Figures. Barack Obama Pushed ‘Redistribution’ at Historic Socialists Meeting in 1996

 From Gateway Pundit

 Posted by Jim Hoft on Saturday, May 26, 2012, 10:49 AM

Can we call him a socialist now???
Barack Obama headlined a Democrat Socialists of America town hall meeting in Chicago in 1996. Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is a democratic socialist and social-democratic organization in the United States formed in 1982 by leftist groups and former members of socialist and communist parties of the Old Left.
Buzzfeed reported:

Barack Obama pushed wealth redistribution in his speech at the socialist’s meeting.
Trevor Loudon dug up this Chicago DSA report on the socialist town hall event.

”Barack Obama observed that Martin Luther King’s March on Washington in the 1960s wasn’t simply about civil rights but “demanded jobs as well”.
One of the themes that has emerged in Barack Obama’s campaign is “what does it take to create productive communities”, not just consumptive communities. It is an issue that joins some of the best instincts of the conservatives with the better instincts of the left.”‘
‘Obama felt the state government has three constructive roles to play.’
‘The first is “human capital development”. By this he meant public education, welfare reform, and a “workforce preparation strategy”. Public education requires equality in funding. It’s not that “money is the only solution to public education’s problems but it’s a start toward a solution… A true welfare system would provide for medical care, child care and job training. While Barack Obama did not use this term, it sounded very much like the “social wage” approach used by many social democratic labor parties.
‘The state government “can also play a role in redistribution, the allocation of wages and jobs. As Barack Obama noted, when someone gets paid $10 million to eliminate 4,000 jobs, the voters in his district know this is an issue of power not economics. The government can use as tools labor law reform, public works and contracts.””

President Obama wants it both ways on private equity

From The Washington Post

By Editorial Board, Published: May 22

PRESIDENT OBAMA isn’t backing down from his campaign ad attacking Mitt Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital. Actually, “attack” may be too weak a description for a video that likens Bain to “a vampire” and depicts Mr. Romney as a plutocrat who callously destroyed hundreds of steel jobs for his own enrichment. Several prominent members of Mr. Obama’s own party thought the commercial was a bit over the top. (Not to mention highly derivative of previous ones financed by backers of Mr. Romney’s Republican primary rivals.)

Still, politics ain’t beanbag, and, if he’s going to tout it as a qualification for the White House, Mr. Romney’s business record is indeed fair game. The more pertinent question is what to make of Mr. Obama’s defense of the ad, which he offered at a news conference Monday.

 Mr. Obama suggested that he never meant to condemn the private equity business as a whole. “I think there are folks who do good work in that area and there are times where they identify the capacity for the economy to create new jobs or new industries,” he noted. Instead, he added, he meant simply to point out that a career in private equity is not appropriate preparation for the White House. There’s a big difference between what it takes to “maximize profits,” a perfectly legitimate goal in the business world, and what it takes to “figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot,” which is the job of a president, he said.

On one level, it’s reassuring to learn that the president has a nuanced view of private equity, a business that has been rightly praised for revitalizing many a struggling enterprise — and rightly criticized for loading up many rescued firms with debt to pay off investors. Of course, those investors include public employee unions’ pension funds, which had entrusted $220 billion to private equity as of fall 2011, according to Wilshire Trust Universe Comparison Service.

The president accepted $3.5 million in campaign donations from private equity executives in 2008, and additional dollars this time around, so it would have been awkward for him not to concede that private equity does “good work.” As for the ad’s depiction of job destruction, economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research found that firms restructured by private equity suffered net job losses over five years only 1 percent greater than other comparable companies.

Yet the minute Mr. Obama conceded those complications — admitted, in effect, that the private equity business, like most endeavors, involves tradeoffs, and that its benefits might be shared among more than a handful of fat cats — he undercut his distinction between “maximizing profit” and the common good. He also undercut his case against Mr. Romney, since Bain had its share of success stories on the former Massachusetts governor’s watch.

What we’re left with is a president who seems content to present an even-handed view of private equity at his news conferences while propounding a much more tendentious one in his campaign advertising. Pointing out that a business career hasn’t fully prepared Mr. Romney to be president, in other words, is a long way from suggesting that he’s a vampire.

Iranian military commander: Yeah, we’re totally going to annhilate Israel

From HotAir

Just in case anyone doubts the intentions of the Iranian mullahcracy if they start producing nuclear weapons, the top-ranking military officer in the regime made it clear yesterday:

Iran is dedicated to annihilating Israel, the Islamic regime’s military chief of staff declared Sunday.
“The Iranian nation is standing for its cause and that is the full annihilation of Israel,” Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi said in a speech to a defense gathering Sunday in Tehran.
His remarks came on the day International Atomic Energy Agency director Yukiya Amano flew to Tehran to negotiate for inspections of Iran’s nuclear program. They were reported by the Fars News Agency, the media outlet of the Revolutionary Guards Corps.
While many within the Islamic regime, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have often stated that Israel should be annihilated, until Sunday no one in the nation’s leadership has announced Iran’s determined intention to carry it out.

Historically speaking, Western nations have made two categories of error when dealing with rogue despotic regimes.  First, they have indulged in an odd transference in which they blame themselves for hostilities created by tyrants demanding acquiescence to territorial and/or political demands.  This usually takes the form of insisting that improved diplomacy will make tyrants more reasonable.  History shows what happens when appeasement is used to jolly tyrants into concessions; the only concessions made come from the Western democracies.
The second error?  Not taking tyrants at their word when they make nihilistic threats.  Usually, those threats come to pass, and in this case, Israel has good reason to have “mixed feelings” over optimism about talks between the West and a country threatening to wipe Israel off the map:

On the one hand, Israeli officials acknowledged that without Israel’s efforts and primarily Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s saber rattling, the world would not have imposed the sanctions it has and would not be taking the issue as seriously as it is.
On the other hand, the Israelis are at the same time concerned that under a deal that does not lead to a complete cessation of the enrichment of uranium, Iran will be able to continue to develop a nuclear weapon, albeit a bit slower than it is today.

Israel wants a complete cessation of all enrichment beyond the 3.5% level, which would allow for medical research and therapy and some power generation.  The West worries about an Israeli strike, which is the reason why they are pressuring Iran to get down to 20% and transfer all uranium enriched above that amount.  The Iranians, however, have played this game for almost a decade, which is another reason for Israel to have “mixed feelings.”  Tehran has toyed with the West since the exposure of their secret nuclear program in 2003, using talks like the Baghdad conference to stall for time.  By doing so, they have inched ever closer to the status of North Korea as a nuclear-armed nation, with one particular goal in mind.
Hassan Firouzabadi didn’t really say anything new this weekend.   He did, however, give evidence that the West would do well to take seriously, which tells the real story of Iranian intentions both apart from and integrated into its pursuit of highly-enriched uranium.  The only real solution in this case is to help the Iranian people rid themselves of their mullahcracy and the radicals in charge of their military.

Boston Globe buries correction of Elizabeth Warren 1/32 Cherokee claim

From Legal Insurrection

Posted by William A. Jacobson    Tuesday, May 15, 2012 at 9:55am

On April 30, 2012, The Boston Globe broke the story that Chris Child of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) had located information about a marriage license showing that Elizabeth’s great-great-great grandmother was Cherokee, Document ties Warren kin to Cherokees:

A record unearthed Monday shows that US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has a great-great-great grandmother listed in an 1894 document as a Cherokee, said a genealogist at the New England Historic and Genealogy Society.
The shred of evidence could validate her assertion that she has Native American ancestry, making her 1/32 American Indian, but may not put an end to the questions swirling around the subject….
Chris Child, a genealogist at the New England Historic and Genealogy Society, said he began digging into Warren’s family history on Thursday, when media interest emerged.
At first, he found no link between Warren’s family and Native Americans in her native Oklahoma.
But Monday afternoon, he said, he discovered a few links. Warren’s great-great-great grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith, is listed on her son’s 1894 application for a marriage license as a Cherokee.
Child also found that Warren’s great-grandfather, John Houston Crawford, had lived in Native American territory, but identified himself as white in a 1900 census.
Child cautioned that the search for ancestry often takes a long time and that more information could still emerge as he continues to research the issue.
But he said Warren’s family is not included in the official Dawes Commission rolls, a census of major tribes completed in the early 20th century that Cherokees use to determine tribal citizenship.

As you know, that Boston Globe story created a legend which lives on in the media despite having been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked at every level, and one from which even NEHGS has walked away.
The Globe finally gets around to correcting the story, but buries it in the “For the Record” correction section today:

Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story in the May 1 Metro section and the accompanying headline incorrectly described the 1894 document that was purported to list Elizabeth Warren’s great-great-great grandmother as a Cherokee. The document, alluded to in a family newsletter found by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, was an application for a marriage license,  not the license itself. Neither the society nor the Globe has seen the primary document, whose existence has not been proven.

(Note:  The correction references an article on May 1 which repeated the story; the correction now is appended at the end of the original online version.)
That’s it?  After all the trouble The Globe caused, necessitating countless hours by lowly bloggers to correct the falsehood.
The Globe and the false report of a 1/32 Cherokee connection may have saved Warren’s campaign, as it came at a time when her campaign was in panic and without any evidence to substantiate her claim to Native American ancestry, which she used when a junior faculty member in a law school association directory to obtain “minority law teacher” status.
The false report bought Warren time during which various supportive pundits could opine about what it means to be Cherokee and how dare white people impose their own standards.
This mea culpa should be front page at The Globe.

Obama Campaign Quietly Adds ‘Clean Coal’ to Energy Policy Website

From Heritage

After coming under fire for its consistent hostility to the coal industry, the Obama campaign quietly adjusted its energy policy website to include “clean coal” among the president’s energy initiatives.

The energy policy page of BarackObama.com now includes a section for “clean coal,” claiming the stimulus package “invested substantially in carbon capture and sequestration research.”

But until recently, that page made no mention of coal. Its Google cache shows a section for “energy efficiency” where “clean coal” now appears.

The change comes mere days after Obama lost 41% of the vote in the Democratic primary in West Virginia – a state heavily reliant on the coal industry – to a convicted felon and current federal inmate.

The chairman of the WV Democratic Party blamed Obama’s poor showing on his stance on coal energy. “A lot of folks here have real frustration with this administration’s stance on coal and energy,” said state Democratic chairman Larry Puccio. “They are frustrated and they are upset, and they wanted to send Obama a message.”

Critics were quick to point out the disconnect between the president’s self-styled “all of the above” energy policy and a platform that did not include the largest source of American electricity.

The campaign’s energy platform “talks about all of our energy resources and it leaves out 57 percent of our energy sources,” noted Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR).

Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL) accused the administration of having a “deep-seated hatred for coal and the electricity generated by coal.”

The change to the website also comes in the wake of a video showing a top administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency comparing his “philosophy of enforcement” against fossil fuel companies to Roman crucifixions.

While the revised energy platform is more friendly to America’s abundant supply of cheap coal energy, Heritage’s Nick Loris noted the administration’s continued hostility to coal.

“Even with the subsidies for carbon capture and sequestration (which the government shouldn’t be investing in nor is the technology needed), the administration has been no friend to coal,” Loris said. ” The federal government is proposing and implementing a host of regulations that will affect existing plants, the ability to build new coal-fired plants and coal mining operations – of which will raise rates on consumers and threaten grid reliability.”

Socialist Francois Hollande wins French presidency

From BBC News

 

Mr Hollande capitalised on Mr Sarkozy's unpopularity

Socialist Francois Hollande has been elected as France's new president.

He got about 52% of votes in Sunday's run-off, according to early projections, against 48% for centre-right incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.

Mr Sarkozy has admitted defeat, saying: "Francois Hollande is the president of France and he must be respected."

Analysts say the vote has wide implications for the whole eurozone. Mr Hollande has vowed to rework a deal on government debt in member countries.

Exuberant Hollande supporters have already converged on Place de la Bastille in Paris - a traditional rallying point of the Left - to celebrate.

Mr Hollande capitalised on France's economic woes and President Sarkozy's unpopularity.
The socialist candidate has promised to raise taxes on big corporations and people earning more than 1m euros a year.

He also wants to raise the minimum wage, hire 60,000 more teachers and lower the retirement age from 62 to 60 for some workers.

In his concession speech, Mr Sarkozy told stunned supporters that he was "taking responsibility for defeat" - without elaborating.

During the campaign, he said he would leave politics if he lost the election.

It is only the second time an incumbent president has failed to win re-election since the start of France's Fifth Republic in 1958.

The last was Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who lost to socialist Francois Mitterrand in 1981. Mr Mitterrand had two terms in office until 1995.

The new president is expected to be inaugurated later this month.

A parliamentary election is due in June.

Once Again Unemployment Rate Drops… As More Americans Drop Out of Labor Force

From Gateway Pundit


People Not In Labor Force Soar By 522,000!
Labor Force Participation Rate Lowest Since 1981.

The unemployment rate dropped again this month as Americans continue to leave the labor force.
Bloomberg reported:

Employers in the U.S. added fewer workers than forecast in April and the jobless rate unexpectedly declined as people left the labor force, underscoring concern the world’s largest economy may be losing speed.
Payrolls climbed 115,000, the smallest gain in six months, after a revised 154,000 rise in March that was more than initially estimated, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median estimate of 85 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for a 160,000 advance. The jobless rate fell to a three-year low of 8.1 percent and earnings stagnated.
A slowdown in hiring as corporate optimism cools may restrain the wage growth needed to fuel consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy. Federal Reserve policy makers view unemployment as “elevated” and plan to hold borrowing costs low through late 2014.
“The labor market isn’t improving all that much,” Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina, said before the report. “Layoffs have slowed but hiring hasn’t really picked up. The next couple of months are going to be challenging. The Fed’s caution is well-placed.”

This is what failure looks like…

The people not in the labor force is at its lowest level since 1981.

Obama’s whopper about an Ohio River bridge

From The Washington Post


(LARRY DOWNING/REUTERS) “I sent them a jobs bill that would have put hundreds of thousands of construction workers back to work repairing our roads, our bridges, schools, transit systems, along with saving the jobs of cops and teachers and firefighters, creating a new tax cut for businesses.  They said no. I went to the Speaker’s hometown, stood under a bridge that was crumbling.  Everybody acknowledges it needs to be rebuilt. Maybe he doesn’t drive anymore.  Maybe he doesn’t notice how messed up it was. They still said no. There are bridges between Kentucky and Ohio where some of the key Republican leadership come from, where folks are having to do detours an extra hour, hour-and-a-half drive every day on their commute because these bridges don’t work.  They still said no.”
--President Obama, remarks to the Building and Construction Trades Department conference, April 30, 2012

Let’s take a drive down memory lane.
 Back in September, when President Obama first unveiled his jobs bill, we gave him Three Pinocchios for remarks he made regarding the aging Brent Spence Bridge on the Ohio River. The bridge connects Kentucky and Ohio, the home states of House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and it was irresistible symbolism for the White House.
 The crumbling infrastructure of the nation’s bridges is certainly an important issue, but symbolism can only go so far. The administration could never explain what, if anything, the jobs bill would do to improve the Brent Spence Bridge, especially since construction was not slated to start until 2015 — and Obama’s jobs bill would spend most of its money in its first year.
 Moreover, there is a long history of bipartisan support for this project, but Obama framed it as if the Republicans were blocking its reconstruction with their opposition to his legislation.
 When we heard the president’s words Monday, we feared he was slipping back into his old habits. Once again he framed it as GOP opposition to fixing the Brent Spence Bridge. But then he upped the ante by mentioning other bridges “between Kentucky and Ohio” that “don’t work.”  So what’s he talking about?

The Facts

 An administration official said the president was referring to the Sherman Milton Bridge, which actually connects Indiana and Kentucky, near Louisville. Back in September, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) had to shut down the bridge because a 2 ½ inch crack had been discovered.
The bridge carries Interstate 64, so the bridge’s closure forced drivers to make major changes in their driving routes. Shortly after the shutdown, a Transportation Department blog declared that this bridge was “another example of why this [the president’s jobs bill] is so crucial.”
 But here’s the rub: While Obama claimed “these bridges don’t work,” the Sherman Milton Bridge has already been repaired, ahead of schedule, and motorists are driving over it again.
It turned out that, rather than being an example of an aging bridge, the crack that had been discovered actually had been there ever since the bridge was constructed in 1962, because of the type of steel used at the time. Other repairs were ordered, and the bridge reopened nearly three months ago — without needing any of Obama’s jobs-bill funds.
Another nearby bridge, the Kennedy Bridge, will soon undergo redecking, but officials said the work will not lead to a shutdown. Again, the work is being done without Obama’s jobs-bill money.
 “The President was making a point about the need to rebuild our infrastructure and the job creation opportunities that come with that, and was pointing to Ohio River area projects to illustrate the point that these kinds of projects are right in the Congressional Republican leadership’s backyards,” the administration official said.

The Pinocchio Test

 As we said before, we understand the need for symbolism. But that does not give a president license to stretch the facts.
Calling out the Republicans at the Brent Spence bridge was bad enough, given the bipartisan support for its reconstruction. But pointing to the Sherman Milton Bridge, which already has been repaired without funding from the president’s jobs bill, is ridiculous.
Perhaps the president was using outdated talking points, but that’s little excuse. Given that the president earned Three Pinocchios before, we have little choice but to up the ante this time.

Four Pinocchios

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