(209.97.50.225*) Headline: Vice President: This is what a real opportunity society looks like

An 8.6% unemployment rate, with a real unemployment rate of somewhere between 11% and 20%, depending on who you read, is what an “opportunity society” looks like? Government spending oodles of money on people who consider the administration of taxpayer money to decide what gravel to use when repaving a road? $15 trillion in debt? A huge deficit? Mortgaging our future to increase the purchasing power of Chinese peasants?

Mitt Romney recently laid out his plan for America. Reading about it, I thought of my dad. My dad was a hard worker. He took pride in what he did. And, like millions of Americans, that pride was put to the test when he found himself struggling to make ends meet.

Ah, so he’s attacking Mitt. Funny that Joe should talk about his own dad working hard, since Joe himself has barely worked a day in the private sector since graduating with his law degree. He’s pretty much always been in government since.

Today millions of Americans are meeting their responsibilities every day, yet falling behind. They are not looking for handouts or bailouts, but rather an economy in which their hard work is rewarded and the prospects for their children will be brighter than their own.

Did anyone else immediately think “Joe’s pushing a government backed economy”?

This is the basic compact that has made America great. These are the basic values that have helped make our workers the most productive, our entrepreneurs the most innovative and our economy the envy of the world. These are the principles on which our vision for the future must be built.

Said vision is to stifle all innovation and worker spirit by regulating everything, involving government in everything. Quick, name the last world changing breakthrough in medicine……..can’t eh? Yet, the American spirit used to bring about world changing medicines on a constant basis. That was before the federal government decided to be involved with everything. Remember, these children, looking for a brighter future, cannot even hold a school bake sale without Los Federales being involved. Kids are hassled for selling lemonade on the corner. The biggest products to be developed over the last 30 years started in people’s garages, such as Apple products. And now have to be built in China and imported.

Romney appears satisfied to settle for an economy in which fewer people succeed, while the majority of Americans are left to tread water or fall behind. His proposal would actually double down on the policies that caused the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression and accelerated a decades-long assault on the middle class.

What’s a little class warfare between political rivals? Anyhow, Joe goes on a bit more, droning on and on, mentioning that the same old policies that brought us to this economic mess that Team Obama made worse, you know, those policies passed by Democrats who controlled Congress a good chunk of the time over the last 100 years. And we get to

The president and I firmly believe, like my father, that every man and woman is entitled to basic dignity. And we believe deeply in opportunity — that if you work hard and play by the rules, no opportunity should be out of reach. That is a fundamentally different vision than what the other side has proposed.

That’s not the entrepreneurial spirit, that’s Big Daddy State Government. Because Joe believes that government should control health insurance and health care, owning the auto makers, regulating banks, credit cards, mortgages, pay day lenders, and having a federal consumer watchdog department. Nothing inherently wrong in having some basic regulations, but, he isn’t talking about just a few common sense ones, he’s talking about people sitting in Washington, D.C., many unelected, administering everything that happens in a country of 300 million plus people.

Quite simply, the president and I believe this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, and when everyone plays by the same rules. That is how we define opportunity. It’s an America where everyone has a fair chance to go as far as their talents and drive will take them, and where the middle class is growing, not shrinking.

A fair shot as defined by Government. That’s their vision. And it is what’s leading the US down the road to destruction. People cannot do things, because there is a regulation for everything. Want to be a barber? Get a government approved license, then apply for a government license to open a barber shop, which must be approved by other barbers who do not want the competition, and, if allowed, you then have to build the shop to government approved specifications with government approved instruments that conform to a wide variety of laws, including how your sign can look and what type of flooring is safe.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

President Obama and his various quislings and underlings still cannot bring themselves to say that the USA is under attack by radical Islamists. This is the self-destructive garbage that comes from the Obama administration every day. This is the kind of stuff that makes of us the “weak horse” that Islamists use to justify their attacks on the US.

We have two examples of this today, one from a representative of the Department of Homeland Security and one from Gaffemaster Joe Biden.

First up, our erstwhile VP. Ol’ Slow Joe Biden told Newsweek’s Leslie Gelb that the Taliban isn’t our enemy, either. You know, despite that we invaded Afghanistan to oust them from power, and all.

Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests.

Next we have assistant defense secretary for homeland defense Paul Stockton refusing to agree with Rep. Dan Lungren’s (R.-Calif.) characterization of al Qaeda as “radical Islamists.”

YouTube Caption:

Wednesday Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) opened a hearing to examine the emerging threat to the military from homegrown terrorists within the U.S. and named the armed services as the “most sought-after” target for radical Islamist extremist groups.

Rep. Dan Lungren (R.-Calif.) asked Paul Stockton, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, whether “we are at war with violent Islamist extremism.

The idiocy from the Obama administration is startling. They won’t even deign to identify the enemy and the enemy IS radical, terrorists driven by a fanatical devotion to Islam. But we can’t even get Obama and his comrades to identify our enemy, an enemy that has no problem announcing their own animus toward the USA.

Proving yet again why he was considered the joke of the Senate when he was a member of that august body, Vice President Joe “Slow Joe” Biden has once again shown that he is one of the most clueless men ever to serve in our second chair. And that really is saying something when we’ve had such gems as Al Gore and William Rufus D. King in that position!

On the morning show of a Tampa Bay, Florida radio station, Biden made an admission that he doesn’t even follow current events and hasn’t a clue what is going on in his own administration.

In a discussion about the Wall Street protests, as empty of purpose as they are, Biden said he didn’t know about “the Van Jones group,” and acted as if he didn’t know who Van Jones even is.

When reminded that Van Jones was the extremist, left-winger that Obama tried to put in place as his “green czar,” Slow Joe said, “Oh is that… alright…”

But, wait, you might say. Perhaps Slow Joe really doesn’t know who Van Jones is? Maybe they never met?

Sorry, that dog don’t hunt. Slow Joe and Van Jones were sent to Denver, Colorado together in 2009 to tout Obama’s public housing program.

Joe Biden is a stupid man. There are very few politicians I’ll say that of but Joe is one of them. For years this fool has made a dunce of himself and this is yet one more example of that.

The Obama White House tried to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion-dollar loan to the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra so Vice President Biden could announce the approval at a September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s factory, newly obtained e-mails show.

The Silicon Valley company, a centerpiece in President Obama’s initiative to develop clean energy technologies, had been tentatively approved for the loan by the Energy Department but was awaiting a final financial review by the Office of Management and Budget.

The August 2009 e-mails, released to The Washington Post, show White House officials repeatedly asking OMB reviewers when they would be able to decide on the federal loan and noting a looming press event at which they planned to announce the deal. In response, OMB officials expressed concern that they were being rushed to approve the company’s project without adequate time to assess the risk to taxpayers, according to information provided by Republican congressional investigators.

Solyndra collapsed two weeks ago, leaving taxpayers liable for the $535 million loan.

Ye Olde White House states that they were just interested in when the decision would be made, but wasn’t trying to pressure the OMB.

The e-mail exchanges could intensify questions about whether the administration was playing favorites and made costly errors while choosing the first recipient of a loan guarantee under its stimulus program. Solyndra’s biggest investors were funds operated on behalf of the family foundation of Tulsa billionaire and Obama fundraiser George Kaiser. Although he has been a frequent White House visitor, Kaiser has said he did not use political influence to win approval of the loan.

The White House has previously said that it had no involvement in the Solyndra loan application and that all decisions were made by career officials based on the merits of the company.

Of course they were playing favorites, this is politics, after all. But, playing favorites with $535 million in taxpayer money when they knew Solyndra was a disaster waiting to happen is quite different from push small projects towards donors.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), chairman of that panel’s oversight and investigations subcommittee, said last week that the FBI raid confirmed their belief that the “darling” of Obama’s green-jobs program was a “bad bet” from the beginning.

“Solyndra was the hallmark of the President’s green jobs program and widely promoted by the administration as a stimulus success story, right up until its bankruptcy and FBI raid,” Upton and Stearns said in a statement on Tuesday. “Let’s learn the lessons of Solyndra before another dollar goes out the door.”

The downside to this is that we can use more alternative energy sources and research, as there is nothing wrong with looking for other sources of energy, but, what happened with Solyndra will harm the companies who are doing good work, and have potential, in the alternative energy sector. These companies will have a tough time finding private investors, who will be wary of dumping their money into these ventures.

Barack Obama is nothing less than a hypocrite on his admonitions over public discourse and the latest example of this truth lies in his refusal to condemn the violence-tinged language of Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa, not to mention his similar silence on the obscene rhetoric of many of the leading members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

While Obama has tsk tsked folks on the right like Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin and told the nation that we need to start “talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds,” he has turned a blind eye to his own vice president calling political opponents “terrorists,” members of Congress saying that Republicans and Tea Partiers can “go straight to hell,” and just this week walked on stage grinning like a Cheshire Cat immediately after Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa told a Detroit crowd that they intended to “take those sons a bitches out.”

Obama loves to sound as if he’s somehow above old fashioned, boilerplate rhetoric or the mudslinging that is associated with down-and-dirty politics. He not only claims to avoid such rhetoric himself but acts the national scold and wags fingers at others that do indulge such tactics. Well, he does if it happens to be his political opponents indulging that sort of rhetoric, that is. When his side does it, the scold in chief is suddenly silent.

Let us recall the soothing, soaring rhetoric Obama employed after the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords earlier this year. Remember that immediately after the shooting the left-wing Old Media began the drumbeat that it was the “violent rhetoric” of the right that somehow caused that apolitical shooter to take after Giffords — even thought the Tea Party hadn’t come into existence when the shooter first showed his obsession with the congresswoman. Obama scolded America for talking in a way “that wounds.”

“At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized–at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do–it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”

Previous to that, Obama pleaded for “civility” in a press conference in November of 2010 saying,

I do believe there is hope for civility. I do believe there’s hope for progress. And that’s because I believe in the resiliency of a nation that’s bounced back from much worse than what we’re going through right now — a nation that’s overcome war and depression, that has been made more perfect in our struggle for individual rights and individual freedoms.

Wonderful sentiment isn’t it? Of course, all this from a guy that said that if the Republicans “bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” This from a guy that said that his supporters should get in the faces of those that disagree with him.

We might also remember in the 2008 contest when Cincinnati radio talker Bill Cunningham opened a John McCain rally by using all three of Obama’s names, an action the left claimed was somehow “racist.” McCain foolishly ran out and repudiated the talk radio host’s use of “Barack Hussein Obama,” and Obama’s campaign praised McCain’s actions as an “attempt to keep it respectful and focused on issues.”

In 2008 Obama was all about being “respectful,” apparently.

But in just the last week alone we’ve seen one calumny after another heaped on Obama’s political opponents by his own vice president and other Obama surrogates. Name calling, hateful rants, allusions to “war” and killing Republicans have been common from Obama and his supporters. And the Old Media has been practically silent on the vaunted “new tone.”

Additionally, what do we get from the national scold? A wave of the hand and a warning that we should not be so worried about Washington’s “Kabuki Theater.” Obama Press Secretary Jay Carney dismissed the disrespectful, violent rhetoric we’ve seen coming from Obama’s supporters saying that, heck, we can’t hold Obama to what others say… right?

But this doesn’t square with Obama’s constant refrain that we need “civility” in our political discourse. For the last four years Obama and his handmaidens in the Old Media have attacked everyone on the right that could be seen in any way as uttering something that might be construed as harsh political rhetoric.

While Obama pretends that he’s interested in “respectful” political discourse we’ve seen a parade of Democrats indulging every manner of disrespectful political speech against Tea Partiers and Republicans. Just in the last few weeks we’ve the following:

• Vice President Biden saying that Republicans and Tea Partiers are “barbarians.”
• Teamsters President Hoffa Says Republicans are “sons a bitches” that should be “taken out.”
• Democrat Andre Carson Says Tea Partiers and Republicans want to start “lynching African Americans.”
• Democrat Maxine Waters says Tea Partiers can “go straight to hell.”
• Vice President Biden calls conservatives “terrorists.”

As I said, this is only a few recent examples. There have been many, many more, all upon which Obama has remained silent. But while Obama may be silent, his hypocrisy and that of his left-wing, Democrat cohorts is deafening.

We are faced with a difficult dilemma concerning Vice President Joe Biden’s outrageous comments about China’s one-child policy delivered in China this week.

On one hand we must either believe Joe Biden is a compete idiot, or on the other understand that he is OK with the fact that Chinese officials forced women to late term abortions and in many cases actually murdered already born babies to satisfy the one child per couple rule that the communist oppressors put into place years ago to curb the country’s population size.

Neither prospect is very auspicious for Biden or Obama.

While visiting Chinese students in southwest China, Biden raised the one-child issue

But as I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China. You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand – I’m not second-guessing – of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.

For decades China’s violent and controversial one-child policy has been the root of the murders of many millions of Chinese babies, many of them actually born alive. For Vice resident Biden to strain to tell his communist audience that he wasn’t “second guessing” this murderous policy is appalling.

This policy is responsible for the outright murder of many babies born alive in China. After authorities found that women gave birth in violation of the policy, these babies were killed in front of distraught parents. But this policy is also responsible for millions of selective-sex abortions where Chinese culturally favor boys instead of girls and aborted babies thought to be female. Chinese authorities also engaged in a whole raft of human rights violations such as forced abortions and forced sterilizations.

So, what is Biden saying here? Are we to assume he is too stupid to know of the murderous history of China’s one-child policy? And if we assume he must know this history, then we are forced to understand that he has no problem at all with these human rights violations.

In fact, this whole thing argues against the whole claim that Democrats are “pro-choice.” Yes, they often choose abortion, like the Chinese are, but the “choice” could also include keeping the baby. You see, there is a choice here. But by agreeing with China’s one-child policy, he’s agreed with taking away the “choice” in the matter because Chinese women have no choice! It is an authoritarian policy thrust upon them regardless of their needs and desires. Biden appears totally OK with that.

Of course, back here at home, his office tried to skitter out from under this major gaffe — a full time job for his office, to say the least. Biden’s office issued this statement:

The Obama Administration strongly opposes all aspects of China’s coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization. The Vice President believes such practices are repugnant. He also pointed out, in China, that the policy is, as a practical matter, unsustainable. He was arguing against the One Child Policy to a Chinese audience.

Unfortunately for Obama and Biden’s office, this does not square at all with what he actually said. Biden said he wasn’t judging the policy and only thought it was bad for economic reasons.

GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney wasted no time condemning Biden’s foolish comments.

China’s one-child policy is gruesome and barbaric. Instead of condoning the policy, Vice President Biden should have condemned it in the strongest possible terms. There can be no defense of a government that engages in compulsory sterilization and forced abortions in the name of population control.

Another GOP hopeful, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, also condemned Biden’s comments.

China’s one child policy has led to the great human tragedy of forced abortions throughout China, and Vice President Biden’s refusal to ’second-guess’ this horrendous policy demonstrates great moral indifference on the part of the Obama Administration. Americans value life, and we deserve leaders who will stand up against such inhumanity, not cast a blind eye.

GOP House Speaker John Boehner chimed in, as well.

I’m deeply troubled by the comments reportedly made by the Vice President yesterday regarding China’s reprehensible one-child policy, which has resulted in forced sterilizations and coerced abortions and should not be condoned by any American official. No government on Earth has the authority to place quotas on the value of innocent human life, or to treat life as an economic commodity that can be regulated and taken away on a whim by the state.

Romney and Boehner had it exactly right. China’s one-child policy is a barbaric, disgusting, condemnable policy that no freedom-loving American should condone in any way whatever.

That’s right, folks, if you thought Porkulus one was a laugh a minute, get ready for “Porkulus II: The Next Fail,” a new flick coming soon from Obama/Alinsky/Marx productions.

If you thought the last Porkulus was a failure wait till you see the next one.

Click image to see larger version

Yes, all your favorites are back. There’s Slow Joe Biden grinning like the useless jackal he is, Harry “This War is Lost” Reid, Timmy “Tax Cheat” Geithner, Hilary Clinton, Reverend Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright, Jeffery “What Jobs?” Immelt, Austan “Sell Out” Goolsbee, Ben “Fed Head” Bernanke, and a host of other halfwits and clowns all meant to tickle your funny bone and rob you blind.

Remember the days when you had to actually pay to see a movie? Well, not this time! THIS movie is FREE we are told. Why, just show up and we’ll let you in gratis. But if you don’t want to see the movie, well at a later date there is a fine, some jail time, and the kind of harassment that even Muamar Gaddhafi would be ashamed of employing.

This is a production of Obama/Alinsky/Marx Productions and Wastrel Belief, Inc. Present Barack Hussein Obama’s PORKULUS II: THE NEXT FAIL executive producers the Democrat Party. Written by Karl Marx and John Maynard Kenyes. Produced by Barack Hussein Obama and the Democrat Party. Available in paperback by Saul Alinsky. A 20th Century Marx film. This movie is rated “F” for abject Failure.

In the nearly two-hour-long White House meeting Monday afternoon during which leaders reviewed savings found last month by a group led by Vice President Joseph Biden, McConnell asked only one question, according to a Republican source familiar with the talks.

“How much does the Biden plan actually cut from next year’s discretionary spending budget?” the Kentucky Republican asked the room.

Obama’s Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew told him, “$2 billion.”

A second source close to the original Biden group confirmed this number.

McConnell grew frustrated in the closed-door meeting, complaining that such a sum was too small, given the scale of the savings Members on both sides of the aisle were hoping for. McConnell’s displeasure spilled over to the Senate floor Tuesday morning, when he attacked Obama for presenting Republicans with “gimmicks” instead of solutions.

Don’t get all confused as Ace originally was: that is “billion”, not “trillion”. This highlights just how serious the Obama administration is about reducing federal expenditures. Perhaps all the squishy Republicans who say “hey, maybe we should give in a bit on tax increases (for that other group), because Barry said we’d get $3 in reductions for every $1 revenue increase” should think hard about $2 billion, and realize that if they give in on any tax increases now for reductions later, we’ll never get those reductions.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

As the clock ticks on raising the nation’s debt ceiling to avoid a catastrophic default, Vice President Biden met with Republican negotiators on Thursday in another closed-door meeting that only showed how far apart both sides remained.

In the 2 1/2-hour meeting, the sixth one between the administration and a handful of top lawmakers, Biden and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner made a pitch for more revenue, but Republicans resolutely oppose anything that could be called a tax hike.

With the talks moving slowly, negotiators agreed to pick up the pace, scheduling three meetings for next week. Taxes remain the biggest sticking point.

“Any balanced packaged has to end big loopholes, like subsidies for the oil and gas industry,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who’s one of two House Democrats participating in the talks. But asked whether Republicans are showing any willingness to consider tax increases, Van Hollen said, “I can’t say that would be true, no.”

Last month, Biden told reporters: “I’ve made it clear … revenues have to be in the deal.”

The White House push for revenues is noteworthy because Democrats will have to provide votes to get the final measure passed, since many Tea Party-backed House Republicans are likely to oppose any measure to increase the debt limit. The vote is already so unpalatable for Republicans that it’s difficult to imagine GOP negotiators going along with new taxes and risk the wrath of the Tea Party and anti-tax activists, like Grover Norquist — even Democrats offer up larger spending cuts.

So, raising revenues, er, expenditures in the tax code, sorry, increased taxation is the only thing on Democrats’ tiny minds. They just can’t envision reducing the federal government’s spending. And, of course, they want to go after the tax breaks that oil companies receive, which would simply be passed on to consumers, who Dems can then demonize, and call for more “green” energy subsidies. No matter that increasing gas prices would destroy the fragile economy, which Democrats own. That’s not their concern.

If they want to remove the tax breaks for oil companies (which would mostly affect American companies, not ones like British Petroleum and Citgo), let’s remove the direct subisidies and tax breaks from the other energy sectors. Let’s remove all loopholes, which benefit rich people like Van Hollen, Obama, Geithner (though, we will give him a small grant every year so that someone can work Turbo Tax for him) and Democrat donors. Heck, let’s go all the way, and enact the Fair Tax!

Democrats truly live in some sort of economic fantasy world.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach

The débacle of Washington’s handling of the Libya issue is symbolic of a wider problem at the heart of the Obama administration’s foreign policy. The fact that it took ten days and at least a thousand dead on the streets of Libya’s cities before President Obama finally mustered the courage to call for Muammar “mad dog” Gaddafi to step down is highly embarrassing for the world’s only superpower, and emblematic of a deer-in-the-headlights approach to world leadership. Washington seems incapable of decisive decision-making on foreign policy at the moment, a far cry from the days when it swept entire regimes from power, and defeated America’s enemies with deep-seated conviction and an unshakeable drive for victory.

Just a few years ago the United States was genuinely feared on the world stage, and dictatorial regimes, strategic adversaries and state sponsors of terror trod carefully in the face of the world’s most powerful nation. Now Washington appears weak, rudderless and frequently confused in its approach. From Tehran to Tripoli, the Obama administration has been pathetically slow to lead, and afraid to condemn acts of state-sponsored repression and violence. When protesters took to the streets to demonstrate against the Islamist dictatorship in Iran in 2009, the brutal repression that greeted them was hardly a blip on Barack Obama’s teleprompter screen, barely meriting a response from a largely silent presidency.

Isn’t this why Obama picked Joe Biden to be his vice president, because of all the vast foreign policy experience? How’s that working out? So far, Obama generally seems to spend as much time as possible demeaning our allies and working to alienate them, while either ignoring our enemies or looking for dialogue with them.

It has also become abundantly clear that the Obama team attaches little importance to human rights issues, and in contrast to the previous administration has not pursued a freedom agenda in the Middle East and elsewhere. It places far greater value upon engagement with hostile regimes, even if they are carrying out gross human rights abuses, in the mistaken belief that appeasement enhances security. This has been the case with Iran, Russia and North Korea for example. This administration has also been all too willing to sacrifice US leadership in deference to supranational institutions such as the United Nations, whose track record in standing up to dictatorships has been virtually non-existent.

That’s simply the way Obama rolls. And it highlights exactly why Joe Biden stated that being President does not lend itself to on the job training. A few years as a Senator, some time spent in the Illinois legislature, and a few years as a community organizer did not prepare him for actually being the person in charge of the most powerful nation on Earth. Now, is any president actually ready for the burden placed upon him? Of course not, but, some are more prepared than others, and have a staff that understands what to do, which is why Qaddafi’s Libya is in a much weaker position to use WMD

Senior administration officials and Pentagon planners, as they discuss sanctions and a possible no-fly zone to neutralize the Libyan air force, say that the 2003 deal removed Colonel Qaddafi’s biggest trump card: the threat of using a nuclear weapon, or even just selling nuclear material or technology, if he believed it was the only way to save his 42-year rule. While Colonel Qaddafi retains a stockpile of mustard gas, it is not clear he has any effective way to deploy it.

While it is unclear whether he might have ultimately succeeded in building nuclear weapons, as part of the deal (Qaddafi) gave up thousands of shells filled with chemical weapons.

The NY Times does everything it can to avoid giving any kudos and praise to Bush, but, this highlights the difference between Obama and Bush: one made the United States feared by most enemies, the other makes those same enemies bold, while pissing off our allies.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.