National Prayer Breakfast speaker attracts attention and criticism

By James H. Shott

The National Prayer Breakfast is held each year in Washington, D.C., on the first Thursday of February, and is attended by some 3,500 guests. The event is hosted by members of the United States Congress, and this year was co-chaired by Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). It is organized by The Fellowship Foundation, a conservative Christian organization and is designed to be a forum for the political, social, and business elite to assemble and build relationships.

Among the speakers this year was President Barack Obama, who told the audience, “We are united in the knowledge of a redeeming savior whose grace is sufficient.” However, he said that even though America’s leaders come together in prayer over national policy and the right direction to lead the country, such talk is often forgotten after the event. “I’d go back to the Oval Office and turn on the cable news networks – and it’s like we didn’t pray!” he said.

Dr. Benjamin Carson, director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, delivered the keynote message, which has drawn criticism from the left as being inappropriately political in a decidedly non-political setting.

However, Dr. Carson's comments were fundamentally about empowering the individual rather than the government, and were non-partisan and delivered respectfully. In fact, he claims political independence, being neither a Republican nor a Democrat. "If there were a party called the Logic Party, I would be a member of that," he told Fox News on Sunday.

That said, Dr. Carson is not the first to inject political messages at the Prayer Breakfast. President Obama himself did so last year, discussing public policy issues such as barring health insurance companies from rejecting people with pre-existing conditions and reducing tax breaks for the wealthy, and tying them in with popular Bible verses. “[S]o when I talk about our financial institutions playing by the same rules as folks on Main Street … or making sure that unscrupulous lenders aren’t taking advantage of the most vulnerable among us, I do so because I genuinely believe it will make the economy strong for everybody,” Mr. Obama said on Feb. 2, 2012.

Benjamin Carson's story is one that inspires us all. He grew up in poverty in urban Detroit, but his home was one built on values typical of the 1950s, raised by a single mother with only a third-grade education who worked long hours to support her family, but who understood American values of hard work and determination. He overcame dire poverty, poor grades, a horrible temper, and low self-esteem, all of which worked against his dream of becoming a physician someday. But his mother would not allow him to give up and challenged her two sons to strive for excellence and stressed the importance of education. His mother refused to become a victim, and did not accept excuses for failure.

Today Dr. Carson is a devout Christian, a full professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and he has directed pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center for over a quarter of a century. His brother is an aeronautical and mechanical engineer. "I became the brain surgeon and he became the rocket scientist," he said.

He told radio host Armstrong Williams last Friday that his comments were “directed at the situation that is going on in our nation and how we can solve it. ... It’s not an attack on anybody, but it’s saying there are logical solutions for our problems and there are things that we can all get behind — be we right wing, be we left wing."

His condemned political correctness, which he described as dangerous because it interferes with freedom of thought and expression. Americans must stop fearing over-sensitive reactions when they express their thoughts and speak their minds freely, he said, but at the same time respect those with whom they disagree.

“We’ve reached a point where people are actually afraid to talk about what they want to say, because somebody might be offended,” he said, citing the example of people refraining from saying “Merry Christmas.” “We’ve got to get over this sensitivity; it keeps people from saying what they really believe.”

Comparing what is happening in America to history, he said: "I think particularly about ancient Rome. Very powerful — nobody could even challenge them militarily … they destroyed themselves from within,” he said. “Moral decay. Fiscal irresponsibility.”

And he offered suggestions for taxation and health care that require far less government involvement than current systems. Citing religious tithing, he suggested a flat tax where everyone pays the same rate, with no loopholes. And he suggested replacing the Affordable Care Act with health savings accounts opened at birth that could be passed on to surviving family members and could receive contributions other than from the owner of the plan to assist the financially disadvantaged.

These are sensible ideas, but they will not gain the support of the control freaks that run our government because they disenfranchise the special interests that Dr. Carson referred to as the fourth branch of government.

Cross-posted from Observations

There is great turmoil in the land as Obama’s second term begins

By James H. Shott

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) last week insisted that "we are in a recovery," and blasted Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for disparaging the economy's performance. The drop in GDP in the 4th quarter is the Republicans fault, he said, citing their austerity and brinkmanship. “Growth went down in the fourth quarter because of reduced government spending,” he said. “The economy was rejecting the austerity and brinkmanship.”

Well, if Sen. Reid is correct and the economy is recovering, things must be better than when President Barack Obama took office prior to the recession ending. Let's take a look.

On the positive side, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is bumping up against its all-time high mark of 14,164, and has regained the losses from the financial crisis.

However, since January of 2009 until just before the election last November the number of long-term unemployed had risen from 2.7 million to 4.8 million; the price of gasoline had more than doubled; there were 40 states with high unemployment compared to 22 in 2009; median household income was down 7 percent; mortgage delinquencies were up by 60 percent; the Misery Index was up 25 percent; and the National Debt had increased by 53 percent.

Today there are 1.2 million fewer jobs in America than there were then, and the number of Americans on food stamps has increased from 32 million to 46 million. The amount of money that the federal government gives directly to Americans has increased by 32 percent since 2009.

And the most recent economic news in addition to the news that for the first time since 2009 the U.S. GDP was in negative territory in the 4th quarter is that consumer confidence plunged in January to its lowest level in a year, and the unemployment rate rose to 7.9 percent for January.

Is this what Sen. Reid thinks a recovery looks like?

Actually, this is what happened to the economy because Barack Obama avoided dealing with the things that really needed attention – the economy, jobs, energy independence, etc.  – and instead wasted all of his four years playing with less-critical issues like health care, killing the coal industry, sending guns to Mexican drug dealers, wasting billions on a failed economic stimulus, and flushing money down the green energy toilet.

As the president's second term begins it is remarkable to observe the high degree of outright revolt among the states and the people over government actions and proposed actions under Mr. Obama's watch, highlighted by the feeling of a majority of Americans in a new poll that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms. Fifty-three percent of 1,502 adults surveyed from January 9-13 by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press responded that government is now a threat to their freedom.

Twenty-seven states are balking over the Affordable Care Act on constitutionality and budgetary grounds, and have sued the government. Provisions of the law threaten to blow states' Medicaid expenses through the roof.

Forty-three Catholic groups have sued the government on religious freedom grounds. The Affordable Care Act forces them to provide services to their employees that violate their religious tenets, in contravention of the 1st Amendment's protection of religious freedom.

And perhaps worse, as the details of what was in the bill that no one read before voting on it leak out, we are learning of taxes and increased costs. The measure requires Americans to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the IRS tells us the cheapest plan will cost a family $20,000 a year.

“We found that about three quarters of again, whatever you want to call them — taxes, fines, penalties — about three quarters of those costs will fall on the backs of those who make less than $120,000 a year. It’s a big punch in the stomach to middle class families," economist Steven Moore of The Wall Street Journal said. This is what passes for "affordable" to Democrat leaders.

A more serious revolt against federal initiatives results from talk of imposing a ban on assault weapons. A number of county sheriffs are refusing to assist the feds on banned weapons initiatives from the administration and Congress on constitutional grounds, should a weapons ban be put into effect. Many law enforcement officials have written letters expressing their positions on proposed bans, and one county sheriff noted that not only does every sheriff takes an oath to "preserve, protect and defend" the Constitution, but federal agents also take that oath, and he believes they won't enforce the bans, either.

Despite the unintended consequences of the Affordable Care Act that punishes those it was supposed to help, and the brewing constitutional crisis over banning weapons instead of addressing the root cause of mass killings, the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats go merrily along, trampling on whoever and whatever gets in their way.

We expect our government to be responsive to our wishes, and the unprecedented level of opposition to these two issues ought to command the attention of those in leadership positions, and cause them to re-evaluate the unpopular course they are following.

Cross-posted from Observations

One week out: The case against President Barack Obama’s re-election

Commentary by James H. Shott

Four years ago the left was filled with optimism and poised to win the presidential election. The Democrats had nominated the first African-American candidate for President of the United States, and millions were spellbound, and buoyed by his message of hope and change.

During his acceptance speech at the Democrat Convention, Barack Obama said, “we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.” The crowd went wild.

And it was about time we did those things. We had never cared for the sick before or provided jobs to the jobless. Or ended wars or been the last, best hope on Earth before.

In a campaign amazingly light on detail and substance, a dreadfully inexperienced Barack Obama won the election.

When he assumed office the country was in the midst of a recession, one President Obama frequently refers to as “The Great Recession.” As time passed and things didn’t improve as promised, this title has become a tool to make the downturn seem worse than it was to excuse his dismal performance on the nation’s crushing economic problems. Data show that other recessions were worse in one or more aspects than this recession, and while significant, the 2008 recession does not rate the honorific the president bestowed on it.

What does deserve our attention is the non-existent Obama recovery, which still has not taken hold 56 months after the recession began.

President Obama claims 5 million new jobs have been created during his term, but for the 37 weeks of 2012 through Sept. 15 the weekly new unemployment insurance claims average roughly 374,000, a total that dwarfs 5 million new jobs in just 37 weeks.

The U-6 unemployment rate stands at 14.6 percent as of September 30, and includes the unemployed, under-employed and those who have given up looking for work, a total of 22.6 million people.

Mr. Obama increased the national debt from $10.6 trillion on Jan. 20, 2009 by 51 percent, or $5.4 trillion, through a failed stimulus and a government spending spree. Despite spending all that borrowed money, since Q3 2009 GDP has averaged only 2.17 percent, substantially lower than the 3.25 percent average GDP through expansions and contractions since 1947.

Median household income has declined by 7.3 percent, and last year the Census Bureau reported more Americans in poverty than ever before in the more than 50 years that it has tracked poverty. Ironically, the group that has suffered the most during the Obama presidency has been black Americans, whose real incomes have fallen by more than 11 percent.

Had Mr. Obama set out immediately to address joblessness, and championed policies to spur the economy we would be far better off than we are. Instead, he wasted two years getting a bill passed to revamp the nation’s healthcare system, against the will of 60 percent of the people he serves.

Yet, the president does not regret wasting two years on Obamacare instead of focusing on the economy. In an interview with the Des Moines Register Mr. Obama said he had no regrets that he didn’t focus on the nation’s most pressing issue. “Absolutely not,” he said.

The dismal economic performance affects us all; however, the most remarkable failure is the scandalous behavior of the Obama administration before and after the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where during a seven-hour attack four Americans were murdered. There was a reduced level of security before the attack, despite numerous requests to maintain the higher levels and even increase those levels because of recent attacks on U.S. facilities and mounting levels of violence.

Requests for help during the attack, including requests from personnel stationed nearby who wanted to help were denied. And worst of all, adequate answers to the many legitimate questions about what actually happened still have not been provided fully seven weeks after the attack. It is difficult to avoid assigning political motives to this behavior, which appears at this point as a clumsy cover-up to get through the election.

Add to this the Fast and Furious gun-running debacle, the ridiculous job-killing ban on drilling for our own oil on federal lands, and the war on coal killing thousands of coal jobs and thousands more in related industries like power plants, railroads and support businesses, and there simply is no reason to give this man more time to wreck the economy.

Barack Obama is not the god-like figure his fawning fans believe him to be, but a very average man who allowed the nation to continue to suffer while he pursued his ill-advised ideological goals.

On the campaign trail he now says, “I want your vote for what I’m going to do.” But we’ve heard that one before, and we can’t afford to fall for it again.

Cross-posted from Observations

Exactly what does being “better off than four years ago” look like?

 

Commentary by James H. Shott
 
The DC newspaper The Hill has a new poll that found 52 percent of likely voters believe the country is now in "worse condition" than four years ago, while just 31 percent believe it's in "better condition."
 
It is pretty clear that people believe they are not better off today than four years ago, but what would things look like if we were better off today?
 
Well, for example, if your home was worth $80,000 in September of 2008 it should not be worth less today and perhaps should have gained a little value. Or, if you were out of work then, you should have a job today, and if you had a job then, you should perhaps be making a little more today. It should not cost you much more to fill your car with gas, and trips to the grocery store should cost about the same today as then.
 
However, most Americans cannot make such claims today. Most homeowners have lost value in their homes; more than 34 million of us are unemployed, underemployed, or have exhausted unemployment insurance and become so discouraged that we have given up looking for work; gasoline prices have doubled, food and health care prices have increased; and relatively few have seen their wages increase. 
 
The jobs numbers released last Friday reflect feeble job creation in August. Just to stay even with the new people entering the job market each month the economy must create 125,000 jobs, and to make progress in replacing those jobs lost during the recession we need lots more new jobs than that. The 96,000 new jobs created in August falls 29,000 jobs short of what’s needed just to stay even.
 
The U-3 unemployment rate fell from 8.3 to 8.1 percent. It most often is a good sign when the U-3 rate falls, but the fact that for every job created four people gave up looking for work and dropped out of the active work force means no good news there.
 
Economist James Fitzgibbon of the Highlander Group said that "If we impute the data samplings of non-working citizens at the labor force rate of January 2009 we would have a Household U-3 Unemployment rate currently of 11.4%." That isn’t better than four years ago, either.

Mr. Fitzgibbon then addresses the effect on the Labor Force Participation rate of the 368,000 people who dropped out of the labor force last month, which "has fallen sharply to 63.5 percent, a new 31-year low reading." 
 
Add to that the fact that from June 2009 to June 2012, inflation-adjusted median household income fell 4.8 percent, to $50,964, according to a report by Sentier Research. The report notes that incomes have dropped more since the beginning of the recovery than they did during the recession itself, when they declined 2.6 percent. That certainly does not indicate we are better off than four years ago.
 
Yet, Vice President Joe Biden said last week at a campaign appearance at an AFL-CIO event just before the beginning of the Democrat National Convention that his answer to the question “Are you better off than four years ago,” is “yes, we are.”
 
"You want to know whether we're better off? I've got a little bumper sticker for you: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive," Mr. Biden proclaimed.
 
After 43 months in office, the vice president cites only two things to support the idea that we are better off than four years ago, both weak. As good as it is that bin Laden has been dispatched to his just reward, whether he is alive or dead is totally irrelevant as a measure of whether Americans are better off today than four years ago. The other one, General Motors, is not looking quite as bright and shiny as the vice president seems to think it is.
 
The company is losing market share; its products are not competitive in the American market. The federal government owns 500,000,000 shares of GM, or about 26 percent of the company, which earned it the nickname “Government Motors.” The government not only cheated GM bondholders out of their investment when it acquired the stock, but would need to get about $53.00 a share to break even on the “investment,” but the stock currently sells for about $20.21 a share.  The government has $10.1 billion worth of stock, and sits on an unrealized loss of $16.4 billion.
 
President Barack Obama showed what he thinks is important when he put his ideology ahead of what Mr. Biden termed his “profound concern for the average American.” His first priorities were taking over the healthcare system and force-feeding green energy to the American people. That put energy industry workers out of work, cost Americans millions in higher prices, and lost a pile of taxpayer money. But like the man said, “You don’t ever want a good crisis to go to waste.”
 
The President’s foolish, ham-handed decision to focus on health care and green energy have damaged, not improved, the economy, and as Clint Eastwood so perceptively noted in Tampa, “When somebody doesn’t do the job, we gotta let ‘em go.”
 
Cross-posted from Observations

Odds and ends: Random thoughts on the passing scene

Commentary by James H. Shott
 
The Center for Immigration Studies released a detailed report that correlates high levels of illegal/legal immigrant poverty as contributing to the increase in welfare programs in the U.S.
 
A study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform shows that illegal immigration costs U.S. taxpayers about $113 billion a year at the federal, state and local level. About $84 billion is absorbed by state and local governments.
 
Strong border control by the federal government, and eliminating federal interference with state efforts to control illegal immigration could substantially reduce this wasteful expense.
 

*****

 

The Heritage Foundation reported last year that “Texas created 37 percent of all jobs since the beginning of the economic recovery, more than any other state. Excluding New York and Pennsylvania, Texas has created nearly as many jobs as all other states combined.”
 
According to Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, “Texas is doing so well relative to other states precisely because it has rejected the economic model that now prevails in Washington. … Texas stands out for its free market and business-friendly climate.”
 
Among other factors, Texas has right-to-work laws, ongoing tort reform, has no state income tax, and has generally been a fiscally responsible state. As a percentage of its economy, the state’s budget is lower than the majority of other states.
 

*****

 

“I don’t think Mitt Romney understands what he’s done to people’s lives by closing the plant,” Joe Soptic, a former employee at GST Steel in Kansas City, said in a Democrat PAC TV spot. He says he lost his health care, and then his wife became ill and died shortly after that.
 
The Washington Post reports, however, that Republican candidate Romney left Bain Capital two years before the GST’s 2001 bankruptcy; Politico notes that Ranae Soptic died in 2006, long after the plant closed; and CNN reports that at some points during that time she had insurance through her own employer.
 
Hmmm.
 
Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in an interview with the Huffington Post recently that someone had called him to tell him that Mitt Romney didn’t pay taxes for 10 years. "Harry, he didn't pay any taxes for 10 years," Reid recounted the person as saying. "He didn't pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that's true? Well, I'm not certain," Senator Reid said.
 
A very good friend of mine who lives and works in Washington, DC, called me after hearing this, and said that “ol' Harry has been seen frequently peeking in Nancy Pelosi's windows and eating at Chick-fil-A.” Well, that’s what he said.
 
Paraphrasing a popular saying, there are lies, damned lies, and the Obama campaign.
 

*****

 

Voter-registration forms being mailed to Virginia residents are addressed to dead relatives, children, family members in other states, non-U.S. citizens, people with similar names, existing registered voters and residents' cats and dogs.
 
These forms are among tens of thousands being distributed in Virginia by Voter Participation Center, a Washington-based national voter-registration group. The organization pre-populates the documents with key information, including names and addresses of prospective voters. This worries election officials, who say the mailings can create opportunities for voter fraud.
 
But, of course, Attorney General Eric Holder opposes requiring voters to show proof of their eligibility, saying that doing so would suppress voter participation.
 

*****

 

Anyone who has spent much time watching the Olympics likely believes that the success of the remarkable people on the American team is due to a lot of individual dedication and hard work. 
 
However, the success of American Olympic athletes and the success of American small businesses are analogous. 
 
Like business people who didn’t build the roads, and other infrastructure that they used to make their companies successful, the Olympic athletes didn’t build the training facilities or the fields and courts that they utilized to become successful in their sport, and they didn’t start the Olympic Games that they now participate in.
 
They didn’t earn those medals. Somebody else did that.
 

*****

 

Seeking to rally a crucial constituency, President Barack Obama on Wednesday warned women in swing-state Colorado that Mitt Romney and the Republicans “want to take us back to the policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century.”
 
Ah, yes, the 50s, when health care costs were so low you didn’t need health insurance (and it wasn’t even available); where you didn’t call the doctor or go to the hospital unless you were really sick; where doctors made house calls; a day in the hospital cost tens of dollars; healthcare was about 5 percent of GDP; “prospecting” lawsuits didn’t exist ... some things back then were way better than today.
 
A new Congressional Budget Office report says that under Obamacare, 30 million non-elderly Americans will remain without health insurance in 2022.
 
Wasn't the whole reason for Obamacare destroying our healthcare system to insure the uninsured?
 
Cross-posted from Observations

Tortured reasoning transforms an unconstitutional mandate into law

 

Commentary by James H. Shott

Last week U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts joined Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy in correctly identifying the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as unconstitutional. That is what the Supreme Court is expected to do: follow the original intent of the authors, who created a document to protect America from over-reaching government actions like this one.

Writing for the Court’s majority, Chief Justice Roberts said: "The individual mandate, however, does not regulate existing commercial activity. It instead compels individuals to become active in commerce by purchasing a product, on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce." He continued, correctly identifying the chaos that would result from finding the mandate constitutional: "Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority." Exactly. But the majority didn’t stop there.

Instead they decided the individual mandate is not really a mandate, it is a tax, essentially rewriting the statute and thereby making “Obamacare” the law of the land. But if, as Justice Roberts wrote, you cannot regulate individuals “because they are doing nothing,” how then can you tax individuals because they are doing nothing? This turns the definition of “taxation” on its head, taxes typically being levied on working, buying and owning, as opposed to levying taxes on not working, not buying, or not owning.

What exactly caused the Chief Justice, criticized by liberals for his judicial conservatism, to depart from his expected position? Many of those familiar with his thinking say the decision is in keeping with his values — conservative in his judicial views, but also considering the Court’s reputation. If the Court is seen as too conservative – adhering to the Constitution’s original intent too often – it may become unpopular with liberals.

Others believe he worked a brilliant bit of judicial magic by striking down the mandate, but upholding the statute’s constitutionality as a tax, preserving President Barack Obama’s signature accomplishment and allowing him to save face, but at the same time giving the law’s opponents a way to correct its many flaws.

Whatever the motivation, the ruling unfortunately opens the door for darn near any activity – or lack of activity – to be taxed by the federal government. As the legendary Chief Justice John Marshall famously said, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.”

Andrew P. Napolitano, former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, writing in The Washington Times, sees it this way: “If the feds can tax us for not doing as they have commanded, and if that which is commanded need not be grounded in the Constitution, then there is no constitutional limit to their power, and the ruling that the power to regulate commerce does not encompass the power to compel commerce is mere sophistry.”

This statute epitomizes dishonorable legislative methodology and bad law-making. Obamacare has been very unpopular with the public since it was first hatched, and it still is. Yet the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives lurched ahead, conceiving the bill behind locked doors, and the 2,700-page monstrosity was passed by the House before members even had time to read it. Remember then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrogantly telling American citizens that they couldn’t know what was in the bill until Congress passed it? Senate Democrats bought enough votes with pricey concessions to key states to eventually pass the bill.

The measure was advertised vociferously by President Obama and his fellow statists as a mandate, not a tax, and it would not cause any American “making less than $250,000 a year to pay one dime more in tax.” The Act has now been upheld by the highest court in the land because it is a tax, not a mandate, and among the 21 new taxes are seven affecting those making less than $250,000 a year, some already in effect, according to Forbes.com.

They are: 1. The Individual Mandate Excise Tax, the higher of $1,360 or 2.5 percent of adjusted gross income; 2. The Over-The-Counter Drugs Trap denying use of pre-tax funds in special accounts to buy over-the-counter medicines for allergy relief and the like without a doctor’s prescription; 3. The Healthcare Flexible Spending Account Cap of $2,500; 4. The Medical Itemized Deduction Hurdle, increased from 7 to 10 percent of adjusted gross income; 5. The Health Savings Account Withdrawal Penalty of 20 percent, up from 10 percent; 6. The Indoor Tanning Services Tax of 10 percent; 7. The Cadillac Health Insurance Plan Tax of 40 percent.

The Democrats are celebrating their prize legislation’s Alice-in-Wonderland survival of judicial review, but now have to figure out how to explain to the American people that the bill they swore was not a tax on the poor and middle class really is a tax on the poor and middle class, in fact, the biggest tax hike in history.

You cannot sensibly praise the Supreme Court for upholding your flawed law, and then claim that the basis upon which it was upheld was incorrect. That twisted logic is beyond even the Obama administration.

Cross-posted from Observations

Did The New York Times Change Their Headline And Article Wording To Protect Obama On Amnesty Decision?

By Susan Duclos

Reminder of the Republicans' messaging on Obama's amnesty decision:

It would be nice if the president was as concerned about the 23 million Americans looking for work in America as he is about the 12 million undocumented individuals the president claims are looking for work in America," Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) added.

While writing the previous piece I ran across a New York Times article which had a changed headline after publishing and changed content within the article and it made me question whether those changes were made to protect Barack Obama after his controversial decision to grant amnesty to 800,000 illegal immigrants and offer them indefinite work permits here in the United States.

Original Headline from New York Times, dated June 18, 2012:  Many American Workers are Underemployed And Underpaid". NYT changed that headline to "Lost in Recession, Toll on Underemployed and Underpaid."


URL shows the original headline: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/19/us/many-american-workers-are-underemployed-and-underpaid.html?pagewanted=all

Not only did the NYT change the headline but a screen shot of the yahoo search result shows they also changed the wording within the article:




Now it says:

But many middle-class and working-class people who are fortunate enough to have work are struggling as well......

Strange that they took out the words "American Workers" from their headlines and "Americans" from the original written article? Yes or no?

NYT article link here.

Are the New York Times' editors attempting to hide the fact that Obama's amnesty decision will take jobs from American workers and give them to illegal immigrants?



Cross posted from Wake up America

Obama plays fast and furious with oil production data

Commentary by James H. Shott

President Barack Obama calls fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas – the “fuel of the past,” and heralds wind, solar and algae as the fuels of the future. But he ignored talking about the fuel of the present, as if it really doesn’t matter. But it does matter. The fuel of the present must exist in sufficient quantity, with sufficient infrastructure to get it to consumers, and be affordable. And there is only one source that meets those requirements: fossil fuels.

Despite his apparent disregard of this obvious fact, it does not take a rocket scientist, a community organizer, or even a law school lecturer to understand the importance of today’s situation: Fossil fuels work; green energy does not.

Favoring an impossible scenario, Mr. Obama resorts to being the class clown, offering playground humor to deflect the harsh criticism his foolish energy policy has earned. He told a fawning audience, "So do not tell me that we're not drilling. We're drilling all over this country. There are a few spots we're not drilling. We're not drilling in the National Mall. We're not drilling at your house."

Now, that’s a real knee-slapper. But the joke’s on those that believe this hogwash, and dream of plentiful wind farms standing motionless among dead birds waiting on a breeze, and seas of solar panels waiting in the dark for a cloudless sunrise.

Mr. Obama might have mentioned that we also are not drilling for oil off the Mid-Atlantic coast, off the Florida Gulf Coast and generally in the Gulf of Mexico, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, on federal lands in the Rockies. You know: places where billions of barrels of American oil await an American company with American workers operating drilling rigs. In these areas, drilling leases are down 70 percent under the Obama administration’s fairy-tale energy strategy. And while the president yuks it up in campaign appearances, Americans still get pummeled at the gas pump and are ignored in the presidential narrative.

But humor was not the only trick up Mr. Obama’s sleeve. He also slipped in a large dose of taking credit where credit is not due, and added a substantial measure of distorted facts. “Under my administration, America is producing more oil today than at any time in the last eight years. That's a fact. That's a fact. We've quadrupled the number of operating oil rigs to a record high. So do not tell me that we're not drilling. We're drilling all over this country.”

Well, sort of. While that statement may be technically true, it turns reality on its head. By saying “under my administration” he suggests that it is because of his policies that drilling has increased. Actually, he had absolutely nothing to do with the policies that prompted all that drilling, which is being done on private land where he cannot stop it, as he has with drilling on federal lands. Oil production has increased in spite of his policies, not because of them. For the increase in drilling he can correctly blame George W. Bush.

The president should have stopped with the ridiculing of the clear thinkers who want to harvest our own oil and natural gas and build energy independence. But he just had to distort more facts for good measure. “America uses more than 20 percent of the world’s oil,” he declared. “If we drilled every square inch of this country …. we would still have only two percent of the world’s known oil reserves.”

Not so fast, Mr. President. The Institute for Energy Research reports that “in classic fashion, he’s using a technicality to skirt the facts and keep the myth of energy scarcity alive. The reality is that the U.S. has enough recoverable oil for the next 200 years, despite only having 2 percent of the world’s current proven oil reserves.”

Even The Washington Post decries the president’s tactic. “The president should drop this fact … or he runs the risk of misleading Americans about the extent of the U.S. oil resources.” It’s too late; he has already misled us.

According to the American Petroleum Institute’s online publication, Energy Tomorrow: “The market sees 87 percent of our offshore acreage off-limits, it sees Federal permits lagging in the areas we are allowed to develop in, both offshore and onshore.  It sees a million barrels a day from ANWR sitting on the sidelines, and it sees the U.S. blocking upwards of 800,000 barrels a day from Canada. The market sees that the U.S. could secure 100 percent of its liquid fuel needs by 2024.”

The CIA World Factbook lists the U.S. third in world oil production in 2011 at just below 9 percent of the total, a little behind Russia at 10.06 percent, and Saudi Arabia at 12.01 percent.

Apparently, Mr. Obama feels comfortable spreading falsehoods to the public, knowing that his fawning followers will believe anything he says, and the media, paralyzed by his charm, will not fact-check what he says.  But while he’s busy being fabulous, wowing the throngs, the country continues to suffer under punishing unemployment and gas prices predicted to set new records this summer.

Cross-posted from Observations