Archive for July, 2011

Herman Cain

Forget President Obama’s 40 percent (and still falling) approval rating. That just means that less than 45 percent of those surveyed have no clue about the direction of the country. Or, those same people support the president’s weakening of America. And please spare me the worn-out excuses that it was Bush’s fault, or things are bad because it was worse than he thought.

Consider the facts:

President Obama ended the Space Shuttle program as of two weeks ago when the last shuttle returned safely from its mission. We will now have to thumb a ride from the Russians if we want to get to the Space Station, and it will cost us dearly. John F. Kennedy’s vision of our leadership in space technology and exploration will soon be a national nightmare. We will now be a follower instead of a leader.

When President Obama made the decision to terminate the missile defense system being built in Turkey, he made it easier for nations like Iran to attack our friends like Israel with nuclear weapons. In talking with a ballistic missile defense system expert recently, I was told that we could have enhanced our overall missile defense systems capability by upgrading our sea-based defense systems technology for a relatively small investment. The Obama Administration said no to the expenditure even though, as a result, the world is not safer.

And now that the “surge” in Afghanistan is working according to General David Petraeus and others, the president chose to withdraw about one-third of the troops over the next year. That means the remaining two-thirds will be at a disadvantage in fighting the remaining enemy. The enemy did not announce that they will reduce their efforts to try to kill our soldiers by one-third.

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Dan Calabrese

After an exhaustive session with Uncle Sam, the Debt Counselor met The Media.

CHARLES BABBLER of the ASSOCIATED NEWS: Why are you trying to create a disaster?

DEBT COUNSELOR: Pardon me?

BABBLER: If you don’t let Uncle Sam borrow more money, he’ll default on his obligations.

DEBT COUNSELOR: His obligations are the problem. He’s taken on far too many and he doesn’t seem to understand that taking care of them, as you say, involves a lot more than just paying interest. He needs to stop borrowing and start paying the money back. If he does, eventually he can live debt-free and won’t have to be making payments all the time.

CHUCK TOAD of BSNBC: Why are you so inflexible?

DEBT COUNSELOR: There’s really not a lot of room for flexibility when one’s debt load has exploded like Uncle Sam’s has. And as usually happens in a situation like this, the person in debt has a hard time recognizing the reality of the situation. It requires a little tough love.

JENNIFER LOVELORN of the UNITED PRESS: Why are you risking default just so you can get your way?

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Dan Calabrese

Debt Counselor: Good morning, Uncle Sam. Are you ready for our debt counseling session?

Uncle Sam: Of course. I’m open to solutions and everything is on the table.

Debt Counselor: All right, well why don’t you give me an update on your situation?

Uncle Sam: Sure. Here’s the deal. I need to borrow another $2 trillion.

Debt Counselor: On top of your existing debt? That’s an awful lot. Why do you need to do that?

Uncle Sam: Oh, it’s for a very good and important reason. I need it to pay the interest on my existing debt. That’s important to do, you know.

Debt Counselor: Yeah, you need to do that, but are you only paying interest on your debt? Are you paying back any principal?

Uncle Sam: Well, that’s something I want to do.

Debt Counselor: But are you?

Uncle Sam: Well, not at this time.

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Brett Noel

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Herman Cain

Last week in this commentary I documented what I thought was a major crisis of leadership in the White House regarding our national debate over the debt ceiling and debt.  The crisis in the Oval Office is apparently even worse than I thought – and frankly, I thought it was pretty bad to begin with.

This weekend we have learned that President Obama has more or less abdicated leadership on this issue. If he can’t get his way, which includes raising taxes and raising the debt ceiling, he doesn’t even want to talk. Congressional leaders are meeting without the president or even any of the president’s staff in an effort to reach a deal on spending and the debt ceiling.

Now this is ironic when you remember that the president had tried to stay out of this very important issue for weeks before trying to swoop in like the super hero to save the day last week.  He was trying to convince the nation that he and he alone was the lone reasonable adult trying to bring order to a chaotic debt mess.

When the president got involved, the mess got worse.

Spending cuts are just not something that a big government liberal can ever get serious about. And if there’s one thing we know for sure, it’s that President Obama is a big government liberal.  Of course, folks who were paying attention knew this long before Election Day 2008.  Everything that has happened since Obama took office – especially the events of the last few weeks – continue to hammer this point home.

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Dan Calabrese

When you read news stories by the legacy media, the key to decoding bias is recognizing differences in credulity. Once you recognize which notions a writer treats with credulity – and which notions he or she treats with incredulity – you have a pretty good sense of the writer’s bias.

A perfect example comes in the form of one Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of the Associated Press. Mr. Alonso-Zaldivar may be the most shameless Obama propagandist in the employ of the AP, which is no small feat. He has authored countless stories on Obamacare, treating criticisms of the law as if they are the product of twisted paranoid minds – and treating official refutations of these criticisms as if they are credible by definition.

On Monday, Alonso-Zaldivar let loose with a piece of propaganda-disguised-as-news so galling, it should be featured in journalism courses as the quintessential example of opinion disguised as news.

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Brett Noel

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Herman Cain

After being AWOL on the debt ceiling debate for weeks, President Obama is now trying to swoop in like some super hero who is somehow above the fray in Washington.  He is trying to convince us that he is the lone leader among 535 want-to-be Congressional leaders. And if they do not solve this Obama-created crisis, Obama is positioning himself again to blame the Republicans.

Some of us are not that gullible. We’re not buying it.

It’s Obama’s lack of leadership that has led to this situation in the first place – a situation that would never have happened under President Herman Cain. Why? Real leaders anticipate and analyze crises to prevent them.

In this current debate over our debt ceiling and government spending, if there is no agreement reached, it will not be because the Republicans are not serious about cutting spending.  It will be because President Obama is not serious about cutting spending, and therefore he is incapable of showing any leadership on the issue.

You can’t be a leader if you can’t figure out which way to go – or if you’re determined to go the wrong way.

Last week, Democratic pollster and commentator Pat Caddell said that the elephant in the room is the fact that our president is simply clueless about what to do.  Now I don’t know if Mr. Caddell is correct or not, but the fact remains that the way the president is handling this debt ceiling issue is just the way someone who is clueless would handle it.

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Dan Calabrese

I don’t really know a lot about Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, so this column has no opinion about the Left’s frequent implication that she is a blithering moron. But her recent response to fellow presidential candidate and fellow Minnesotan Tim Pawlenty says a lot about how Bachmann and a lot of other people these days view the notion of accomplishment.

Pawlenty’s appeal as a candidate, to the extent he has one, arises from his track record governing Minnesota. So it’s no surprise that he would seek to distinguish himself from Bachmann by making the case that she hasn’t accomplished much.

Appearing on “Meet the Press” this past weekend, Bachmann responded to Pawlenty’s comment about her thin record in a most interesting way. Look what she claims are her “accomplishments.”

I have fought the cap-and-trade agenda, rather than implement it, and I will work to end cap-and-trade as president of the United States. I stood up against President Obama’s support of the $700 billion bailout rather than defend it.

I was a leading voice, fighting against Obamacare and the unconstitutional individual mandates; I did not lift my voice in praise of it. My message brought tens of thousands of Americans to Washington, D.C., to oppose Obamacare. As president, I will not rest until Obamacare is repealed. And I will not vote to raise the debt ceiling.

People can count on me as a fighter. I am proud of my record of fighting with resolve, and without apology, for our free markets, for sane fiscal policies, and in opposition to the advancement of the big government left. As president, the American people can count on me to stand by my record of advancing pro-growth policies to put our nation back on the right track.

All right, let’s take these items one at a time.

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David Karki

If Speaker Boehner and Senate Minority Leader McConnell had any guts and brains respectively, which they don’t, they could take a peek at my home state of Minnesota to see how their debt-ceiling fight with President Obama will turn out if only they’d stand firm and make a clear, concise case to cut through the biased media’s lies.

You see, we already have our own state government shutdown here thanks to our own insane, Marxist puppet of a chief executive hell-bent on jacking taxes to infinity in service of hardcore class-warfare ideology. Governor Mark Dayton has already done what Obama is threatening to do – cause maximum pain and chaos in the arrogant belief that the resulting apocalyptic propaganda by his media allies would force the Republican legislature to cave in to his extortion.

Dayton also refused to offer any budget of his own. He too refused to say on what he’d spend the proposed tax hikes. He also refused to seriously negotiate prior to the July 1 deadline or sign any sort of “lights on” bill to keep things operating. And in his deluded condition, he like Obama (and their media acolytes) has psychologically projected onto Republicans all the qualities that can only be found in them and the Democrat base:   a total denial of reality, ideological intransigence in the extreme, and a willingness to engage in the most scorched-earth tactics available. Read the rest of this entry »