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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Farmboy who wrote (57578)	10/28/2012 12:06:37 PM
From: greatplains_guy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Hansen is spot on more often than I'd care to say.

To: Farmboy who wrote (57578)	10/28/2012 12:08:11 PM
From: greatplains_guy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

The Incredible Shrinking Obama By THE SCRAPBOOK Nov 5, 2012, Vol. 18, No. 08 With our embassies around the world besieged, and some 47 million Americans on food stamps, the pettiness of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has been something to behold. The leader of the free world has spent the last few weeks before Election Day talking about Big Bird and “binders full of women.” His latest gambit—accusing his challenger of having “stage three Romnesia”—manages the adolescent twofer of simultaneously mocking his opponent’s name and making light of cancer. We were convinced the Obama campaign had hit bottom, but if the president has one thing going for him it’s his ability to surprise. And so last week the Obama campaign unveiled a new campaign ad featuring Lena Dunham—the young actor, writer, and director behind HBO’s critically lauded TV series Girls. Dunham’s argument for voting for Obama is, uh, curious: “Your first time shouldn’t be with just anybody. You want to do it with a great guy. It should be with a guy with beautiful—someone who really cares about and understands women.” The comparison of surrendering one’s virginity to voting for Barack Obama is obviously beyond tasteless, and the reaction to the video has mostly been derision and mockery. (For what it’s worth, as The Scrapbook writes, the video has 5,396 likes and 7,242 dislikes on YouTube.) It also does no credit to the Obama campaign that parallels were quickly discovered between the Dunham spot and an election ad for Vladimir Putin, whose attitudes towards gender equality are not usually held up as a model by American feminists. Interestingly, The Weekly Standard’s movie critic John Podhoretz recently praised Dunham and her show in these pages for “bitter honesty” in portraying the misadventures of four young women in Manhattan, in contrast to the “profoundly false we-are-women-hear-us-roar gender-solidarity fantasy that was Sex and the City.” However, the Washington Examiner’s Joel Gehrke notes that Dunham’s ad turns all that on its head: As Dunham puts it, “It’s super uncool to be out and about and someone says ‘did you vote?’ and [you reply] ‘no, I didn’t feel—I wasn’t ready.’?” If a girl’s not ready, she’s not ready. The president, who has two daughters, surely understands that and probably wouldn’t have released this ad if he weren’t having a hard time while asking voters for four more years in the White House. Considering that Democrats have spent the last few months making the vile argument that Republicans who don’t support abortion on demand are encouraging rape, the president of the United States running a campaign ad implying that young women who don’t let themselves get pressured into sex are “super uncool” is more than enough to make any normal person’s head explode. In any event, we have a shiny new penny for the first reporter that asks the president whether he thinks young women who don’t have sex are “super uncool.” (Or better yet, maybe someone should ask Mrs. Obama what she thinks of all this.) Dunham’s ad lasts only a minute, but it says volumes about the cynicism of Obama and the Democratic party when it comes to women. It doesn’t matter to them that millions of young women can’t find jobs and may be struggling to feed their children. They do not feel compelled to appeal to women by addressing any issue that doesn’t directly pertain to their sexuality. They’ll say anything to get them to hop into the voting booth with Barack Obama, and it’s a safe bet they won’t care if these women end up regretting it the morning after. weeklystandard.com

To: Farmboy who wrote (57578)	11/25/2012 8:11:01 AM
From: greatplains_guy	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Let Obama Be Obama The defeated Republicans should meet the president halfway. By Victor Davis Hanson November 22, 2012 12:00 A.M. After his party’s devastating setback in the 2010 midterm elections, Barack Obama was reelected earlier this month by painting his Republican opponents as heartless in favoring lower taxes for the rich. They were portrayed as nativists for opposing the DREAM Act amnesty for illegal immigrants, and as callous in battling the federal takeover of health care. Republicans countered with arguments that higher taxes on the employer class hurt the economy in general. They assumed most voters knew that amnesties are euphemisms for undermining federal law and in the past have had the effect of promoting more illegal immigration. They tried to point out that there is no such thing as free universal health care, since Obamacare will only shift responsibility from health-care practitioners and patients to inefficient government bureaucracies and hide the true costs with higher taxes. And they utterly failed to convince the American people of any of that. Why doesn’t the Republican-controlled House of Representatives give both voters and President Obama what they wished for? The current battle over the budget hinges on whether to return to the Clinton-era income-tax rates, at least for those who make more than $250,000 a year. Allowing federal income rates to climb to near 40 percent on that cohort would bring in only about $80 billion in revenue a year — a drop in the bucket when set against the $1.3 trillion annual deficit that grew almost entirely from out-of-control spending since 2009. Instead, why not agree to hike federal-income-tax rates only on the true “millionaires and billionaires,” “fat cats,” and “corporate jet owners” whom Obama has so constantly demonized? In other words, skip over the tire-store owner or dentist, and tax those, for example, who make $1 million or more in annual income. Eight out of the ten wealthiest counties in the United States voted for Obama. Corporate lawyers and the affluent in Hollywood and on Wall Street should all not mind “paying their fair share.” Upping federal tax rates to well over 40 percent on incomes of more than $1 million a year would also offer a compromise: shielding most of the small businesspeople Republicans wish to protect while allowing Obama to tax the 1-percenters whom he believes have so far escaped paying what they owe, and then putting responsibility on the president to keep his part of the bargain in making needed cuts in spending. Likewise, instead of hiking death taxes on small businesspeople, why not close loopholes for billion-dollar estates by taxing their gargantuan bequests to pet foundations that avoid estate taxes? Why should a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates act as if he built his own business and can solely determine how his fat-cat fortune is spent for the next century — meanwhile robbing the government of billions of dollars in lost estate taxes along with any federal say in how such fortunes are put to public use? The president flipped in an election year on the DREAM Act. Suddenly, in 2012, Obama decided that he indeed did have the executive power to order amnesty without congressional approval for those who came illegally as children, stayed in school or joined the military, avoided arrest and thus deserved citizenship. In response, Republicans supposedly lost Latino support by insisting that federal immigration law be enforced across the board, regardless of race, class, gender, or national origin. But why not make the president’s DREAM Act part of the envisioned grand bargain on immigration? Once it is agreed upon that we have the ability to distinguish those foreign nationals deserving of amnesty, then surely we also have the ability to determine who does not meet those agreed-upon criteria. Why, then, cannot conservatives allow a pathway to citizenship for the play-by-the-rules millions who qualify, while regrettably enforcing an un-DREAM Act for others who just recently arrived illegally; enrolled in, and have remained on, public assistance; or have been convicted of a crime? Who could object to that fair compromise? Finally, Obamacare will be imposed on all Americans by 2014. But so far the Obama administration has granted more than 1,200 exemptions to favored corporations and unions, covering about 4 million Americans. Shouldn’t Republicans seek to end all exemptions rather than tackle the improbable task of overturning Obamacare itself? Their motto should be: “Equality for all; special treatment for no one!” One of the brilliant themes of the 2012 Obama campaign was forcing Republicans, on principle, to systematically oppose most of the things that the administration wanted them to oppose — thereby shielding itself from the unwelcome consequences of its own ideology while winning political points. Now, in defeat, Republicans should agree to let the chips lie where they fall: Tax only the truly rich; reward only the truly deserving illegal immigrants; and exempt no one from Obamacare. Nothing could be fairer or more equal than that. — Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The End of Sparta. You can reach him by e-mailing author@victorhanson.com. nationalreview.com