Obama Was Honest When He Said He Wanted to Remake America

At the Wall Street Journal, "Transformers 2":

For all the spin and deception of politics, sooner or later every politician reveals his true purposes. For Barack Obama, one of those moments came when he declared shortly before the 2008 election that "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." Above all else, the President who asked voters for a second term Thursday night sees himself as destined to transform America according to his own progressive dreams.

For most of 2008, Mr. Obama was able to disguise this ambition behind his gauzy rhetoric of hope and post-partisanship. The fine print of his agenda betrayed his plans to expand and entrench the entitlement state, but most voters ignored that as they chose his cool confidence over John McCain's manic intensity amid a financial panic.

Candidate Obama was eloquent and likable. His personal story echoed of America's history as a land of opportunity. Voters put aside any worry about his ideology and took a chance on his promise of a better tomorrow.

Four years later the shooting liberal star, as we called him then, has come down to earth. What should have been a buoyant recovery coming out of a deep recession was lackluster to start and has grown weaker. The partisanship he claimed to want to dampen has become more fierce. The middle-class incomes he sought to lift have fallen. These results aren't bad luck or the lingering effects of a crash four years ago. They flow directly from his "transforming" purposes.

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IMAGE CREDIT: The Looking Spoon.

Chainsaw Massacre Propaganda Video Used by Free Syrian Army

Extreme video, via Blazing Cat Fur, "Warning Extremely Graphic: "Syrian" Propaganda Chainsaw Atrocity Video." It's a Mexican drug cartel clip, apparently. Which is interesting in how violence so close to home, perhaps fueled by U.S. demand for narcotics, is creating violent propaganda material in demand by our terrorist enemies overseas. And make no mistake, if the worst of the Syrian "free" insurgents come to power, it'll be like the Taliban in Afghanistan. See this report for more on that: "Killing of Rebel With Qaeda Links Opens Debate on Syrian Opposition."

Toast to the Troops

Smokin'!

Hot Shots Calendar 2013: Rosie Jones and India Reynolds

Lovelies:

Heroes of Hotness

Amazing:

More at Front Magazine.

The GOP Is Not Racist...

It's Alfonzo Rachel, via Theo Spark, "GOP Is Not Racist, Notwithstanding Liberal Lies."

Anti-Semitism Alive and Well in Romania

From Professor Michael Curtis, at the Gatestone Institute, "Anti-Semitism Alive and Well in Romania; Or How the Holocaust Never Happened":

The virus of antisemitism is alive and well in Eastern Europe, and so is the denial of the Holocaust. It is particularly disconcerting that a younger generation in Romania, and more than likely everywhere else in the world, should be infected with this virus, and is -- or claims to be -- ignorant of the real treatment of Jews in the 20th century.

Dan Sova, a 39 year old Romanian lawyer and Social Democrat, who has been a Senator in the Parliament since 2008, was promoted to the position of Minister for Parliamentary Relations by the Prime Minister Victor Ponta on August 6 after saying on a television broadcast on March 5, that "no Jew suffered on Romanian territory (during the Holocaust) thanks to Marshal Antonescu." Two days later Sova was removed "temporarily" from office as speaker of his political party. He has also said that "only 24 Jews were killed during the Iasi pogrom (of June 28-29, 1941) by the German army."

Both statements by Sova were false and malicious. Ion Antonescu, the pro-Nazi dictator of Romania during World War II was "leader of the state," prime minister, foreign minister, defense minister, and self-appointed Marshal. He joined the Tripartite Pact of Germany, Italy, and Japan against the Allies in November 1940, two months after it had been signed. He also established close personal contact with Hitler. It was Antonescu who on June 27, 1941, ordered the commander of the military garrison of the town of Iasi, in northeast Romania, to "cleanse" the city of its Jewish population. The action was not instigated by the Nazis but by the Romanian authorities and the Romanian army on their own initiative.

It is estimated that during the two days of the pogrom in Iasi, between 13,000 and 15,000 Jews were massacred in the streets or else died in the death trains on which 100 Jews were herded into each boxcar; most died of thirst, starvation, or suffocation. The actions of the Romanian regime in the Holocaust led to the deaths, not of 24 Jews, but a number estimated to be between 280,000 and 380,000 Romanian Jews -- most likely the larger number, in the territories under its control.

It was not Nazi policy that triggered the massacre of Jews but the Romanian government itself -- with the enthusiastic participation of the military, and the endorsement of the broader society, similar to the better-known participation of the French Vichy regime and French authorities during the war.

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Desperately Seeking Middle-Class Taxes

At the Wall Street Journal, "What Obama's critique of Ryan tells us about Obama's budget plans":

Democrats in Charlotte are pounding away at the savage budget cuts that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan supposedly favor and their phantom plan for "raising taxes on the middle class," as President Obama puts it. The truth is the opposite, but table that for a moment. The President seems not to realize his critique is really a scorching if implicit indictment of his own time in office.

Think about his logic like this: Mr. Ryan's House budget details a long-range plan to equalize spending and tax revenues without—ahem—raising tax rates. But if such fiscal restraint is as deep and draconian as Mr. Obama claims, then as a matter of arithmetic the White House must favor a tax increase of an equal size, or something close to it, in order to pay for the amount of government he wants to sustain.

***
The nearby chart dramatizes this reality. It shows the accumulation of outstanding debt as a share of the economy in the modern era. This is debt held by the public—the kind the country has to pay back to bond investors, and not the IOUs that one part of the government owes to another part. These debt projections are highly speculative, and faster economic growth would do a great deal to mitigate them. But we offer them to help readers compare the Ryan and Obama budget visions...

Continue reading.

And folks said Obama was just like Clinton? Amazing that he'd even want to be, but then again, the Democrat secular collectivists got nothin'.

Bleak New Jobs Report Harshes Democrats' Convention Bounce Mellow

James Pethokoukis reports, "The awful, awful August jobs report" (via Memeorandum):

This was not the employment report either American workers or the Obama campaign were hoping for. A huge miss. It shows the U.S. labor market remains in a deep depression, generating few jobs and little if no income growth.

Continue reading.

Also, Instapundit has more here and here.

And still more at the Wall Street Journal, "Slow U.S. Hiring May Spur Fed":

America's employers added jobs at a tepid pace in August, posing a re-election challenge for President Barack Obama and raising the likelihood the Federal Reserve will step in to spur growth when it meets in the coming week.

The Labor Department employment report, which draws more than its usual scrutiny as elections approach, said the U.S. added a seasonally adjusted 96,000 jobs last month. That is down from the 141,000 added in July and too few to make headway in putting the nation's 12.5 million unemployed workers back on the job.

The unemployment rate ticked down to 8.1%, from 8.3% in July, but for the wrong reasons. The jobless rate, based on a separate survey from the main job tally, fell as people gave up searching and left the workforce, not because they found positions.

People give up after awhile, especially with the clusterf-k Democrats in office.

More at the link, with graphs.

RELATED: Here's that bounce, from Gallup, "Obama Bounces Up to 52% Approval, 48% to 45% Over Romney." Not that big a bounce, actually, and they're ephemeral in any case, especially with these job numbers. The mellow is harshed.

Three Times They Said No to God

That was fast.

I discussed the Democrat Party platform fiasco in my classes and I told students I'd be surprised if Republicans didn't create some campaign ads out of the disastrous floor vote optics. And here they come already, at Common Cents, "Allen West Ad '3 Times They Said No to God'":

And see J. Christian Adams, "Losing It in Charlotte":

Lee Atwater couldn’t have written a better script for the Democratic National Convention that just ended in Charlotte. The Charlotte fiasco was a less violent version of the fiasco in Chicago in 1968, except the lunacy was now inside the venue, not outside.

RTWT.

'Why Organic Is Better (Never Mind the Study)'

I had purchased the paper the day this story came out, but Instapundit linked it as well, "BUT IT’S SO TRENDY: Stanford Scientists Cast Doubt on Advantages of Organic Meat and Produce."

And boy, trendy is right.

Here's a response from the letters to the Times, with an emphasis on "Never Mind the Study":

To the Editor:

“Stanford Scientists Cast Doubt on Advantages of Organic Meat and Produce” (news article, Sept. 4) misses the point.

The first sentence suggests that people eat organic food with the hope of getting more vitamins per serving. I choose organic food because it contains fewer pesticides, and is grown more naturally.

Furthermore, the article contradicts the implications of the headline; it provides evidence that organic food contains fewer chemicals, and cites several examples that validate the reality that organic food is in fact healthier.

The fact that nonorganic food also contains pesticide levels below the standards of the Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t indicate that organic and nonorganic foods are actually equally healthy.

Finally, the article acknowledges that this study ignores food’s taste, and doesn’t mention other factors, including support of independent farmers, healthier conditions for workers, biodiversity and reduced environmental degradation.

JOSH GRAY
Roxbury, Conn., Sept. 4, 2012

That's some truly snooty commentary without even the slightest mention of data to support the claims, and I've bolded the most important point, besides. I'm sure organic could taste ten times worse than cardboard and idiots like this would still be spouting such progressive nonsense.

There are more letters at the Times.

And see Jonathan Tobin's piece on this as well, "Broken Clock Alert: Organic, Schmorganic."

Britney Spears Strips Down for 'Elle Magazine' October Cover Story

At Fox News, "Britney Spears drops her pants for a magazine shoot – This month, The X Factor star Britney Spears makes a splash on the cover of ELLE’s October issue..."

Nice photos at the link.

Canada Severs Diplomatic Relations With Iran

I had Blazing Cat Fur's report at the sidebar, but I'm moving it over to the front-page, "About Time: Canada closes embassy in Iran, expels Iranian diplomats."

And see Telegraph UK, "Canada breaks off diplomatic relations with Iran":

Canada closed its Tehran embassy and expelled Iranian diplomats on Friday, in an unexpected and dramatic move.

Canada expressed concern for the mission's safety and criticised Iran's support for the Syrian regime and its threats against Israel.

"Canada's position on the regime in Iran is well known. Canada views the government of Iran as the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today," Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said.

"Diplomatic relations between Canada and Iran have been suspended. All Canadian diplomatic staff have left Iran, and Iranian diplomats in Ottawa have been instructed to leave within five days," he added, in a statement.

Canada did not cite a specific incident that caused the breakdown in ties, but issued a strongly worded attack on Tehran's support for Bashar al-Assad's pariah Syrian regime and its "incitement to genocide" against Israel.

More at that top link, and also, "Iran sends elite troops to aid Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria."

An arc of influence across the Persian Gulf and Middle East regions, the implications of Iranian power seem to be lost in this administration. Syria is not turning out so well and it won't be good for U.S. interests and those of our allies.

Democrat Values Are Not American Values — 'How Will You Answer?' (VIDEO)

We were shown over and over again this week that the Democrats don't stand with the average, blood-of-the-soil American. They might talk the talk, but on foreign policy to social issues, the Democrats are dragging this nation down in a godless maelstrom of hatred and death. I pray Barack Obama suffers a massive defeat in November --- and I'll be working toward that effect as well.

Check out this vital clip, which ran last night on television around the time of President Infanticide's speech, via Pundette:

PREVIOUSLY: "Democrat Abortion Extremists Reside Way Outside the American Mainstream."

BONUS: From Peggy Noonan, at WSJ, "The Democrats' Soft Extremism." Correction, Peggy: Hardcore extremism. The Democrats' Hardcore Extremism. (Via Memeorandum.)

Illegal Alien Benita Veliz Speech to Democrat National Convention

At the New York Times, "A ‘Dreamer’ Addresses the Democratic Convention":

Benita Veliz was only at the lectern at the Democratic convention for a few minutes on Wednesday night. CNN did not even turn its cameras on the stage during her brief speech. But for many Latinos in the hall, her moment under the lights was a stunning surprise.

Yeah, CNN ignored the illegal alien's speech, conveniently, of course. The idiot Dems had enough bad optics for the week. No need to pile on with lawbreaking grievance activists. Seriously. The woman's speech was one of the most important of the convention, as it officially confirmed the Democrat Party as the party of lawlessness and utterly sick ethic political pandering. The "DREAM Act" is not about legalizing those who came through "no fault of their own." It's about building a bullet-proof Hispanic ethnic voting bloc, damn the Constitution, to say nothing of national sovereignty.

UPDATE: Linked at iOWNTHEWORLD, "The Lawless Left On Display – Until It Was Blacked Out By MSM." Thanks!

Eva Longoria Speech to the Democrat National Convention

Eva Longoria's a smokin' hottie, one of the hottest babes on the Democrat roster. The problem, of course, is that she's Democrat, and by implication objectively stupid. So, take it for the eye candy, if nothing else:

And then see Lonely Con, "Forget Eva Langoria – Read This Instead."

Cardinal Timothy Dolan Speech to the Democrat National Convention

It's frankly astonishing that they allowed the Cardinal anywhere near the podium. The Democrats' convention pushed pro-death politics. It's sickening.

Nice Deb reports, "Best Speech of the Dem Convention: Cardinal Dolan’s Benediction (Video)."

Shameless: Dems Portray Obama as Patton at DNC

You gotta love it.

I tweeted this comment below before I saw Dana Loesch's essay at Big Peace:

Reality check: Obama was biggest antiwar Dem in 2008. Now foreign policy just a campaign prop for reelection. Shameless.
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) September 7, 2012

Read Dana's entry at the link.

A great piece.

Foaming, Frothy Jennifer Granholm Unleashed

If I recall correctly, this lady drove Michigan into the ground.

She's a freak, and she deserves this mock-up at Power Line, "THE DEAN SCREAM REVISITED."

More video at TPMtv, "Granholm Brings Down the House..."

Scarlett Johansson's Speech to the Democrat National Convention

I would have preferred Natalie Portman. And I'm interested to know why she didn't speak after all. I wouldn't be surprised if some off those "reviled" Jewish neocons --- so despised by the Democrat left --- talked her out of it.