Friday, October 26, 2012

Obama’s Big Tax Increases on Small Business


It is quite a stretch for President Obama to argue that he wants to cut taxes for small businesses. In reality, he is proposing to increase taxes on small businesses by around $49 billion.
President Obama has touted his treatment of small businesses repeatedly over the course of the campaign, and last week’s presidential debate was no exception. “I also lowered taxes for small businesses 18 times. And what I want to do is continue the tax rate — the tax cuts that we put into place for small businesses and families,” argued Obama.
While in the strictest sense it is true that the president has lowered taxes for small businesses 18 times, this does not accurately reflect the totality of his small-business tax policy. In fact, on net, the president’s policy proposals will inflict significant harm on small businesses.

Don Quixote Is Alive and Well and Living in Spain

 

Spain is the euro area’s fourth-largest economy. Bad government policy threatens the whole euro project and the global economy.
It was said of the Bourbons that they learnt nothing and that they forgot nothing. The same might be said of the Spanish government, judging from its recent economic policy pronouncements amid widespread social and regional unrest. The government seems to be persisting with the past year’s failed economic policies, which have not only gotten Spain into its current difficult economic straits but that are now also running the real risk of tearing the country apart.

CANDIDATES DEBT PLANS


PANETTA: US LACKED EARLY INFO ON BENGAZI


AP-GfK poll: Romney edging out Obama on economy

By NANCY BENAC and JENNIFER AGIESTA

  • Mitt Romney
     
    Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks as he campaigns in Reno, Nev., on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2012. (AP Photo/Cathleen Allison)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans are growing increasingly optimistic about the future of the U.S. economy, and likely voters trust Republican Mitt Romney slightly more than President Barack Obama to do a better job of managing it, an Associated Press-GfK poll shows.
On the cusp of an election offering stark choices on how best to handle the economy, 60 percent of Americans still describe the current economic situation as poor, but almost as many think things will get better in the coming year. More voters expect the number of unemployed to go down, too. Forty-two percent anticipate improvement in the jobs picture, up 10 percentage points from a month ago.

Exclusive--Cover-Up: Chinese Govt Blocks Access To Obama.com, Obama Campaign Blocks Chinese Web Visitors


The Chinese government has suddenly blocked access to Obama.com throughout mainland China, and the Obama campaign website now shows error messages to Chinese visitors.

The startling developments come just days after the New York Post and Breitbart News ran extensive reports on Obama.com owner Robert Roche, an expatriate American and Obama bundler with business ties to the Chinese government who lives in Shanghai. The Government Accountability Institute revealed the website’s ownership in its widely covered 108-page report, America The Vulnerable, which details the threat of foreign and fraudulent online campaign contributions.

Democrats Preparing to Oust Nancy Pelosi


House Democrats will hold their leadership elections on November 29, and the late date has led to speculation that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will step down and groom potential successors to take her place. 

Monster Haul: Romney Rakes In $112M in First 17 Days of October


Rising enthusiasm for Mitt Romney’s surging presidential candidacy has driven Americans to the donation box: Romney’s campaign raised a whopping $112 million in 17 days of October, according to the Republican National Committee. Much of that giving was obviously driven by Romney’s stellar performance in the first debate.



Romney needed a good showing after incumbent President Barack Obama defeated him in fundraising for September, $181 million to $170 million. The Romney campaign has approximately $169 million to spend over the final two weeks of this campaign. Approximately $38 million of the money raised in October came in donations of $250 or under, suggesting burgeoning grassroots appeal for Romney.

Boehner Demands Answers From Obama On Libya

 


House Speaker John Boehner sent an open letter to President Barack Obama today demanding to know who knew what and when in what has now developed into a three-pronged scandal: The lack of security at our consulate in Benghazi, the fact that nothing was done during the seven-hour attack to bring in American reinforcements, and the dishonest narrative that evolved afterwards that blamed the attack on a spontaneous protest and YouTube video.

Father of Murdered Ex-SEAL Rips Obama for Libya Deception


President Obama's reelection campaign has focused on the theme of trust, especially on his foreign policy record. But the father of one American victim of this year's 9/11 attacks says that, based on his firsthand interaction with Obama, that trust isn't warranted.

"The New Economic Patriotism" Is Not a Jobs Plan

The truth about Obama's shiny, substance-free pamphlet.

Fear not; Barack Obama has an economic plan for America, and it's all in a glossy brochure, called "The New Economic Patriotism: A Plan for Jobs & Middle-Class Security"—an antidote, we're told, to the vagueness of Mitt Romney's agenda.
This is what the president, according to a campaign official, believes will ensure that "every voter knows what a second term of an Obama presidency would mean for middle-class Americans." So, in other words, a shiny substance-free pamphlet is a metaphor for the Obama presidency—because these 11 pages of fluff make Romney's tax proposal look like an annotated edition of the Talmud.

The Semantics of Benghazi Don't Matter: Obama's Foreign Policy is a Failure

There's something bizarre coming out of the final (thank God) presidential debate: a righteous debate over whether President Obama called the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, a terrorist attack the day after it happened.

Greed Is Good

The pursuit of self-interest benefits everyone.



Give me a break.
Bill's smart. If he believes such things, we who care about freedom have done a poor job communicating economics.
Blaming problems on "greed" is a mindless cliche.
Yes, Wall Street was greedy -- but that's nothing new. Greed is a constant. Did you ever turn down a raise? We need a free market because it restrains greed. Laws against theft and fraud help, but competition does more. With this election approaching, and statist, eager-to-regulate candidates in ascent, we need more Americans to understand this.
The statist left says it's government's job to protect consumers and help poor people. But greed -- more precisely, the pursuit of self-interest in the free market -- would work better. The market (if not corrupted by corporate welfare and bailouts) harmonizes the interests of diverse people who don't even know each other and might not even like each other. It motivates them to work hard to serve customers.

Foreign Policy Surprises Ahead

Foreign Policy Surprises Ahead

If we've learned anything from past campaigns, it's that the winner will have an unpredictable foreign policy.

Americans who watched Monday's debate learned that Mitt Romney wanted to sound like Barack Obama on major world issues and that Obama wanted to highlight the contrasts. They learned that Romney can be vague and Obama can be condescending. They learned that Bob Schieffer can't keep a discussion from veering off course.
What they didn't learn is what the next president's foreign policy will look like or whether to expect war or peace. That's not the fault of the debate. It's the fault of the candidates—not just these two, but pretty much all presidential candidates. Ultimately, it's the fault of voters, who repeatedly give their presidents a blank check.

The Coming Global Disorder

Bret Stephens

Woody Island is a speck of land in the middle of the South China Sea, not quite a square mile in size. Over the past 80 years it has been occupied by French Indochina, Imperial Japan, the Republic of China, the People’s Republic of China, South Vietnam, and, after a brief war in 1974, the People’s Republic again. Now known as Yongxing to the Chinese (or Phu Lam to the Vietnamese, who still lay claim to it), the island has an airstrip, a harbor, and a few hundred Chinese residents, none native-born, many of whom make their living as fishermen.
An obscure tropical island may seem an odd starting point for an essay on the coming global disorder. Yet great conflicts have been known to flare over little things in faraway places. “On the morning of July 1, [1911,] without more ado, it was announced that His Imperial Majesty the German Emperor had sent his gunboat the Panther to Agadir to maintain and protect German interests,” wrote Winston Churchill in his history of the First World War. The proximate causes of the German foray to this deserted Moroccan bay “were complicated and intrinsically extremely unimportant.” But the real purpose of the kaiser’s move was to test—and, he hoped, to break—Britain’s alliance with France and, perhaps, scope out the possibility of establishing a German naval base in the north Atlantic. “All the alarm bells throughout Europe,” Churchill recalled, “began immediately to quiver.”

Dems Begin the Post-Obama Blame Game, Jonathan S. Tobin

Some Democrats are apparently not waiting for Barack Obama to lose the presidential election before starting the inevitable recriminations about whose fault it was. Whether writing strictly on his own hook or as a result of conversations with campaign officials, New York Times political writer Matt Bai has fired the first shot in what may turn out to be a very nasty battle over who deserves the lion’s share of the blame for what may turn out to be a November disaster for the Democrats. That the Times would publish a piece on October 24 that takes as its starting point the very real possibility that the president will lose, and that blame for that loss needs to be allocated, is astonishing enough. But that their nominee for scapegoat is the man who is almost certainly the most popular living Democrat is the sort of thing that is not only shocking, but might be regarded as a foretaste of the coming battle to control the party in 2016.

Where were the Marines?


By Sen. Rand Paul

Monday’s foreign policy debate between President Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney was designed to help voters better understand each man’s vision for America’s role abroad. While I have publicly taken issue with both candidates on aspects of their foreign policies, there is no question that Mr. Romney remains the right choice for Americans on Nov. 6.
However, it is also clear neither candidate adequately addressed the gross intelligence failure in Libya that left four Americans dead, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens. Too many important questions remain unanswered concerning Mr. Obama’s entire mishandling of the recent siege of Benghazi.

Obama's Little Plan

By Larry Kudlow -

Under pressure from Mitt Romney, President Obama has finally released his own policy vision for a second term. And, yes, it's the same old, same old. Some are calling it a second first term.
There isn't a single true economic-growth incentive in this scant plan. There's no serious spending, deficit and debt reduction, and no attempt to solve the Social Security and health-entitlement problems, which are moving us toward bankruptcy.

THAT HORSE IS ALREADY DEAD

THAT HORSE IS ALREADY DEAD

By Sheriff Jim R. Schwiesow
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
--Alexander Pope,
DOWN THE TUBES
This country is sinking at a divinely controlled rate and will continue such a decline to the point of desperation, everything that is done by men to level the state of affairs will fail miserably; this to let arrogant men know that they are not in charge, and never have been. God can bless the works of their hands, but He can also bring their exploits to miserable failure. It is not without reason that scripture points out that the wisdom of men is as foolishness in the sight of Almighty God.
The entire nation wallows in an egregiously deep and socially penetrating economic trough of government making; the jobs picture is depicted as desperate when in reality millions of technical jobs go unfilled for a lack of those with the practical skills to fill them. Yet there is no dearth of sloppily educated and poorly job-equipped mental midgets with liberal arts degrees, these are of no practical value and in totality comprise a drag on productive tax-paying citizens by their indolent and clumsy rolling about in search of cushy jobs, welfare, and government handouts. The government accommodates these hindrances on society by mandating extended unemployment benefits and that insurance companies keep them on their parent's health insurance program unto age 26. Everything the ignorant and mentally deficient politicians do is double-dipped in dung and guaranteed to make all that they touch infinitely worse, as we shall certainly see if this government health fiasco known as Obamacare prevails. 

OBAMA VOID OF VISION

OBAMA VOID OF VISION

By Attorney Jonathan Emord
Author of "The Rise of Tyranny" and
"Global Censorship of Health Information" and
"Restore The Republic"

After his horrendous performance in the first debate, President Obama came out swinging in the second. Although void of any excuse for adding $5 trillion to the national debt and for never proposing a balanced budget, the President waxed confident and offered rebuttals throughout. But that is not enough to justify re-election, even among the Democratic Party faithful. He needed to appear presidential, command the facts, and rebut charges against his administration, that is true, but he also needed to articulate a clear vision for a prosperous and free America. He failed miserably to articulate that vision.
Moreover, although many pundits appear to think otherwise, he compounded his problems over the botched Benghazi terror cover-up. He had a superlative opportunity to take the high road. He could have said that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been gracious in accepting responsibility for failed security but that the buck stops with him. He eluded to that but did not state it directly. He should have said that the Administration erred because while in possession of evidence of terror, they proceeded with a second justification, the public riot over the Nakoula Youtube video, which in fact had nothing to do with it. He should have said that the youtube explanation went on for too long, past the administration’s knowledge of the facts of terror. He should have apologized to the American people. Had he done that, there would be no post-debate firestorm of controversy. 

The world is bankrupt -- How it will affect you

Harvey Gordin

Despite the disingenuous doublespeak coming out of the Federal Reserve and all the campaign rhetoric, the true state of our economy is in dire circumstances. It is not going to have a 'soft' landing and unemployment is not going to rebound for tens of millions of Americans. Not in 2012 or 2013. Unless the U.S. Congress suddenly awakens from their delusional state that spending us into the stratosphere is the right course to take, you should look out for yourself and your family - now.

Why? Because the toxic "global" economy for one thing is trillions in debt. Because the affected countries are socialist (except Germany), the reforms that should have been undertaken decades ago are too little too late. Greece is DOA and Germans are tired of bailing out the same repeated mistakes. Portugal, Ireland Spain and Italy are the next dominoes in line for major trouble.

MARRIAGE, DEMOCRACY AND DICTATORSHIP IN AMERICA

 By Roy Masters
Author of "Hypnotic States of Americans"

"Democracy passes into despotism." – Plato
We were all born sovereign with the potential of beginning the world all over again. In 1776 a nation rose to protect the rights of the sovereign citizens from the lawless mob, by establishing a democratic republic. The kind of citizen upon which America was built is the smallest most precious member, the noble citizen core cell.
In the 1960s America began to be dismantled, and as a misguided, polite society we forgot to defend our language, culture and borders. We became a "compassionate" democracy and made everyone special and morally equivalent even to demand rights, those strange appetites and lawless behaviors. With such people elevated to our noble values of citizenship, our people allowed themselves and their children to become demoralized and dumbed down by our seeking their acceptance. And so without the checks and balances of moral versus immoral behavior, the rabble multiplied and began voting in their kind into a democratic government that would be destined to become a divided country leading to dictatorship and civil war.
In the Hearts of Men
For thousands of years, a desperate struggle for power has raged on in most homes, resulting in one partner or the other rising as a despotic dictator. One form of despotism is the willful female, with a wimpy victim husband and a terrified brood of demoralized, psychotic or violently rebellious children. Such a left leaning female dictatorship spawns the equivalent; a right leaning male, violently seeking to retrieve his lost role as the authorized head of the home, but always in the wrong way. Right wing could become the dangerously collective disenfranchised males attempting to restore order from the chaos caused by the permissiveness of female-centered homes and their socialist benefactors.

Condi Rice Cautious on Benghazi: 'We Don't Have All the Pieces'

Condi Rice Cautious on Benghazi: 'We Don't Have All the Pieces'

By Greg McDonald
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declined to jump to conclusions Wednesday on the Obama administration's handling of email traffic during the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, saying, "it's not always easy to know" what's happening on the ground.
 
Rice, who had to deal with similar situations when she was running the State Department under President George W. Bush, told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren that it's best to let a congressional investigation and a government accountability review board sort it out before jumping to conclusions.

Fmr Amb John Bolton: New Benghazi Emails Reveal 'Incredibly Stupid Cover...

Mark Levin: "Obama Is A Serial Liar"

Even Polls With Samples Favorable To Democrats Are Picking Romney To Win

 By  

Obama Reacts Swiftly To Poll Numbers SC Even polls with samples favorable to Democrats are picking Romney to win
For months, conservatives have criticized the obviously Democrat-friendly samples used in any number of polls, samples giving Dem respondents anything from a 6 to 13 point edge over the GOP.
But times have changed as even polls using samples that favor Democrat participants are showing Mitt Romney with a lead over Barack Hussein Obama.
The Suffolk University poll of likely Ohio voters uses a voter registration sample of 39% Democrat, 35% Republican, and 27% Independent. But the 4-point advantage for Democrat Party members yields a 3 point advantage in the poll for Mitt Romney, 48-45.
The Monmouth University poll uses a sample of 35 Dem/34 Indep/31 Rep. Here, even Independents outnumber Republicans, and Democrats hold a 4 point edge. Yet the results of the national poll show Romney with a 3 point lead among likely voters, 48-45. Also, though Obama holds a 4 point lead with women voters, he is down dramatically among men at 51-40.

Suddenly, a Credibility Gap

Benghazi has damaged voters' willingness to believe in Barack Obama.

Less than 14 days before the vote, Gallup has Mitt Romney leading the president by three points and in Rasmussen he's up four. This paper's poll brought Mr. Romney from chronically behind to even. Yes, 270 Electoral College votes will decide the race, but with the whole nation watching the same events, one has to ask whether what we're seeing is Mitt Romney's rise or Barack Obama's decline.
It is conventional wisdom that incumbency breeds advantages. But incumbency also brings burdens, and the Obama candidacy looks like it's buckling beneath one: Of the two candidates, the president is held to a higher standard of behavior.
There have been only two events that could be said to have caused significant movement by voters in the campaign. One was the Oct. 3 Denver debate in which Mitt Romney disinterred political skills that stunned the incumbent and woke up a sleeping electorate. Race on.
imageAFP/Getty Images
Vehicle inside the U.S. Consulate compound in Benghazi, Libya, Sept. 11.
The other is Benghazi. The damage done to the Obama campaign by the Sept. 11 death in Benghazi of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three American colleagues has been more gradual than the sensation of the Denver debate, but its effect may have been deeper.
The incumbent president has a credibility gap.

The President Sends His Non-Regrets

A revealing interview about his priorities in 2009—and 2013.

President Obama doesn't give many interviews these days outside Comedy Central, so it caused a stir Wednesday when editors at the Des Moines Register managed to pin him down and even elicit some news. Specifically, Mr. Obama said he wants to pursue immigration reform in a second term, as well as a budget "grand bargain" with Republicans that includes tax reform.
This will come as a surprise to voters reading the President's just-released 20-page brochure on his second-term agenda, which makes little or no mention of these priorities. Perhaps that's why the White House first demanded that the interview be off the record, making the transcript public only after the Register editor objected in a public blog post.
But the larger reason to be skeptical concerns Mr. Obama's answer to another Register question: Whether he regrets pursuing ObamaCare and other liberal social priorities in his first two years rather than focusing on the economy.
"Absolutely not," Mr. Obama told the Iowa journalists. "Remember the context. First of all, Mitch McConnell has imposed an ironclad filibuster from the first day I was in office. And that's not speculation."
Whoaaaa there, big fella. Mr. McConnell was then and still is the Senate Minority Leader, and in 2009 he had all of 40 votes. Mr. Obama could have pursued any agenda he wanted, and the Des Moines editors wanted to know why he didn't focus on the economy first. Yet Mr. Obama's instinctive reaction is to blame Republican obstructionism that never happened.
imageZuma Press In those first days of progressive wine and roses, Mr. Obama managed to peel off three Republican votes for his stimulus blowout in February 2009. He got five Republicans for the trial-bar gift known as the Lilly Ledbetter bill and nine for an expansion of the state children's health program, both in January. That was some ferocious filibuster.
By spring 2009, when Minnesota's Al Franken was seated, the White House had 60 votes and a GOP-only filibuster wasn't even possible. "We have the votes. F-- 'em," declared then-Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, according to the first-100-days chapters of Bob Woodward's new book.

Rove: Strategies for the Stretch Run to Nov. 6

Over the last 40 national surveys, Mr. Romney is at or above 50% in 11, with Mr. Obama at or above 50% in one

This year's presidential election was transformed between the first debate's opening statements in Denver and the closing statements in Boca Raton. As a result, most of the negative impressions created by the Obama campaign's five-month, $300-million television advertising barrage were destroyed. Seen unfiltered, Gov. Mitt Romney came across as an earnest, straightforward, thoughtful conservative with a concrete plan for the nation's future.
Wednesday's RealClearPolitics.com average of polls showed Mr. Romney with 48% support to President Barack Obama's 47.1%. On the eve of the Denver debate, Mr. Romney had 46% and Mr. Obama 49.1%.
More revealing, in the past week's 40 national surveys, Mr. Romney was at or above 50% in 11, with Mr. Obama at or above 50% in one. Mr. Romney leads 48.9% to 46.7% in an average of these surveys. At this same point in 2004, President George W. Bush led Sen. John Kerry in this composite average, 48.9% to 45.8%.
So what are each candidate's strategies for the stretch run?
New television spots reveal the Romney campaign's closing message. One says another four years for Mr. Obama would mean more debt, up to 20 million people losing their employer-provided health insurance, higher taxes, rising energy prices and Medicare cuts. Other ads emphasize Mr. Romney has a plan for jobs and showcase his success as a Republican governor in a Democratic state.
imageReuters
President Barack Obama
This three-part strategy—matter-of-factly indict Mr. Obama's failed policies, highlight a common-sense conservative agenda to create jobs and growth, and stress Mr. Romney's capacity to provide bipartisan leadership—was evident in all three of his debate performances.

Clint Eastwood Stars in Anti-Obama Ad


AP poll: Romney erases Obama advantage among women

By JENNIFER AGIESTA and NANCY BENAC | Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — What gender gap?
Less than two weeks out from Election Day, Republican Mitt Romney has erased President Barack Obama's 16-point advantage among women, a new Associated Press-GfK poll shows. And the president, in turn, has largely eliminated Romney's edge among men.
Those churning gender dynamics leave the presidential race still a virtual dead heat, with Romney favored by 47 percent of likely voters and Obama by 45 percent, a result within the poll's margin of sampling error, the survey shows.

Carney: 'Everyone' Knew About Terrorist Claims 'Instantaneously'


Today, at the White House press gaggle, Jay Carney was asked one – really, just one – question about the emails regarding the terrorist attack in Benghazi. Those emails, to refresh, showed that within two hours of the attacks, the White House had been informed that the action on the ground was a terrorist attack. There was no mention of a YouTube video or a spontaneous demonstration in the emails.



Carney acknowledged today not only that the White House knew, but that it knew “instantaneously”:


The email you’re referring to was an open-source, unclassified email referring to an assertion made on a social media site that everyone in this room had access to and knew about instantaneously.


Instantaneously. Yet the Obama administration claimed for weeks that they were giving Americans the best available information.

*EXCLUSIVE* Anti-Mormon Bigot Behind Obama/Allred 'October Surprise'


As I write this, Barack Obama's gal-pal Gloria Allred and the Boston Globe have aligned themselves with the Chicago Machine in a partisan crusade to launch an October Surprise against Mitt Romney. That we all know. What you might not know is that Allred's client, Maureen Sullivan, the woman pushing to unseal the gag order on her own divorce records, is an embittered leftie, a Huffington Post "Super User," and a vicious anti-Mormon bigot.

For what's obviously a manufactured reason, Sullivan blames Mitt Romney for a divorce settlement she received during the early-nineties. Time's Mark Halperin reports that while he was Chairman of Bain Capital, Romney was called to testify in the divorce proceedings between Staples founder (and Romney friend) Tom Stemberg, and Ms. Sullivan.  Supposedly, Romney's testimony about the value of Staples at the time affected the eventual settlement agreement. Flash-forward over 15 years later, and Ms. Sullivan still hasn’t gotten over it. 

CBS Busts Obama--and Itself--in Benghazi Cover-Up


CBS News has released a clip of an interview by Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes on Sep. 12 with President Barack Obama that indicates Obama knew the assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya was a premeditated terror attack--and suggests the White House later deceived the public by blaming protests against an anti-Islam video. CBS chose not to air the clip for over a month--but did air Obama’s attack on Romney that same night.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

A Son of Europe Reflects on the EU’s Nobel Prize

 

The Nobel Committee should have named the U.S. and NATO as equal co-recipients for their role in transforming Europe ‘from a continent of war to a continent of peace.’
Europe is always on my mind. After all, I am about as European as they come, born in the very center of the continent, with family history so typical of those ancient crossroads where Germans, Czechs, Jews, Austrians, Italians, Poles, Hungarians, French, Swedes, and Russians came to fight, settle, intermarry, live, and die. I had also lived on both sides of the Iron Curtain before it finally fell in 1989; I continue to be a frequent visitor to Europe’s cities (including Brussels, Copenhagen, Geneva, Helsinki, London, Munich, Paris, Salzburg, and Zurich just in the past four months), a frequent rider of the continent’s fast trains (TGV, InterCity, Thalys, AVE), and a diligent reader of Euronews in several languages
And after more than 40 years of living in North America (first in the United States, then in Canada) I think I also have a fair sense of real (and imagined) differences between the mores, attitudes, strengths, weaknesses, and aspirations of the two continents, differences conceived in simplified, idealized — and perhaps superficial — generalizations and abstractions. I am allergic to many of those perceptions and claims because of their ignorance and condescension.

Compounding a Crisis

 

Fifteen Americans have died from tainted steroid injections. Here’s how Obama’s FDA can make things better.
In the past two weeks, 15 Americans have died of fungal meningitis and more than 200 have become infected from tainted steroid injections they received to treat problems with their spines. The “compounding” pharmacy responsible for distributing the contaminated steroid shipped nearly 18,000 vials of the product to 75 facilities in 23 states, so that many more people could have been exposed to the fungal contaminant.
Federal health agencies are rightly focused on recalling the drugs, and members of Congress are already calling for new laws with tighter controls over compounding pharmacies. New laws merit consideration, but so do existing rules that are not being enforced and policies that are driving more widespread use of these compounded products.

It’s Past Time to Stop Blaming Bush

 

The Obama campaign blames today’s economic doldrums on past Bush policies. But this rhetoric doesn’t square with the record.
With the presidential campaign turning white hot, the decade-old “Bush tax cuts” are attracting more blame than ever for the post-Bush economy. Because one facet of Romney’s tax reform proposal is a reduction in all income tax rates, the Obama campaign has been equating it with the “failed policies of the past” (most notably the Bush tax cuts), which allegedly created the mess we’re in. A frequent line in Obama’s stump speeches has been that Romney’s party “drove the car into the ditch... [and] now they want the keys back.” Further, says the Obama campaign, the ditch would have been much deeper had the stimulus package — the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) — not halted the economy’s decline early in 2009.
Neither of these assertions squares with the record, however.

The Tragic Demise of Fannie Mae

 

A new book offers an instructive lesson on the unhappy surprises caused by the government’s attempts to manipulate the housing market.
James R. Hagerty’s new book, The Fateful History of Fannie Mae: New Deal Birth to Mortgage Crisis Fall, shows how hard it is for administrations throughout history to know what they are really doing in their political attempts to manipulate the housing market.
As Hagerty explains, the Eisenhower administration, working through the Housing Act of 1954, tried to wean Fannie off the government’s credit and make it operate with private capital. It succeeded instead in creating the essence of the fateful and costly government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) structure.

The Scariest Day of My Life

 

‘It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response.’
As the month of October progressed in the prosperous year of 1962, the country was preparing for Halloween, harvesting the last of the crops, attending football games, and getting ready for winter. It seemed a peaceful time, at least by Cold War standards.
But unknown to the public — and certainly unknown to this 18-year-old freshman at Vanderbilt University — the greatest crisis of the Cold War was brewing. Afraid of a possible U.S. invasion of Cuba, the Soviet Union had in September begun deploying intermediate-range ballistic missiles to the island, which lies just 90 miles off Florida. These missiles were capable of carrying one-megaton warheads (enough to destroy a large city) and had ranges of up to 2,400 miles. That was great enough to put much of the Western Hemisphere and most of the United States under threat.

No War on Women

No War on Women
Exposing the Left’s gender politics and pandering
An NRO Interview
Sabrina Schaeffer, co-author with Carrie Lukas of Liberty Is No War on Women


Text
Carrie Lukas and Sabrina Schaeffer are co-authors of Liberty Is No War on Women, pushing back against some of the more exaggerated and misleading rhetoric this election season. Schaeffer takes some questions from National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ
: You contend that there is no “war on women” in the United States. If that’s the case, why does the Left seem to think it’s an accusation with traction?
SABRINA SCHAEFFER: There is absolutely no war on women. And the claim that one political party is openly hostile to more than 50 percent of the electorate should strike any reasonable person as absurd. You don’t have to be a political scientist to know that women – single or married, rural or urban, young or old, mothers or childless — are not a homogenous voting bloc.

The President’s Ridiculous Pamphlet

The President’s Ridiculous Pamphlet
By The Editors


Text
Barack Obama has released a ridiculous little 20-page pamphlet — 20 pages with lots of pictures — detailing his agenda for a second term. He calls it the “New Economic Patriotism,” and if that name seems to you redolent of early-20th-century totalitarians, that may be because it is not the first N.E.P.: Lenin’s was the Novaya Ekonomicheskaya Politika. Mitt Romney published an economic-policy book, too. No pictures.
Apparently, Obama’s second term is to be a more or less precise repeat of his first term. In fact, the sixth item on his seven-point list merely touts Obamacare, which, if memory serves, already has been passed. He also wants to add six-figure numbers to the headcounts of the public-sector unions that finance and staff his campaign. And build batteries. There’s no picture of the batteries, but there are 17 photographs of the president, most of them centerfolds. In fact, photographs of the president gazing down benevolently upon children, doctors, oldsters, and one guy with a baseball cap on sideways account for about 80 percent of the space in the booklet. That is appropriate, inasmuch as the Obama campaign, like the Obama presidency, is not about jobs or economic growth: It is about Barack Obama.

Obama Knew Benghazi Was Terrorism And Did Nothing

Obama Knew Benghazi Was Terrorism And Did Nothing


 Credibility: When President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton stepped into the Rose Garden the morning of Sept. 12, they likely knew the attack on our Benghazi consulate the day before was organized by terrorists.
They knew because they were likely privy to a flurry of emails among administration officials discussing the attack in real time. Yet they said nothing about what they knew and, worse, had done nothing to mount a rescue despite American forces being less than an hour away during the seven-hour blitz.
According to Fox News, 300 to 400 national security figures received these emails in real time almost as the raid was playing out and concluding. These people work directly under the nation's top national security, military and diplomatic officials.
The first email was sent at 4:05 p.m. Washington time, about 25 minutes after the attack began, with the subject line "U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack (SBU)" It read: "Embassy Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four COM (chief of mission) personnel are in the compound safe haven."

Brian Doherty on the Trouble With Governments and Benefits of Anarchism

Exclusive Interview

– with Anthony Wile

Brian Doherty
The Daily Bell is pleased to present this exclusive interview with Brian Doherty (left).
Introduction: Brian Doherty is a senior editor at Reason magazine and Reason.com. Doherty is author of the books This is Burning Man (2004, Little, Brown; paperback BenBella, 2006), Radicals for Capitalism: A History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (PublicAffairs, 2007) and Gun Control on Trial (Cato, 2008). From 1994 to 2003, Doherty worked as associate editor and reporter for Reason, writing a variety of stories on topics ranging from the Americans with Disabilities Act to pollution-credit trading to the independent rock scene. Doherty's work has appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines. He has been a commentator on hundreds of radio and TV shows and was the Warren Brookes Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 1999. He served as managing editor at Regulation magazine from 1993-94.
Daily Bell: Tell us about yourself and your background. Where did you grow up and go to school?
Brian Doherty: While born in New York City, I left at age three. Spent my school and college years all over the state of Florida.
Daily Bell: You received a Bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Florida. What do you think of Western mainstream journalists and media?

Am I a Corporate Shill?

– by Tibor Machan


Dr. Tibor Machan
It has always been my view that corporations are groups of people united for various purposes, often to benefit from a business venture guided by competent management. Initially, I worried little about either the legal details or even about the legal history. A bunch of people incorporate or form a company to achieve certain perfectly acceptable, even admirable goals. Sometimes this can be done via a partnership, sometimes by incorporating, sometimes for profit, sometimes not.

The Internet Revolution is a Liberty Revolution

– by Ron Paul


Ron Paul
Until the late 1990s, individuals interested in Austrian economics, US constitutional history and libertarian philosophy had few sources of information. They had to spend hours scouring used book stores or the back pages of obscure libertarian periodicals to find the great works of Mises, Rothbard, Hayek and other giants of liberty. Local library and university collections ignored libertarian politics and economics.

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