulus plan that failed, a bank bailout that failed, a green energy plan that failed, $15 trillion in debt and an Affordable Care Act that will cost at least twice as much as advertised.  So Obama picks cultural fights with conservatives, blares about a Republican "war on women," mandates that religious institutions provide insurance coverage for contraception, demands discounted student loans for his college-age constituents, and announces his support for gay marriage so he can appear as the champion of liberal causes and rake in the dough.

Beyond the crass political maneuvering, though, this episode demonstrates once again Priest-King's obssession with fundamentally restructuring America into a true socialist state.  He has already ordered the Justice Department to forego enforcement of the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, a bald violation of his Constitutional responsibility to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," and now he goes even further by openly avowing his support for homosexual marriage.  Understanding that younger, more liberal voters approve of gay marriage (like the college students to which he has been pandering recently), he would eventually order the DOJ to challenge state bans directly, hoping that in a second term, he would have enough votes on the Supreme Court to overturn them permanently and have public opinion behind him.  That, plus Obamacare, amnesty for illegal immigrants, cap-in-trade legislation and compulsory union membership would rebuild the United States into the country of his dreams, a Balkanized polyglot of socialist collectives where mediocrity overrides talent and depravity is celebrated, not scorned.

Yet there are millions of Americans who reject Priest-King's vision, who reject homosexual marriage in particular and homosexuality in general, who deny that marriage can be defined to suit whichever left-wing radical inhabits the White House, and who exercise their denial through the ballot box.  These Americans embrace the traditional definition of marriage, the Biblical definition of marriage, the true definition of marriage as a legal, physical and spiritual union of one man and one woman for life and who ardently oppose efforts to expand the definition to include anyone else.  For one thing, once marriage is redefined to include homosexuals, what guarantee do we have that it will not be redefined again?  Polygamists will demand recognition, and pedophiles, and people who want to marry their pets, and the gays will not be able to scoff at such notions as being immoral and ridiculous because the line was already moved for them and then society collapses.  Conservatives have fought abortion and pornography and taxpayer-funded contraception and legalized marijuana and gay marriage for forty years because these vices rot society and rotting things die, regardless of how wonderful Ellen DeGeneres or George Clooney or Barack Obama declare them to be, and anyone who sneers at that prediction should simply look at where we are.  American society is coarse, vulgar and degenerate, nowhere near healthy, moral and thriving, and as the Romans lost their empire after 500 years because of weakness and depravity, Americans may wake up one day and discover they've lost their country to a stronger people.  Anybody who welcomes this fate for the greatest, freest and noblest country the world has ever seen is nuts, and if Barack Obama himself stands in favor of it, then we should all stand against him.

The Smartest People in the Room

One of the fundamental failures of liberalism is the way liberal policies conflict with each other and nowhere is that conflict more apparent than when discussing energy.  Liberals worship the Earth as a god, they love clean, renewable energy like wind and solar and pond scum (Priest-King's latest favorite) because they want to avoid offending their god and there's a certain internal logic there, but it all falls apart when you start connecting one position to another.  Any third-grader will tell you that trying to force like magnetic poles together is an exercise in futility, but try telling that to a liberal: They can overcome Nature, don't you know.

For example, liberals love clean, inoffensive energy but they also say they want a prosperous economy, at least in the way they define prosperous:  Wealth is distributed equally from top to bottom, nobody has any more than anyone else and employment is concentrated in manufacturing and building trades, fields historically dominated by the Democrat Party but which also require abundant, reliable and relatively inexpensive sources of energy which from the Industrial Revolution onward have been drawn from oil and coal, the two greatest demons in the tree hugger's philosophy.  So the liberal attacks oil and coal, forbids drilling offshore in the Gulf of Mexico and the Alaska ANHWR (Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and former EPA Administrator Carol Browner were condemned by Federal courts in June and July 2012 for publishing a report that purposely distorted the views of a White House-appointed panel that opposed the Administration's moratorium on offshore drilling), forbids fracking that would extract more oil from existing wells (EPA Region VI Administrator Al Armendariz, in a speech in 2010, asserted that his enforcement policy toward oil and natural gas companies was comparable to the Romans' practice of crucifixion), stops construction of the Keystone pipeline (forcing the Canadians to sell their oil the Chinese, boosting their economy and not ours), imposes draconian fuel mileage standards on the automakers to kill production of the trucks, minivans and SUV's that Americans prefer, issues drastic clean air regulations designed to close coal-fired power plants that provide 40% of our electricity, presses for cap-in-trade legislation that would kill the coal industry entirely, and imposes stiff sales taxes on gasoline to discourage consumption (U.S. oil consumption has fallen over 1.6 million barrels per day from 2004-2010 but still not enough to satisfy the socialist one-worlders).  As if that were not enough, the liberals provide billions of dollars in Federal loan guarantees to the solar power industry, fully aware the American public has largely rejected solar power and that individual businesses are on shaky financial ground, then stand aside as Solyndra, Solar Trust and other companies go bankrupt.  They mandate the total replacement of incandescent light bulbs that have been the norm for over 125 years in favor of fluorescent bulbs that are more expensive and are the very devil to dispose of (the EPA recommends evacuating a room in which a CFL bulb breaks, airing it for 5-10 minutes, shutting off the home's central air system to avoid circulating poisoned air and removing any debris outside).  Still not finished, the liberals pour billions into electric cars, hoping that the love that the white, affluent, environmentally-conscious elite have for their toys transfers to the general public, then scratch their heads when the Chevy Volt, Fisker Tesla and Nissan Leaf either fail to sell or are so prone to mechanical failure that production is halted.  (The Tesla apparently turns into a "brick" if the battery drains, such that it must be returned to the factory for a total overhaul.)  The net effect is an economy that struggles to grow, deprived of the energy it needs, and the strangling of the very industries that the liberals claim to champion, and this paradox never occurs to the liberals nor to the unions who traditionally throw their support behind them, proof that liberal energy policies can never succeed because they literally cancel each other out.

What about gasoline prices?  Liberals always complain that the rising price of gasoline unfairly affects the poor and middle class and that the oil companies are gouging the public, but they never offer to reduce or eliminate the heavy taxes they attach to the sale of gasoline, or reduce the heavy regulations that throttle the construction of new refineries, or remove restrictions on new drilling, or do anything that would increase supply, lower demand and therefore prices.  Priest-King blocked the Keystone Pipeline that would have increased trade with a friendly country and reduced our dependency on Middle East oil while he flatly stated that "we can't simply drill our way out of this problem, " when in fact we could if he would only get out of the way.  In ten years' time, we would have tapped enough of our own reserves (and Canada's) that we could indeed reduce gasoline prices, create new jobs, boost our economy, cut our foreign oil imports and bolster our national security, but these benefits are all secondary to the desire to revert to a horse-drawn, agrarian, pre-industrial economy that would be at one with Nature and which, of course, would be completely inadequate to sustain a nation of 310 million people.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/15/despite-stimulus-funding-solyndra-and-4-other-companies-have-hit-rock-bottom/
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/02/us-solartrust-bankruptcy-idUSBRE8310ZV20120402
Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/297070/epa-expands-its-mission-crucifixion-charles-c-w-cooke
Source: http://www.epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup.html

If You Ain't Cheatin' You Ain't Tryin'

Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent comments about the supposed nonexistence of voter fraud in the United States and his opposition to voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina are the latest proof that he is just another liberal hack and an embarrassment to his office, with apologies to Janet Reno. After refusing to prosecute the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation in Philadelphia during the 2008 election, after calling America "a nation of cowards" for supposed reluctance to discuss racial issues, after instituting a policy at Department of Justice that there would be no investigations against minorities for civil rights violations in the Obama Administration, after announcing that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and other Gitmo terrorists would be tried in New York City in civilian courts (and then renegeing after a groundswell of protest), and after overseeing Operation Fast and Furious, in which Mexican drug lords were allowed to purchase guns in the United States and take them to perpetrate murder, including the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, and lying to Congress about his knowledge thereof, Mr. Holder now stubbornly refuses to approve voter identification laws passed by the Texas and South Carolina legislatures because they would unfairly impact minorities, the poor and the elderly, at least in his distorted view. Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires that states in the Old South submit their election laws to the AG for review and approval in order to prevent Jim Crow-style voter suppression, Holder sees himself as a champion of the disadvantaged in this case, ensuring that every voter has the chance to cast their ballot.

…instead of ensuring that every legitimate voter has the chance to cast their ballot as these voter ID laws attempt to do. Free and fair elections lie at the heart of our democracy. The people have a right to expect that elections are conducted lawfully, that cheating, rigging and fraud are vigorously prosecuted, and that the results of every election are genuine. Since the presentation of photo ID is required throughout our society (I can’t check into a hotel without identifying myself) and since photo ID’s are free of charge to registered voters in the states in question, Mr. Holder has no reason for his obstinacy other than a desire to facilitate fraud such that the greatest number of liberal-leaning, pro-big government, entitlement program-consuming people reach the polls on Election Day, legal or not. And as for Holder’s comment that voter fraud in the U.S. is "nonexistent," a view echoed by The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, CNN and the George Soros-funded Brennan Center for Justice, that view is based on the deliberately misleading reference to the relatively low number of voter fraud convictions reported nationwide. It’s a vicious circle: Minus photo ID’s, voter fraud is easier to commit and harder to prove; the harder voter fraud is to prove, the fewer voter fraud convictions are obtained; the fewer voter fraud convictions are obtained, the greater the perception among liberals that voter fraud is "nonexistent." The fraud can continue, Democrats get elected and Republicans’ efforts to stop it are frustrated.

But voter fraud convictions are not the only indicator that voter fraud is actually occurring. Take for example last week’s incident during the Washington, DC city election in which an associate of James O’Keefe, the filmmaker who exposed ACORN’s voter fraud operations in 2008, approached a poll worker at Eric Holder’s own polling place and could’ve cast a ballot for the Attorney General without any identification (he didn’t). This incident has caused some embarrassment and anger on the Left, liberal commentators have simultaneously dismissed it as a harmless prank that proves nothing and attacked Mr. O’Keefe as a right-wing muckraker (“It’s no coincidence that these so-called examples of rampant voter fraud consistently turn out to be manufactured ones"), but the point is that committing voter fraud in the nation’s capital in the Attorney General’s name was ridiculously easy and nobody was arrested or charged, let alone convicted.

And what about ACORN? In 2009, the left-wing activist group was investigated for various forms of voter and election fraud in fifteen states during the 2008 general election that included the following:

- Nevada officials charged ACORN, its regional director and its Las Vegas field director with submitting thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms. Larry Lomax, the registrar of voters in Las Vegas, said he believes 48% of ACORN's forms "are clearly fraudulent."

- Prosecutors in Pittsburgh, Pa., also charged seven ACORN employees with filing hundreds of fraudulent voter registrations before the 2008 general election.

- Fred Voight, deputy election commissioner in Philadelphia, protested after ACORN (according to the registrar of voters and his own investigation) submitted at least 1,500 fraudulent registrations in 2008. "This has been going on for a number of years," he told CNN.

- Washington state prosecutors fined ACORN $25,000 after several employees were convicted of voter registration fraud in 2007. The group signed a consent decree with King County (Seattle), requiring it to beef up its oversight or face criminal prosecution.

In September 2009, Mr. O’Keefe and a female associate, posing as a pimp and a prostitute, videotaped employees at ACORN’s Brooklyn, New York, office helping them obtain public funding for a brothel to be staffed by underage girls who were also illegal immigrants. ACORN subsequently lost its Congressional funding – a fact that is by itself embarrassing – and was shut down, but apparently Mr. Holder doesn’t consider widespread and systematic voter fraud committed by one of Priest-King’s favorite groups (community organizer Obama started working with ACORN as early in 1992 and has sat on its Board of Directors) as actual fraud, a strange position for the nation’s top law enforcement officer to hold.

What if we go back further, to say, 2004? In 2008, the Milwaukee Police Department released a report of its 18-month investigation into voter fraud in the city in the 2004 general election and concluded that there had been an "illegal organized attempt to influence the outcome of an election in the state of Wisconsin." This organized attempt included the following examples:

- Twenty-nine voters were registered at a county office building that featured no residential living.

- Between 4600-5300 more ballots were cast than voters that could be accounted for.

- The ballots of 540 people who registered on-site and then voted (allowed under Wisconsin law) were not counted.

- Eighteen convicted felons were hired as elections inspectors, eight of whom had been hired by ACORN.

- Out-of-state people were allowed to vote (and their votes allowed to stand).

- One hundred twenty-eight voters used a homeless shelter as their address of record.

- Over 2600 students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who were registered to vote in Milwaukee, living at one residence hall, were also eligible to vote in another jurisdiction.

- Dead people voted, people voted multiple times and addresses used to register to vote did not exist.

Given that John Kerry won Wisconsin by a grand total of 11,000 votes out of 2.9 million cast, I think it would be reasonable to conclude that the full-court press put on in the City of Milwaukee put him over the top, hardly a "nonexistent" example of voter fraud.

Same-day registration on Election Day facilitates voter fraud and the lack of photo ID makes it worse. That Eric Holder embraces the former and opposes the latter is a stark indicator that he’ll do anything to help his boss win: After all, if you’re not willing to cheat, you must not want it bad enough.

Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/295431/why-we-need-voter-id-laws-now-john-fund
Source: http://blog.heritage.org/2008/09/15/voter-fraud-puts-ohio-election-at-risk/?query=Voter+Fraud+Puts+Ohio+Election+at+Risk
Source: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/doj-official-calls-okeefe-voter-id-stunt-manufactured

Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/285771/if-fraudulent-vote-falls-woods-christian-schneider
Source: http://media2.620wtmj.com/breakingnews/ElectionResults_2004_VoterFraudInvestigation_MPD-SIU-A2474926.pdf
Source: http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2010/04/voter-intimidation-black-panther-style?query=Voter+Intimidation+New+Black+Panther+Style